Kentaro's Taco Rice

This is a plate dinner to serve up to 4 (if they aren't teenagers)...a kind of flat donburi, where the rice is topped with shredded lettuce and taco fixings.

Cook enough rice for 4, and shred a pile of lettuce leaves, 4-5 leaves depending on size.

Cube one big tomato and an avocado.
Squeeze lemon or lime juice over the avocado. I like lots of lemon or lime juice over the finished dish too, especially in hot weather.

1 bag plain tostitos or nachos chips

3/4 c grated cheese

Wet seasoning mix:1.5 T tomato ketchp
2 T worcestershire sauce (Japanese - use less if using western Worcestershire sauce)
1 T sake
1 scant T red pepper, to taste
1 t soy sauce
0.5 t curry powder or ground cumin

Dry seasonings:2 pinches salt
black pepper, ground

2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
1 T oil
300 g ground meat (pork or beef)

Heat up a frypan, and hold your hand about 10 cm over it. When you can feel the heat but it’s not too hot, add the oil to the pan. Fry the garlic. If it’s too hot, take the pan off the heat and stir it quickly, because garlic burns very easily.

When the garlic smells good and looks golden, add meat, salt, pepper. Stir-fry it.

When the meat is mostly brown, add the wet seasoning mix and stir it in. Cook just a bit more, until there is no raw meat, and taste a bit to see if it needs more salt.
Don’t forget that the cheese and tacos are salty.

Serve the rice onto dishes. Scatter lettuce over the rice, then add a dollop of met. Top with tomatoes and avocado, another squeeze of lemon or lime if liked, and sprinkle with cheese and crumbled tostitos. Grind more pepper over if you want.

The Thoroughly Modern Inari-zushi

This is strrraight (well, roughly) from NHK's "Tameshite Gatten" version, because it works. Recently, I've thought that inari-zushi were too sweet...but if you tone them down, they are too bland. When I read the NHK version, I immediately noticed the sushi rice - NO SUGAR! Aha! 

I do sometimes make sushi rice with no sugar, and I'm convinced that the sweetness of modern sushi rice has a lot to do with how long the sushi sits around after being made, and also the move away from salad-type homestyle chirashi-zushi, or sushi wrapped in tofu or leaves to the eye appeal and easy serving of nigiri and maki. No-sugar sushi rice doesn't stick together as well, and can get dry...but that's no problem with inari-zushi, and the fresh taste of vinegar is perfect with fried tofu pouches with the traditional strong flavor.

These are tasty but not cloying, perfect picnic and bento food, and a very good dinner with shira-ae (tofu-dressing and vegetables) and vegetable soup in a shoyu broth.

Sushi Rice for Inari-zushi

Per 2 cups (Japanese rice cup measure) of rice:

75 ml rice vinegar

scant t salt (4 g - bit less  is OK if using 1 T red pickled ginger, finely chopped)

1 T finely chopped red pickled ginger (the cheap type you buy pre-shredded)

1 T toasted black sesame seeds

Alternatives - finely chopped green shiba-zuke (cheap type), 1 t salt-pickled sansho seeds, white toasted sesame seeds plus finely shredded green shiso leaves.

Inari-zushi Pouches

3 slices thin fried tofu (aburage, usu-age)  1 pack - 6 pouches if pre-cut.

The cheap type are thinner and better for this dish than expensive products! Make plenty, these freeze well. If not prepared for inari-zushi, pop the aburage on a chopping board and use a rolling pin or several long chopsticks to roll back and forth a few times - this loosens the two layers. Cut in half into two squares, then gently pull apart to make pouches.

simmer 3 minutes in plenty of water, then drain. Use a saucer, drop-lid, or large strainer/colander to keep tofu under the surface of the water.

In clean pan, heat till dissolved:

5 T sugar (about 1/3 J cup)

3 T shoyu (1/4 J cup)

300 ml water

Replace aburage, and use some kind of drop lid, and simmer till liquid has almost gone. If you want, you can leave them overnight for flavor to penetrate fully, and reheat before using next day, but they are perfectly tasty used straight away.

I don't squeeze them, but lay them to drain on a cake cooler or kitchen paper etc.

With wet hands, take 2 small T of rice and gently squeeze to make a ping-pong sized rice ball. Pop into the pouches, pressing into corners if you feel you must, then lay upside down on serving plate so that the opening doesn't show.

Rice with Roasted Soybeans

Rice with boiled soybeans is good...but rice with "iri-daizu" (dry-fried/parched/roasted soybeans) is quicker, tastier, and free of that soapy soybean texture. Iri-daizu are to be had cheaply the day after setsubun, and also at this time of year, just before the new crop beans hit the market, but as bargain-bin beer snacks, they are never very expensive at any time of year. They make pretty good "instant" 5-flavor simmered beans too (go-moku mame).

You can double the amount of sake/soy sauce, but I prefer a lighter taste. You can also add in almost any of the usual takikomi gohan suspects, but slightly salty ingredients work best.

Takikomi Gohan with Iri-Daizu

per cup of rice:

1/2 t sake

1/2 t soy sauce

pinch salt, OR 1 t shio-konbu (salted konbu, or salted hijiki etc), OR 1-2 T semi-dried whitebait (shirasu-boshi - my favorite addition to this dish). 

Very simple - wash your rice and into the rice-cooker with it, along with your other ingredients. I add the shirasu-boshi at the end, so that they don't lose too much flavor.

Chrysanthemum Rice

Success! I'd never been pleased with chrysanthemum petals in rice....but this works!

Chop a few daikon stems finely (with or without leaves, in fact the stems alone make a pretty pale jade contrast to the bright yellow petals), rub in a teaspoon of coarse salt and leave to drain. When limp, squeeze dry and set aside.

Pull petals off half a dozen or so yellow edible chyrsanthemum flowers (most are edible anyway, if not sprayed with insecticide) and toss into a pot of boiling water with a spoonful of mild vinegar. Drain, cool under running water, squeeze gently, and toss with a tablespoon each of mirin (sweet sake) and mild vinegar (preferably rice vinegar, but cider or wine vinegar will do). Set aside.

Into a pot of cooked rice, mix the chopped daikon stems and then the chrysanthemum petals. Don't squeeze again, just drain gently and toss with the rice.

A pretty consolation for tonight's chilly temperatures!