Food Blogging: Japanese Style Curry Rice

Curry Rice

Type: Japanese

Difficulty: Easy

Non-Standard Ingredients: Japanese style curry roux

Grade: C+

It's easy to see why curry rice is one of the most popular foods in Japan.  It is one of the quintessential Japanese comfort foods, a dish eaten both in restaurants and made at home, it can be made with expensive ingredients turned into a gourmet treat, or bought pre-made in a pouch for a dollar and poured over some rice by broke college students, or it can be anything in between.  No matter how you eat it, where it comes from, or how much it costs, curry rice is always good.

This is one of the very few recipes where I'll advocate using something pre-prepared as the critical part of a main dish.  Normally I'm all about making things from scratch but trying to make your own Japanese style curry sauce that tastes right is an exercise in futility; so use a curry roux from the store.  I listed it as a non-standard ingredient, but I've found Japanese style curry roux for sale in Wal-Mart so it isn't exactly rare or hard to find.

There are two major brands in Japan, House is the most popular, followed by S&B.  I prefer S&B, but House is perfectly fine too.

As a comfort food, it's hard to beat.  Warm, filling, spicy, savory, filled with onions and carrots, it warms you on a cold night, and tastes just fine on a muggy summer night, it's great for nights alone or nights with the family.  There's never a bad time to eat a plate of curry rice.   Eat it with your family along with a conversation, or eat it watching Netflix by yourself.  It's also delicious put in the fridge and nuked for lunch the next day.  Hell, I've eaten it for breakfast from time to time.

Curry's introduction to Japan shows how secluded Japan had kept itself during the Edo Period.  India isn't exactly right next door to Japan, but it isn't that far away.  Yet curry didn't come to Japan until it was brought by British sailors in the 1870's.  

Which is why Japanese style curry has a distinctly British aspect and doesn't much resemble any any of the Indian curries, or Thai curries, or really any other curry.  Basically it's sort of like beef stew with some fancy spices served over rice.

Japanese recipes always call for potatoes, but I find that redundant since it's served over rice and so I usually leave potatoes out.  Also, if I leave the potatoes out all I have to wash is the pot I make the curry in and the rice pot.

Below is a "recipe", but really it's just my take on following the directions on the box of curry roux. This isn't just an easy recipe, it's the sort of thing a person can do if they've never cooked before in their lives.

Ingredients
1 Package curry roux
1.5 pounds thin sliced beef
1 pound crinkle cut frozen carrots (or fresh if you're super fancy)
1.5 pounds thin sliced onion
1 serving rice per person (short grain rice or sushi rice is best)

Following the instructions for your rice cooker, get the rice going.  It should be finished by about the time you're done with the curry.  If you don't have a rice cooker, I'm very sorry for you and highly recommend you get one, but in the meantime you can make your rice in a pot (don't stir it!).

Heat a tablespoon or so of oil in a very large skillet or a pot.  Slice the onions into long thin strips, and saute them over high heat until slightly browned.  While that's happening cut the beef into bite sized chunks, slice the curry roux into small pieces for quicker integration, and nuke the carrots for a few minutes to get thawed.

Don't brown the meat, normally you'd want to but for thin sliced beef and this sort of dish it'll get tough if you do.

Reduce heat to medium, add carrots, beef, the amount of water called for by the curry roux, and the cut up curry roux.   Stir until it begins bubbling, then reduce heat to low and lid.  Allow to simmer until the rice is done.

I find that the normal S&B is a bit less currylike than I prefer, so I always add a bit of black pepper and some extra curry powder.  Taste it and decide for yourself if you want to add extra spices or not.

Dish up some rice, pour the curry on top, grab a fork, and dig in, life will be better with curry.

Food Blogging: Rigatoni alla Genovese

Pasta alla Genovese

Type: Italian
Difficulty: Easy
Non-Standard Ingredients: None
Grade: C

I'd never made la Genovese before, but prompted by a posting on reddit, I decided to give it a shot.  I stuck with the most traditional recipes I could find, looking for that authentic taste, and I think I'd have liked it better if I'd moved away from the traditional a bit.

For my taste, it's kind of bland and way to sweet.

