Chicken Katsu

One of the most famous Japanese chicken recipes, is Chicken Katsu. Not surprisingly, you can order it many small restaurants and it is often put into bento boxes. During our last vacation to Shibu Onsen we ordered some chicken katsu at a small (little run-down) restaurant owned by an very friendly old man. Because the restaurant had a half-open kitchen we were able to see some of the cooking. And when he brought us our meals (really big), and we tasted it, it was really good! Definitely one of the best Chicken Katsu we had ever eaten. So, because we wanted to eat it again (and Nagano is a bit far for Tokyo) we decided to try and make it ourselves.

Ingredients (2p):

• 300 gr chicken breasts*
• pepper and salt
• 1 egg (beaten)
• bread crumbs
• frying oil

* you can also use pork or beef, then you will get respectively tonkatsu or beefkatsu, also very nice!


Preparation
First you need to pound the chicken breast until they are approximately 1 a 1,5 cm thick.

Then, you need to prepare to egg and bread crumbs. Beat the egg, and place it in a shallow bowl. In another shallow bowl, place a handful of bread crumbs

beaten egg

bread crumbs

 Season the chicken on both sides with salt and pepper to taste, dip it briefly in the beaten egg , and press it in the bread crumbs so the chicken breast is covered (both sides) with crumbs. Repeat for the other chicken breasts.

Heat around 0,5 cm of oil in a fry-pan. Put the chicken in the fry-pan and let it cook in the hot oil until the outside has a nice brown colour. Turn the chicken halfway through the cooking.

Chicken Katsu with rice

Serve it as side dish, or serve it with rice (and lettuce) as Chicken Katsu-don. Tastes best when topped with tonkatsu sauce.

Sweet potato (Satsuma imo) rounds

Japanese sweet potatoes (satsuma imo) can be used in many recipes. Since we really like the taste of the potato, we have tried many of these recipes (and have uploaded already quite a few). Recently we tried another Satsuma imo recipe, which was a great success so we want to share it today.

The recipe is for making sweet potato baked rounds. (we are not sure how to name it.. maybe it can also be sweet potato cookies, or sweet potato cakes, anything will do!)

Ingredients (2p):

• 1 Satsumo imo
• sesame seeds
• oil for frying

First, peel the potatoes (this will make it much easier to purée them and shape them into rounds later on) and cut them into small pieces.

Next, we are going to steam the potatoes till they become soft. Bring a small amount of water to boil, and place your steamer with the potato on top. You will probably need to steam for around 20 (-30) minutes for the potatoes to become soft.
If you don't have anything to steam with, you should also be able to soften en potato if you put them for around 10 minutes in the microwave (but we have personally never tried it, so double check the time and stand needed)

Let it cool down a bit and mash the potatoes. You can use a masher, but otherwise we have found that a normal fork also works just fine.

For the next step we shape the mashed satsumo imo into flat rounds (around 1,5 cm thick), and we add sesame seeds on both sides.

Heat some frying oil in the pan and bake the potato rounds (on both sides) for a couple of minutes.
Serve as a side dish with some soy sauce (or mayonnaise for a the less-healthy variant). Goes great with almost all rice-based meals.

Banana cake from the rice cooker

Although fruit can be quite expensive to buy in Japan, bananas are normally the cheapest you can get. Our local supermarket sometimes even has very good deals were you can buy large amounts of bananas (15-20) at a time for really cheap. Too good a deal not to buy! But we do end up eating a lot of bananas...
So, we have been trying different banana-recipes, and off course we also had to mix it with our favorite cake recipe. It turned out the be a really delicious cake, with the banana giving the cake a nice soft, smooth texture and sweet taste. Just like our other recipes, the cake is really easy baked (steamed) using the rice cooker. Absolutely fail-proof!

Ingredients (makes a cake with approximately 19cm diameter, and 3 cm height):

• 125 gr flour
• 2 eggs
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 50 ml oil
• 100 ml milk
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 or 3 bananas

First, mix all ingredients (except for the bananas) together. Make sure the batter is smooth.

Mixing the batter

Then, you add the bananas. Normally we just 'break' the banana into small pieces and mix it in the batter. No need to make it completely smooth, the banana-pieces should still easily be visible

Batter with the banana pieces mixed in

 Put the batter in the rice cooker, put it on cake-setting and let it bake for 30 minutes. (or what your own rice cooker requires) After the rice cooker has finished, wait until the pan and the cake has cooled down. Then you can turn over the pan and with a little shake the cake will come out perfectly.

Banana cake from the rice cooker