Udon/Salmon/Tomato-Stewed Chicken

Monday: Udon noodles with pork, seaweed, tofu, fried bean curd, mushrooms, and looooots of ginger. Warms you up.



Tuesday: Salmon night with lots of veggies. Always so soft and juicy.



Wednesday: Chicken stewed with fire-roasted tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, parsley. Chicken was ok - made us want to eat a yummy clam linguine.

Niku Jaga

Niku jaga, literally meat and potatoes, is like the poster child for "mom's flavor" in Japanese home cooking. As a hearty dish with a warm and kind flavor, it's not hard to understand why. The dish is stewed in your usual dashi, soy sauce, mirin, and sake plus a little bit of sugar. Here's an interesting story about the birth of nikujaga: an officer in the Japanese navy who studied abroad in England loved the beef stew he ate there so much that when he came back to Japan, he asked the cooks in the navy to recreate the dish. The cooks had no idea what beef stew was and ended up creating their own yummy Japanese version.

Salmon Oyako Gohan

Another rice dish, only tonight I cooked the rice by itself and broiled the salmon separately and mixed it all up together with shiso leaves later. "Oyako" means parent and child, which is why Oyako-don usually refers to chicken and egg over rice, but I looooove the salmon version of oyako-don, mostly because of the salmon roe. The shiny, squishy, salty, juicy presence of the salmon roe when added on top of the salmon rice - YUM!

Takikomi Gohan

Tonight I made takikomi gohan, rice cooked along with seasoning and meat and/or veggies. Often when you have this in Japan, the ingredients are a reflection of the season - like bamboo shoot rice in the spring, and chestnut rice in the fall. The seasons don't make much of an appearance here in Hawaii (although it is feeling a couple of degrees cooler lately which must mean it's winter), so today's ingredients were also very seasonally neutral - chicken, carrots, and dried mushrooms, along with dashi, soy sauce, sake, and sugar for seasoning. The rice came out yummy - it's kind of cool that the rice cooker by itself can produce a dish that can stand on its own. I'd like to try another takikomi gohan recipe sometime, maybe something that uses Hawaii specific produce? To be researched...

A New Salad Udon

Today we discovered how compatible black tea pork tenderloin and salad udon are. When I marinated the pork in the sauce, I put half of it in the fridge to eat right away, and the other half in the freezer. After sitting in the freezer for about a week, when I took it out today the flavor of the sauce had seeped into the pork so well that my mouth is still watering just thinking about it.

Chicken Salad / Anago Daikon Stew

For lunch I used the remains of our Costco chicken to make a chicken salad with lettuce, apples, celery, walnuts, and tomatoes. Eating this reminded me of how much I like this combination of sweetness, crunchiness, and protein. No wonder I love to order chicken salad sandwiches wherever I go!


Tonight's main dish, the anago daikon stew, was a first try at a recipe similar to the pork-daikon-greens stew. Anago (salt water eel) is the less rich and fatty cousin to unagi (freshwater eel). I usually only have it in sushi, so was curious how it would be as a part of a stewed dish. It came out ok. I think H and I both like the pork version of this dish better.

Thanksgiving Part 2

Maybe Costco Chicken is not exactly the symbol of Thanksgiving, but ever since an old coworker mentioned that her family had it instead of turkey for Thanksgiving, the two things have been somewhat linked in my mind. Besides, their chicken is so plump and juicy that it's hard not to get a craving for it every once in a while. So after a not-very-Thanksgiving-like-dinner last night, we enjoyed our simple pseudo Thanksgiving with chicken, mashed potatoes, bread, and soup. We were also tempted to get a pumpkin pie from Costco - they make H's favorite version of the dessert and it's only $6 for a giant pie - but the thought of the two of us eating that pie for days and days to come was just a little too overwhelming.