Tag Archives: pork

anime, Asian food, geek corner, main dish, meat & fish

Food Envy

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Katsudon

A bad and all the same wonderful thing about watching anime is all the food. You agree? Just think about all the delicious looking pictures: Simplified just enough so you will recognise the dish, but the colours beautiful and bright, every little detail a perfect masterpiece, and you can nearly smell the rising steam. Equally awful is watching the characters indulge in said dish with their beaming eyes and an excited “oishii!“ that in bad times nearly makes me swoon.

Yes, whilst watching anime it’s easy catch food envy. The praised Katsudon (pork cutlet rice bowl) in the latest hype “Yuri!!! on Ice“ is another example out of many. Luckily you can make it yourself at home. Easy and good. It might not look quite picture-perfect as on TV, but the flavour will make up for it. 

Katsudon

Katsudon — Pork Cutlet Bowl

Ingredients for 2 generous portions

  • 2 pork cutlets without bone
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 tbsp potato starch or flour
  • panko or bread crumbs
  • 1 tbsp oil for frying
  • 1 onion, cut into rings
  • 1 spring onion, peeled and cut into rings
  • 2 tbsp soy sauce
  • 1 tbsp mirin
  • 2 servings of freshly steamed rice

Crack one egg onto a plate and mix it thoroughly. Put the starch on a second plate and the panko on a third. Mix the soy sauce and mirin in a bowl. Wash the pork cutlets, pat dry them dry with kitchen paper and crumb it. For that turn it first in the starch, then in the egg mixture and finally in the panko.

Heat the oil in a pan. Put in the cutlets and fry them on medium heat for 5 minutes. Flip them over and fry for another 5 minutes.

Get the pork out of the pan, and get in the onion and the white part of the spring onion. Fry for about one minute then add the soy sauce and mirin mixture. Cook for another 3 minutes.

Cut the pork into bite-sized stripes. Roughly mix the remaining two eggs. Put the cutlets back into the pan and pour the eggs over it. Cover the pan with a lid and let it cook for about two more minutes until the egg just has solidified.

Divide the rice onto two bowls, cover with the pork and finish with the remaining, green part of the spring onions and some sesame if you like. Enjoy.

Asian food, main dish, meat & fish

Against the Loss of Appetite

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Udon with Pork Belly

It happens to the best of us. A—hopefully temporary—period of tiredness. A time of “ehhh!”, listlessness or mopishness. A state that tells us there is something bothering us and we should listen to what is going on inside: Is it caused by outside influences? Is it ourselves? Is it simply a sign of being stressed out? Is it a health-issue? It is important to talk about this in an environment where social media, society, and advertisement suggest that life has to be perfect all the time and we with it. Always glorious. Always happy times. A constant state of elation. Because, spoiler alert? Life isn’t like that. It is okay, normal, important, to have days like these. Or weeks. Or even months.

During these times we need soulfood. It has to be made quickly. Easily. Almost without effort. Because—let’s be honest—especially in times like these we want it that way. Uncomplicated. We need these “almost no recipe” recipes. These “please don’t let me stand in the kitchen for too long” dishes. These “I’ll cook you every day, because everything else would be too bothersome” favourites. These “I just want to munch happily and feel good” meals, that go best with a glass of wine or a beer or a comforting pot of tea.

So what about udon noodles, quickly cooked and mixed with stir-fried pork belly? The noodles make happy just by being noodles and are always joyful to eat. The limes give a certain freshness and flavour, the pork is comforting, and the hot and sweet sauce will make us smile again. Of course you could make the udon on your own. But hey! There’s no need to always do everything from scratch when you can have it easy just as well. It’s alright. Live a little!

Udon

Udon Noodles with Pork Belly in Lime and Honey Sauce

Ingredients for 2 portions

  • 2 portions of udon noodles*
  • 200 g pork belly without bones, cut into 1-3 cm big dice
  • 2 spring onions, washed and chopped
  • 1 tbsp sesame oil
  • juice of 2 limes
  • 2 tbsp honey
  • 2 tbsp soy sauce
  • 1 tbsp mirin
  • some chili flakes
  • 1 tsp sesame

*The recipe for homemade udon noodles is below

Bring a pot of unsalted water to a boil, add the noodles and cook according to instructions. Drain them into a sieve and wash with cold tap water to rinse off additional starch and to stop the cooking process. Drain well and gently mix with a tbsp of oil.

