Chicken Teriyaki And Sorry That Took So Long... :/

No matter how sophisticated we are about food, it's often the simplest things that make us collectively drool.

Browned and crisped chicken skin is one of those things.

And when that browned and crisped chicken skin is complemented by a delicate glaze of soy, ginger, onion, rice wine, and a touch of sweet, it's all the more irresistible, isn't it? And that is the magic of teriyaki chicken. Simply delicious and widely appealing, when it's done well, it takes a pretty picky omnivore to turn it down.

My preference is to grill it over a low flame, but on the day these pics were taken, some serious brewing was going down in the yard, and I didn't want to add to the mayhem. On days like that, or when I just don't feel like dealing with coals, I find the broiler an excellent workaround.

TERIYAKI CHICKEN
Serves 4

For the chicken:

- 2 pounds boneless, skin-on chicken thigh meat
- 1/4 cup lite soy sauce
- 2 or 3 cloves of garlic, crushed
- 1 Tablespoon rice wine, sake, or white wine
- 1 Tablespoon brown sugar
- 3 or 4 slices of fresh ginger (or if you don't have fresh, use 1/8 teaspoon powdered)

For the glaze:

- 1/4 cup lite soy sauce
- 2 or 3 slices fresh ginger
- 1 clove garlic, crushed
- 1/6 of an onion
- 1/4 cup rice wine, sake, or white wine
- 1 Tablespoons brown sugar
- 2 Tablespoons white sugar

- 1 teaspoon corn starch slurried (dissolved) in 1 Tablespoon cold water
- 1/4 cup unsalted chicken stock

1) Season the chicken with the marinade ingredients and mix gently but thoroughly to evenly incorporate. If you're planning to cook the chicken shortly, leave it out while you make your glaze. Otherwise, refrigerate until 30 minutes before you plan to cook it. I say it all the time, and I'll say it again that for the most part, most things cook better at room temp.

2) While the chicken is marinating, put all the glaze ingredients except the corn starch slurry and unsalted chicken stock in a small saucepan and bring to a very gentle boil over medium heat.

3) Once the glaze has come to a gentle boil (you should see gentle, infrequent bubbles rising to the surface and popping), add the cornstarch slurry and unsalted chicken stock, and bring back up to a very gentle boil over medium heat.

 

Once the glaze comes back up to a gentle boil, reduce the heat to low and let simmer for another 5 to 7 minutes, and cut the heat.

4) While the glaze is cooling, preheat the oven to 400F and place the chicken meat side down on a foil lined pan.

5) Roast the chicken for about 15 minutes in the 400F oven, then turn on the broiler, and place the chicken about 4 inches under the broiler to crisp up the skin another 2 minutes or so. After 1 minute, check the chicken every 15 seconds or so and take it out when it looks like this.

When you put anything sweet and fatty under the broiler, it can go from perfectly charred to burnt beyond recognition in a matter of seconds. Best to be vigilant! :)

Slice skin side down - and do it decisively so you cut through the skin - and serve with a little glaze spooned over.

On this particular day, we ate it with a little steamed white rice, some garden salad dressed with homemade Thousand Island, and a ham tamagoyaki (rolled omelette).

All together now...

Hope you rike. ^^

shinae

100 DOLLARS A WEEK - Day 20 (Thursday)...

Catching up is the problem with falling behind.

One all nighter spent subconsciously ruminating over a family matter, which then fries your brain for the next 4 days while your brain and body try to compensate for the fact that you're no longer a 20 year old who can bounce back from an all nighter with nothing but adrenaline and a Diet Coke. (They didn't have Red Bull back then, that's how long ago that was.)

This may sound kinda lame, but at Day 20, with just a week and a day left to go, I feel pretty good about the fact that I did something as mundane as keep track of everything I ate for the past three weeks even though I didn't have to. It doesn't sound like much, but when you grow up in an oddly Bohemian environment (Yes, Asian people can be that way, believe it or not. We just don't grow up thinking there's anything cool, hip or chic about it and instead opt to see ourselves as failures for our lack of routine and discipline.), it's a feat to get your teeth brushed by roughly the same time every morning.

