Meal #5 Tempura Prawns and veggies in rice

Was really looking forward to making this meal, cause it was certainly one of  the dishes I was familiar with when in Japan last year. Below is the recipe i used, and made a few amendments especially around the vegetables that i prepared just to bring some extra colour to the dish.

This recipe was made up of a couple of different components - you had to get ready the sauce, the batter, the veggies, the rice, as well as skin and devain the prawns so that everything is ready for cooking at the same time.

So Step 1: Making the sauce, consists of seaweed, mirin, soy sauce, raw sugar water and dried bonito flakes, bring to the boil then lower the heat for 15minutes.

Next i prepared the batter and it's important that you use really cold water, as you don't want the gluten to develop too quickly, because this will make the batter sticky and dough like, which is the opposite to what tempura is like. Once I had it prepared i then put it in the fridge until i was ready for it.



The third and fourth component that needed to get ready was the veggies and prawns. The veggies I decided to use were two different types of capsicum to bring in colour as well as zucchini and beans as they are so readily available at the moment.

Totally cheated with the prawns and just got frozen prawns, where as fresh ones would have been so much better and would have accentuated the dish so much more, especially on presentation, which i would consider doing next time.


In the picture to the left you can see that I am making a slight cut down the back of the prawn and slightly down the front so that it remains flat when in the pan.

Now that I have all the components ready i can start getting the oil on to start the deep frying process and dipping my ingredients in the batter ( which has been chilling in the fridge).

Above you can see both the veggies and prawns starting to become crisp and golden. However, i was mindful of not over cooking the pawns, as i didn't want them to come rubbery. Once each item had cooked i drained on a paper towel, of course sampling to ensure that they had been cooked to the correct degree. I have actually surprised myself with how well this worked out, On reflection i would probably have cooked things a little longer just to allow them to crispen up a little more.

With everything cooked up, it was then up to the presentation. Started off with the good old white rice on the bottom (remembering that you need to wash the rice prior to cooking). Then i ripped up bits of nori and added that to the rice. Then it was a matter of trying to get some of the colours to come through and use the different heights of the veggies  to try and present it nicely (with the deep frying its hard to make it look colourful), you then have the prawns in the front of the bowl ( this is were fresh big king prawns would have looked amazing). I then topped it off with a few more strips of ripped nori and then spooned over a couple of Tablespoons of the sauce that I made at the very start.

This dish was certainly a lot easier than i thought i was going to be, however there are certainly improvements that could be made that i have noted already. Again the flexibility of ingredients that can be used is there and allows for people to put their own flavour and likes to the dish. 

Meal #4 Chicken Meatballs with egg and rice

Well I always felt like it was going to happen, that cooking disaster and the more I ventured into today's recipe the more I made it up lol. Nothing seemed to go right tonight in regards to the actual look of the dish. However, in saying that the meatballs were still really tasty, especially with the addition I made of adding coriander to them.  s

Step one: was creating the sauce that the meatballs would eventually cook in. The sauce incorporates such ingredients as mirin, soy sauce, oyster, garlic and sugar.

The recipe calls for 1 bruised garlic, this is when you lay the flat side of the knife on an angle and smash it downwards. This smashes the clove enough to release flavor in to the sauce mixture.

Step Two: involves preparing the mince for the meatballs. First the ginger and my addition of coriander. Then you kneed it until its all combined and nice and smooth. To this you then add more mirin, soy sauce, sesame oil,cornstarch and a 1/3 of an egg (this is the strangest measurement i've ever encountered, how you measure 1/3 of an egg is a real guess)

Step Three: this is were it all started to go wrong. I am not sure if the consistency of the mixture was correct, but the instructions said to roll the mixture into balls. However there was no way that that was happening so i just spoonfuls of the mixture into the sunflower oil in the pan. I chose sunflower oil as it doesn't burn as easily when heated and it allows the food to be golden brown. 

Being chicken i probably cooked them longer than what was needed as i needed to ensure that they were cooked all the way through. Don't particularly want food poisoning so close to Christmas lol.

Step four: now this was my next confused section, the recipe said to add the sauce to the fry pan that had the meatballs and oil already in it, it seemed weird to me so i tipped some of the oil out and then added sauce, this may not have been the right thing to do cause the sauce didnt thicken like it was said it would, so perhaps next time i would try leaving the oil in.

