Dinners: The BIG Post; The Second Coming

So as always, I cook, I take pictures and I adore my photographs because honestly I'm a bit of an egotist when it comes to cooking and really only when it comes to cooking and truthfully I like to stroke my own ego on my cooking and have it looked upon by others; guilty pleasure. Who doesn't have them? And as mentioned in the past, it's hoped that I can do this and others will find it interesting and enjoy the post as well; win win, right? Well beginning, I've been cooking some strange things.. I've been branching out and typically fixing a rotating menu of Spicy, Sweet and Savory dishes. Course I'm still cooking Japanese, Japanese is my favorite style of cooking so you're probably shit out of luck if you're just dead set on seeing me make something Italian, I've honed my skills with Japanese cooking and I think if I do toot my own horn that I'm pretty darn good.

We start the cavalcade of meals off with a simple one; Gyu-kure ( Beef-Curry ) and this is probably something anyone could make. It's a spicy one, the actual Curry Sauce I created using a mixture of spices including paprika, pepper, salt and ginger while a thickening agent was added in the form of a little bit of coconut rum and an egg, there was also a bit of sake thrown in there for flavour and of course a little bit of  tabasco sauce and soy-sauce, most Japanese cooking utilizes soy-sauce. The Anpan strangely enough on this night decided that it was apparently going to grow a butt-hole as the top of it strangely deformed and mutated in the oven leaving the browned Anko toasted slightly by the oven looking suspiciously like.. Well.. Yeah.. But there were no complaints of it tasting like shite, just that it opened James' sinuses.

This was a colourful and rather large dish I made; Suteki ( Simply 'Steak' ), although steak doesn't seem particularly Japanese off first mention, it all depends on how you cook it. This was an entry into 'sweet' and the sweet came in the form of a unique idea I suddenly had while cooking a new batch of Ume no raisu purin ( Plum-Rice Pudding ), I decided a steak may be delicious if it were cooked Japanese style and added with a vegetable spiked sweet Ume Shoyu ( Plum-Soy Sauce ), the sauce of course made by a list of my own ingredients which I won't detail because I'm feeling slightly territorial of the recipe but I will mention as should be expected, plums were a factor. This shit was gone before I knew it, it was clearly something James had enjoyed; he vacuumed it up. As for the Anpan? This time you may notice a kind of purple-ish colour on it's edge, it's a jelly candy which I placed inside the Anpan and unfortunately which caused it to rupture slightly. Nevertheless the Anpan became somewhat reminiscent of a Jelly Doughnut if you were to add a bit of Anko ( Red Bean Paste ) into it and James seemed to think that worked just fine.

Next dish up; Ebi to Sake Chanpuru ( Chanpuru being noodles typically with meat or fish and vegetables ), this was an interesting one to cook and it took an interestingly pretty form as I used the two stalks of broccoli as garnish which came out looking very pleasing. This one was an entry in spicy as it was a Supaishiyashi-sosu ( Spicy-Coconut Sauce ) that I made for the Chanpuru, of course coconut rum, sake, ginger, an egg for a thickening agent, a little bit of sweetener, a good bit of tobasco and a little bit of salt. I had tasted the sauce before serving, while it was spicy it was incredibly tasty if I do say so myself, I've been quite proud of my sauces lately as I've recently learned a few tricks from repeated viewing of the Food Network and Cooking Channel. Thank you cable!

Tori to Ebi Teiryaki; Teriyaki is self explanatory and while most Teriyaki are deep fried with a slightly dredged flour or panko coating ( Panko being Japanese bread crumbs ) I actually did these a bit different because they were an entry into sweet. Put simply, I marinated them overnight in sweetener and a little of the sauce I had made for them ( A slight tweak on my Supaishiyashi-sosu, sans spicy and changing it for sweet ) and fried them in that before bringing them to the pan to finish cooking and to cook the oils out and the vegetables in. The dish came out looking quite pretty and if I recall correctly, I actually added a small piece of chocolate into the Anpan which guessing and considering the taste of Anko and Anpan to begin with probably went extremely well with both and was surprisingly noticed by James whom commented on it and confirmed it was indeed good. I've been really into bell-peppers lately for some reason also as a point, I don't know why but they're extremely fun to cook with and truthfully, what doesn't a bell-pepper fit with? ...You can't really answer that, can you? They're adaptable little fuckers.

That finally brings us to tonight's dish, my most recent dish at the time of posting and it goes by a simple name; Toriniku ( Chicken-Meat ), it is as it's name suggests rather simply put, chicken meat. Specifically I used Chicken Legs because they're more easily adapted for what I was aiming to do with this, I stewed them and anyone that's ever stew cooked something knows that big cuts of meat can be difficult to turn and cook evenly if you're not fully submerging them. In my case, I was cooking them in a thick savory sauce and so they were only half submerged, using chicken legs allowed me to use my prongs which I utilized to gently grip the chicken legs and turn them over, coating them evenly and cooking them evenly in the sauce. When all was said and done what I had on my plate was a delicious looking dish if I do say so myself, an Anpan whose cheesy innards ( Yes, cheese. Velveeta and a small bit of cream cheese with the Anko ) had burst fourth like so many puss-filled zits and a fresh bowl of Ume no raisu purin. James seemed to have liked this one a lot, I've still yet to ever get that 'enthusiasm' I've aimed for, but what the hell? I'll keep trying. Some day I'll do it and on that day I'll probably shit my britches because I'll have coincidentally died on spot from shock. At least I'll die happy.

....Now someone give me a goddamn cooking show on the Food Network or a job as a Chef!