November 25, 2008

Chiken TSUKUNE ^__^


TSUKUNE is chiken (or fish) ball made by mixing ground meat with egg (or ground yam).
Ingredient: ground chicken, green onion, two eggs, Japanese mint(basil), starch, soy sauce, salt&pepper. For sauce: soy sauce and sweet sake(mirin).

Mince green onion. Brend ground chicken, onion, egg, starch, a tbls of soy sauce and sake. Add minced green onion. Mix them well by hand untill sticky.

Break in small quantity and make them eleptic balls. Put Japanese basil on top of half. Heat a tbls of salad oil on a pan, and put chicken balls. Bake one side for about 2 mins and another side as well. Add one tbls of sake, cover it and steam untill done.

In an another pan, put 3 tbls of soy sauce, mirin(sweet sake) and sake. Simmer and stir it till thickened. Also boil an egg in a water till half-boiled. If you add a little bit of vinegar, egg shell wont be broken during boil.
Serve with chicken ball with soft-egg, and add the sauce for seasoning. Enjoy with chicken and egg!

November 02, 2008

Absorbed in TOFU (^3^)


Following last posts...I cannot move to next topic without introducing TOFU restaurant in Kyoto:Hanbeifu. They serve only one course starting from Tofu dish and ending with Tofu! In the big pic above, you see Yuba(skin of Tofu) stewed in soy sauce and sugar, grilled Tofu, cold Tofu, Tofu ball, and sweet cake made of Tofu...

Right after cleared all big plate, secondly fried Yuba and Nidashi-Tofu, which is fried Yuba stewed in dashi soup(fish broth). Nevere experienced such clispy Tofu fried in light oil.

Mostly as for Japanese food, soup is sarved in last stage. Tofu floated in white miso soup and Tofu yaughlt for desert. White miso soup is used mostly in Kyoto. I dont use white one because perefer salty miso to sweet one.
You might be amazed at Tofu world, atmosphare in this resaurant, and thier stuff hospitality& loyality. When we three women left this place, an old lady and a gentle man sent us off at the entrance and watch after us untill we disappered around a corner. We felt sorry for it walked a little bit faster...