Step Five: the presentation and bringing it all together. The recipe said to serve it with a raw egg, as long as it is fresh, therefore i stayed well away from that, as the Home Ec teacher in me just does not feel easy about raw egg. So i fried up the remaining 2/3 of the gg and rolled it up.

I served the meatballs with a cup of white rice and drizzled a little more sauce over top of the meatballs.

The presentation doesn't look the best and really needed something green (herb or steamed veggies) on the plate to make it pop a little. However like i said at the beginning it's a shame you can't taste through here because it really did taste better that it looks lol. I would certainly look at trying these again and playing around with flavors a little more

Meal 3: Crispy Chicken with steamed veggie, egg roll on rice.

So for tonight's menu I tried incorporating a few of the recipes together (crispy chicken and the egg rolled omelette). The main thing I am concerned about is whether I'd get the coating on the chicken right and then making sure that it wasn't over or under cooked during the frying process.

Step 1: made the marinade which incorporated the regular favours of garlic, ginger, sesame oil, soy sauce, raw sugar, potato starch and cinnamon and placed it with the chicken ( I'm using thighs, just cause I feel they don't dry out as easily as breast meat does) and let it marinade in the fridge for an hour (or  overnight)

Step 2: I prepared other parts of the dish such as the rice (ensuring that you wash the rice prior to cooking it to get rid of as much of the starch from off it), I put the veggies in the steamer  I was going to use ( on this Occassion it was Spinach and broccoli) and made the egg roll.

For the egg roll I didn't really follow the method that was in the recipe but more from what I learnt in Japan last year from my homestay. I brought one of the small square frypans as I find them to be the easiest to use and allows you to get a good shape. I added enough egg to the bottom of the pan, waited for it to turn into a more solid form and then rolled it. Leaving it to one side of the pan I then repeated the processes insuring some went under the rolled egg already in the pan. Once that had also hardened I rolled it in the opposite direction.


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Step 3: was the all important cooking of the chicken. Using 2-3cm of sunflower oil in the bottom of the pan I then heated it to roughly 180 degrees and started cooking in small  batches to ensure the cooked evenly and correctly. It was roughly 2-3mins each side as I'd cut the meat a bit smaller than what the recipe suggested

The finished product was close to what it would look like. Was really happy with the flavor in both the chicken and egg roll.

Meal no#2: Lamb and coriander Gyoza

I was really excited about trying to makes these because in the past couple of weeks I have ventured to 'the Columbo' to have the most delicious dumplings, so I wanted to see if I could do it myself.
This recipe  basic one offered in my recipe book but they also had variations which is what I tried.

Step one involved me combining the filling ingredients together I chose to go with lamb and coriander this time around.

Step two: filling each of the cases with only a teaspoon of the mixture, rubbing a little water around the edges to ensure they stuck. I was nervous about trying to get the pleats around the edge as it looked complicated. However the recipe book gave really good instructions and once I'd done a few it seemed to come fairly naturally. However this is certainly one that takes a lot of time so if you were making them for a dinner party or something you need plenty of time. 

Meal One: Rice Burger

So last night was my first meal. I decided to start with an easy task to help build confidence and then I will build up from there.

This recipe is broken up into a number of different parts that you need to get right.
Step 1: using short grain rice rather than sushi as its combines better. Once cooked, I added some corn starch to it as it acts like the glue and then placed in egg moulds so to get them the same size and shape, then kept end them together with glad wrap.

Step 2: After combining some herbs, onion, starch and seasoning to the patties, I shaped them so they were similar size as the rice buns and cooked them evenly on each side.

Step 3: I made a teriyaki sauce from 2T of mirin, sake, sugar and soy sauce and glazed the patties.

Step 4: With everything nearly ready to put together you place the rice patties into a fry pan and colour up one side of the pattie. Roughly 3-4 mins

Step 5: You prepare whatever salad fillings you wish to have, I chose to do lettuce, capsicum with Japanese Mayo.

The finished product looked like this, really pleased with the presentation, however think my teriyaki needed more flavour to it, don't think I had enough sugar to allow for the glaze to sweeten. I would also look at applying a bit of heat through the use of chilli, ginger or garlic.

For a first attempt I was pretty happy though.

Holiday Challenge

So I have decided to challenge myself over the holidays and spend a week cooking meals from the new recipes book that my awesome student mentees gave me.

From here I'm hoping to challenge not just my taste buds but my culinary skills as well and hopefully get people's feedback and help along my little journey. Tonight I'm going to try a recipe that I have made earlier this year with my Year 10's. Rice Burgers!!!