Yuzu Karaage (Japanese Fried Chicken Wings)

I know this may sound shocking, but my boyfriend actually enjoys eating healthier than I do. Well, okay, enjoyED eating healthier. Whenever I'd come over, he'd always have salad already cut and ready to eat in his frig. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy salad, but we like different types of salad. He likes a MAN salad, romaine cut into big chunks, carrots, mushrooms, chunks of regular tomatoes, raw onions, italian dressing ... while I like my salad all GIRLY, musclin with either fresh pears or dried cranberries, goat cheese, cherry tomatoes cut in half, oven roasted beets, steamed asparagus, shallots, balsamic vinagrette. I mostly don't eat salad cuz the ingredients for the type of salad I like don't keep in the frig very long.

So my BF thought he'd be a good influence on my eating habits. At first he made a gallant effort. He always prepped a salad for our dinner. And I dutifully ate it. Its healthy, its good for me. It'll counteract all that butter I love! But after a while, it just sat there wilting and being ignored in exchange for more unhealthy fattening dishes like mussels or the fried chicken I made this past weekend. My boyfriend didn't even want to eat rice since it took up too much stomach space with so much chicken available to eat. When I do bother to make a salad, it just its on the table ... He calls it the "bouquet", you know, the flower arrangement ...

Don't worry baby! I put veggies in this fried chicken dish ... uh, there's scallions on top ... and I lined the plate with romaine lettuce so it looks pretty. At least the romaine lettuce in the frig didn't completely go to waste!

I used a couple ingredients not usually found in an american supermarket. So I thought I'd take a picture, so you know what it looks like if you can find these at a Japanese or Asian market. I'll give alternate ingredients just to make regular Japanese chicken wings if you can't get ahold of these ingredients.

Left: Yuzu Kosho in tube
Center: Katakuriko (Potato starch)
Right: Yuzu Kosho (dehydrated skin of a yuzu)

Marinade:
2T yuzu koshou from tube
1 lemon, juiced and skin cut into chunks
1/8 cup salt
2T sake
2T mirin -OR- mixture of sugar and sake
1T yuzu ponzu -OR- regular ponzu or more lemon juice
1T soy sauce
1/8 t sansyo (optional)
thumbsize piece of ginger, grated, and juiced (keep only the juice)

1 large package of chicken wings (about 3-4 pounds), tips removed, broken down to wings and drumettes
1-2 cups katakuriko -OR- mixture of flour and cornstarch
cooking oil
yuzu kosho powder (optional)
1 bunch scallions, chopped

Dressing:
1 lemon, juiced -OR- 2 T rice vinegar
2 T roasted sesame oil
1 t yuzu kosho from tube (optional)

Mix all ingredients of marinade together. Place chicken wings and drumettes in marinade. Allow to soak in flavor at least 2 hours, up to overnight.

Heat cooking oil in large pot over high heat to fry chicken. You will want to cook the chicken at least 375 degrees F. The oil may get hotter than this since when you add the chicken to the oil, it will lower the temperature of the oil. Take the chicken out of the marinade and light dust the chicken with katakuriko. Fry in small batches for about 3-6 minutes depending on the size of your wings, until the chicken wings have a nice color. Drain chicken on newspapers lined with paper towels (cuz don't you think those newspapers are really dirty?).

After all the chicken has been fried. Line a large plate with romaine lettuce. Place a layer with half the chicken, sprinkle with the powdered yuzu powder and half the scallions, then do another layer and add more yuzu powder and scallions. Whisk together the lemon juice, roasted sesame oil, and yuzu kosho from tube. Pour the dressing over the chicken immediately before serving.

Note: The lemon in this recipe is to bring out the subtle yuzu taste. Do not substitute out for rice vinegar unless you are not planning to use the yuzu ingredients.

Tsukune (Japanese-style Chicken Meatball)

A while back, I went to go eat at Yakitori Totto with my BF. If you are unfamiliar with yakitori and live in NYC, I highly recommend this spot in Midtown West. Yakitori is Japanese chicken grilled on skewers over charcoal. The chicken they use at Totto is organic and very juicy. One of my favorite skewers to order is tsukune which is a chicken meatball.

