ささ身のサラダ - Chicken breast salad

This salad is a long running favourite dish for our family, usually heavily routine through the hot summer. It can be nice nibble for serving with drinks, also quite adequate for serving as a main dinner plate on its own, or with some white steamed rice, especially during the hot summer days like now. It looks very simple, but the threaded chicken absorbs the fresh sauce and a hint of sesame oil invites you to eat more. Because you can leave it for overnight, it's nice for party and pot-luck-lunches.
My mom's original recipe uses threads of Zha Cai, is a spicy Sichuan pickles, but the Japanese adapted seasoning one (means not-so-spicy), which either not easy to find or very expensive even you find in here UK.
My recipe uses cucumber for replacement, and actually has gained the better response from my guests here.

Ingredients (3-4 people):
2 big slices or 3 small slices of Chicken breast
2 slice ginger
1 leek - green part only

4 x 5cm leek - white part only (about 5cm x 2 per each leek, 2 leeks)
1/2 cucumber
1tsp salt

6 Tbsp sushi vinegar
3 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp sugar
some black pepper

Method:
1. Prepare chicken: boil the chicken breast with 2 slice of ginger (with skin but cleaned) and green part of a leek (cut of very end and clean the soil out under running water before use) for about 20-25 minutes, then leave them in the boiled water until all cool down.
2. Meanwhile prepare vegetables: we need 4 pieces of 5cm length white part of leeks, usually you can take up to 2 parts per one whole length. Take the most outside skin off if its not soft enough (US leeks may need to peal 2 skins off...) cut off the very ending with loots, then cut them in to 5cm length, slice them into thin julienne. If the leek is spicy as the one from Japan then you may need to soak it in a bowl of water for 5min before use.
3. Skin the cucumber, cut in half along with the length, take off the center transparent par will seed using either knife or spoon. Cut in to half width again, the slice them in about a half cm width slices.
4. Put all slices of cucumber in a small bowl, add the 1tsp salt and mix them well, then leave it for about 10min.
5. Put the cucumber slices on a strainer, wash out the salt under running water well, then grab a hand full of slices at once and squeeze out all water in your hand. Repeat that for all slices. Doing so, it will prevent making the salad soggy later, and keep the cucumber crunchy in the salad.
6. Prepare the sauce: just mix the listed ingredients well.
7. Once the chicken breast get cool down, then break them into few small pieces, and thread to the string one by one as thinner as your patient can handle. The thinner you can thread the better absorb the sauce and tastier later.
8. Mix the threaded chicken, julienne leeks, sliced and squeezed cucumber in a bowl roughly, then pour over the mixed sauce, mix the whole thing again.
9. Leave it in your refrigerator for at least 1 hour, even better if you can leave it for overnight before serve.

* If you can find a good Zha Cai  then you might want to try my mom's version; you firstly clean the Zha Cai out from soaked spicy juice well. If it is a whole one then slice it, and then cut it into threads. Soak the threads in a cup of water for 5 minutes and drain out the water before mixing it with other ingredients at step 8.

やきうどん: Fried Udon noodle

I had long break on this blog due to my main occupation, I knew the busy time coming but the last project took much longer than I expected....

Anyway, this is a simple recipe easy to remember. Udon is kind to your stomach and nice for digestion. Good to go as vegetarian without pork in.
Lately the packed soft Udon noodle become easy to reach, it's an "instant" style for us Japanese compare to dried noodles but really useful for this quick cooking.

Ingredients (per person):
1 soft Udon pack
1/4 onion - sliced
1/4 carrot - sliced
1/4 bell pepper - sliced
1/4 leek white part - sliced sliced
1 slice of bacon or equivalent amount of sliced pork berry
cabbage - equal amount as bacon

* Idea is, onion, carrot, bell pepper and leek are about same amount, then cabbage and bacon are in same amount and about double amount of onion.

* 2 kinds of Udon noodle you can find in market in UK

1/2 pot of water boiled in kettle
2 + 1 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 Tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp salt if using pork berry
black pepper
(Optional) Katsuobushi (dried bonito flakes)
(Optional) Shichimi (seven flavor chili pepper)

* left: Shichimi, right: Katsuobushi - those are sold in Japanese glossary shops.

Method:
1. Slice onion, carrot, bell pepper and leek. Idea is slice them in almost same size/thickness so all can be cooked at same time.
2. Cut bacon to 1 to 2cm width, or slice pork berry thinly.
3. Cut cabbage into about 1 to 2 cm square.
4. Heat up a Chinese wok or a large pan on high heat, then put 2 Tbsp vegetable oil once the wok gets enough hot. Spread the oil all over the wok, then take out the excess of oil out on small dish (not plastic!) If you are garlic lover, put a crushed garlic before taking out oil then take it out with the oil, so the oil gets the garlic aroma.
5. Put onion and carrot in the wok, fry for 1-2 minutes until they are halfway cooked, then add bell pepper and continue cooking for another 1-2 minutes.
6. Add leeks and cook only for 1 minute, take all out in a pat or dish and put it aside.

