J-Food Day 7: Unfried Potato Korokke

Week 1 of the project has been completed!
Today I was inspired by a recipe I saw for potato korokke or croquettes that are the flavor without the hassle of shaping, flouring, egg-ing, breading, and frying. Instead, it's an assemble in the pot and put it over rice method!

Dish 7. Potato Korokke (unconventional)- The ingredients are potatoes, ground turkey, carrots, onions, corn, and cabbage to serve with it. I sauteed the meat, carrots, onions, and corn in one pan, then added boiled potatoes to it and mashed it together. Add flavorings, and voila! I used the tonkatsu sauce I made for the okonomiyaki/Japanese pancakes with this as well. I love being able to use so many of the same ingredients for different dishes! I also toasted and sprinkled the panko bread crumbs to give it a crunch, but I didn't really feel the crunch since I didn't put as much on as a fried korokke would have.

In assembling for eating, we put some brown rice down as the base, then some cabbage, then the potato mixture, topped with toasted panko and sauce. It was quite delicious, but of course Jeremy still likes the fried version better. Who doesn't like fried food, right? It was my attempt to make it healthier but of course it wasn't as good as what it would've been in its traditional shape! It was worth a shot!

Since it is the end of week 1, I wanted to recap the list of items I've made this week and how I felt about them:
Turkey & Cabbage Gyoza- 2/5 stars
Okonomiyaki- 3/5 stars
Turkey-burg- 2/5 stars
Nikujaga- 5/5 stars! Keeper!
Pickled Cucumbers- 4/5 stars! Keeper!
Chicken Teriyaki- 4/5 stars! Keeper!
Potato Korokke- 4/5 stars!

Woohoo- I'll be taking a weekend break but to be continued next week!

J-Food Day 5: Teriyaki Chicken

Japanese food project day 5! Today is chicken teriyaki day! I marinated it overnight in a little sake, soy sauce, and ginger, so I was hoping that after I got home it would be a breeze...

Dish 6. Chicken Teriyaki: Result- yummy!
It started out well where I browned the chicken on both sides, but I was using some bone in chicken breasts that I had purchased for soup a while back and froze extra pieces. The problem was that these were huge pieces that I couldn't exactly slice off the bone to make chicken teriyaki with. So, I browned both sides and I was supposed to steam it with a little sake for 5 minutes... well 5 minutes ended up being a little longer than that to cook these big doggers. Good thing I wasn't absolutely starving, even though I didn't get home until a little after 7pm, and thankfully I have a patient husband!

After I checked that the chicken had cooked through (I had to add more water and raise the heat to steam faster) I added brown sugar, mirin, sake, soy sauce, and dashi soy sauce for the additional flavor. Right as it was finishing, I added some shiitake mushrooms and cabbage to cook in the sauce as well to soak up the delicious flavor of the sauce. The sauce isn't as thick as what comes out in restaurants or is sold in bottles because I didn't add any cornstarch or other thickeners. I like it more broth-y than a goo-like texture, especially if it is homemade. The pictures may not look that great but trust me it tasted good. A little rice, a little chicken, some cabbage and mushrooms topped with a little sauce... It took a while and in the end the chicken got chopped up into pieces but Jeremy liked it, I liked it, everyone wins! Another successful dish- this is encouraging!

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!

J-Food Day 2

Day 2 of the Japanese Food project was better!
Again, I'm usually making things I've made before but trying new recipes or tweaking them a little bit to experiment with new things and go out of my usual comfort zone. I'm also making everything from scratch instead of using mixes or taking the easy way out!

Dish 3. Okonomiyaki aka Japanese savory pancakes- The ones I made today had a base made of nagaimo, eggs, flour, chicken stock, and dashi. Then I mixed in cabbage, shiitake mushrooms, ginger, green onions and chives. It's always an interesting experiment to try to convert from metric units and to increase serving sizes so I may have put too much nagaimo. It was very moist, but it may have been a little too thin/runny and not as "flour-y" and thick. I usually put some sort of meat or seafood, but not this time! I'm finding out that Jeremy doesn't really like shiitake mushrooms so I may have to go easier on those too. Overall though, I was happy with the flavor and we ate it up!

I actually even made my own "tonkatsu" sauce. The recipe I used was good but the sugar it called for made it a little too sweet, in my opinion, so I might cut back on that next time. Besides, ketchup already has sugar in it!

Dish 4. Pickled cucumbers- This is my Mom's recipe that I've never made on my own, but hers is awesome so hopefully mine will turn out well. If it doesn't, it means I didn't take good enough notes of my Mom's "a little bit of this, a little bit of that". Learning from an awesome "feeling" cook is hard... It's still marinating and I can't try it until tomorrow, but I will definitely have to provide an update in the days to come!

This day was very encouraging since the food turned out better even though I'm still experimenting. Even though it's hard work making dishes and figuring out when to fit it in to my schedule, I love doing it! I heart food- especially Japanese food!

J-Food Day 1

Japanese Food Project Day 1 is off to a start!