I recently attempted to make tsukune at home on a frying pan. Came out pretty okay, but no where as good as the ones at Yakitori Totto unfortunately. My BF must have thought they were damn good, evident by the fact a whole pound and a half of tsukune was gone in a day! I made mine as a donburi with yamaimo and scallions.

Recipe for Tsukune

Chicken meatballs:
Package of ground chicken, appx 1.5 lbs
1/3 cup breadcrumbs
juice squeezed from thumb sized piece of ginger thats been shredded
1 small onion, grated or finely minced
1 egg
1/2 t salt
splash of sake

Tare (sauce):
4 T sake
5 T soy sauce
1 T mirin
1 T sugar
1 T cornstarch mixed well with 1 T water

To make sauce, mix the sake, soy sauce, mirin, and sugar in a small pan. Bring to a boil, and then lower heat to a simmer for 10 minutes. Add the cornstarch and water mixture and continue to simmer until thickened. (I actually didn't make the tare, I was given some from someone so I cheated!)

Gently mix all the ingredients for the chicken meatballs. Form meatballs somewhere between the size of ping pong ball and a golf ball.

Heat a non stick pan over medium high heat with some oil. Fry the meatballs until lightly browned, approximately 3-5 minutes, then flip over. Brush tare sauce on the cooked side. Allow to cook the meatball another 2-3 minutes. Flip over onto a plate, and brush additional tare on the other side. Be careful not to overcook these meatballs since it is chicken and it tends to get dry. The breadcrumbs help in keeping the texture soft and preventing it from drying out as easily.

Serve over hot rice with extra tare and scallions. We served it with some yamaimo, a sticky mountain potato.

Nikujaga

In Japanese there is a term for food that Japanese men love ... "Otoko ryori" ... which literally means "Men's food". If you can cook any item if not every item on this list, you will make a Japanese man very happy! Men love home cooked food. Standard food on this "otoko ryori" list is Curry, Tonkatsu (Bread and deep fried pork cutlet), Ramen, and ... NIKUJAGA ... Nikujaga translates to Meat and Potatoes. I remember reading somewhere that Japanese tried to make Beef Stew and came up with Nikujaga.

My boyfriend, being a Japanese male, adores Nikujaga. I recently made a huge pot of nikujaga. I am very glad that I ate my portion and packed my own lunch before he came back from the bar. He didn't eat dinner, so he devoured a good 2 quart container of nikujaga at 2am. He insisted it was delicious. Though, since he basically inhaled it, I'm not very sure if he tasted any of it.

Nikujaga Recipe

1 lb thinly sliced beef
2 lbs potatoes, peeled and cut into 2 inch chunks
2 small onions, thickly sliced
15 baby carrots
50g harusame (glass noodles)
cold water
hondashi granules
soy sauce
sugar
mirin
sake
roasted sesame oil
cooking oil

Saute the onions in oil over medium high heat in a large pot until softened. Add thinly sliced beef, sprinkle about a teaspoon hondashi granules and a teasoon of soy sauce. Cook until browned.

Add potatoes and enough water to cover potatoes. Keep heat at about medium to medium high, we want the potatoes to heat and then cook evenly. If you have the heat too high, the outside of the potatoes will cook and melt before the inside is cooked. Season the water with approximately another 3-5 T of hondashi (the correct amount of the amount of water added to the pot), 2 T soy sauce, 3-5 T of sugar, 2 T mirin, 1 T mirin, and 2 T of roasted sesame oil. Taste the cooking liquid. It should be fairly aggressively salty and sweet, since the meat and potatoes will absorb alot of the flavor. Adjust taste according to liking. I actually never measure these ingredients, so these are approximations. The most important thing with cooking is to taste your food as its being made. Add carrots after the broth is seasoned. Since the carrots are smaller than the potatoes, it will cook mush faster. You don't want mushy carrots.

Skim any foam that arises. The nikujaga is done is when the potatoes are done cooking. Pierce the potatoes with a sharp knife to check for doneness. Turn off heat and add the harusame glass noodles into the broth. Allow it to soften and absorb the sauce for about 15 minutes before serving.