Pour the sesame oil into a pan and heat it up on medium to high heat. Mix the lime juice, honey, soy sauce and mirin. Put the pork into the pan and fry it until it looks nice and crispy all around. Shake the pan or stir every now and then. Add the white parts of the spring onions, the chili flakes, and the sauce and let it cook until it is reduced to a creamy consistency. Put the noodles into the pan, give it a good shake and divide the dish onto bowls. Sprinkle with the green part of the spring onions and some sesame. Serve hot and enjoy.

Udon with Pork Belly

Homemade Udon Noodles

Ingredients for 2 portions

For the udon noodles*:

  • 250 g wheat flour
  • 125 ml water
  • 12 g salt
  • some rice flour for rolling out
  • 1 tsp sesame oil

*If you don’t want to make the udon on your own you can buy them just as well, of course. Personally, I prefer the precooked ones to the dried version.

For the udon noodles knead the wheat flour with the water and the salt into a firm, smooth dough that’s neither wet nor too dry. Cover it and let it rest for an hour. Put the dough into a big plastic bag and put it into the floor to knead it with your feet for at least 5 minutes. Put it onto your work surface and roll it out until it is about 3 mm thick. Dust with a little bit of rice flour and cut it into 3 mm thick strings. Bring a pot of unsalted water to a boil, add the noodles and cook for 3-5 minutes. Drain them into a sieve and wash with cold tap water to rinse off additional starch and to stop the cooking process. Drain well and gently mix with a tbsp of sesame oil.

Stored in a closed container and in the fridge the udon noodles will be good to eat for about two days.

Asian food, main dish, meat & fish

Wrap, hide, fry, steam, eat! Gyōza

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Gyouza

Wrapping, wrapping, wrapping. It almost feels a bit like Christmas already. Small, precious treasures are lovingly cloaked, lashed, sealed and piled up, almost like on a table for presents. The eyes are sparkling in anticipation of things to come, the heart is beating, the soul is singing… the stomach is rumbling. Isn’t making noodles a delight? I always calm down in my noodle sessions, it’s almost like meditating, just way better: I can handle food here! Cabbage wants to be chopped with care, then gently mixed with minced meat and spices to finally nuzzle into gauzy slices of silky noodle dough, in which it will be fried and steamed into glorious perfection. 

Gyouza

Yes, making filled noodles is always a fun thing to do and a process which is better made at 200%, so all the effort pays for not just one… but a few portions and/or meals at once. And it will feel like something special then. Like a feast. Something precious. And something you should definitely enjoy in company. Because it is always good to have people around, especially when it comes to enjoying life. The lovely Julia also prefers to cook and eat in company and so we will have a double portion of recipes for you today. Both traditional, delicious and best enjoyed with at least one more person at your side. Julia has a recipe for vegetarian Swabian Maultaschen for you today and I will be cooking Japanese again to make you some traditional gyōza. I hope you enjoy them!

Gyouza

Yaki Gyōza – Fried, Traditional Japanese Dumplings with Cabbage, Minced Pork and Ginger

Ingredients for 3-4 portions

Gyōza dough*:

  • 250 g wheat flour
  • 125 ml water
  • 1 tsp salt

Gyōza filling:

  • 1 piece of ginger (the size of a peanut)
  • 300 g cabbage
  • 1 tbsp salt
  • 300 g minced pork
  • 1 tbsp soy sauce

For cooking:

  • some vegetable oil for frying (like peanut oil for example)
  • water

Dip:

  • 20 ml soy sauce
  • 20 ml rice vinegar
  • a few drops of chili oil

*You could also buy gyōza dough instead of making it from scratch. Check out the freezers in the Asian supermarkets; you will probably find some packages there. 

Combine the ingredients for the dough in a bowl and knead until you have a very smooth and firm dough. Knead for 5 more minutes (to make the dough more elastic), wrap it in cling foil and let it rest for 1 hour. Knead again and now roll it out very thinly. If you use a pasta machine for this you will want to roll it out with the finest adjustment. Cut out circles (I used a glass with a 4 cm radius). Combine leftovers to another ball of dough and roll out again until you have no dough left. 

To prepare the filling peel the ginger and chop it finely. Remove the stalk from the cabbage and chop the rest finely, too. If you have a kitchen processor, you can perfectly use it for this; it will save you quite an amount of time. Mix the cabbage with the salt and let it just rest for a couple of minutes. Then, using your hands, press out the excessive water, then mix the cabbage with the other ingredients.

