Tokyo Eats - Roppongi Area Part III

It's taken us a while but hubby and I are slowly exploring the Roppongi area for good food ^.^

This Hainan Jeefan Shokudo in Azabu-Juban was a discovery from last fall. Hubby and his colleagues stumbled upon it and that was that. Funny enough I don't like the Singapore chicken rice, but I'll give them due credit that the chicken rice here is out of this world! My god that breast meat is unbelievably tender and juicy. How do they do it?! Anyway, I prefer their curry to the chicken rice, because it tastes like mum's curry ^.^

Char Siu Chicken

Had a fairly delicious and super easy dinner made using this Lee Kum Kee brand Char Siu Sauce. If you go a Chinese restaurant and see slices of pork being served up coated in a plummy red sauce, that's char siu, or Chinese BBQ.

***Picture from Lee Kum Kee USA.

Normally when I make char siu at home, I use the Char Siu Seasoning package from Noh brand and using pork exclusively. The problem with that is the pork would have to be either grilled or at least broiled in an oven. I have neither, and my toaster oven is not, umm, sufficient or even hot enough to cook meat. Pan frying sounds too greasy for pork, so I used this ready made Lee Kum Kee char siu in a jar and chicken instead ^.^

***Picture from Noh Foods, Inc.

But really I have to credit this Vietnamese cooking blog for giving me the idea of using this Lee Kum Kee ready made char siu sauce with chicken. It wasn't clear to me whether blogger grilled broiled her chicken, but it was clear this sauce yielded yummy results. So I tried it at home ^.^ although via pan frying and not grilling or broiling. There's no need for a recipe, just marinade chicken or pork with a generous coating of this ready made sauce for at least 30 minutes before grilling, broiling, or pan frying! I told you it was super easy! xD

Salmon in Yuzu Sesame Sauce

A very simple dish! Quite easy to make, and the yuzu sesame combination is super tasty!

Here's my recipe for Salmon in Yuzu Sesame Sauce.

Ingredients:

- Salmon, 5-6 slices skin on

- Negi thinly sliced, or scallions chopped, about a handful

Seasonings:

- Sesame oil, 3/4 Tablespoon

- Yuzu vinegar (it's called vinegar, but it's really concentrate, just like the lemon/lime concentrate in the plastic fruit-shaped bottles), 1 teaspoon. Don't go over board with this or it will turn your sauce bitter.

- Soy sauce, 2 Tablespoons

- Sugar, preferably dark brown, 1 heaping teaspoon

Steps:

- Heat pan with sesame oil, sear the salmon skin down until skin is golden brown.

- Mix yuzu vinegar, soy sauce, and sugar together until sugar is all dissolved, pour even over the salmon in the pan.

- Cook for 15 minutes, basting occasionally to coat the salmon well, until the sauce is thickened.

- Right before serving, sprinkle the sliced negi or chopped scallion over the salmon, baste a few times again to coat the negi or scallion well before turning off heat.

- Serve hot with steamed vegetable and rice.

Lazy dinner

My local Coop supermarket has these excellent store brand frozen fried rice so I bought a few bags for days I'm too lazy to cook, like today :P

There are 3 flavors: chicken, pork, and shrimp. I have tried all 3 and I must say they are all equally tasty, not to mention quite convenient as it takes a whole 10 minutes to warm up in a pan :) If I want to dress it up a little, I would dice up a small onion and throw it in first to stir fry, then I crack in an egg and scramble it up. Then in the frozen fried rice. Yum...

This picture shows a mix of chicken and shrimp fried rice. I mixed 2 bags together to make a giant portion so that I have enough to pack a bento for hubby ^.^

The soup I made myself. It is actually a "Japanized" egg drop soup with wakame and enoki, basically Japanese ingredients you don't normally see in the egg drop soups served in the states. I copied this soup from an instant egg drop soup bought also from Coop. It was a very different egg drop soup than what I'm used to, but nonetheless it was good, which was why I copied it :P

Oh, and I prefer Korean nori. Love the sesame oil and salt combination. Sooooo satisfying with rice and furikake.

Coffee Jelly!

One of my favorite dessert in Japan (and Vietnam too!) is coffee jelly! Actually, I had forgotten about it because there is no coffee jelly in the states, but I was quickly reminded of its existence over dinner at Denny's, the day after my arrival! So what else to do but add it to my grocery list?

The first dessert I bought at the grocery wasn't coffee jelly though, it was flan, also known as caramel custard and is surprisingly popular here. I tried a few variety but found none to my liking (too thick, too eggy, too sweet, etc.), so I turned to coffee jelly instead :)

Pictured here is from the brand MeguMilk, but the best brand I've found so far turns out to be a store brand by Coop, a grocery store chain. It was the first coffee jelly I found that wasn't too bitter or sweet. Yum!