J-Food Day 4: Nikujaga

After a break day because of a long day at work, I'm back to the kitchen! One of my favorite dishes of all time is nikujaga, which means literally "meat potatoes". I forgot to buy the thinly sliced beef from Nijiya market the other day, even though I only had two things on my list to buy, so it is just going to be 'jaga" or "potatoes".

Dish 5. "Nikujaga" I added potatoes, carrots, onions, ginger, shiitake, and konnyaku (yam noodles). I have made this with the "little bit of this, little bit of that" method in the past, but I decided to try a recipe... but of course I tailored it to make it better after I tasted it! The base that I made by altering the recipe had water, soy sauce, dashi soy sauce, sake, mirin, and brown sugar. I personally like the flavor a little stronger when it is with potatoes, so I tweaked here and there.

I think this may be the first dish so far that Jeremy liked and had seconds of! I thought it was delicious too, but again it wasn't much different from what I have made before. Usually it's served as a side dish, but we made it a rice and nikujaga main dish! This dish I definitely feel very comfortable making! Even though we didn't end up eating until 9:15pm, because I went to the gym after work and didn't start cooking until close to 8 and had to wait for the rice to cook, I still enjoyed it and ate a lot!

By the way, the pickled cucumbers turned out great! They tasted like my Mom's, which is a huge success, and Jeremy liked it too!