But I won't lie. It does help to stay on task when you're getting feedback and encouragement. I don't get many *attagirls* for brushing my teeth.

BREAKFAST

How fried am I? I had to upload the pics to remember what I ate yesterday.

Half of the last bagel each for the Man and me, and a repeat of the vanilla yogurt for Joe. (I really can't believe how little that boy eats sometimes...)

   1 bagel with cream cheese and some jam $0.60
+ 2 cups of coffee $0.40
+ yogurt with sugar and vanilla $0.60

= BREAKFAST: $1.60

LUNCH

The Man was chickened out, and the Tandoori chicken with the aloo gobi was the only leftovers we had enough of to pack a lunch, so he bought lunch at Panda Express, and that lunch cost him $8.00.

GAH. Eight bucks for some breaded beef crap and some chicken crap with some rice. Is there any better argument I can make for cooking enough to have leftovers the next day???

The very last of the pernil and some steamed rice for the Boy.

The Tandoori chicken dealie for me. And you can totally see that we are getting to the end of the week. It gets dicey, folks.

LUNCH: $8.00 total for caca Panda Express food.

DINNER

Dinner was supposed to be salmon, but I decided I would put the salmon in my wonky refrigerator to defrost overnight. *FAIL.* That's why you buy instant or near-instant crap. Plan B food, I call it.

Yakisoba (yahkkeesohbah) with onions, carrots and cabbage. A most interesting Worcestershire based seasoning if you've never had it. I personally love the stuff, and all the more with a few dashes of Tabasco. I can't articulate what it is about yakisoba with that particular seasoning packet and Tabasco sauce that I like so well, but I like it. A lot.

Leftover kimchi soup and cucumber bahnchahn on the side.

   3-pack of yakisoba $2.50
+ 1 carrot $0.10
+ 1 onion $0.20
+ 1/3 of a head of cabbage $0.45
+ 1 green onion $0.10

= DINNER: $3.35 total, $0.85/serving (4 servings total)

I think we had some kind of a snack last night, but hell if I know what it is.

Saturday:  $5.40
Sunday:  $16.00
Monday:  $12.40
Tuesday:  $12.60
Wednesday:  $12.00
Thursday:  $13.00

$76.00 spent with one day left to go in the week.

Off to cook dinner and then hopefully back in a bit with today's meals so I can finally get caught up.

shinae

STRANGE GRUB: Cosmic Gifts That Look Like Aliens...

For as long as I've been conscious of it, it's seemed to me that the less you expect from life, or really, the less you feel entitled to, the more good stuff comes your way. Certainly it's not always a material change - that is to say that sometimes, the change is really in your perspective - but sometimes it is. I know it sounds all hokey and metaphysical, but my life really does seem to work this way. I don't always get it right, but whenever I'm truly grateful for just enough, the Universe usually sends me something so much better.

Eight - count 'em - EIGHT live uni...

Not to get all Wayne Dyer preachy in your face, but when, after a couple of years of interesting but mostly fruitless dating, I decided that all I really needed was a good man with a kind soul who would laugh and cry at the same things that make me laugh and cry and care for my children as though they were his own, I got that plus a hot, funny, geeky in the best way, fellow musician and foodnik who shares my obsession with really good sushi and voluntarily watches cooking shows every morning before he goes to work. (Well, that or Samantha Brown's Travels or No Reservations...)

When we decided all we needed was just enough space to live, cook and sleep in, where my kids would be comfortable, and where we wouldn't be soaking in triple digit temps for the summer, we got a little bungalow literally a 3 minute bike ride to the beach with a little yard where we can plant things and the Man can brew his beer and drive no more than six minutes to get to work as opposed to the hour it used to take him before we moved.

...some of them as big as The Man's head.