Place 1-2 tsp of the filling in the middle of one slice of dough, apply a little both of water on the edges of the dough and wrap it in the typical gyōza way. This video shows it quite well if you don’t know how to do it. It will take a few gyōzas to get it right, but it is quite easier than it may look at first, so don’t give up! Make as much gyōza until you are out of dough and/or filling. If you still have some filling left, you can just fry it later (you can store it in the fridge for about a day) or freeze it. Remaining dough slices can be dried to be cooked later.

Put a pan on medium heat. Add 1 tbsp of oil and plave one layer on gyōza in it. Fry them for about 5 minutes without moving them, they should just be fried on the side they are standing on. Add 50 ml of water to the pan and cover it with a lid. Steam the gyōza for 5 more minutes. Cook the remaining gyōza in the same way. Don’t crowd them in more than one layer in the pan; you’ll have to cook them in batches anyway.

Mix the ingredients for the dip and serve the gyōza with it. Enjoy!

And if you want to check out Julia’s Maultaschen recipe, please visit her lovely blog here.

Gyouza

Asian food, main dish, meat & fish, soul food

Self-Discovery and Soup

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To be adapted. To swim with the tide. That is what one seems to expect us to do, isn’t it? When we are little we still are allowed, encouraged even, to be who and what we are. With all our quirks, ideas, dreams… but some day everyday life begins and starts to pull all those special things away from us. Little by little but still effectively. We are supposed to be ideal students. We are supposed to show interest in every school subject we have to attend to, to being able to proceed in life. Maybe that is justified. Perhaps. Somehow we have to be „valued“, to be stereotyped so one can see what we have accomplished. But what falls by the wayside? We want to belong to the cool kids. We want to be part of the „coolest clique there is on this world“. So we start to bend even more and hem ourselves in, without even recognising. Everybody keeps on telling us: „All of this will be better once you’ve grown up“. That feeling of being lost. That imaginary (?) loneliness. But does it really work this way? Because suddenly they don’t tell you to fit in anymore. They tell you to be yourself. So be unique. To trust in your strengths! But how do you do that?

Who are you?

Tonjiru

To dig up all these traits that make us special after all these years of suppression, like precious treasures of the past, is exhausting. You have to put a lot of effort and energy in it and sometimes even a little bit of bravery, just to find back to yourself again. You have to try new things, even just out of impulse. Risk to jump in at the deep end. Get to know (and to love) new and wonderful people. And maybe let go of others that do you no good. Nothing ventured…

And if things are really bad, maybe a warming soup might help. A soup that strengthens from inside. That makes you brave again. A soup that caresses your soul and that is so simple to prepare, that you have enough time left in-between, to indulge in all of those new (and maybe a little crazy) hobbies that come with being just who you are. Even if that means to be a thirty year old woman that dresses herself as a 16 year old teenage boy with amazing pink hair and red eyes…!

Tonjiru

Tonjiru 豚汁 – Japanese pork soup

Ingredients for 1 big pot

  • 600 g pork belly
  • 3 spring onions
  • 3 cm ginger root
  • 100 ml sake
  • 1 piece of kombu (about 10 cm long)
  • 2 l water
  • 400 g potatoes
  • 2 large carrots
  • 3-4 tbsp yellow miso

Cut the pork into bite-size pieces. Finely chop the white part of the spring onions, chop the remaining green part into slices. Cut the ginger into coins.

Put the pork into a large pot on medium heat and let the fat dissolve. Add the white part of the onions and the ginger and let it cook until the pork is done and you have a light brown crust on the bottom of the pot. Pour in the sake and scrape the bottom of the pan to free those lovely flavors, then add the kombu and the water.

Switch the heat to high temperature and bring the soup to a boil. Use a spoon to scrape off the foam on the surface of the broth until no more foam starts rising up. Turn down the volume, put on the lid and let the soup simmer gently for 30-45 minutes. Meanwhile peel the carrots and the potatoes and cut them into bite-size pieces or chunks.

Scrape off the fat on the surface of the tonjiru. Add the carrots and potatoes to the soup, cook for 15 more minutes until tender. Switch off the heat, then stir in the miso. Depending on the brand and kind of miso you use you might have to add more miso, so season it to your taste. Serve hot with the green parts of the onion.

The tonjiru is very delicious when still fresh but you can store it in the fridge as well and heat it up on the next day.

