Yakitori Hatsu

This post is the final installment of the three-part, Yakitori-themed Kebab-apalooza. The prior two installments focused upon Yakitori Negima (chicken thigh kebabs) and Yakitori Sunagimo (chicken gizzard kebabs). Now, I take an additional step into the world of chicken offal with Yakitori Hatsu. Skewers of chicken hearts.

I am no stranger to preparing heart. To date, I have prepared Grilled Beef Heart with a Herbed Vinaigrette, Cuore di Agnello al Chianti (Lamb Heart Braised in Chianti), and Khalyat Alkadba Wal Galoob (Fried Heart and Liver). (That last one was the Around the World in 80 Dishes challenge to prepare a main course from Libya.)

Some say that the Yakitori Hatsu is as popular as Yakitori Negima. And, as with the latter type of skewers, Yakitori Hatsu is prepared with, as well as served with, a tare. That is a sauce made with soy sauce, mirin and sake. The tare provides a slightly sweet, yet salty complement to the earthy, mineral flavors of the chicken hearts. 

One practical note: I purchased a two pound package of chicken hearts from a local Korean grocery store. (It was the smallest package I could find.) Given the number of hearts that came in the package, I decided to thread the hearts horizontally onto the skewers, which increased the number of hearts that I could have on each kebab. I think the more traditional way of doing it would be to thread the hearts vertically. 

In the end, this recipe represents a strong finish for this three-part series, which was the first to focus upon the kebabs of one particular cuisine (as opposed to three separate kebabs from three different cuisines). This little journey has gotten me thinking about what other cuisines. Perhaps that will be the subject of the next Kebab-apalooza. 

YAKITORI HATSU

Recipe from Ang Sarap

Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 20 chicken hearts
• 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 tablespoons sake
• 3 tablespoons mirin
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger paste
• 1 teaspoon corn starch

Directions:

1. Prepare the sauce. In a sauce pan mix together sugar, sake, mirin, soy sauce, ginger paste and corn starch. Mix well until free of lumps and then place on the stove top, using high heat boil the mixture and simmer for a minute. 

2. Grill the chicken hearts. Season the chicken hearts with salt and pepper, then place on skewers. Grill the chicken heart while brushing with the soy sauce mixture occasionally.  Remove from the grill and then serve immediately. 

ENJOY!

Yakitori Negima

Good food is very often, even most often, simple food.

- Anthony Bourdain

Bourdain's words provide an apt description for one of the simplest, but perhaps, greatest kebabs in the world ... Yakitori. Even the word is simple, translating to "grilled bird." Small bite sized pieces grilled over a charcoal grill, sometimes basted with a particular sauce or other times just a sprinkle of salt. These particular chicken skewers a truly a unique culinary experience. 

The history of yakitori dates back to the middle of the Meiji Period, around the 1880s and 1890s. (However, there are references to grilled chicken dishes going as far back as the Kamakura Period, the fourteenth century, and the term "yakitori" is said to have appeared in the oldest Japanese cookbook, Ryori Monogatari, which was produced during the Edo Period in 1643.)

Yet, it may have been pigs who led the way. Before yakitori become widespread, there was yakaton, which was pork offal skewers, which were first made in the Kanto Region of Japan (which includes, among others, the city of Tokyo). It is said that these pork offal skewers led the way for the chicken skewers that became yakitori. Food stalls -- or yatai --started popping up across Japan, from which vendors offered skewers of grilled innards from the expensive game birds served by from restaurants. The grilled skewers became a way for Japanese to enjoy grilled birds, which were often too expensive to bun the restaurants.

It took some time to get used to the smells of these stalls. For many Japanese, the smells of roasted or grilled meat was distasteful. Vendors began grilling their skewers using a particular type of coal, binchotan coal. This coal gets very hot, burns cleanly, but produces its own smoky aromas, which not only mask the smell of the grilled fowl, but also provide a smoky taste to the skewers. Vendors also started applying a tare, a sweet and salty sauce that added more aromas and flavors to the meat. 

There are many different types of yakitori, with each type focusing on a particular part of the bird or chicken. The most common yakitori is Yakitori Negima (ねぎま), which consists of bite sized pieces of chicken thigh skewered along with pieces of scallions or long onions. This particular yakitori includes the preparation of a tare, which is a sauce consisting of soy sauce, mirin, sake and sugar. The sauce is brushed on the skewers during the grilling process, as well as served alongside the skewers.