And most recently, when we decided that we would live on a somewhat limited food budget (among other budgets) and forego more regular sushi dinners (among other things) in order to allow me to stay home and try to carve out a new career path, the Universe sent us Diver Dude, who shall remain nameless to protect our source of ridiculously fresh from the dive (but legal!) uni year round and, when in season, spiny lobster, for a fraction of what we would pay retail.

Which might not be a big deal to some, but considering that I am *CUCKOO* for sushi and that uni (which is Japanese for sea urchin) is one of my very favorite kinds, this is a B.ig F.ucking D.eal to me. Nutty, buttery, and sweetly tasting of the sea, I can eat this stuff straight out of the shell with a little bit of that salty sea water to foil the sweet, on top of sushi rice and wrapped with nori (seaweed) and/or shiso, over plain rice with a little spicy ponzu laced with sesame oil, or even atop spaghetti with a little bit of garlic, bonito shavings and a sprinkling of toasted nori strips. Top it off with some really crisp and light lager or cava, and I'm somewhere nearing nirvana.

According to Diver Dude, these suckers are usually found about 50 feet underwater. Pair the diving with the somewhat labor intensive and delicate process of removing what I like to call roe clusters but what are apparently actually gonads, and it's not hard to see why you can easily pay anywhere from 12 to 20 dollars for a mere two pieces of uni sushi.

It would be almost indecent for me to tell you what we paid (or rather, didn't pay) for this much uni...

Sorry the pic's so yellow - nighttime, fluorescent bulb in the
kitchen, that kinda thing...

...with clusters this big...

monster uni

...but I can tell you that I, armed with a hammer and a paring knife, earned every bit of the savings in elbow grease and fine motor skills. 'Tis a delicate operation removing a critter's nutsack fully intact, as you can imagine.

uni carnage
Oh, the humanity...

uni pickin' fangers...

A pile of shells and ten inky digits later, sweet, delicious, delicate uni atop steamed rice and topped with a spicy ponzu with chili and sesame oil...

And just last night, yet another obscene quantity of uni with a ponzu of cucumbers, red onion, jalapeno, ginger, lemon zest and wasabi...

We'll probably slow our roll now that we've gotten our kid in a candy store overindulgence out of the way, but boy does it ever pay to be grateful some days...

shinae

Girl Cravings & Genmai Cha Snickerdoodles...

I wouldn't call myself a sweet tooth. I mean, I like a good sweet for sure. But when someone calls themselves a sweet tooth, I assume they crave sweets far more often than I do, which is probably once a week or so, and almost never when I'm grocery shopping. Which explains why I never seem to have sweets around when I'm craving them. Which is probably a good thing in a way. Because I have a feeling I could learn to crave them more if I ate them more, if that makes any sense.

A girl's got needs...

When I do want something sweet, the fact that I am a crap baker (by neglect to some extent), means I rarely have the ingredients to bake anything too complicated. While I have been thinking about baking green tea sugar cookies for a while, when it comes to *baking*, unlike *cooking*, *thinking*, rather than *doing*, is usually the operative word. Add in the fact that I'm an hour and a half away from anywhere I can buy matcha, and the green tea sugar cookies are just gonna have to wait another month. or two. or three...

On the other hand, if I'm taking inventory of the foodstuffs that need to be consumed before we move at the end of the month and happen to find a box of genmai cha in the cupboard, and I have everything I need to bake a basic cookie, and I'm mad hormonal jonesing for something that resembles those sugar cookies I've been thinking about for way too long, I really don't have a choice but to bake these Genmai Cha Snickerdoodles.

green tea + toasted brown rice = genmai cha.
*Cha*, btw, means *tea* in 
Japanese, Korean and Chinese.

A lightly sweet cookie with that little bit of fluff and chew that I love in a snickerdoodle, paired with a hint of roasted, nutty genmai and mild green tea flavor. A little East meets West kind of treat that's extremely easy to make, and perhaps a little too easy to eat. It's a good thing the Man's good at disappearing cookies.