Tonjiru

Asian food, main dish, meat & fish, soul food

A Little Bit of Wellness for the Soul

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Miso Ramen

A good noodle soup is a treat: It makes you warm, saturates and it is filled with delicious ingredients. A really good noodle soup is far better though… a little bit of wellness for the soul. It is pleasing to the eye and has been cooked with love – with commitment and a lot of time spent already on the broth itself. It really makes you sigh out of pure happiness. The Japanese have made an art form out of their soup and maybe some day I will be able to go there… to go into a tiny little noodle bar to sit at the counter and order my first “real Japanese Ramen soup”. Until then I’ll have to try every other noodle bar with a good reputation (this one for example) to educate my palate and take everything I’ve learned back home. There I will try my best to make a soup of my own.

This recipe has been the best result since a long time: A ramen soup with an “own” miso mixture, broth-poached fillet of pork, mushrooms and egg. The soup is completed with a dash of soy milk, a small but effective trick I’ve come across on lovely Mandy’s blog. The miso mix is inprired by her recipe, too.

The spicy miso with sesame makes the soup wonderfully creamy and adds a nice fragrance of sesame, ginger, garlic and chili. The mild-flavoured prok loin indulges us with proteins, the mushrooms add a nice freshness, the egg makes it perfect and the nori finally reminds us of beautiful days at the sea. Don’t be put off by the long list of ingredients: Most of it is spices and except of a little time the soup itself just needs simple attention. But it’s definitely worth it!

Miso Ramen

Ramen Soup with Miso, Fillet of Pork, Mushrooms, Nori and Shoyu Tamago

Ingredients for 2 big bowls

Miso mix:

  • 2 cloves of garlic
  • 30 g ginger
  • 10 g chili paste
  • 30 g sesame
  • 3 tbsp mirin
  • 1 tbsp sesame oil
  • 2 tbsp oil for frying
  • 130 g red miso
  • 130 g white or yellow miso

Soy sauce eggs (“Shoyu Tamago”):

  • 1-2 eggs
  • 3 tbsp soy sauce
  • 3 tbsp mirin
  • 1 tbsp sake or sherry
  • 1 tbsp sugar

Broth-poached fillet of pork:

  • 200 g fillet of pork
  • 1 tbsp oil
  • 500-600 ml good, unsalted chicken broth (the homemade one is always the best choice)
  • 1/2 spring onion
  • 1 peanut-sized piece of ginger

Ramen soup:

  • the leftover broth from the poached fillet of pork (see above) – about 500 ml 
  • 160 ml miso mix
  • 100-150 ml soy milk
  • 2 portions Japanese soup noodles (ideally ramen)
  • 1/2 spring onions 
  • 1/2 sheet of nori
  • a few small mushrooms (like shiitake)

Additionally:

  • a few drops of sesame oil
  • a few drops of chili oil
  • sesame

Peel the ginger and garlic for the miso mix and add them to all the other ingredients in a bowl. Mix thoroughly with a hand blender, fill it into an airtight glass jar and store it in the fridge. You can let it stay there for a few weeks until you use it up.

For the shoyu eggs boil the eggs until they are soft (I always put them in boiling water and let them stay in there for exactly 7 minutes), then put them in ice water and let them cool down completely. Peel them carefully. Mix soy sauce, mirin, sake and sugar and let the eggs marinate in that mixture for 2-3 hours.

Heat up a small casserole, pour in the oil. Fry the fillet of pork shortly on each side, then add the broth and the spring onion in one piece. Cut the ginger into slices and add to the pot. Heat the broth until it almost boils, skim off the foam that may rise to the surface and let the broth gently simmer at medium temperature for 30 minutes. Turn the meat after 15 minutes so it doesn’t dry out on one side. Get the pork out of the pot and strain the broth through a sieve – then pour the broth back into the pot. You will need it for the soup itself.

Add the right amount of miso mix to the broth and resolve it in there. A miso sieve or a ladle helps with that. In an extra pot cook the noodles according to the instructions on the package and strain through a sieve. Devide them into two soup bowls. Meanwhile bring the soup to a boil but don’t let it cook for too long.

Chop the spring onion into rings. Cut the pork into thin slices. Pour the hot soup over the noodles in the bowls. Garnisch with the remaining ingredients. Serve hot with a few drops of sesame and chili oil and a few sprinkles of sesame.

Miso Ramen