7. Put back all oil again, spread through and take it off again.
8. Put the pork berry slice or bacon slice, fry until the oil start to melt and getting cooked, then add cabbage and fry until the cabbage slices are cooked. Put all vegetables back once, mix them, add pepper, add salt if it is pork berry. Put all aside again.

9. Prepare the Udon noodle. Majority of packed Udon sold in an individual small package ideal for a person. They are kind of soft but packed. It's so different if you do this trick first: Put the noodle on a strainer and place it in sink, pour over a boiling hot water all over the noodle. After pouring a half the water, then give some wagging by fork or chopsticks. Then pour over the rest of hot water. After that, pour the remaining vegetable oil from the wok and mix them well.

10. Now put the wok back on high heat, once heated up then add the another 1 Tbsp of oil in the work, spread the oil through the wok.
11. Add the noodle in the wok, put all vegetable & pork on top of it, then mix them quickly.
12. Add all soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce then mix them well. Cook until the sauce spread through for about 2-3 minutes.
13. Serve it on a large dish, pour over Katsuobushi freaks on top of it if you have. Put some Shichimi to spice it up as you like. Alternatively a bit of Nori freaks and mayonnaise are other common toppings.

Japanese version here: http://misaskitchen-jp.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/blog-post_10.html

Spring Savoy Cabbage rolls in tomato sauce

The season of spring savoy cabbage is on, UK supermarkets are competing some extreme sale between them lately. The price is not the only thing getting my attention, but the colour of the cabbages have changed from the winter dark to bright green of spring, shouting out loud from the shelf to me. 

I love this cooking 'cause those rolls provide plenty of different vegetables and nutrition in one go, they are so tasty, pleasure to handle the all beautiful spring season colours, and at the end, it comes pretty economic (roughly about £3 for all?).

My cabbage rolls are to enjoy the cabbage. The layer of cabbages cooked soft and juicy, well absorbed the taste from the soup come out from the bit of beef makes us pure joy! 

Ingredients (for 8-9 rolls enough for 3-4 people):

250g minced beef (I use 12% fat or more, because that's the only fat comes out in this cooking and even you scoop them out during cooking)

1 medium size savoy cabbage

1 onion finely minced

1 small carrot finely minced (either by hand or food processor)

2 bunch of spring onion (green onion in US) sliced thin or minced by food processor

1 pointy bell pepper minced by hand - is much better taste for bell pepper

condiments for meat mixture

* 1/4 tsp grand nutmeg

* 1 tsp smoked paprika powder 

* 1/2 tsp dried thyme

* 1 tsp dried marjoram

* 1/2 tsp grand black pepper

* 1 tsp salt

* 1/2 cup of water from boiling cabbage

for sauce

- 1/2 can of chopped tomato

- 1/2 tsp dried thyme

- 1 tsp dried marjoram

- 1 tsp dried basil

- 1 bay leaf

- tsp sugar

- salt and black pepper to taste
- all remained water from boiling cabbage

(optional: some butter)

Method:
1. Prepare the cabbage. Rinse the cabbage then peel out the last one layer of dark outside leafs that not tightly closed to the cabbage, leave them aside.
2. Prepare a pot that the cabbage can fit easily in. Put the cabbage in the pot, pour in water, just to cover up near the top of the cabbage, then take the cabbage out. Put the pot on a hob and boil the water up.
3. Stub the stalk of cabbage by a cooking folk, that you can use as a handle of the cabbage. Dip the cabbage in the pot of boiling water, leave it for about 30 seconds - the cabbage leaf on outside become soft and easy to peel. Take the whole cabbage out on a large strainer, peel the softened leafs cut the leaf out using a knife at the near to the stalk. Repeat this process to peel off as many leafs as you can, until it get to very core, about 4-5cm radius ball. Keep the leaf in order of peeling - this will help you sorting them later. Cut the core out from the remaining stalk.
4. Once you peel them until the core, now boil the stalkside of each leafs in the boiling water for another 30 seconds. Keep the order of leafs but in other way around now - so the smallest ones goes to the bottom and the largest ones comes at the top of pile.
5. Boil also the core ball and the very outside leafs kept from step1 until it gets enough soft. Cut them in to mince.
6. Sort the leafs into individual roll set: On your cutting board or clean kitchen table, take the leafs from the top of the pile (means from the largest ones), deal them in to 8-9 piles - the number of rolls you want to make - like cards; deal the leafs up to the number, once you hit to the last one (8 or 9), then return back from the last one to 1st one in back order. Next line go up from the first one again, repeat until you deliver all leafs into piles. (This should give almost equal quantity and surface of cabbage for each rolls)
7. For each group of leafs, go through them one by one and trim the hard center vain of leaf (but keep the order of leafs): place the leaf outside up on a cutting board, slice out the center hard vain to nearly the leaf thickness using a sharp knife. Mince the sliced vain remains very thin and set aside with the minced core and outside leafs.
8. Make mixture of meat. Put the minced beef, the minced cabbage leafs from above, all other minced vegetables and all condiments for the meat except the water from boiling cabbage in a bowl. Mix them well using your hand; the mass should be hard and dry at this point, start adding the warm water remained from boiling cabbages little by little (if you forgot keeping it, don't worry but just use some warm water). Keep adding the water with mixing the meat, until the mixture get quite sticky and soft so you can make the mass together easily, up to about 1/2 cup.
9. In a bowl, roughly divide the meat mixture into number of rolls you are going to make. Take the group of leafs one by one, then fill the center smallest leaf with the divided meat mixture. Don't force to fill the all portion, the amount you cannot fit in to the smallest center leaf. You can make small meat balls with remaining and put them together later.

