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When I first started blogging about cooking meals from What Did You Eat Yesterday, someone was telling me about how he just can’t have the time or the chance to cook it because the ingredients were hard to find. I suppose that raised the challenge for me to find recipes in the series that were not difficult and were fairly easy to recreate in places without Asian groceries.
In this recipe, I try out Shirou’s dinner after an interesting day at the Tominaga’s.
The Tominaga family is one of my favorite recurring characters in What Did You Eat Yesterday? They’re good “normal” people who make an effort in accommodating people in their lives. So even when one of Kayoko’s friends, Shirou, turns out to be gay, they try their best to make him feel welcome in their family.
Hence one afternoon, Tominaga-papa thought it’d be best to introduce Shirou to one of his gay friends! The result is a very interesting afternoon for the “unconventional”1 gay man, Shirou Kakei.
While pondering on his new friend’s Gilbert-esque lover, Shirou makes this fantastic cheap dinner for Kenji.
Green Peas Rice with Chicken Mushroom in Tomato Sauce
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Green Peas Rice
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Ingredients: 1 cup of rice, 1/2 cup (100g) of peas, cooking sake (optional), salt
Instructions: In a pot or your rice cooker, put your cup of rice and the instructed amount of water it requires to cook it. Shirou suggests to get a ladle of water out because you’ll be adding cooking sake instead. However, if it’s unavailable, you can just leave the water as is and a bit of salt. Add the peas after and cook in your rice cooker.
P.S. I took some liberties by adding a bit of butter in my rice. That always makes things a little better. :3
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Chicken Mushroom in Tomato Sauce
Ingredients:
- 500g of chicken thigh fillets, cut in bitesized pieces
- 500g mushrooms (as much as you want, really, as to what kind, bunashimeji was used but I used pearl mushroom)
- 1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
- 1 onion, cut lengthwise
- 1 can of whole tomatoes
- 1 chicken bouillon/stock cube
- Herbs, salt, pepper to taste
Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
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Instructions:
- Fry the chicken thigh fillets until it changes color and the fat is rendered. Don’t over cook it so that it won’t be dry when you cook it again. Set aside when cooked.
- Fry the onions and garlic next until it changes color. Then fry the mushrooms until it wilts.
- Add the can of tomatoes, and yes add all of it. Break the the whole tomato pieces for a bit and then let the mushrooms simmer in the sauce for a while. Also, don’t waste the leftover sauce. Put some water in the can and add it to the sauce. After a few minutes, add the chicken and then let that simmer.
- Add the chicken stock cube, salt, pepper, and if you want, herbs and chilli (those parts are my suggestions!)
- Let it simmer until the sauce is nice and thick.
Shirou’s trick: Don’t waste the leftover sauce in your canned tomato. Put some water inside and pour those juices back into your sauce!
Khursten’s note: When Shirou cuts up his veggies, he uses the term aramijin, which is just basic chopping, but I thought you guys might be interested how the Japanese cut up their veggies. I think it’s no different than what they do in usual television shows, but yeah, it’s really nice and helps making things look pretty.
I really loved these dishes for their simplicity and how it’s easy to adapt them. I think you don’t need to use chicken even. If you have fish or pork, you can use those as well! Best part about these dishes was that they tasted really awesome given the little effort I did in making them. These were totally good eats and the left overs are also awesome the next day.
So what did you eat yesterday? If you had an awesome meal this week, share a photo and tweet, tumblr, or instagram it with the hashtag#whatdidieatyesterday! You might even win a copy of this comic!
- seriously, what is conventional in terms of sexual identities, right?