Korokke (Japanese Croquette) コロッケ

Korokke (Japanese Croquette) is by far my favorite food. My record for one dinner is four pieces.  Shhhh…  I shouldn’t be too proud of my big appetite. I know Korokke takes a long time to make, but if you like Korokke, this homemade Korokke won’t disappoint you at all.  Homemade Korokke beats restaurant Korokke anytime.
For filling you can add anything you like I'm not much fond of meat so I'm using chicken ground meat. You can use shrimp, seafood or even meat too.

Ingredients:

2 lb. (about 4) russet potatoes, peeled and halved

1 large onion, finely diced½ carrots, finely diced (optional)
2 Shiitake mushrooms (optional) you can use any other mushroom too.
2 Tbsp. oil
1/2 kg ground chicken meat
1 egg
1 tsp. salt
¼ tsp. white pepper
Freshly ground black pepper
3 eggs for the breading
2 cup Panko(panko is Japanese breadcrumbs you can use simple breadcrumbs too)
½ cup all purpose flour
Oil for deep frying

Method:

In a large pot, put water and potatoes and bring it to a boil. Cook potatoes until a skewer goes through the potato easily.

Remove the potato from the heat and drain the water completely.

Move the pot back to the stove. On low heat shift the pot so that remaining moisture will completely evaporate (but don’t burn them).

Turn off the heat and mash the potatoes. Unlike mashed potato, you don’t have to mash completely. You can want to leave some small chunks for texture. Set aside.

Meanwhile, chop onion, carrot, and mushrooms finely.

In a large skillet, heat oil on medium high heat. Sauté onion until soft.

Add carrot and Shiitake mushrooms and cook until they are soft.

Add the meat and break it up with a wooden spoon. When the meat is cooked through, add salt, white pepper, and black pepper. Set aside.

When both mashed potato and meat mixture are ready, add the meat mixture into mashed potato in the large pot. Make sure you leave the liquid behind. We only want dry ingredients into the pot. Discard any liquid left in the pan.

Add an egg and mix all together until everything is well combined.

Set aside till cool down a bit (so you can actually hold the mixture with your hands).

While the mixture is still warm, but not hot, start making Korokke balls.

Dredge each ball in flour,egg and panko

In a wok (or frying pan), heat oil over medium high heat. Deep fry Korokke until they are golden brown.Inside is already cooked, so all you need to do is to make it nice brown color.

Transfer Korokke to paper towels and let the oil absorbed in the paper

       NOW ENJOY YOUR KOROKKE!!

Fish Dumpling soup

Today I'm going to share fish dumpling with vegetables soup. It's a quite healthy soup with full of protein and nutritions.

Ingredients:
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth

1 tablespoon sugar

1 1 -inch piece ginger, peeled and thinly sliced

salt and freshly ground pepper

2 scallions, sliced, white and green parts separated

1 cup sliced button mushrooms

2 medium carrots, thinly sliced

2 to 3 napa cabbage leaves, thinly sliced

24 frozen fish dumplings or pot stickers

3 to 4 boiled eggs

Soy sauce, for drizzling (optional)

Method:
Combine 2 cups water, the broth, sugar, ginger,1/2 teaspoon salt, and pepper to taste in a large pot. Cover and bring to a boil over high heat. Add the scallion whites, mushrooms and carrots. Reduce the heat and simmer, uncovered, until the carrots are crisp-tender, about 4 minutes.

Add the cabbage, dumplings and scallion greens. Cover and cook until the dumplings are soft and heated through, 4 to 5 minutes. Divide the dumplings and soup among bowls. In last add soy sauce and boiled eggs if desired.

Per serving: Calories 256; Fat 9 g (Saturated 3 g); Cholesterol 56 mg; Sodium 1,011 mg; Carbohydrate 24 g; Fiber 3 g; Protein 18 g

Dorayaki (Japanese Red Bean Pancake) どら焼き

I’m so excited to share this traditional Japanese dessert recipe today.

Today’s dessert Dorayaki is best described as a dessert sandwich with red bean filling between two slices of pancake.  If you are familiar with Japanese cartoon from the 70’s, you probably know this dessert from the anime character Doremon who is crazy about Dorayaki.However, it is really easy to make at home and much more delicious if you make it from scratch.  Hope you give this simple recipe a try.  Have a great weekend!

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 40 minutes

Yield: 8 pieces

Ingredients for pancake:

4 large eggs
140 g (2/3 cup) sugar
2 Tbsp. honey
160 g (1 cup) all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1-2 Tbsp. water
2 Tbsp. oil

Ingredients for homemade sweet red bean paste (tsubuan):

200g (7 oz, a little bit less than 1 cup which is 220g) Azuki beans (red beans)

Water

200g(7 oz, 1 cup) granulated white sugar

Pinch of salt

Preparation of tsubuan (red bean paste):

1. Soak the Azuki beans overnight.

2. Rinse azuki beans.

3. Use a big saucepan/pot because the amount of azuki beans will double after cooking. Put washed azuki beans in the pot and pour water till 1-2 inch above azuki beans. Turn the heat on high.