As with most cookie recipes, it's a good idea to bring your butter and eggs to room temp (20 minutes or so out of the fridge - less if it's a blistering hot summer day) before starting.

GENMAI CHA SNICKERDOODLES
Makes about 3 dozen 2-inch cookies

This recipe is essentially Martha Stewart's 2005 Holiday Cookie recipe, minus the cinnamon sugar, plus some genmai cha thrown into and atop, and with a few minor adjustments to size and bake time. But the concept would work well with any basic drop sugar cookie or snickerdoodle recipe. 

My notes/additions in italics.

• 2+3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
• 1+1/2 cups sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 4 Tablespoons (about 8 packets) genmai cha for the batter
• 2 Tablespoons (about 4 packets) genmai cha to sprinkle atop

1) Preheat oven to 350F.

2) Sift together flour, baking powder and salt; set aside (if you have a stand mixer, you can do the sifting while the butter and sugar are beating). Put butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Mix in eggs. 

3) Reduce speed to low; gradually mix in flour mixture and 4 Tablespoons genmai cha.

4) Shape dough into 36 1-inch balls. Space 2 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper (or a Silpat / silicone baking sheet) and sprinkle the tops with a pinch of genmai cha. (My silpat and baking sheets are in storage. I used the Man's scratched and banged up cookie sheet, and it worked just fine after I very lightly buttered and floured it.)

roasty, toasty sprinkles...

5) Bake cookies, rotating sheets halfway through, until edges are golden, 12 to 15 minutes. Cool for 3 to 5 minutes before removing from cookie sheet to avoid breakage.

I saved half the dough to bake off another time, and though it is hot as Hades up in this place, I think I'm going to make me some more cookies tonight. What's a little extra heat from the oven when you're sweating like a pig from making dinner anyway?

*oink*,

shinae

Beef Tataki & Bragging Rights...

By many of the standard measurements, I am a big, fat *FAIL* of an Asian daughter of my generation. Frustratingly willful, shamefully outspoken and woefully underachieving, I didn't give my father too many bragging rights to counter when my cousins got accepted to Berkeley and MIT, or when his best friend's daughter got into Stanford, and I attended a state school for loser commuters like me instead. And though the tides changed when one of the cousins met with some legal <clear throat> *issues* over dealings related to certain <clear throat again> *herbs*, and the friend's daughter came home to stay for a few years too long armed with a 6 figure degree but no job (or any desire to have one), and I was living independently, my dad didn't gloat. Lucky for both of us, he's never been the type.

I think I inherited that trait from my dad. I get an uneasy feeling when parents brag about their children's achievements. And when I say *brag*, I don't mean the kind of earnest honorable mention you give your children, in their presence, to another person, so they will know that you recognize and value their achievements. I'm talking the bragging that mothers do to their PTA frenemies and the pissing contests fathers have with golf buddies about their children's achievements as if they were their own (and even then, that would be a little awkward).

My kids love this tataki, and that makes
me somewhat, sort of proud...

I realize my thinking on this subject, and in general, contradicts much of the filial piety that pervades both my parents' cultures. (Yet more evidence of my failure as an Asian daughter - Tiger Mom would have my hide...). But perhaps as a result of my own struggle to reconcile a fiercely independent and possibly even dysfunctionally detached nature with a fairly Confucian upbringing, I like to think my children's characters and achievements are very much their own. (Which is not to say we don't offer the constant encouragement and occasional nudge...)

So while I think it strange that most parents boast about their kids' report cards, trophies, and piano recitals, I've no doubt in my mind that those parents would think me a huge kook if they knew what about my own kids makes my heart swell with happiness, if not also a tinge of pride. Not so much because I am incredibly pleased and grateful that my daughter is empathic, sensitive and caring and that my son is creative, protective, and generous...

They even like their beef a nice, juicy, pink medium rare to rare.
This is also a source of pride.