I switched up what to make and started with gyoza and tofu patties. Let me preface with this- I don't make these very often from scratch so it wasn't a picture perfect turnout... neither Jeremy nor I were huge fans of either dish but we didn't dislike it either.

Dish 1. Gyoza- The inside consisted of ground turkey, chives, green onions, shiitake mushrooms, cabbage, ginger, and sessonings It was quite green since I put in a lot of greens in comparison to meat, to which Jeremy asked "Are the insides supposed to be that green? Our Costco ones aren't that green are they?" Definitely not. I will agree that I overdid the greens a little bit because the taste was a bit "green-ier" than even I would have liked... definitely less chives next time. However, that wasn't the only thing that went wrong. At least I took a before picture when they looked pretty.

When I assembled and lined them up on the cookie sheet, and the pan, they were absolutely gorgeous, but come time to cook them in the pan, they stuck to each other AND the pan. I'm not sure if the skin is thinner than what my parents and restaurants use, but after the water disappeared from the pan, most of the pot stickers were stuck to the bottom. Apparently I will need to use a lot more oil at the beginning than I actually did this time. As you can imagine, when I flipped them out of the pan, instead of beautifully browned gyozas, they were pot STICKERS with green insides exposed and homeless. I had to do a careful reassembly project to make them presentable!

Dish 2. Tofu Patties- Japanese people call it "tofu-burg" like a burger, but I see it more as a patty (I guess they're the same thing). I included tofu, egg, chives, shiitake mushrooms, carrots, and green onions. My first mistake was putting too many veggies in there for the amount of tofu and egg to bind it together, which means it wasn't going to hold together. I was obviously willing to hope and take the risk though!

Now for the things that went wrong. First off, it fell apart so it didn't turn golden brown like I would have liked on both sides. I might as well have scrambed it all together. Two, I tried to steam it for a while while I was housing the homeless gyoza innards and well the bottoms burned. At least I was able to scoop up the tops without the burn-y flavor and they somewhat stayed together in patty-ish pieces. The flavor itself wasn't bad at all even though it did lean a little bit on the bland side in my opinion. The book mentioned eating it with grated daikon so maybe that would have made a difference, but I should have flavored it a little more from the beginning. Overall though, not bad but not something Jeremy nor I will crave.

To add to the disastrous morning, I was cooking rice and chose the "brown rice" setting as I normally do, instead of the white rice setting I meant to do this time. So it took FOREVER to cook...

For anybody that saw the movie Julie & Julia, this was definitely a Julie going crazy in the kitchen moment for me. I've never been a failure in the kitchen but I sure felt like one today! I thought to myself "On the first day? REALLY? Maybe this is why I don't venture out of my normal favorite dishes!" BUT, I will press on because it can only get better from here! Heck, these are learning experiences so I may make these again with these improvements I've noted!

Getting Ready for Japanese Cooking Galore Month

The time to execute my Japanese Cooking Galore Month is approaching! 30 dishes in 30 days... After much thought about all the events in September, such as being gone for Labor Day weekend, friend's birthdays, and both Jeremy and my birthdays, I have a feeling that there will be quite a lot of days where I can't cook dinner at home... so I'm starting this weekend to swap with Labor Day weekend!

I went shopping today at the Asian market for pretty much the first week's worth. My list for the first week is as follows (in order for now but that may change):
Chicken Teriyaki
Pickled vegetables
Okonomiyaki
Gyoza
Miso-flavored Stir Fry
Nikujaga
Sushi rolls
Miso Soup
Takikomi rice
Tofu Burger

It seems like a lot for the first week but some are side dishes and some are less labor intensive so two items can be made in one day. Besides, I think now is going to be less event filled than later in the month. Next week is going to be close week, but hopefully I have picked things that aren't too difficult, even if I get home a little later than usual. Hopefully nothing blows up at work and off we go!

Stay tuned for day by day picture updates :)
Comments are obviously always welcome!

A Gifted Janie Lunchbox

I just wanted to blog about how nice my co-worker Janie was today. I had planned to go out to lunch with a different co-worker today, but she ended up working from home due to being sick. Thus, I was left without a lunch (I usually bring a lunch for those that don't know me very well) and was a bit sad that I would have to go somewhere for food I didn't REALLY want. Janie who is also a consistent lunch bringer, offered me one of her lunch boxes. She cooks a lot over the weekend, freezes tons of lunches, and brings different ones to keep in the freezer.

I accepted her generous offer, and chose the fried udon she had made. It was kind of like the idea of yakisoba, but with udon noodles instead. The flavor was also different from yakisoba, because it was more soy saucy, but it was delicious. She had added udon nooodles, fish cakes, chicken, carrots, cabbage, green beans, and I think that's it. I thought it was quite funny that it was purple from the purple cabbage she added, but I loved it. She warned me it might be salty- the chicken was MAYBE a little salty, but other than that I thought it was great! My lunches usually tend to be on the smaller side, so I actually ended up eating more than usual but it was so good I just kept eating... besides I had already heated it up!!

Thank you Janie for your kindness and I definitely either owe her a lunch or samples from my September month of Japanese cooking. Too bad she is rotating out of our group in a few weeks already!