Oyako-don [Chicken-and-Egg On Rice]

One of the greatest things I've discovered in Japan is Japanese home-style cooking: not the stuff you find in Japanese restaurants outside of Japan, but the things that get eaten every day. There are so many wonderful dishes to explore, and this is one of my favorites.

This is what's called a donburi dish: a bowl of rice topped with something that gets mixed into the rice. There are a number of dishes that are similar, especially in Japanese fast food restaurants. And why not? They're quick to prepare, flavorful, and quite filling.

Another category this dish fits into is tamago-toji, which literally means 'bound with egg'. In this version, the egg mixture (which is seasoned predominantly with soy sauce and sugar) holds together small pieces of chicken and slices of onion. The egg is added at the last minute and is just barely simmered; most restaurants serve it while it's still a little undercooked. Once it's mixed with the hot rice, it finishes cooking but is still quite fresh-tasting. This combination of egg and chicken gives the dish it's odd name: "parent-and-child donburi".

OYAKO-DON adapted from Recipes of Japanese Cooking by Yuko Fujita & NAVI INTERNATIONAL

makes one serving

1 bowl of steamed white rice

50g of chicken thighs, diced into small pieces

2 eggs, beaten

1/4 of a small onion, sliced

2 or 3 stalks of mitsuba

Sauce:

35ml of dashi (or water with a small shake of dashi powder)

1 tbsp sake

1 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp mirin

1-1/4 tbsp soy sauce

1. Trim off any excess fat from the chicken thigh, remove the skin, and cut into very small cubes. Peel the onions and slice very thinly. Cut the mitsuba--including the stems--into pieces about 2-3 cm long. [Mitsuba is not unlike fresh corriander, which would make an interesting substitute.]

2. Mix together the ingredients for the sauce and place into a small frying pan. [In Japan, an oyako-nabe is used: it's essential a very small frying pan with an angled handle. The angle of the handle makes it easier to pour the contents over the bowl of rice. See an image of one here.]

3. Put a portion of hot rice into a donburi bowl. Any deep, steep-sided bowl will work.

4. Put the frying pan with the sauce over a medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Stir gently to make sure the sugar dissolves fully, and then add the chicken and onion slices and simmer briefly. One the chicken looks mostly cooked through, gently pour the beaten eggs over the top. Pour in a circular spiral, starting at the outside and swirling to the center of the pan. Cover (although I rarely do), and shake the pan gently to evenly distribute the egg. Don't cook for too long: 30 seconds is about all it takes to just set the eggs. Some people like their eggs even runnier, while others like them more cooked. Adjust the time to suit your taste, but it shouldn't take more than a minute or so.

5. Carefully pour the contents of the frying pan over the rice in the donburi bowl, trying not to get rice stuck to the bottom of the frying pan. Scatter some of the mitsuba over the top, shake on a little shichimi powder, and serve immediately.

Notes:

• I really love this dish on its own with just a bowl of miso shiru and a bit of pickle, but lots of restaurants will also pair it with a bowl of udon.
• Other vegetables can also be added with the chicken and onion: small mushrooms (like shijimi or shiitake) are quite nice.

Miso Yakisoba

I've been on a bit of a Japanese food kick again lately. This happens every now and again, but I'm not sure why I lose interest in cooking this kind of food at home.

This time, my interest got reignited by picking up a cooking magazine. Well, it's probably more akin to a "woman's" magazine--the first 15 pages or so are filled with recipes, while the rest of the magazine shows the latest in (comfortable, down-to-earth) women's fashion and laundry tips. (Not to mention all the ads for feminine hygiene products.) But you can't go wrong with ¥290 for some recipes, even if they're all in Japanese!

Actually, what I really love about these recipes is that they're often straight-forward, tasty home-style Japanese meals: quick stir-fries, noodle dishes, seasonal veggies--even desserts and fusion-type dishes.

This recipe for yakisoba (fried noodles) comes from a magazine I was looking at while at the pharmacy today, waiting for my daughter's medicine to be prepared. I secretly snapped a pic with my phone, but the resulting image was nearly unreadable. Still, I could make out the ingredients list, and that's about all I need to test-drive a new recipe!

MISO YAKISOBA

1 180g pack of fresh yakisoba noodles (I use the ones marked 中華 [chuuka], Japanese style Chinese)

1 spring onion, sliced on the diagonal

50g ground pork

1 clove of garlic, minced

1/2 tbsp of sesame oil

Miso Sauce

1-1/2 tbsp miso

1 tbsp mirin

1 tbsp sake

1/2 tsp sugar

Combine the sauce ingredients together in a small bowl. Set aside for now.

Place the cold noodles in a bowl and toss with about a small amount of sake. Pull the noodles apart as you get the noodles slightly wet with the alcohol, and then heat quickly (about 30 seconds) in the microwave. [I'm not too sure what this step is supposed to do, but tossing the noodles with the alcohol is a nice way to get them separated.]

Heat a medium-sized frying pan over medium heat and add the sesame oil. Toss in the minced garlic and fry quickly, just enough to bring out the aroma. Take the pan off the heat and add the miso sauce--be careful, it may spit at you. Cook for a minute or two, stirring constantly so it doesn't burn or stick, and then add the meat. Keep stirring to break up the meat, and cook until no longer pink.

Toss the heated noodles into the pan and stir aggressively to coat the noodles in the sauce. Fry for a few minutes to heat through, and then add the sliced onions.

Serve immediately.