Dainty Bites

Made this for cherub's lunch today. The poor girl has been sick for the past 2 weeks and I thought that maybe a little of her favourite lunch item would jot her appetite abit. The breaded chicken made before hand and frozen. Yes, you can freeze breaded stuff too. Just think of Bird's Eye Fish Fingers/Fillets. Get the idea? The whole lunch only took me about 15 minutes to prepare. Of cos, that is before counting the washing up, which is still waiting to be done in the sink. The next time round, I am going to try making frozen broccoli to see if it will work for us. (^.^) She can't wait till I grab my camera to start her lunch. Here is how she fared: And, that's all folks!

Another experiment from one of my Japanese cookbooks. I cannot for the life of me figure out what is "きじ", but I must admit that this chicken don taste too yummy for me to be embarassed and not share it. It comes close to tasting like teriyaki chicken, but not quite. Hmm.... Here's how I did it, but please note that I HAVE NOT translated my cookbooks yet, so try at your own risk! === きじ焼きどん - Chicken Don (ala Rene) === Marinate 2 whole deboned chicken breasts with 2 tbsps of sake, 2 tsps of ginger juice and 2 tbsps of soy sauce . Let it sit for 10 minutes. In the meanwhile, prepare the たれ (tare) or sweet soy sauce/gravy. Combine 2 tbsps of sugar, 4 tbsps of mirin and 6 tbsps of soy sauce in a bowl. In a frying pan, heat 1 tbsp cooking oil . Pat dry the chicken breasts and add to the frying pan. Saute until golden brown. Pour the たれ (tare) or sweet soy sauce/gravy over the chicken in the frying pan. Simmer until the sauce thickens slightly, 2 minutes. Serve over 2 bowls

Amongst the books that I bought when I was in Tokyo were some books on freezing food. I know I have blogged about this before and when I saw those books I knew I had to get them. Heck! Translation can come later. So now, everytime when Hubby goes market, I would stash some fresh food away in the freezer for future use. But the prep work can be quite a killer. Just look at the above chicken breast meat for example. I had to debone the chicken breasts, wash, dapped dry with kitchen paper towel and use a cling film to wrapped it tight and then put them into a zipper bag. Then using a straw, suck out all the air to create a vaccum. Freeze them flat to save space. Is that tedious or what?! But the benefits? The food uses like those conveniently store bought prepacked frozen food. I've portioned everything into serving size, so I just take out as much as I need to use. And previously I would be hard pressed to finish cooking all those food in the fridge after a few days they arrive from

After days of yaki udon, I finally ran out of udon and had to turn to my second choice - soba. I am more of a udon person, but the Hubby is a soba person. So I whipped this up for our lunch. I applied the same cooking method as I did with the udon, but the soba turned out gummy instead. So I guess I will have to go easy on the stock and sauce ingredients next time.

One of the most delicious foods that I came across in Tokyo was their pumpkin. I have read that when cook the pumpkins are creamy and very sweet. So I bought a packet of simmered pumpkins in a Tokyo supermarket and took my very first bite of Japanese pumpkin, kabocha - カボチャ. OMG! It was heavenly! Extremely sweet (to the point that my mom asked if it was pre-soaked in syrup before cooking) and the texture is really very creamy. I was sorely tempted to finished all the 6 succulent pieces in the packet by myself, but I managed to savour each morsel of that 2 pieces I managed to snitched away. Haha ... So the above was my recreation of the dish. I made the mistake of asking Hubby to supervise the cooking and leaving him with a very vague (to him, but not to me!) instruction of the done-ness of the kabocha. My instruction was: "It is done with the pumpkin can be forked." Was this very ambigous? Well, it turned out that he simmered it for so long until the pumpkin had began to disi