There is a huge difference between Japanese curry and Indian original curry. Japanese curry is much thicker like stew, mild or not spicy at all compare to any other curries, usually chunks of vegetables and meats are in and served with rice on a plate, garnished by some pickles.
This has a really good reason and history behind it.
Curry was introduced to Japan by the UK trading ship about 200 years ago. That curry was a British curry, the earlier adapted style from colonies, which was more like a mixture of stew and curry powder.
Then after that style is imported to Japan, that British version is adapted again; it has been thickened by the flour and served with rice.
The Japanese Curry Rice is one of the most popular meal in Japan, very close to Ramen.
To make Japanese Curry you don't use spices, you use "Curry roux"; it's a block of instant curry sauce.
There are 2-3 big food makers proving the roux and they are dominating JP market, and, they are all more or less same taste; this means, every family in Japan eat mostly same taste curry at home.
We do mix the different company's roux and make "home special" but that doesn't make that much difference, unlike between masala and tkika. Small percentage of families may add some additional things in it, but not the thing you may consider for making curry; soy sauce, dashi, mayonnaise, and most unusual one, chocolate.
At the end, the real variations are created by what is cooked in the curry sauce.
Most basic ingredients are chunk of: carrot, onion, potato and beef or pork stew meat.
My minced meat & aubergine curry is a kind of unusual variety in Japan, it's much quicker to cook than the regular style one but the taste has nothing to compromise compare to the regular ones.
Ingredients (for 4-6 people):1 pack Japanese curry roux (better if you can have half pack each of any 2 kinds)
500g minced meat (beef, pork or chicken. No lam. I used pork this time).
1 large aubergine
1 medium onion minced
enough water as the curry roux package states.
3 Tbsp vegetable oil
(optional) 1 tsp sake
(optional) 1 tsp soy sauce
Methods:
1. Dice the aubergine into about 1cm cubes. Put them in a large bowl of cold water, place a plate in the bowl over the floating cubes and push in; so all cubes can sank in the water. Leave it for 10 minutes then drain them by a strainer.
2. Put a large pot on a hob with oil, then turn the hob to medium high heat. Fry the minced onions for 5 minutes until it start to get brown.
3. Put all minced meat, fry them together, separate the minced meat to grains. I like to add sake here because that can reduce meat strong smell, but that's totally optional. Cook until all minced meat change the colour and cooked.
4. Drain the water well and put all diced aubergine in the same pot, fry them together until aubergine cubes get soft, for about 10 min.
5. Pour water in the pot as your box of curry roux says, skim the scum for first few minutes and cook it for another 10 minutes. (Package may say to cook for 1 hour, don't worry, that's the time takes for cooking chunks of veggies and meats, not applicable to today's cooking)6. Meanwhile, slice the curry roux. Each curry roux box comes with 2 packs of curry bars, each bar is ready to break in to 4 pieces, and most of package says you can just add them as how it is. Truce is, it doesn't melt well always, a remained piece of roux looks totally like a chunk of been in the curry sauce; if you even once hit that in your mouth then you wouldn’t complain for this step. Put the bar on a cutting board and slice them as thin as you can.
7. Add the sliced curry roux in the pot, immediately mix them well in to soup. Cook for another 10- 20 minutes, until the aubergine gets really soft.
8. Curry rice serving style: serve a small mountain of rice on one side, then serve the curry on the other side.
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