I’m a huge foodie, and a massive fan of Asian cuisine, so when Bang Bang Oriental Foodhall opened up in Colindale, not far from the old, now defunct, but still legendary Oriental City shopping centre, I had it on my wish list for months.
Tag: Japanese
Itsu Gyozas: A Taste of Japan At Home
I’m a massive fan of gyozas, so much so that I own three gyozas presses, have written my own published recipes for them, and have spent an excruciating five minutes in a ramen joint in Tokyo trying to work out how to pronounce the word properly so I could order some from the waitress (disclaimer: I still don’t know. But I just pointed in the end!).
Although gyozas aren’t exactly the mysterious food item for UK consumers that they used to be ten years ago, you’d still be hard-pressed to find any ready-made in supermarkets outside of Asian speciality stores. That’s why I was so excited when I found out that Itsu were launching their own cook at home gyozas, ready frozen and available in Tesco and Waitrose in three flavours: Vegetable Fusion, King Prawn and Sesame Tuna. The packets cost £3.50 per pack and contain 20 dumplings, and dipping sauce.
Eat like a sumo wrestler: Chankonabe recipe
This hearty, clean tasting bowl o’goodness is modelled on the sort of food that they feed to sumo wrestlers in Japan – but don’t be put off from trying it for fear of putting on weight. When it comes to food, sumo wrestlers go for quality and quantity – piling on the pounds with vast amounts of really good, healthy food.
Chankonabe is a kind of nabemono, or one pot dish, where all of the diners help themselves from a central, simmering stew. Not only does the tabletop stove the stew sits upon keep the diners warm in winter, but by sharing, friendships and familial ties are strengthened. Because sumos live together in groups in so-called stables, there is an obvious advantage to sharing meals – and although the origins of the word ‘chanko’ are unclear, many think the word comes from ‘chan’, for father and ‘ko’, for child, indicating the strong ties between a stablemaster and his trainees.
The chanko-ban, or chanko cook (that’s you, if you’re following my recipe!) is usually a junior sumo wrestler. There are no rules about what goes in chankonabe – the contents are dictated by the seasons, what’s in the kitchen, and personal taste. But generally, chicken is favoured, and beef and fish could be considered bad luck, as both represent a sumo in defeat (on all fours, or completely legless!).
Is it really chankonabe if it’s not served to or by a sumo? Well, maybe not – but eat it with a warrior spirit! This recipe will serve six adults, so it’s great for an informal dinner with friends.
- Four chicken breasts or thighs, skin-on for authenticity
- 3 litres chicken stock
- 1 large, white potato, peeled
- 1/3 of a daikon radish, peeled
- 2 peeled carrots
- 3-4 heads pak choi (depending on size)
- 2 leeks
- 1 large onion, quartered
- 12 shiitake mushrooms (approx 125g)
- 1 block firm tofu (or packet deep fried tofu)
- Enoki mushrooms
- 125ml soy sauce
- 60ml mirin
- Salt
- 1 package cooked udon noodles (optional)
- If using fried tofu, place in a colander and blanch with boiling water to remove excess oil. When cutting the vegetables, try to cut them diagonally to make them look nicer.
- Slice the radish, potato and carrot, parboil (submerge into boiling water for around five minutes), then drain and keep to one side.
- Slice the pak choi into chunks. Wash the leeks and slice white parts only. Cut the chicken into 2-inch chunks, keeping the skin on. Prepare the shiitake mushrooms by wiping them with a damp cloth and trimming down the stalks. The enoki mushrooms should be trimmed and separated into smaller bundles.
- Add the chicken stock, chicken, onions, shiitake mushrooms, leek and tofu to a large pan, and bring to the boil. Add your soy sauce and simmer for 15 minutes, or until all the ingredients are cooked. Keep skimming off any scum that might form.
- Add the potato, radish, carrot and pak choi and simmer for five more minutes. Add the mirin and shimeji mushrooms, then simmer for a few more minutes and season to taste with salt.
- Serve in a pot simmering on a tabletop stove, or alternatively, dish into bowls. Seconds are compulsory!
- Once you have had your fill of the chankonabe, remove any remaining ingredients, then add the udon noodles to the soup, simmer for around five minutes, and serve with the broth.
I have a portable, tabletop stove that I like to use for this, but you can serve yourselves from the pot at the table without having heat under it, as it stays warm for a while due to the sheer volume of food inside!
It may seem like a simple dish, but somehow, the finished product is so much greater than the sum of its parts. I made this for my cousin and mum back in 2009, and they still talk about it… Maybe it’s time to make it again!