This recipe seemed like the perfect start for the trifecta of yakitori recipes that will serve as the latest installment of my Kebab-apalooza series. Come back and check as I head further back into the origins of yakitori, including the preparation of kebabs using chicken offal (like hearts and gizzards). 

YAKITORI NEGIMA

Recipe from Curious Cuisinere

Serves 4

Ingredients (for the chicken):

• 8 bamboo skewers
• 1 pound chicken thighs, cut in 1 inch pieces
• 6 scallions, cut in 1 inch pieces

Ingredients (for the tare):

• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/2 cup mirin
• 1/4 cup sake
• 2 tablespoons sugar

Directions:

1. Prepare the grill and the skewers. Preheat the grill to a medium-high to high heat, roughly 450 degrees Fahrenheit. Soak the skewers in water for 10 minutes.

2. Prepare the tare. In a small saucepan, mix the soy sauce, mirin, sake and sugar. Bring the mixture to a boil over high heart. Reduce the heat to medium heart and set it aside to cool slightly. Once cool, divide the sauce between two small bowls. One will be used for brushing the raw meat, one will be used for serving. 

3. Prepare the skewers. While the sauce is simmering and resting, remove the skewers from the soaking water and skewer the chicken and scallion pieces, leaving a little room at each end for easy turning.

4.  Cook the skewers. Cook the yakitori skewers over a hot grill for 2 minutes on the first side. Flip the skewers and cook for an additional 2 minutes on the second side. Flip the skewers again and brush them with the yakitori sauce. Flip and brush the skewers once more. At this point, the chicken should be firm and the sauce should be beginning to caramelize and create a nice glaze on the chicken.

5. Finish the dish. Transfer the cooked yakitori to a platter and brush them once more with the yakitori sauce (using a clean brush and the second bowl of yakitori sauce that has not been used for the chicken as it cooked).

Chengdu Chicken with Black Beans, Chiles, and Peanuts

There are only a small number of chefs that I follow on social media or the Internet; and, I follow them for very specific reasons. For example, I follow chef Sean Sherman, who is reviving Native American foodways through education and, more recently, through practice with his restaurant, Owamni. I also follow chef Michael Symon because, at first, he is a home-town chef, but, in recent years, he has been doing great work in promoting anti-inflammatory recipes and cooking. And then there is chef Andrew Zimmern, whose work on television and in the kitchen helped to expand my thinking about exploring new cuisines. These opportunities led to my desire to also learn more about the cultures in which those cuisines arise. And, for the few who follow this blog, it may explain much of what I post and why.

So when I get recipes from Andrew Zimmern, especially those involving dishes from around the world, I take notice. One particular recipe caught my eye: Chengdu Chicken with Black Beans, Chiles and Peanuts.  I got that recipe from Zimmern's weekly newsletter back on October 16, 2018. I bookmarked it with every intention of making that dish. However, for a variety of reasons, it took me more than two and one-half years to actually make the dish. The wait was entirely worth it.

The new ingredients: toban djan and
douchi (fermented black beans)

One reason why it took me a while to make this dish is that the recipe called for the use of ingredients that I had not used in the past. There is toban djan (or doubanjiang), which is a fermented chile bean paste. The paste is made from fermented broad beans, chiles, soybeans, salt and flour. Toban djan has been called the "soul of Sichuan cuisine," because it figures prominently in many well known provincial dishes. There is also douchi or fermented black beans. And, as I discovered, they are not just any fermented black beans. Douchi have been found in sealed in a Chinese tomb that dates back to 165 B.C.E., which makes it the oldest, known soy product out there.  Of these two new ingredients, I was able to find toban djan fairly easily in my local Asian grocery store. It took a little more work to track down the douchi. 

However, once I had all of the ingredients, I set out to make this dish. Not only was this recipe easy to make, the dish itself was incredible. It got me to thinking about all of the bad food that I have ever eaten from local Chinese restaurants and why I don't just invest the time into making, not just great Chinese food, but great regional dishes. Sichuan cuisine always intrigued be because of its extensive use of chiles and garlic in the recipes. This Chengdu Chicken recipe (Chengdu is the capital of the Sichuan province) confirmed everything that I love about the regional cuisine. For that reason, I made the dish a second time and enjoyed a little bit of this dish every day for lunch over the course of a couple of weeks. 

