THE JAPAN NEWS


 

The Yomiuri Shimbun

On a busy morning, it can be challenging to prepare several dishes to pack in a bento lunch to eat later in the day. The fish grill of a Japanese kitchen stove can be a powerful tool for solving this issue.

Many recent stove models have grills that can heat food from both above and below, eliminating the need to turn items over.

“It’s convenient because more than one dish can be cooked without using several pots and pans,” said Satomi Sugiyama, manager of Tokyo Gas Co.’s Food Communication Center.

As an example, Sugiyama showed how to use a grill to prepare four dishes for one bento.

The main dish is grilled chicken in a karaage deep-fried style. Marinate chicken thighs in a mixture of soy sauce, sake and grated ginger. Then wipe off the marinade and coat the chicken with potato starch.
Grilled potato and asparagus with cheese is one of the three side dishes. Peel a potato and cut it into strips. Remove the hard root ends of asparagus and cut diagonally. Mix the two vegetables and divide into two foil cups. Top each cup with butter and grated cheese.

 

The second side dish is simmered hijiki seaweed. Soak it until it gets tender. Cut carrot and aburaage deep-fried tofu into strips. Mix the ingredients with mentsuyu ready-made noodle soup, water and sugar. The mixture should be tightly wrapped in foil.

The final item is a “boiled” egg. Wrap a room-temperature egg in two sheets of tissue before soaking in water. Then wrap the egg in foil. “Cut the foil to a size just big enough to wrap one egg to make it easier to cook all the way through,” Sugiyama said.

The final step is simply to arrange these ingredients on the rack to put in the grill. As the egg requires a longer time for cooking, it will be taken out of the grill last and thus should be positioned in the back. Other ingredients should be placed so as not to be piled up on each other. The surface of the chicken should be lightly coated with vegetable oil.

Set both the upper and lower sides of the grill to high heat. Take out all ingredients — except the egg — after about eight minutes. The egg should be grilled for an additional two minutes and left for five more minutes to take advantage of the remaining heat. Cool it in water and then peel it.

 

The finished chicken will have shed its excess fat and will have a crispy texture, while the cheese-flavored potato and asparagus become aromatic thanks to grilling. The hijiki and egg are moist, almost indistinguishable from the same items simmered or boiled in a pot, because the foil locks in the water.

If you use a grill with heat available only on the upper side, the cooking time should be about 50 percent longer, and you should sometimes check the ingredients. “Meat should be turned over halfway to cook both sides,” Sugiyama said.

Your morning routine can become easier if you marinate chicken and do other prep work on the previous day. You can complete dishes for bento while at the same time making your own breakfast on the stove.

Ingredients

Serves 2:
Karaage-style grilled chicken
8 bite-sized pieces chicken thigh
½ tbsp soy sauce
½ tbsp sake
½ tsp grated ginger
1 tbsp potato starch
Grilled potatoes and asparagus with cheese
½ potato
1 to 2 asparagus spears
6 grams butter
10 grams grated cheese
‘Boiled’ egg
1 egg

Simmered hijiki seaweed
30 grams hijiki (soaked in water)
15 grams carrot
½ sheet of aburaage deep-fried tofu
1 tbsp mentsuyu ready-made noodle soup
(triple-condensed type)
1 tbsp water
2 pinches sugar

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