Isn't it so beautiful, just like blossoming a bunch of spring flowers?

10. Now rolling them. Place number of toothpicks handy. Take one group from them then take the center small leaf with meat mixture in your hand. Pull straight the leaf easily and wrap up the meat by the leaf: if you have some remained mixture and you think you can fit some more in the leaf without opening too much gap, add more mixture to form just fitting wrap. 

11. Open up the second leaf - the center stalk side top and inside up like picture, then place the first roll - opening gap side down,  stalk side up. By doing this, the stalk doesn't come over another stalk so it will be easier to roll, and also the layers of cabbage in the rolls get even when you cut. 

12. If you have enough width going around the core, tack up the side inward at the near end, hold them together then put on the third leaf in the same way. Continue this to use up all leafs from the group.

It's a bit tricky but try to make the rolls as tightly rolled as you can. 

12. At the end of rolling the last leaf, staple the leaf end by a toothpick. Basically stub from a side of center vain over the top leaf, push it through with the leaf under and push it out from other side of stalk. Be really careful not to stub your fingers!

* Extra step if you like a rich taste: you can easily fry them on a fry pan with some butter, until each side gets lightly brawn colour. I don't do this for spring cabbage 'cause I like the sweetness of the spring cabbages as it is. 

13. Once all rolls are done, place them stand and lined in a pot: the stalk end of leaf down. You need to select a pot just to fit them all; the tighter the better because it doesn't get lose during the long cooking. 

Look how pure spring colour they can be! Just feel pleasure looking at them in my pot.

14. Pour 1/2 can of chopped tomato and 1 tsp salt and some black pepper, pour the remained water from boiling the cabbage, then pour over cold water until just the height of rolls.

15. Cover the pot with the lid and put the pot on a hob with medium high heat. Once it start to boil, open the lid and skim the scum for about 5 minutes. If you don't like fat, then continue scoop them out whatever comes out for the next 10 minutes.

16. Add all remained condiments, turn the heat down to medium; to keep the pot simmering a bit hard with the lid. 

17. Keep cooking for about 1/2 hour, check the taste of salt and adjust to your taste, then keep cooking another 1/2 hours, until the sauce reduce to 1/4 in the pot and the rolls are braised with the sauce; if the sauce reduce too quickly, then add some more water and adjust the heat.

18. Once ready, take out the bay leaf. The rolls are very soft, so be extra careful when you pull them out from the pot. 

Serve them hot with some steamed rice or mashed potato, some sauce on them. I love them on some cuscus too. 

Don't forget to remove the toothpick before you dig in!

ひき肉のレタス巻き - Minced pork lettuce roll

This is my family recipe, it was my favourite dinner since I was small and today it’s my son's favourite. The picture is the meal that my son cooked because I was with cold yesterday. A bit of lazy part is to add green beans noodle, and that's optional. Otherwise it's very difficult to make it wrong. It’s nice and light meal, I usually serve this without anything else because when you dig in to this with your hands, you won’t need anything else.

Ingredients: (2-3 people)

500g minced pork

15cm bottom whiter part of leak minced

2 large slice of ginger minced 

2 medium size dried Shitake mushroom (see prep)

3 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp sake

2/3 Tbsp sesame oil

1 tbsp potato starch

salt & black pepper

1 large head of lettuce

1 small pack of glass noodles/green beans noodles (optional)

vegetable oil for deep fry (optional)

Preparation

1. In a small soup cup, place the dried Shitake mushrooms – stem side down, add a pinch of sugar (not included in the list of Ingredients) then pour some boiling hot water to cover the Shitake as much as they can float in the hot water. Leave it aside for about 15 min. Cut off the stems when it become enough soft.
* This is the quick way to restrain the Shitake - it is good enough when you want it for stir fry, etc. Otherwise it needs to be left in some cold water for over 1 hour - that drains better aromatic juice with complete Shitake taste.