In the end, this is the best recipe that I have made in quite a while (and, in my humble opinion, that is saying something because I think that I have made some very delicious dishes in recent weeks and months). I will make sure that I have all the ingredients on hand so that I can make this dish in the future.

CHENGDU CHICKEN WITH BLACK BEANS, CHILES AND PEANUTS

Recipe from Andrew Zimmern

Serves 4

Ingredients:

20 to 24 ounces of boneless, skinless chicken breast 

     and dark meat, diced

3 tablespoons rice wine or sake

2 tablespoons corn starch

2 tablespoons toban dijan (fermented chile bean paste)

1/3 cup shelled peanuts, toasted

1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper

2 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons Szechuan peppercorns, crushed

12 dried whole Chinese chiles (tsin-tsin or Mexican arbols work well)

1 tablespoon ginger, sliced

1 tablespoon garlic, sliced

4 tablespoons peanut oil

4 tablespoons whole fermented Chinese black beans (douchi)

1 tablespoon brown sugar

2 tablespoons black vinegar

2 tablespoons dark soy sauce

1 cup scallions, chopped

Cooked rice, for serving

Directions:

1. Marinate the chicken.  Combine the chicken, rice wine, cornstarch and 1 tablespoon of the toban djan and mix well in a large Ziploc bag or bowl.  Cover or seal and place in the refrigerator to marinate for 4 to 24 hours.  Drain chicken and discard any remaining marinade.

2.  Prepare the wok.  Preheat a wok over high heat for several minutes.  Combine the peanuts, white pepper, white sugar, Szechuan peppercorns, dried chiles, ginger and garlic in a bowl.  When the wok is very hot, add the peanut oil and swirl.  It should smoke and ripple immediately.  Add the bowl of mixed seasonings.  Swirl in the wok - they will scorch quickly. 

3.  Cook the chicken.  Next, add the chicken and 2/3 of the scallions.  Wok toss until cooked through, about 3 minutes.  Use wok tools so you don't break the chiles and can scrape across the sides and bottom of the wok safely.  Add the fermented black beans, brown sugar, black vinegar, soy sauce, and remaining toban dijan.  Toss and cook for another 2 minutes.  The sauce should reduce and tighten to a glaze. 

4.  Finish the dish.  Toss in the remaining scallions and immediately spill contents out on a platter.  Serve with white rice. 

ENJOY!

Kaki Gohan

It is known as seasoned rice with oysters, or Kaki Gohan, and it comes from Japan. The rice is seasoned with a water that includes of sake, soy sauce and mirin, as well as the oysters' liqueur. This recipe offered a different way for my beautiful Angel and I to try oysters. And, while it was my first attempt at the dish, this recipe illustrates why it is important to make dishes over and over again. It is all a part of the cooking process. 

The directions call for the oysters to be placed in a boiling broth of water, sake, soy sauce and mirin. This much is very interesting, as it could impart a lot of flavor to the oysters themselves. However, oysters cook very fast, shrinking in size and increasing it toughness. Thus, it takes skill and a good eye when making this recipe to avoid a result that would not be as tasty as it could be.  I followed the recipe, but I ended up with oysters that looked like they had been steamed or grilled. They did not look like the oysters in the picture that came with the recipe.

Looking back on this particular cook, I think I know what I should have done. I need to approach the recipe from a different angle. One way is to use the typical means of preparing an octopus. Recipes will tell you that you should not simply plunk an octopus in boiling water, as it will curl up and become difficult to work with. However, if you carefully dip the octopus into the boiling water three times, that helps to firm up the octopus without it shrinking and curling into a round of tentacles. I think a similar approach could be used with oysters in this recipe.  Once the water and other ingredients come to a boil, the oysters could be dipped a few times, for a minute or two, until they firm up along the edges and become opaque. At that point, I think the oysters would retain their meatiness and texture, while having just a hint of the soy sauce, sake and mirin. 

I will follow up with this post when I have a chance to make this dish again and let you know how this alterative approach works.  In any event, this recipe was a welcomed change from eating raw oysters.  

