my take on oyakodon

I’m quite certain that my nearly year-long ongoing stay at my parents’ place has somehow made me more accepting towards carbohydrate staples such as rice and bread. My mother is the culprit although she denies it. When I lived away in Canada, I had to forego eating rice and potatoes precisely because I was inept at preparing them. The few attempts I had made in cooking rice usually ended with me scraping off the rice from the depths of my pressure cooker and by then, I was quite done with carbs. Now that I live in the midst of a rural landscape and the nearest city is an hour and a half’s drive away, I have had to accommodate local produce. 

Last year, Amman Hussein, who happens to be a photographer and friend of mine, strongly recommended that I watch Midnight Diner on Netflix. Recently, I got around to watching it and discovered that simple Japanese recipes are prepared in the episodes and the stories revolve around the star dish of the episode. Taking cue from that, I decided to concoct my own take on Japanese comfort food that I can prepare with the limited ingredients that are immediately available to me and those which  can be ordered on Amazon. 

Oyakodon (親子丼) means “parent-and-child rice bowl.” The chicken (parent) envelopes the egg (child) in an embrace. Naturally, chicken and egg both are protein rich, so I make sure that I reduce the quantity of rice when I prepare this meal. However, if you’re a rice-lover, you can portion yours as you desire.

The ingredients that I use are:

1. Freshly cooked rice

2. Some sliced chicken

3. An egg

4. Scallions

5. Onions

6. Mushrooms (seasonal)

7. 2 Seaweed sheet strips

8. Light soy sauce

9. Dark soy sauce

10. Sichuan powder

11. Umeboshi strings

12. Butter

13. Sesame oil

14. Mirin

Photo from Unsplash (this is a beef donburi but it follows the same
decorative principles that I follow in my version of the oyakodon)

The steps are fairly straight forward:

1. Put the chopped chicken in a small pot of water (as much as you would pour in your instant noodles bowl) and let it simmer for about 10 minutes.

2. Thinly slice the onions, mushrooms, and scallions while the chicken broth is being prepared. Set aside the sliced onions and mushrooms together and keep the scallions separately.

3. Turn off the gas of pot that has the broth and remove the chicken pieces and transfer them to a plate. Keep the broth to a gentle boil with a covered lid.

4. Introduce a strip of seaweed sheet into the broth and cover the pan. Let the broth soak up the seaweed.

5. Take a pan and grease it with any vegetable or sunflower oil that isn’t strong smelling and toss the partially boiled chicken pieces and sauté them.

6. Drizzle Mirin on them and flip them until cooked.

7. Splash a mixture of light and dark soy sauce in the ratio 2:1 on the chicken and remove the chicken back to the plate.

8. Introduce some strands of umeboshi, 1.5 tablespoons of light soy sauce, 1 teaspoon of dark soy sauce, Sichuan powder (as much as you require), 1 tablespoon of Mirin, and a teaspoon of sesame oil, into the chicken broth and mix well.

9. Transfer the onions and mushrooms to the oiled pan and pour some of the dashi broth on them until they are somewhat covered. Close the lid and let the vegetables soften and then remove them from the pan.

10. While the rice is still warm, put it in a bowl and throw in a cube of butter in the center. If your rice isn’t warm, reheat it.

11. Pour the remaining dashi broth into the bowl of buttered rice and introduce the cooked onions and mushrooms

12. Tear up the remaining seaweed strip into tiny bits and sprinkle them over the rice.

13. In the oiled pan, prepare a sunny side up egg, or if you’re feeling fancy, prepare a poached egg.

14. Transfer the egg into the centre of the bowl over the dashi soaked rice and seaweed.

15. Arrange the chicken pieces around the egg and garnish the bowl with chopped scallions and Sichuan powder (optional) and serve.

matcha flavoured lychee ice cream

Lately, there is a lot of pandemic and election related unrest in India. Fortunately for me, I live in an isolated bubble far from the maddening crowd and affairs of the country. At the moment, I can only order food on Amazon and buy ice cream and fried chicken from a highway outlet. 

Last fall, I had bought a kilogram of ceremonial grade matcha from Arahataen Tea Farm, Shizuoka. There’s no way that I’d have been able to finish all of it even if I drank matcha every day. So one night, I decided to incorporate it in my brick of lychee ice-cream that I bought from the parlor.

Usually vanilla ice cream is used as the base as it is a safe but rather mainstream choice. However, in my opinion, lychee flavored ice cream with dried bits of lychee brings about an interesting character to the finished dessert, especially for those who can’t deal with too much ice cream sweetness. The matcha powder introduces a vegetal freshness to the otherwise somewhat saccharine lychee flavor. It’s quite perfect for my palate.

The steps are few and quite simple:

1. Take out the ice cream box from the freezer and let it sit in ambient temperature until the initial frost melts away.

2. Take out tablespoons of matcha (l love to overdose on matcha but you can regulate it as per your personal preference) and evenly spread it over the selected portion of ice cream. I like to convert my entire lychee ice cream into a matcha flavored ice cream.

3. Wet the ice cream scooper and start scooping up the ice cream and mashing it back until the matcha is blended perfectly. Alternately, you can keep it semi-blended for a marbled effect.

4. Freeze for a quarter of an hour.

5. Scoop out and serve in a bowl or put it in a crunchy waffle cone.