2. Cut off the bottom stalk of the lettuce for about 0.5- 1cm, to loosen the first few leaves. Put it under running water, the stalk side up, then carefully remove the lettuce leaves one by one. Try not to break the leaves. Repeat the process until pealing all leaves. Leave it on a strainer to drain the water.

3. Chop the leak in to mince. Place the leak on a cutting board, hold the greener side of the stalk then cut a slit at the center along the leak stalk leaving but where you are holding without cutting it to pieces. Roll the stalk for 90 degree, do it again. Then make additional slits between the slits - so it will have a cut looks like an asterisk when you look the leak from the bottom. Now slice them in about 2-3mm from bottom side. Keep repeating this until all minced.

4. Chop ginger in to mince. Ginger has strings inside along with its growing direction. Unless you want to mince all the piece, you slice them in a right-angle to the string direction. Take off the first bits out (skin bits) then cut 2 of 2mm slices. Cut off the skin part, place one over another slice, then slice from one side to another to make 2mm threads. Turn them 90 degrees then cut them into cubes.

5. Once the Shitake mushroom is softened entirely until where was the stalk, then take them out from the water, squeeze them gently to drain out the liquid. On a cutting board, place them one over the other one, slice them into about 5mm threads. Turn them 90 degrees and cut them into cubes.

  

Method

1. Put all ingredients from the Ingredients list until salt in a bowl, following the list order. 

2. Mix them well using your hands. Leave it aside.

3. Optional step: deep frying the green beans noodles

It is nicer if you add some deep fried glass noodles, but this takes time. I do omit when I don’t have time, it is totally optional to add it or not.

3.0 Place a kitchen paper on strainer, ready another few kitchen papers aside of it.

3.1 Open the package, take the noodle out from the package, and take off the string holding the noodles together. Give some wagging to the mass and try to lose it a bit (don't need to be loosen all free, just to make it a bit loose so the oil can go into the center easier).  

3.2 Using a Chinese wok or a large deep pan heat up some vegetable oil, enough amount for deep frying the noodles (about at least 2 cups).

3.4 Wait until the oil gets enough hot. Firstly do the test: drop a small string of the noodle into the hot oil. If the heat is enough high, then the noodle should start popping to rough whiter and thicker noodles. If not, keep heating the oil until the noodle gets popped. Once the oil is enough heated then place the whole noodle mass in. Turn over the noodles in the oil few times and allow all around the noodle mass to pop. 

3.5 Once the popping stopped and see that the most of the noodles are popped, take the noodles out from the oil, keep it over the wok/pan for another 5-10 sec to drain the remaining oil out from the noodle well, then place it on the kitchen paper on the strainer. 

3.6 Using the extra 2 kitchen papers, wag the noodle and make them into loosen threads - be careful, the noodle must be very hot and some hot oil may come out! 

3.7 If the center of noodle mass remained not popped then put that remaining mass back in the hot oil and repeat the process again. 

3.8 You may find some center bits cannot pop at all - that's fine, once the noodles start to get brownish, then the noodles are fried enough anyway. You should be able to break that down to small pieces by the kitchen paper. 

4. If you've done the step 3, then take all oil out from the wok/pan to other pot, then place the pan on a hob and turn it on to high heat. Pour about 1 tbsp of oil in the wok/pan. 

If you skip the step 3, Place the Chinese wok or deep pan on a hob, turn the hob to high heat. Once the wok/pan is heated enough then pour about 3 tbsp of oil in the wok/pan. Move around the wok/pan to spread the oil all over the wok/pan. Discard 1/3 of the oil.

5. Put all the mixture of step 2 into the wok/pan. 

6. Using the turner, separate the mixture into smaller meat ball bits. Push down the mixture in the wok/pan, then cutting them through to small bits using the turner. Once the bottom side of minced pork are cooked, then using the turner, little by little turn them over roughly. Repeat separating them by the turner to small bits. If all became roughly a small bits, then stir fry until all get cooked.

7. Add the deep fried glass noodles into the wok/pan, stir fry them together for another 1 minute and done.

8. Serve the minced pork in a pot with few large spoons – the meat is nice serving in hot as well as cold depend on the weather. Serve the fresh lettuce separately. Everyone use your hands to build your own rolls.

* Additionz: I prefer to add some mayo in my roll. Chili oil is also nice if you like to have some kick. 

Japanese version here: http://misaskitchen-jp.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/blog-post_6.html