More likely because girlfriend could barely contain herself when Mads learned to eat pho with chopsticks, ambidextrously even, when she was 3. And because I was happier than a pig in shit when Joe, at the age of 5, having eaten his first beef tataki at Cafe Hiro, resolved never to eat medium or well done steak again. These are the things that make a quirky, maladjusted mother who happens to be more than mildly obsessed with food, come THISCLOSE to bragging.

So when my son asks for tataki, and my daughter volunteers to help me make it AND write down the recipe for me, I beam from the inside out with happiness and gratitude and even a touch of pride, that my children are beginning to develop a love of good food and the process of making it, that we'll be able to share for many years to come.

She did an awesome job of writing down the recipe for me.
That's right. I'm bragging. So what.

Tataki is usually dressed with ponzu, a citrus based sauce made with yuzu and often mixed with shoyu (Japanese for soy sauce), and it's easily accessible to me. But as usual, I love the challenge of both replicating and putting my own signature on the dishes I love using relatively common ingredients so my friends who have limited access to exotic ingredients (or are just as cheap and lazy as I am) can enjoy them too.

As you might have noticed by now, I am almost always suggesting that meat be brought to room temp before cooking. This is especially important with a dish like beef tataki, where the meat is just seared on the outside long enough to form a crust and just long enough to warm, but not cook, the meat through to the center.

BEEF TATAKI

Serves 4 as a meal, 6 as an appetizer

• 2 to 2.5 pounds beef steaks, 1" thick (I used ribeye - you could do sirloin, or even London Broil, as this dish is best prepared medium rare to rare and sliced thin)
• salt and pepper for seasoning

Sauce

• 1/2 cup soy sauce (I used Kikkoman Lite)
• 1/4 cup water
• 3 Tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest
• 1 clove garlic, sliced or smashed, for steeping
• 1 or 2 thin slices of onion for steeping

Garnish

• 1/2 cup very thinly sliced bulb onion (about 1/2 a small onion - white, yellow or red ok)
• 2 green onions, cut in 2 inch segments, then sliced vertically into very thin strips
• 2 cups ice water

1) Lightly season all steaks on both sides with salt and pepper and bring them up to room temperature (at least 30 minutes out of the fridge) while preparing the sauce and garnish. 

2) Prepare the garnish by putting the sliced bulb and green onion into the 2 cups of water for at least 10 minutes. This will mellow and crisp them at the same time. It also slightly curls the green onion greens, if you like that sort of thing...

3) Prepare the sauce by combining all ingredients in a bowl and stirring or whisking until the sugar is completely dissolved.

4) Make sure the beef is up to room temp and preheat your pan on high heat.  I used a non-stick grill pan this time, but a cast iron pan would work great, or even a good, thick stainless steel one with just a tiny splash of oil would work well. It's important to ensure that the pan is pretty much screaming hot before you cook the steak to ensure the proper sear of the outside and heating of the inside in a relatively short cook time.

5) Pat excess moisture off both sides of the steaks and sear them, one at a time, roughly 3 minutes a side for rare, up to 4 minutes a side for medium rare (slightly less time on a cast iron pan). And ensure the edges are seared as well by propping them up on the sides or holding them up with tongs for 30 to 45 seconds an edge.

6) Rest steaks for 5 to 7 minutes before slicing. The resting period will allow the meat to cool and keep juices from running in the slicing process. A cooling rack is ideal for the job, as it allows air to hit both sides of the steak and stop the cooking process. Cooling on a flat surface is also fine, but will result in some steam and additional cooking on the bottom side.

7) Slice into 1/8" - 1/4" strips, on a slight angle, and arrange them overlapping on a plate. Dress with sauce and a small handful of garnish.

Served with a small bowl of steamed rice, a fresh, crisp cucumber salad, and an improvised miso-like soup made from Korean dwehnjang, this made for a light, refreshing meal enjoyed by adults and monsters alike. A little dollop of wasabi mixed into the sauce gave a good, peppery bite to alternating slices of steak.

Enough of this bragging already...

shinae

P.S. I am UP TO HERE with blogger's line break issues and am seriously contemplating a format change... <Aaaargh>