Omuraisu! Or, how sometimes it's okay to put ketchup on rice

Days off usually mean more culinary exploration.

I've been wanting to make "omuraisu" or "omelet rice" for a while, but I just hadn't gotten around to it. I'm not sure what prompted me to make it today, but I'm glad that inspiration struck because it's tasty. Oh yoshoku, how deliciously ironic you are.

I used Maki's recipe, as she's very reliable for this sort of thing. I did add a little salt to the onions (which isn't called for) but since I was using unsalted butter I figured it was fine.

Basically you dice half a small onion and saute it in butter, then you add half a cup of chicken or ham (I used ground chicken that was in the fridge) and cook that through. Add a cup of rice and two tablespoons of ketchup and mound on a plate. Then you beat two eggs and half cook an omelet and flip it onto the rice mound (runny side down). A little more ketchup on top and you're good to go.

I didn't really measure the amount of chicken I put in (I was trying to use it up) but it made a hefty omelet.

I made some glazed carrots to go on the side. That was two carrots (for two servings), peeled and chopped roughly, maybe a quarter inch of grated ginger, a splash of soy sauce and two tablespoons of simple syrup. I added enough water to cover and let it reduce down. I actually added more water as the carrots weren't soft enough and had to let it reduce again, but I don't think that hurt anything.

It was a very yellow/orange/red kind of meal, but that's not a bad thing.

What are your views on the ketchup raise combination?

Tempura Tempura, space people

That above is me being silly. "Ventora ventora space people (supeisu peporu)" is the traditional method for Japanese students to try and summon aliens.

Every once in a while, you have to cook something that's a pain in the ass, just to eat it. Tempura is something I feel that way about.



You remember the left over sake/soy/giner/garlic infused chicken meat I had left over? I cooked that up in unflavored water, and then I parboiled all of my vegetables in that chicken infused water. The veggies included: purple yam, kabocha (a Japanese pumpkin), carrots, and green onions. (I didn't parboil the onions).



After parboiling everything (except the green onions), I dipped them in batter.

The batter was kind of my "economically challenged" version of a few recipes I found. I used one egg, 1/3 cup sake, 2/3 cup water, 1/3 cup mochiko (sweet rice flour), 1/3 potato starch ('cause I'm sick of eating corn byproducts), and 1/3 regular all purpose flour.

Perhaps it was because the outside was wet from the boiling, but the first few pieces had very little batter on them; it just wouldn't stick. Then I sprinkled in about a 1/4 cup more of the mochiko. That worked fixed the problem.



Deep frying is something I do from time to time. It's pretty simple, and I don't see why some people are so afraid to attempt it. You just have to learn a trick or two.

These are Sarah's rules for successful deep frying:
1) Keep flammables far away.
2) Use a heavy pot.
3) Use high smoke point oil (I like grape seed oil).
4) Be prepared to par cook or finish in the oven.
5) Don't be afraid of pops.

If you're afraid of popping oil, go ahead and wear long sleeves, just make sure they really hug your wrists. You don't want them dipping into batters. You really don't want them dipping into hot oil.

Anyway, we ate this with white rice, and and tentsuyu sauce from a bottle. You mix 1/4 cup with 1 cup hot water. It made a salty soup base.

The Boyfriend and I polished off this basket of fried goods but, since they were all veggies (aside from the chicken) I didn't feel bad about this.

Chanko nabe!

So, after watching this video by Runnyrunny999 I decided to try my hand at chanko nabe.

Chanko nabe basically means "sumo wrestler stew" (according to Raani-san), but this recipe isn't loaded with fat or anything. Sumo wrestler fat is actually very interesting, because of the amount they exercise, the fat doesn't penetrate the muscle or anything. The amount of rice they eat is what loads on the calories.



This is most of the ingredients here. I already had some dashi soup stock in the pot. Dashi is made from konbu (a kind of pressed kelp sheet thing, I think) and bonito flakes. You let it all rest in cold water for about twenty minutes and then you simmered it for a couple minutes, and then you strain out all the little fish flakes and such. It's used in a good portion of Japanese soups and dipping sauces.

Here we have tofu, aburage (which is deep fried tofu), enokidake (the white, thin mushrooms), shitaki (you're probably familiar), carrots and cabbage.



This is a small package of ground chicken with grated garlic and ginger, and a shot of soy sauce and sake. You mix this together really well, and make into small balls to drop into the soup.



I put the ingredients that would take a little longer to cook into the pot first. That includes the cabbage, carrots and the chicken balls.



I think I may have put too much into the pot already. I ended up putting most of the super firm tofu into a tupperware container with clean (filtered in my case), cold water. I only made a couple chicken balls, the rest also went into the refrigerator. The mushrooms basically covered everything up.



And here's the money shot. Don't you want to eat this up? We had white rice with this.