KAKI GOHAN

Recipe available at Uncut Recipes

Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 2 jars oysters
• 2 cups rice
• 2 cups water
• 3 tablespoons sake
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons mirin
• 2 thin pieces of ginger root
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions:

1. Prepare the rice. Wash all of the rice, as well as you can to remove all of the starch.  Drain and set aside.

2. Prepare the oysters. Wash all of the oysters, gently in salted water.  Pat dry.

3. Prepare the ginger. Cut the ginger root into thin, skinny pieces.  

4. Prepare the broth. In a pot, add the water, salt, soy sauce, sake, and mirin. Bring to a boil.  Add the oysters and cook for three minutes.  Remove the oysters and set aside.

5. Cook the rice. Put the rice in the bowl of a rice cooker.  Add enough of the seasoned liquid to the rice to reach the line of 2 cups and cook the rice. After rice is cooked, add the oysters and leave for 10 minutes. Then mix and serve.

ENJOY!

Chinese-Style Steak

When I first started cooking as a hobby, there were two things that motivated me.  First, it was Italian cuisine.  This was due to my food-based trip through Emilia Romagna and Tuscany, which I took back in 2006.  However, the other source of motivation came from the other side of the world ... it was the original Iron Chef.

Iron Chef was a cooking competition show produced by Fuji Television.  Each episode generally pitted two of the three (and later four) Japanese Iron Chefs in an one-hour cooking battle focused around a secret ingredient.  The Iron Chefs were Japanese chefs who represent the pinnacle of a cuisine: Hiroyuke Sakai, who was Iron Chef French; Chen Kenichi, who was Iron Chef Chinese; and Rokusaburo Michiba, who was the original Iron Chef Japanese.  (Masahiro was later succeeded by Koumei Nakamura and Masahiro Morimoto as Iron Chef Japanese.)  The fourth Iron Chef was Masahiko Kobe, Iron Chef Italian.  

Iron Chef Chen Kenichi

While I enjoyed watching all of the Iron Chefs produce creative dishes, the one chef who I always seemed to root for the most was Iron Chef Kenichi.  The official records of the Iron Chef reveal that Chef Kenichi had the most losses of any Iron Chef, but that did not matter to me.  Chef Kenichi brought a Sichuan-inspired flair to his dishes, which earned him the nickname, "The Szechuan Sage." His dishes always left me hungry and his cooking inspired me to dabble with Chinese cuisine.  

Long after the show ended, and the reruns stopped, I came across Chen Kenichi's cookbook, Iron Chef Chen's Knockout Chinese.  While the book has sat on a shelf for a very long time, I have been wanting to make a dish from its recipes.   I paged through it one day and found a recipe for "Chinese-Style Steak."  Chef Chen writes that this was his favorite recipe as a child.  "If my mother said, 'Steak for dinner tonight,'" he recounts, "my head would be filled with mouth-watering visions all day at school."  The chef would head "straight home on those days" for that steak dinner.  

With that background, I thought that would be a good recipe for one of my Steak Nights. The recipe is incredibly easy to make.  That simplicity seems quite ironic for a chef who made some very complex recipes during his Iron Chef Battles.  In the end, this is just another lesson that has been become a theme in my cooking adventures.  Simplicity can be perfection.

(One last note: I did not have any watercress for the garnish.  But, who needs greens?  Steak and onions is a meal in and of itself!)

CHINESE-STYLE STEAK

Recipe from Chen Kenichi, 

Iron Chef Chen's Knockout Chinese, pp. 58-59

Serves 1

Ingredients:

1 cut beef tenderloin

Dash each salt and pepper

1 onion

Beef tallow or vegetable oil

1 tablespoon sake

1 teaspoon soy sauce

Watercress, for garnish

Directions:

1.  Prepare the beef and onion.  Score meat diagonally along the surface of the beef and season with salt and pepper.  Thinly slice the onion against the grain.

2.  Cook the beef.  Melt the beef tallow in a wok and add  steak.  Grill on both sides to desired level of doneness and remove from the wok.  Use remaining fat in pan to saute onions.  Add the sake and soy sauce.  

3.  Finish the dish.  Cut steak into bite-size strips, top with sauteed onions and garnish plate with watercress. 

ENJOY!