West Meets East Meats West?

In Japanese food there is a little something called "yoshoku" which is food that comes from the West. This includes things like kareraisu (curry with rice), hayashiraisu (beef stew with rice), and omuraisu (omelet with rice). The thing that I made from this category is "koroke" or a croquette.

To make these, you boil potatoes until they're soft, add cooked ground beef cooked with diced onion (cooked so that all the little bits of meat are separate) add shredded carrot and salt. Then you form it into little balls or patties, dip it in beaten egg, dip it into panko (Japanese bread crumbs) and deep fry until golden brown and delicious.

It's usually served with a thick dipping sauce like tonkatsu sauce, shredded cabbage and rice. I'm going to omit the rice though, deep fried potatos and rice seems a bit excessive.

I know it seems like all I do for this blog anymore is deep fry, but I assure you that I'm eating simmered and boiled things properly in between posts. Plus it has raw cabbage, what could be healthier than raw cabbage?

In any event, this recipe was very hap hazard, but that's how I like to give things to you. I'm under the impression that the sink or swim nature of my recipes will make you more self reliant.

Zettai ni Katsu!

The title above is another attempt at a clever pun. It could be read two ways: "It's definitely katsu (pork cutlet)" or "I'll definitely win!". Who doesn't win when delicious katsu are involved?



For the katsu, I took some bone free, thinner pork chops and beat them thinner with the bottom of a heavy bottle ('cause I'm classy and have every tool I need). This also has the added bonus of making the pork tender.



A three stage dipping arrangement. Flour (spiked with black pepper and salt), beaten egg with water (I used three eggs which turned out to be too much and about a tablespoon of water), and panko (which we've discussed before).



Don't start getting nervous because now we are going to deep fry. It'll be easy, you take a large heavy pan (cast iron if you've got it) and put about an inch of high smoke point oil (canola for example) and you put your heat on about medium high. Drop a little bit of your beaten egg into the oil and if it starts sizzling immediately, it's hot enough (alternatively you can use a fry thermometer and test for about 350F). Boost the heat a little bit after you put fresh batch of food in the pan because the cold food will drop the temperature. Lower the heat after it has regained the temperature that you want.

Isn't that simple?

Deep fry the cutlets until 165 degrees F and let rest perhaps five minutes. The cooling rack keeps them suspended so they can drip and not get soggy while they cool down. When they're cool enough to handle, cut them into strips.



A little shredded cabbage and some rice are the usual companions. That brown sauce is actually labeled "Katsu Sauce". It's kind of like a BBQ sauce that tastes like Worcestershire sauce. I used to make my own, but that was by just combining other prepackaged sauces, so, in the end it all comes out in the wash.

Some people put the sauce directly on the katsu because it looks pretty. And while I agree with the aesthetic, depending on how slow you eat the sauce can make your katsu soggy, which kind of defeats the purpose of breading and frying it in the first place. I guess I'm just a "sauce on the side" kind of girl.

In any event, deep frying can definitely be done at home, and you know everything that went in there because you put it there.

Try it out and let me know what you think.

Clam city baby

So, here's the thing about clams. They're alive. That can be intimidating. But clams are also delicious and kind of hard to mess up.

I had a conversation with The Boyfriend about eating clams raw on the half shell (which I haven't been able to bring myself to do). He said that it was gross because they're still alive. I mentioned to The Boyfriend (who has a degree in Japanese and lived in Japan for almost a year) that the fanciest of Japanese cuisine has living and moving dishes. Like, a carp that still has the muscles moving, or the tiny fish you drain then dump into a vinaigrette and swallow whole. They say you can feel them wriggling all the way down. He said that was gross.

Anyways, because I am a timid American cook, I took my baby clams, half shucked them (I removed half the shell), covered them in a breading compost of panko, aged white cheddar, flour, and salt then fried them in a generous portion of bacon fat (rendered from that morning's bacon). It kind of creeped me out that after I'd taken half of it's exoskeleton the clams still recoiled from the panko mix that I sprinkled onto them. That being said, I have had few things as delicious as that. Like, it was totally worth scraping my little finger in the cheese grater.

Apparently clams are really high in iron. Like, the same portion of clam meat has as much iron as the same portion of beef liver. And if I remember correctly, the liver of any creature is pretty irony.

Another nice thing about clams is that it's still easy and affordable to find wild clams at the market. More and more fish are being bred in captivity for the fish market. I don't view this as a bad thing because I believe that fish should swim free so much as they don't get to eat all the delicious things they would in the wild. Though clams eat... never mind.

In any case, I think I'll still wait a while before I sink my dainty teeth into living muscle, and enjoy this treat all fried up in bacon.

The Almost Daily Sarah