Nikujaga Recipe – Meat and taters Japanese style

I love a night like this. The air is chilly, darkness encroaches earlier and earlier, and the wet, chilled weather just demands that you keep your arse indoors. It is a nikujaga night.

Nikujaga is a dish that holds a special place in my cold, blackened heart. It’s such a simple dish with no frills and a lot of good taste.  It was one of the first Japanese dishes I learned to make when I started cooking Japanese food in high school. I got the recipe from a friend, and have since modified it to my own family’s tastes. In fact, part of the beauty of a dish like nikujaga (cooked almost exclusively at home) is that almost every recipe you find is a little bit different. At its core, it’s stewed meat and potatoes. Well, most recipes include onions of some sort. It’s hard to find a recipe without mirin, and even harder to find one without soy sauce. However, every house is almost guaranteed to have its very own variation of this dish. Here’s mine:

Sennet’s Nikujaga

Ingredients:
1 pound sliced beef strips
About four medium potatoes, cut into cubes
1/2 of a medium onion, sliced thin OR five green onions, hacked up real good
1 cup (yes, an entire cup) soy sauce
2 tablespoons mirin
1 cup water
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons oyster sauce
1 teaspoon garlic, minced
About 1 cup frozen peas

Nine ingredients. How hard is that, chowderheads? Onto the procedure! Naturally, you should chop, mince, slice, and fuck up your foodstuffs first. I won’t hold your hand for that.

Next, dump the onions and meat into a heated pot (or a large skillet, I suppose) and  add the garlic. Add a little tiny bit of oil just to lube things up. Once the meat is mostly cooked, chuck the taters in and pour the remaining ingredients – EXCEPT THE PEAS – in after them. Stir the mixture together.

Cover and bring to a boil. Once the stew boils, cut the heat down a bit and let it simmer, still covered, for about ten minutes. Then, take the lid off and let the stock reduce by about a fourth. This will help concentrate the flavors. Once the stock has reduced enough, remove the pot from the heat. Quickly add the peas and stir them into the stew. Let the stew stand for three to five minutes before serving.

Well, what a week or two I’ve had.

It’s definitely been a busy couple of weeks for me. Between exams, preparing for my transfer, and appeasing my family, I’ve hardly had any time to contribute to this blog. But never fear, the backlog is here!

My most recent bento is… appallingly simple, actually. Fried rice with peas, an egg roll (home made, even), a chocolate cupcake, and some nappa cabbage and radish slices. When I made this, I was tired, tired, tired.

This batty, pickly, spammy horror was far more delicious than its contents would have you believe. The spam and pickles in the top tier aren’t important, but I do like the rice on the bottom. Night-purple rice with a cheesy moon, a FruitaBu bat, and a little rice ghosty.

Mmmm. Beefy, batty, fruity bento. Bean-sprouty, too.  This was made by essentially cleaning out remnants in the refrigerator and slapping them into a box. The fruit salad is mandarins, peach chunks, and pineapple. And bats. Always bats. I’ve also got stir fried beef and pineapple, bean sprouts, and fried rice.

This bento is ugly. I don’t wanna talk about it. 😦

Spooky bento, part one!

Friday’s bento featured teriyaki chicken (the recipe for which I’ll be posting shortly) and something indicative of the season:

A carrot bat!

At least once a week, until Halloween, I will be creating a bento that somehow incorporates the spooky spirit of the season. Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday, and I thought that it deserved a little more attention from me this year.

 

So, what else have I got? Well, there’s the miso rice, the steamed veggies, and the teeny tiny peach cobbler. The miso rice is my way of using up shiro miso soup mix that I can’t really use for soup. I don’t care for shiro miso soup, but it’s great mixed into fresh rice!

 

The vegetables (carrot, peas, broccoli) were steamed by placing them in a covered bowl, on top of a wet paper towel, and nuking them for about a minute. It made the broccoli such an awesome green!

Sausage Bento – NWS?

Well, I’m finally back in the swing of things, and I made a tasty bento yesterday. It features two of my very favorite fall foods: pecan shortbreads, and spicy beef sausage.

Here’s a detail shot of the shortbread cookies, for they are quite attractive. More attractive than ground, pressed cow flesh, at least.

Top tier:

Skewered hot sausage slices on a bed of peas and tomato chunks

Pecan shortbread cookies

 

Bottom tier:

White rice

Stir-fried mushrooms

Pickle slices and tomato chunks