Omurice
I’m one of those weird people who gets all funny about ketchup. I like it, don’t get me wrong, but I have certain rules about it – which I’ve never really examined in too much depth, to be honest. For example, it is never to be squirted onto food – makes it soggy. Better to go on the side, by itself, so it can be dipped into. Also, it is never to be mixed in with things to create some hideous Frankenfood of soggy ketchup and ‘other stuff’. That’s just wrong.
So, with that in mind, it’s very strange that one of my most favourite and comforting foods should be omurice: the dish that breaks my cardinal food rules and somehow manages to rise above its offence:
Omurice is basically rice and veggies cooked with some ketchup, then coated in an omelette and served with another drizzle of ketchup on top. It’s comfort food for children, which makes it all the more weird how strangely nostaglic the dish is for me, a 28-year-old woman who has never lived in Japan… But nevertheless, there’s something very universal about its combination of starchy carbs, eggy protein, and lashings of tomato sauce.
This recipe makes four portions:
INGREDIENTS
- Butter
- 2 chicken thighs, boned
- 1 onion
- 50g carrot
- 1 green pepper
- 2 shiitake mushrooms
- 1 tbsp parsley
- 4 cups cooked Japanese rice
- 3 tbsp ketchup
- 1 tsp sake
- Dash Worcestershire sauce
- 8 eggs
- Ketchup to serve
METHOD
- Finely chop the onion, carrot, mushroom and parsley.
- Debone the chicken and remove the skin. Cut the thigh into small pieces, around 1cm in size, then season with salt and pepper.
- Heat 1 tbsp butter in a frying pan and sauté the onion until slightly softened. Add the chicken and fry until the outside has gone white. Add the carrot, pepper and mushrooms and cook until soft. This could take as long as ten minutes. You need to ensure the carrot is tender, as it will not be cooked again. Add the parsley and remove from the heat, reserving the mixture and wiping out the frying pan.
- Melt 1 tbsp of butter in a frying pan and add the hot rice, stirring well. Add the fried mix along with the ketchup, sake and Worcestershire sauce. Season if needed, and keep warm. Do not over cook as this will dry out the rice.
- In another, shallow frying pan, heat 1 tsp butter. Beat two of the eggs, season with salt, then pour into the frying pan, spreading to cover the base. Put a quarter of the rice in the middle of the pan while the egg is still slightly raw. This helps to stick the rice mixture to the omelette.
- When the eggs are slightly set, wrap the edges over the top of the rice and turn out onto a warm plate. Don’t worry if you pierce the egg as you do so, as the edges are tucked under. Using a paper towel, shape it as in our photo, then squirt tomato sauce on the top. Continue with the rest of the eggs and mixture until you’ve made four omelettes.
You can also keep this for the following day, and serve it in a bento ala the picture!
Carrot and onion rice
This recipe is a pretty good ‘un, in my opinion (I know, I know, who asked me?). Not only does it taste good, but it’s got veggies in it and it’s a way of naturally colouring your food without using chemicals. Now, there’s no way anyone could suggest I’m not up for dying food whenever I get the opportunity, but somehow it seems wrong to dye savoury food. Don’t know why! When you introduce sugar, all the bets are off…
Also, once you’ve softened your veggies, you bung the whole lot into rice cooker and let it cook. Easy! Obviously, you don’t have to eat this in a bento – it makes a great addition to a hot meal, too.
I really like this bento box – I have a thing for single tiered boxes. I also love Animal Crossing. I don’t know if the box is still available, but I bought it from J-List. (If you click that link, you’ll be taken to the J-List site, so if you buy anything, it earns me pennies to buy new bento stuff! Thank you!)
Recipe for carrot and onion rice
INGREDIENTS
- 2 cups raw rice
- 1 carrot
- ½ onion
- Butter
- Splash soy sauce
- Seasoning
METHOD
- Process the onion and carrot until they are finely chopped, then sauté in butter until softened – but not browned. This will take around five minutes. Season and add the soy sauce.
- Add to a rice cooker with washed rice and an equal amount of water, and cook as normal.
Scattered summer sushi
Late to the party again… here I am with scattered summer sushi in October. To be fair, I did come up with this recipe in May, but also, you can eat this any time of year, whether the weather’s sunny, or not. It’s the kind of dish that works better when it’s hot, but it’s still pretty nice around here even in autumn…
And yes, I did get carried away with decorating this, but it was worth it. So pretty! And not too much hassle to prepare, in the grand scheme of things.
