For those of you that are familiar with Japanese fast food, you’ve probably heard of Yoshinoya. It’s a fast food chain that specializes in rice bowls and they’re particularly well known for their gyudon (beef donburi).
This popularity was elevated to cult status when the Japanese government banned American beef imports due to the mad-cow scare. Being a fast food chain, they couldn’t afford to buy Japanese beef and continue selling the bowls for $3, so they halted the sale of their signature dish and replaced it with butadon (pork donburi). Their loyal fans where crushed and there was much hullabaloo over the whole episode until the menu item was restored a few years ago.
Honestly, I don’t get the appeal. True, it’s cheap, but there were people flying from Tokyo to LA to have a bowl during the beef-outtage, so that argument doesn’t really hold. Here’s my rendition of the popular dish. It’s truly as simple to make as it looks and yet it makes for a satisfying meal.
It’s important that you use a tender cut of beef with a lot of marbling. Since this is supposed to be a cheap dish, I pick up packs of “kiriotoshi” which are the odds and ends of high quality beef that’s left after they slice the beef for sukiyaki and shabu shabu. If you don’t happen to live near a Japanese grocery, you can semi-freeze a piece of beef and use a sharp knife to cut it across the grain into thin slices.
In other news, Kang over at London Eater has tagged me for a meme. I don’t participate in memes, but since he was nice enough to tag me and because he has a great collection of London restaurant reviews (which I’m sure to use the next time I’m over there) y’all should check out London Eater.
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Japanese people have a thing for naming things for the vessel they come in (see nabe), and this is no exception. Donburi literally means “bowl”, but is typically refers to a bowl of rice topped with something. Japanese people also like abbreviating things, so donburi becomes “don” in common parlance.
This is the ultimate weeknight meal as it takes almost no time to make. It’s also fantastic in bento boxes for lunch. I usually make a batch of onsen tamago (slow cooked egg) over a weekend as it takes a bit of time to make, if you haven’t make any ahead of time, this also great topped with a sunny side up egg, or scrambled egg, or even no egg at all.
The chicken is quickly cooked in a sweet soy sauce (think teriyaki sauce), and sandwiches a thin layer of green onions over rice. The onsen tamago, permeates the entire dish with a custardy creaminess that you just can’t beaten.
You could do a lot with this basic recipe too. Try using beef or pork, or even crumbled firm tofu. You could also add veggies. For seasoning, it’s great with a little sesame oil, garlic, or if you want to give it a little kick, add some gochujang (Korean hot sauce).
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Sunday brunch is one of my favourite meals. I’ll often wake up around 10, pour myself a glass of o.j. and spend an hour preparing something tasty, but then there are those lazy mornings when I wake up and just don’t feel like cooking anything.
These muffins are the cure for those days. It’s also the perfect way to clean up those last few slices of ham, the left over roast potatoes, half a can of corn, and sauteed carrots that have been sitting in the back of your fridge for a week. The chopped up left overs are suspended in an eggy batter that makes them a suitable (if not convincing) stand-in for frittatas, and like their more pedigreed Italian cousin, they taste better as leftovers than straight out of the oven.
These muffins really embody what this blog is about, there are a few basic ratios you need to know and then the rest is up to your creativity (or what’s left in your fridge). This time I used some leftover grilled eggplant, squash, bell peppers and onions, adding in some chopped up garlic scapes and green onions for a bit more flavour. For seasoning I went with smoked paprika (pimenton) and ground coriander seed, but really you could use just about anything here.
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After my success with a slow roasted sockeye fillet, I decided to apply the technique to a whole fish.
This is one of those dishes that is very impressive looking and yet requires almost no work at all. The perfect dish for a dinner party. If you get the fish monger to clean and scale the fish for you, all you need do is throw all the ingredients in a roasting pan and stick it in the oven for about an hour and a half. It’s all done in one pan making it’s own sauce to boot
If cooking whole fish isn’t your thing you could probably do this with a fillet although you’ll need to adjust your cooking times and you may want to par boil your potatoes.
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I almost hate calling this a stew because it doesn’t really do it justice. There’s no liquid added, so any sauce that develops comes out of the veggies, melding together and caramelizing in the pan to make a wonderfully hardy “stew”.
Its great on pasta, but I think it’s even better scooped up with soft flatbreads like a pita or naan.
For this batch I used some incredibly tender young summer squash along with sweet grape tomatoes, spring onions and fresh peas, but you could really use just about any mix of just-picked farmers market produce. For the seasoning I went with a home made Herbes de Provence mixture of fresh rosemary, lavender, sage and bay leaves, but it’s also great with sumac, lemon rind, and harissa.
While I included measurements below, they’re just guidelines. The idea here is to get the fewest pans, plates and utensils dirty, so do what feels right, taste it then adjust the seasonings until you’re happy.
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