My partner said she thought it was pretty good, but that she preferred a more savory sauce herself. Our kid said he thought it was OK in his "I'm being very polite" tone of voice, and then asked me not to make it again.  Unfortunately he's quite picky so that wasn't a surprise. How a pair of foodies like us wound up with a picky eater is a mystery.

My hope had been that, like all the people singing the praises of la Genovese say, the simplicity would make things amazing.  Either my palate is too unrefined, or I did something wrong, or it just plain isn't the sort of thing I like.  I'm leaning towards the last option.

Make no mistake, it wasn't bad.  I just felt kind of meh about it.  If I were to make it again I'd add rosemary maybe, or perhaps oregano and basil, maybe some tarragon to go with the onion. Something.

It is not a short recipe.  Total cooking time is around six hours, but your involvement is about 30 minutes of prep and occasionally stirring.  Not a great meal for a weeknight, but you can make it on the weekend and still get in your reading or Netflixing or gaming or what have you.

You begin with a mirepoix, or at least the carrot and celery parts of a mirepoix, because you'll be adding plenty of onion very soon. I used a rib of celery and a carrot, some recipes called for two celery and two carrots but most called for one so I went along.

Then the meat, in my case 2.8 pounds of bone in shoulder roast, nice and fatty, bone for extra flavor, and all in all a good choice of meat for a long braise, which is basically what la Genovese is.

I cut it into bite sized chunks, browned it, then added the carrot and celery, also the bones and all the meat I couldn't cut off the bones.

dang that's a lot of onions

That's 7 large yellow onions, one onion short of 5.5 pounds, six thin sliced and ready to go the seventh left for scale in the photo then sliced and added to the bowl.

They filled the pot, almost to the brim. Slapped a lid on, gave it stir every now and then, and an hour later it looked like this:

Why no, I didn't add any liquid, that's all onion and meat juice.

After letting it cook for a total of five hours or so, removing the bones and pulling all the cooked meat off I could, and then letting it gently boil down with the lid off to get a bit less watery, it looked delicious.

The recipes all said a big cylindrical pasta was best, so I went with rigatoni.  Mixed the pasta with the sauce, plated, and the result was indeed a lovely looking dish of pasta.  I added Parmesan, the real stuff not that nasty crap from Kraft, per the recipe, before I ate, but took a picture of just the sauce and pasta.

And it was.... ok.  Obviously a lot of people like it, but as I noted earlier I found it a bit meh, and too sweet.  I knew it'd be sweet, you can't cook down 5.5 pounds of onions for hours without getting a sweet result, but I was unprepared for how almost cloyingly sweet it was.

Again, it wasn't bad.  I just didn't care much for it.  Which is a shame, because I love onions, and really wanted to like it.  Oh well, I may make a less traditional batch with some herbs and spices added someday.

Full Recipe:

2.8 pounds of fatty beef with bone in, or 2 pounds of leaner boneless beef.
5 to 7 pounds onions
1 rib celery
1 carrot
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Rigatoni or your favorite large cylindrical pasta

Thin slice the onions, this will take a while, there's a lot.  If you have a mandolin that'd be the quickest and most dangerous way to get the job done.

Cut the beef into bite sized cubes and brown with a touch of olive oil in the pot, including the bones if you've got bones.  Once browned, add the carrot and celery, saute for a moment, then reduce heat to medium add the onions.  All of them.

Add salt and pepper, then lid and allow to cook for ten or fifteen minutes before stirring for the first time.  Lid again, and give a stir every fifteen or so minutes for the next four to five hours until cooked into a delicious mass with the onions mostly dissolving into delicious oniony mushy goodness.

Once cooked to mush, remove the bones, pick off any meat left on the bones and reintroduce to the sauce, and discard the bones.

Remove the lid and allow to boil down until it thickens, depending on how watery your onions were, how tight your lid was, etc this could take anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour.

Prepare your pasta ever so slightly al dente, once it is finished mix with the sauce.  I used a pound of pasta and found it to be not quite enough, I had sauce left over.

Plate, add a healthy sprinkling of fresh grated Parmesian cheese, and broil util the cheese is nice and melty.

You're finished!