4.When boiling, turn off the heat and cover with lid. Let it stand for 5 minutes.

5. Throw away water and put the azuki beans into a sieve.

6. Put the azuki beans back in the pot. Add enough water just to cover the beans and turn the heat on high. Once boiling, turn down the heat to medium low and keep it simmering.

7. Once in a while push the azuki beans under the water with slotted spoon. Water will evaporate so you need to keep adding water to cover just above the beans. If you put too much water, the beans will move and break. If you need to leave the kitchen, make sure to turn off the heat. You will be cooking for 1+ hour.

8. Pick one azuki bean and squeeze it with your fingers. If it is smushed easily, it’s done.

9.  Turn up the heat to high and add sugar in 3 separate times. Stir constantly. When you draw a line on the bottom of the saucepan and see the surface for more than 2 seconds, add salt and turn off heat. Anko will thicken more when it cools.

10. Pour into a container to cool down. Do not leave it in the pot. Cover with plastic wrap and keep in the fridge to store after cool down. If you aren't planning to use it all at once, you can divide it into 100g packages. Wrap in plastic bag and store in Ziploc Freezer bags and can store in fridge for a week and freezer up to a month.

Preparation of pancakes(Dorayaki):

1. In a large bowl, combine eggs, sugar, and honey and whisk well until the mixture becomes fluffy.

2. Sift flour and baking powder into the bowl and mix all together. Keep in the fridge to rest for 15 minutes.

3. Stir in 1/2 Tbsp of water at a time to get the right consistency. It should be a little bit thicker than pancake batter. If the batter is too thin, pancakes will be too flat and not fluffy.

4. Heat a large non-stick frying pan over medium-low heat. Dip a paper towel in oil and coat the bottom of the pan with the oil. The pan should be slightly oiled but shouldn’t be visible. That’s the secret to get nice texture on the surface of dorayaki. With a ladle, drop the batter from 6" (15 cm) above the pan to create 3" (8 cm) diameter pancakes. When you see the surface of the batter starting to bubble, flip over and cook the other side. Transfer to a plate and cover up with a damp towel to prevent from drying. Continue making pancakes.

5. Make sandwich with red bean paste. Put more red bean paste in the center. Wrap dorayaki with plastic wrap until ready to serve.

Note:
If you don't eat it on the same or next day (keep it in a cool place), wrap the dorayaki in plastic wrap and put in a Ziploc bag to store in the freezer for up to a month.

Gyoza 餃子(ぎょうざ)

It place the gyoza may look difficult to make Gyoza, but once you know how to cook them it’s actually pretty simple.  You can be very creative and try different ingredients for filling based on your own preference.
Japanese Gyoza is distinctly different from Chinese potstickers.  Chinese potstickers tend to have a thicker skin and the filling is mostly meat.  Japanese consider Gyoza more of a side dish to complement our rice whereas the Chinese sometime eat potstickers as the main course.  Japanese Gyoza wrappers are thinner and smaller, so make sure you buy the right wrappers specifically for Japanese Gyoza.
Today I teach you how to make Gyoza wrappers at home but if you want to buy Gyoza wrappers you can buy them

Ingredients:
2 cups (240 g) all-purpose flour (or 120 g bread flour + 120 g cake flour)
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup (120 ml) just-boiled water plus more if necessary
1 1/2 Tbsp. oil for frying each batch of gyoza
1/4 cup water for frying each batch of gyoza
1 Tbsp. sesame oil for frying each batch of gyoza

Filling:

2-3 (140 g, 5 oz) cabbage leaves
1-2 (15 g, 0.5 oz) green onion/scallion
2 shiitake mushrooms
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp. grated ginger
Seasonings
1/2 Tbsp. sesame oil
1 tsp. soy sauce
1/4 tsp. salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Dipping sauce:

1 Tbsp. rice vinegar
1 Tbsp. soy sauce
1/8 tsp. La-Yu (Japanese chili oil) (optional)

Gyoza Wrap Instrustion:

Before you start, you need to accurately measure flour. If you don’t have a kitchen scale (I highly recommend you to get one), stir the flour in the bowl, scoop it up with a spoon into the 1-cup measuring cup, and level off the top. Put the flour into a medium bowl. The amount of flour shoud be close to standard 4.25 oz (120 g) per cup.

Sift the flour into a large bowl.

Add salt to just-boiled water and mix until completely dissolved.

Add the just-boiled water into the flour little by little, stirring with a rubber spatula. You will eventually need to use your hands to form the dough into a ball. If the flour is still separated, add 1/2 Tbsp. water at a time till you can form the texture into a ball.

