Tonkatsu

This is one of my favorite Japanese dishes.  I just love it and so easy to make. Tonkatsu is deep fried breaded pork cutlet served with rice, shredded cabbage and a special dipping sauce (buy the one in the picture. it’s the best one and makes a difference)

Use boneless pork, pork loin, pork fillet, etc and cut or pound into 1/2 inch thick fillets. Salt and pepper the meat.

Set up an assembly line of flour, egg, and panko (Japanese bread crumbs).

Salt and pepper the flour and egg too. Cover the pork in flour, then dip in the egg, and cover with panko and deep fry in hot oil until golden brown.

Serve with rice,  shredded cabbage and miso soup.

Japanese Curry

Japanese curry – kare is one of the most popular dishes in Japan and in Korea.  We call it ka lei. It tastes very different than Thai curry or Indian curry but does originate from Indian curry.

If you haven’t had it, get on it. It’s so delicious and so easy to make. Perfect for a cold night when you’re feeling really lazy.

Buy this and buy this brand:

By the way, the ‘HOT’ is not really that spicy so try it.

Anyway, in a soup pot, add some oil and cook bite size pieces of meat. I like to use chicken breast, my mom likes to use beef tenderloin. It’s up to you.

Then add some diced carrots, potatoes and onion. Saute for about 4 minutes.

Then add about 4-5 cups of water and the curry mix.  It’s in a block and you break it into 4 pieces.  Make sure the curry mix gets broken up and mixed in well.

Bring it to a boil and then let it simmer for about 15 minutes.

I think there’s also directions on the back of the box too. In any case, super easy and takes less than 30 minutes. You can attempt to make the curry from scratch but I think the only people who really know how to do that well are like 80 year old Korean and Japanese grandmas, so just use the box.

Serve over white rice. yummmm.  You can put out some soy sauce for people to add if they want to it.

p.s. Trav–I’m so happy you liked this. You’re slowly turning Asian and I love it!

I figured it out!

I figured out why SPAM is so prevalent in Asian cultures and cooking. As I suspected, SPAM was brought over by the Americans during their military occupation in Okinawa, Japan, Korea, Philippines and also Guam and Hawaii. Fresh meat was difficult to get to American soldiers, so during WWII, there was a large use of SPAM. Afterwards, there was such a surplus that natives from each territory began introducing it into their traditional dishes. In Okinawa, Japan, SPAM is so popular that they even serve it in a traditional Okinawan dish called chanpuru (see photo below). South Korea is one of the 3 largest countries to consume SPAM. The other two are the US and UK.

Spam Recipe Number 2

SPAM Musubi

A take off Japanese sushi, this is an incredibly popular snack in Hawaii.

There’s lots of variations. Some use a soy sauce/sugar marinade to fry and carmelize the SPAM, some add furikake (a dry Japanese condiment of seaweed, sesame seeds, sometimes dry fish, there’s lots of different kinds of furkake).

This one is the simplest.

Form the sticky rice into a rectangle shape and try to pack down the rice as much as possible. Lay on a piece of fried SPAM and wrap with a strip of nori (seaweed). That’s it!

My homage to SPAM

Spam is amazing and I don’t want to hear it from anybody that it’s not. If you eat hot dogs, chicken nuggets, any fast food, you cannot diss on my SPAM. period! It’s my comfort food.

Asian people eat a lot of SPAM and I have no idea why, but we do and we love it. Open up any Korean family’s pantry and there will be SPAM. Japanese too. The McDonald’s in Hawaii has SPAM, egg and rice breakfast meals and for this reason I love Hawaii. well other reasons too, but this helps.

Anyway, I grew up eating SPAM, rice, and egg along with some kimchee of course and it’s my favorite comfort meal.

I have a few SPAM recipes to share and you can try it or you can be lame and use pork or beef instead or you can keep it vegetarian.  Suprisingly, a lot of Korean food has vegetarian dishes contrary to all the Korean BBQ hoopla.

Anyway, it’s going to be a special SPAM series so check back!