INGREDIENTS
- 2 cups Japanese rice (around 430g)
- 6 tbsp sushi rice vinegar (or check label)
- 1 tbsp sake (optional)
- 1 piece dried konbu (optional)
- 2 eggs
- 1 egg yolk
- 2 tsp cornflour
- Large pinch salt
- Pinch sugar
- Vegetable oil
- 1 Cucumber
- 1 Carrot
- Handful mange tout (cooked)
- 4 tofu pouches (optional)
- 16 large prawns (shrimp)
- 1/2 cup edamame beans (cooked)
METHOD
- Make your sushi rice – I recommend you buy a rice cooker, as it takes all of the guesswork and stress out of cooking rice. Mine cost me about £10 three years ago and is still working fine. Firstly, wash the rice thoroughly and leave it to soak for half an hour. Then, drain and add your sushi rice to the same quantity of water in your rice cooker. Add the sake and konbu if using, then switch on and leave to cook. Once it has finished, leave it to rest for 15 minutes.
- Turn the rice out into a damp, flat container (like a Pyrex oven dish) and add the sushi rice vinegar. Using a damp wooden spoon, turn the rice gently to coat it in the seasoning. At the same time, fan the rice to cool it and help it to absorb the dressing. Continue until no visible steam rises from the rice, and place it under a damp kitchen towel.
- Make thin Japanese omelettes by combining the eggs, egg yolk, salt and sugar in a bowl. Add the cornflour dissolved in 4 tsp water. Heat the oil in a frying pan, and add enough oil to coat the base. Thinly cover the pan with the egg, and heat until almost set. Then, turn the omelette over to finish it off. Do not allow it to colour. Continue until all the egg has been cooked, then roll the omelettes up and shred them finely.
- Prepare the carrot by peeling it and cutting it into thin discs. Then, using a flower-shaped cutter, cut the discs into flower shapes.
- Use your cucumber to make a pretty garnish. A simple method is to cut the cucumber thinly on a diagonal, cut through it to the middle, and then twirl the ends in opposite directions (see picture).
- If you’re using them, drain the tofu pouches and shred finely. Cut the mange tout at sharp diagonals.
- Divide the sushi rice into four bowls. Scatter over the shredded tofu, omelette and edamame beans. Finally, arrange the carrots, cucumber and prawns.
Green bean, sweet potato and soy and balsamic vinegar chicken bento
I love the penguin pick in this bento. I bought it from J-List in a pack of sea-creature food picks, but I think the penguin is my favourite.
Inside this bento is a mixture of different recipes I was trying out for the first time. I think the sweet potato was a recipe from Wagamama, and included a honey and lime juice dressing. I’m not big on sweet potato, to be honest, and this one didn’t really sway me to the cause. This bento picture was actually taken over two years ago, and as you can see, I’d still not really perfected the art of packing onigiri… Ah well.
The orange bento box is from Daiso, and even though it’s one of the cheapest ones around, it’s still my favourite because it’s such a nifty oval shape. The front tier contains soy-balsamic chicken and spicy green beans, both adapted from Harumi’s Japanese Cooking – both of her English cookery books are great, although I prefer the second one!
Spicy green beans
INGREDIENTS
- 150g green beans
- 75g minced pork
- 1 tbsp garlic oil (or use olive oil and some garlic puree)
- Pinch dried chilli powder
- 1 1/2 tbsp soy sauce
- 1/2 tsp sugar
METHOD
- If making for the bento, trim your green beans (or French, or fine…whatever you call them!) into halves or even thirds, so they can be picked up easily by chopsticks.
- Boil for about four minutes, then drain and refresh quickly in very cold water. This is to retain their colour. Drain again, and shake off excess water.
- Heat the garlic oil in the pan and add the pork, stirring to break up. Now add the chilli pepper and stir well to coat, then add the soy sauce and sugar.
- Mix well, ensuring the sugar has dissolved, and then serve the beans with the mince on top.
Note
You can increase or decrease the chilli powder according to your tastes, just ensure it’s all mixed in well or someone will be getting a surprise in their bento box…
Soy and balsamic vinegar chicken
INGREDIENTS
- Six chicken thighs
- 4 tbsp dark soy sauce
- 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1 tbsp oil
METHOD
- Mix the soy sauce, balsamic vinegar and sugar in a pan, then simmer. Allow to cook for several minutes, reducing the sauce until it’s thick and glossy.
- Now wash and dry your chicken thighs, and place them in a hot pan with the oil, and allow to brown on one side. Turn them over and pour over the sauce, then cover and cook for five minutes, taking care not to let the sauce burn over too high a heat.
- Remove the chicken and test it’s cooked by slicing a piece in half. Return to the heat if it needs longer.
- For a bento, allow to cool before slicing and dressing with some extra sauce.
Note
You will need about one or two chicken thighs, depending on size, per person for a bento lunch.
These recipes originally appeared in 501 Bento Box Lunches, published by Graffito Books.