Buta no Kakuni

Buta no kakuni is Japanese braised pork belly. Since Japanese food is considered healthy (we do have the longest average life expectancy in the world) and bacon is made from pork belly, this is the healthy version of bacon. Yay! Healthy bacon! I'll keep telling myself that! I usually make enough so that I can freeze enough for when I want a small portion for my ramen.

On to the recipe ... So let me be honest, I rarely measure anything when I cook. This is just my disclaimer. I will list the ingredients with approximate volumes, but just go by taste. Besides, you might not even like my cooking since all most of you guys are seeing are pictures but have never tasted my cooking. Btw, this is a recipe using a pressure cooker. You can simmer it slowly over the stove, but I don't have any idea how long it will take to cook, maybe 2 hours or so?

Recipe for Buta no Kakuni (Simmered Pork Belly)

Ingredients:
1 package Pork Belly (about 2 lbs)
Thumb sized chunk of ginger, unpeeled, but smashed slightly under knife
2 cloves of garlic, smashed under knife
1 Leek, cleaned of all sand and cut into 3 chunks
1/2 c Soy Sauce
1/4 c Cooking Sake
1/4 c Mirin
1/4 c Sugar
2T vinegar
water

Cut the pork belly into 2 inch cubes. Rinse the pork under cool water. Place the pork belly into a large pot with water filled until its covering the pork. Bring this to a boil, and then turn it down to a simmer for 15 minutes. Skim any of the foam that floats to the top. Drain the pork in a colander and rinse with cool water to rid the pork of any coagulated foam, yuck!

Brown the each pork belly piece on all sides in some oil over medium heat. (This is optional, I was being lazy and didn't do this for the pork belly pictured above. Its suppose to taste better and it keeps it from falling apart as easily.) Place the browned pork belly pieces and all the remaining ingredients into the pressure cooker and cover with water until almost all pieces are covered. The cooking liquid should be pretty dark in color. Taste the cooking liquid (the pork is already cooked so it should be safe), make sure it is salty enough with a touch of sweetness. If not, add more soy sauce and/or sugar. Bring to high pressure and cook for 15 minutes. Let the pressure release naturally. The meat should be pork tender, but not falling apart. If it is not ready, cook it a bit longer. If you like hard boiled eggs in the kakuni, after the pressure is released, place peeled hard boiled eggs into the cooking liquid and let simmer for 10 minutes. Remove the ginger, garlic cloves, and leeks, do not eat, it was only to flavor the liquid and pork.

Eat with a squeeze of lemon (this cuts the fatty taste) and karashi (Japanse mustard). The kakuni tastes even better if left overnight to absorb more of the sauce. If you make alot, freeze aliquots of 2 or 3 pieces of pork wrapped in saran wrap to use in ramen.

Hiyashi chuuka, two ways

If my boyfriend wakes up before noon on a Saturday morning after a long night of hard drinking, much less 10am, it better be for a good reason. This particular Saturday it was for the hiyashi chuuka that I prepped for us the previous day. Hiyashi chuuka is basically a Japanese pasta salad. It literally means "cold chinese" which refers to the fact the "pasta" is cold chinese ramen noodles.

Hiyashi chuuka is actually very easy to make. It comes in packages with uncooked noodles and the sesame dressing. The time consuming part is cutting and prepping all the toppings. Typically, I like crab, poached chicken, thinly sliced deli ham, egg crepe thinly sliced, cucumbers, wakame, fresh corn off the cob, grape tomatoes cut in half, and scallions.

Recently, I've tried a Korean variation on Japanese hiyashi chuuka called Bibim Guksu. Using the same toppings on soba noodles, I make a homemade spicy, sweet, and vinegary sauce. Its also very good on cooked cold ramen noodles or even those cheap maruchan ramen noodles (just the noodles, don't use the seasoning package).

For the dressing, I kind of just go by taste, but the basic recipe is mix the ingredients below. If you want it sweeter, add more sugar or honey. If you want it saltier, add soy sauce. If you want it spicier, add more gochujang. Pretty simple, but very delicious!

Ingredients:

2T gochujang

2T rice vinegar

1T soy sauce

1T honey

1T sugar

1T rayu

1T sesame seeds