I promised my daughter I’d only do one new Asian dish this week and since I have more time to explore new things on weekends, tonight was it! I made this gingery spiced chicken from Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen. Of course, she LOVED it!
I made this then served it over rice for a Three-Colored Dish, but tried to expand it a little. The recipe I saw called for peas and corn but my youngest doesn’t like corn, so I made up some simple carrots for her. (I just steamed them, then put a dash of mirin, sake, and soy sauce plus sprinkled some sesame seeds. Idea from Easy Japanese Cooking: Bento Love, a fun book with lightly detailed recipes aimed at Bento lunches.)
Leftovers would definitely be great in a Bento lunch!
So start the rice in the rice cooker. I put the carrot slices in to steam once it hit the Warm stage and that seemed to work out well and let me get away with one less dirty dish.
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground chicken
- 2 Tbs sake
- 1 Tbs sugar
- 3 Tbs soy sauce
- 1 tsp ginger juice
Instructions
- For ginger juice, grate the fresh ginger and then squeeze the pulp to make the juice.
- Put the ground chicken in the frying pan and then add the sake and sugar. Stir and break up the clumps and then cook over medium heat, stirring and breaking up the meat, for a few minutes, until the meat turns white.
- Add the soy sauce and simmer a few more minutes, stirring, another 2-3 minutes, then add the ginger juice and cook, stirring, another minute or so.
This freezes well, apparently, although I’ve not tried it yet. And you can use it to top rice or to stuff in a rice ball / omusubi, although I’ve not done that either. I just served it over fresh steamed rice, with about half the rice covered with the ginger spiced chicken and 1/4 with peas and 1/4 with corn or carrots. I added a few halved grape tomatoes and some nori (seasoned seaweed).
This was really good and a very mild way to introduce some Japanese flavors I think, if your kids are resistant.
New discovery tonight: Apparently the dogs love nori!
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