Gyoza and hot soy sauce cucumber bento
I love making Japanese pickles – unlike western pickles, these aren’t preserved vegetables, but are soaked in a preservative liquid for a couple of hours, or overnight. This recipe produces a spicy delicious pickle that goes really well with rice and gyozas.
Recipe for hot soy sauce cucumber
INGREDIENTS
- 1/2 cucumber
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 tsp mirin
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tsp English mustard
METHOD
- Halve the cucumber and scoop out the seeds. Cut the cucumber into half moon chunks, salt and leave to stand for 20 minutes in a covered bowl.
- Take a plastic bag and add the remaining ingredients, mixing well so that the mustard is dissolved. Add the cucumber and mix well, then refrigerate until needed – leaving for at least 10 minutes. Drain well before adding to a bento – best used the same day or the day after.
This recipe originally appeared in 501 Bento Box Lunches, published by Graffito Books.
Inari Sushi bento
This pretty little bento is one of my favourites – it’s elegant and healthy… completely unlike me! Inside is sesame vinegar aubergine and spicy soy sauce cucumber, as well as soy sauce and balsamic vinegar chicken.
Recipe for inari sushi
INGREDIENTS
- 2 cups hot, cooked Japanese rice
- 3 tbsp liquid sushi seasoning
- 1 tbsp black sesame seeds
- 6 inari skins
METHOD
- Pour the sushi seasoning over the rice, then turn and fan until cooled and no longer steaming. Leave to get completely cold before stirring in your black sesame seeds.
- Open your packet of inari skins, and slit open along the longer side, carefully pulling the edges apart to make a pocket. Fill with the rice and place in the bento rice side up.
Notes
You might want to trim the inari skins down so that they fit in your bento, as some can be taller than your bento is deep. Generally, cutting them in half will make them the right size. Or, you can simply lay a full size piece on its side.
This recipe originally appeared in 501 Bento Box Lunches, published by Graffito Books.
British bacon and asparagus sushi
Even though nobody cares but me, every so often I sort of get myself into this little crusade to link together British and Japanese cooking. Don’t laugh, it’s actually not completely far fetched. Did you know that some very essential Japanese sauces, like okonomiyaki and tonkatsu sauce, are based on Worcestershire sauce? Did you also know that curry rice came to Japan from India by way of British companies? Come on, you can’t tell me you thought that brown gloop came from anywhere but the UK…
So, every so often I come up with something that’s sort of Japanese, but using British ingredients, and it’s never worked so well as it did with this scattered sushi recipe. It’s really simple, and it’s really good – and it’s great for hot summer days, too. Probably one of the main reasons this works is because the vinegar in the sushi rice dressing mimics the acidity of tomato ketchup. Hey, whatever it is, it tastes lovely.
INGREDIENTS
-
2 cups Japanese rice (around 430g)
-
6tbsp sushi rice vinegar (or check label)
-
1 tbsp sake (optional)
-
1 piece dried konbu (optional)
-
2 eggs
-
1 egg yolk
-
2 tsp cornflour
-
Large pinch salt
-
Pinch sugar
-
Vegetable oil
-
Packet streaky bacon (smoked or unsmoked – your choice!)
-
500g asparagus tips
METHOD
-
Make your sushi rice – I recommend you buy a rice cooker, as it takes all of the guesswork and stress out of cooking rice.
-
Firstly, wash the rice thoroughly and leave it to soak for half an hour. Then, drain and add your sushi rice to the same quantity of water in your rice cooker. Add the sake and konbu if using, then switch on and leave to cook. Once it has finished, leave it to rest for 15 minutes.
-
Turn the rice out into a damp, flat container (like a pyrex oven dish) and add the sushi rice vinegar. Using a damp wooden spoon, turn the rice gently to coat it in the seasoning. At the same time, fan the rice to cool it and help it to absorb the dressing. Continue until no visible steam rises from the rice, and place it under a damp kitchen towel.
-
Make thin Japanese omelettes by combining the eggs, egg yolk, salt and sugar in a bowl. Add the cornflour dissolved in 4 tsp water. Heat the oil in a frying pan, and add enough oil to coat the base. Thinly cover the pan with the egg, and heat until almost set. Then, turn the omelette over to finish it off. Do not allow it to colour. Continue until all the egg has been cooked, then roll the omelettes up and shred them finely.
-
Fry the bacon until very crispy. Snip into small pieces.
-
Steam the asparagus, and when cooked, remove the tips and slice the stems into small coins.
-
Divide the rice into four bowls, and top with the bacon, asparagus and omelette.
There you go, a summery fry-up. Well, sort of.
Food, Fashion and Fitness 