Chicken Yakitori

It's been a while since I've posted. I haven't really had the time to cook anything interesting or unique. I'm still trying to get a groove with my new job and having a split weekends. I had the day off and decided that I was going to grill. Initially it was going to be pesto pork pinwheels with grilled peaches because they are amazing, but when I was at the grocery store I realized I had done pork for two of the last three nights. While I love pork I also like variety, so Chicken Yakitori was my next option. Yakitori is a type of Japanese skewered chicken seasoned with a tare sauce. A tare sauce is a thickened soy sauce sauce that has been sweetened with sugar and flavored with vinegar and mirin.  If you don't have mirin you can replace it with sake and a little more sugar. Toward the end of grilling the chicken is either dipped into the sauce the put back on the grill or brushed onto the chicken while still on the grill. I use chicken thighs because they hold up better for grilling than breasts.

Japanese cucumber salad and a warm Asian potato salad are perfect sides for yakitori and a warm summer day. 

 

Not every yakitori recipe calls for togarashi seasoning. I was fortunate enough to find this at World Market for $1.98. It is a mixture of Chili pepper, orange peel, black and white sesame seed, Japanese pepper, ginger, and seaweed. Just sprinkle a little on before serving, it really adds a unique flavor. 

Japanese cucumber salad has become one of my favorites and it is super simple. The trick is cutting the cucumber thin. You can practice your knife skills, use a mandolin, or a potato peeler. This was the first time I used a peeler and I think I'll stick with the mandolin. A trick to keep your cucumbers from being bitter is to cut both the ends off before cutting or peeling. The only thing I add to the recipe is a few drops of sesame oil.

I neglected to take any pictures of the warm Asian salad but the link to the recipe has great ones. It has also become one of our favorites, but I leave out the minced chili pepper since my wife is still working on her heat tolerance. I prefer to leave the skin on and scrub potatoes, but these ones had been sitting around for a while so I decided to peel them just to make sure I could cut out the bad spots. If you don't have any parchment paper to put on the baking sheet I would not recommend aluminum foil. I have tried it twice and had to peel chunks of it off from the potatoes both times and I don't want to use an absurd amount of oil.

Here are links to the recipes I followed. They are all fairly easy to make. Cutting the cucumber is the biggest pain if you have one too large for a peeler, don't have a mandolin, and have to do it by hand.

I hope you enjoy trying these!

http://rasamalaysia.com/yakitori-recipe-japanese-grilled-skewered-chicken/2/

http://www.eatingwell.com/recipe/252108/japanese-cucumber-salad/

https://steamykitchen.com/21891-warm-asian-potato-salad-with-sesame-fresh-chile-dressing.html

Kung Pao Chicken with Black Vinegar and bacon cauliflower fried rice

I love vinegar, I can't explain why, but I do. Maybe it's the fifth flavor umami that can't really be explained but isn't sweet, sour, bitter or salty.  Vinegar adds an element to food that I think makes it delicious. Several years ago I saw black vinegar called for in a beef and broccoli stir-fry recipe, which I had never heard of at the time and was curious, so I set out to find some. Six grocery stores later I couldn't find any and settled with the balsamic vinegar substitute suggested in the notes. The recipe turned out fantastic, but left me curious as to how it would be with black vinegar. While grocery shopping a while ago at a local grocery store, I saw some! There are three of the same grocery store in town and I didn't previously check them all. I have since learned that they are all the same store, but separate entities and have different inventory.

According to The Bald Gourmet "Chinese black vinegar is an aged vinegar which is typically made from rice, but can also be made from wheat, millet, sorghum, or a combination of any of the four. It has a deep black color, similar to that of balsamic vinegar." The vinegar I picked up smells similar to molasses, is somewhat sweet, and quite black. Naturally I was excited to try this vinegar and settled on two recipes I wanted to try, the beef and broccoli mentioned above, and a Kung Pao chicken recipe I'd been eying for a while. Unable to decide, I asked my wife, and we decided to make Kung Pao chicken. I have enjoyed Kung Pao chicken on many occasions but never tried to make it. I forgot to pick up the dried red chilies, which is ok as my wife doesn't have a high spice threshold though we are working on it.

Still working on food photography

I decided to do a cauliflower fried rice with the chicken partially because I love it and can't get enough, and partially because I didn't take inventory of my rice supply until I was in the process of cooking and discovered I didn't have enough. I used this recipe for the Kung Pao chicken http://rasamalaysia.com/kung-pao-chicken/2/ I don't have the dark soy sauce and a google search informed me that I was probably using dark soy sauce it just wasn't labeled as such, so I used the same soy sauce instead of two separate ones. I also added a few dashes of chili oil since I didn't have the chilies.

The cauliflower fried rice came from skinnytaste I completely spaced eggs, but it still turned out amazing. In fact, the whole meal was amazing, there were no leftovers! I'll have to make it again.