Transfer the dough to the work surface and knead the dough for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, the texture of the dough will be much smoother. Cut the dough in half.
Cover the dough with damp kitchen towel at all time to prevent from drying.

For each piece of dough into a ball shape.

Press the ball onto the work surface.

Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough, but DO NOT roll out (flatten) the TOP and BOTTOM edge. This is a trick to make a nice round shape.

Gyoza Preparation:

Microwave cabbage leaves for 1 minute and chop into very small pieces. Mince green onion and shiitake mushrooms as well.

Combine all ingredients and seasonings and knead the mixture with hands until the texture becomes sticky.

Add the rest of fillings and continue to knead.

Wrap the filling with gyoza wrappers . To save gyoza for later, please see my Notes.

Heat the oil in a large non-stick frying pan over medium high heat. When the pan is hot, place the gyoza.

When the bottom of the gyoza turns golden brown, add 1/4 cup of water to the pan.

Immediately cover with a lid and steam the gyoza for about 2 minutes or until most of the water evaporates.

Remove the lid to evaporate any remaining water. Add sesame oil and cook uncovered until the gyoza is nice and crisp on the bottom. Transfer to a plate. For the gyoza lined up in circular shape, place a serving plate on top of the pan and quickly flip.I deep fry some gyoza fFor different taste so you also can deep fry them.

For the dipping sauce, combine the sauce ingredients in a small plate and mix all together. Serve the gyoza with dipping sauce.

Chicken Teriyaki チキン照り焼き

Teriyaki may have originally been a grilled dish, these days in Japan, the chicken is pan-fried more often than not due to busy schedules and a lack of charcoal grills. It doesn’t have the smoky flavor that grilled chicken teriyaki has, but pan frying produces chicken that’s more moist and tender. The best part is that the chicken and sauce can be made in the same pan, which not only makes it fast and easy, it means there’s one less pot to wash.
I thought authentic Chicken Teriyaki would be a great first introductory dish for cooking Japanese food.
Hmmmmm!  Just talking about them make me drool! So dear readers, when you think of Japanese food, what dish comes to your mind first?

Ingredients:

1 lb (454 g) boneless chicken
2 Tbsp. sake for cooking
1 tsp. oil
1/4 Tsp. Salt

Teryaki Sauce:

2 Tbsp. soy sauce
2 Tbsp. water
1 Tbsp. sake
1 Tbsp. sugar
1/4 onion, grated, including juice
1" (2.5 cm) ginger, grated, including juice

Method:

1.  Cut each chicken thigh into 4 pieces.

2.  Combine the teriyaki sauce ingredients      in a medium bowl or Ziploc bag.

3.  Add the chicken into the bowl and marinate for at least 2-3 hours in the refrigerator.

4.  Heat the oil in a non-stick pan over medium high heat and place the chicken pieces skin side down, RESERVING the sauce.Do not add any liquid so that chicken will brown nicely.

5.  The chicken teriyaki is done when most of the liquid has evaporated and the sauce forms a thick glaze around the chicken. Slice and pour the remaining teriyaki sauce over the chicken.

Onigiri ( Rice Ball おにぎり)

Onigiri, also known as rice ball, is a Japanese comfort food made from rice formed into triangular or oval shapes and usually wrapped in nori (seaweed).  If a person is new to Japanese cuisine, sometimes onigiri is misunderstood as a type of sushi but it is not. You can put almost anything in an onigiri; try substituting grilled salmon, pickled plums, beef, pork, turkey, or tuna with mayonnaise.

Ingredients:
Cooked Japanese rice (2 rice cooker measuring cups) uncooked rice
Water
Salt
A few sheets of seaweed
1/4 cup bonito shavings OR Katsuobushi
(dry fish flakes)
Salted salmon
Soy sauce

Method:
1.  Wash the rice in a mesh strainer until the water runs clear. Combine washed rice and 4 1/2 cups water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to low; cover. Simmer rice until the water is absorbed, 15 to 20 minutes. Let rice rest, for 15 minutes to allow the rice to continue to

2.   prepare the fillings. Bake salted salmon at 400F degree in a toaster oven for 25 minutes and break the cooked salmon into flakes.

3.  Moisten katsuobushi bonito flakes(dry fish flakes)with soy sauce.

4.  Combine 1 cup water with the salt in a small bowl. Use this water to dampen hands before handling the rice. Divide the cooked rice into 8 equal portions. Use one portion of rice for each onigiri.

5.  Divide one portion of rice in two. Create a dimple in the rice and fill with a heaping teaspoon of bonito flakes. Cover with the remaining portion of rice and press lightly to enclose filling inside rice ball. Gently press the rice to shape into a triangle. Wrap shaped onigiri with a strip of nori. Sprinkle with sesame seeds. Repeat to make a total of 8 onigiri.

Wrap a strip of fresh nori (seaweed) around it…and enjoy!