Casual Japanese Lifestyle

Silver week is coming soon! Which basically means that next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday (Respect for the aged day, National People's day and Autumnal Equinox day respectively), I have no classes - w00t for 5 days weekend.

Therefore, more trivial study/eat/sleep/hang out combination this week and more crazy shenanigans to come this coming weekend, with planned trips to Osaka and really explore the city deeply, such as denden town, downtown Osaka - and if I'm lucky, check out a french maid cafe (of course only for academic research purposes). For now, I just returned from school and stopped at the grocery shop to buy a couple ingredients to cook supper tonight - on mah' brand new bicycle (of course when I say brand new, I mean second hand and rusty).

 

Look at this fine piece of metal awesomness. I'm gonna' get all the ladies with this baby - it even comes with its own hoe' carrier at the front.

I just finally mastered my hiraganas (Japanese's first alphabet - yes...there are three alphabets in Japanese) and did pretty well in my quiz today. Heck, I even noticed that I can catch some words here and there on the signs and billboards on the streets, so I don't feel as illiterate as I did back when  I first arrived here three weeks ago. Also, I've started looking up recipes for Japanese dishes and convinced myself to try to cook every single one of them - and of course show you guys the results of my silly exploits. 

Without a further ado, I've decided to make Teriyaki Beef - and when I say 'make', I really do mean making the sauce from scratch and none of that buying the sauce pre-made bullshit. Alright people, here's how it's done;

Ingredients

1- 1/2 cup of soy sauce

2- 1/2 cup of mirin (mirin is very sweet rice wine). Mirin/Soysauce 1:1 

3- One ginger (at least 2 grams)

4- 1/4 cup of Sake wine (rice wine)

5- Beef either pre-cut into strips, or you cut them yourself lazy bum.

6- 1 table spoon of flour mixed with 2 table spoons of water

7- One onion 

8- One green pepper 

9- Rice

Alright, once you figured out how to buy this shit from the Japanese supermarket (trust me it's not easy, especially when you don't understand any of the labels). Throw the soy sauce, mirin, sake into a bowl and start chopping up your ginger with the use of a gratter (you know that thing that grates cheese?) until you have a decent pile weighing about 2 grams. Take the ginger strips with your hands and squeeze the juice into the mixture - stir to mix everything up properly.

Take out the meat and with the use of the fork, puncture some holes into it - this will make it easier for the meat to absorb the teriyaki marinade. Throw the meat into a ziplog bag along with some of the terriyaki sauce (not the whole thing, just like enough to slightly cover the meat. Remove all air from the ziplog bag, seal it and store it into the fridge for one hour - allowing the teriyaki to really seep into the meat.

Meanwhile, chop up some onions and green peppers and turn on the stove. Place the rest of the teriyaki sauce onto a frying pan at about medium high heat and wait for the sauce to start boiling. When that happens, throw the mixture of flour and water into the pan - this will make the sauce become slightly more thicker. Actually, if you have corn starch, use that since it will be better - flour was just an improvised subsitute I had to use cuz explaining what corn starch is in Japanese is FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE.

When the sauce boils and evaporates the alcohol out of it, turn off the stove and let it sit on the pan. Transfer the sauce into an appropriate container for later and future use. After one hour, take out the meet and throw it onto the frying pan after putting a bit of vegetable oil first. As the meat cooks, throw in the vegetables and pour the teriyaki sauce lightly and watch it as it glazes the meat. (That's actually what teriyaki stands for - teri (glaze) yaki (grill). When the meat and veggies are cooked to your liking, I of course like it medium rare, it's ready to serve onto plain white race which is conveniently waiting warmly for you in your rice cooker. Of course that is a japanese thing, so you guys will have to cook rice the regular way with boiling water and stuff.

And theeeeen DADAM

 
 

They often say your first cooked meals will taste like ass, cuz you suck, but man did it taste INCREDIBLE. I must have a genius knack for cooking cuz it was really in-fucking-credible. If you guys want to try it at home, let me know how it went - except for Sara, I don't want to be responsible for your house burning down.

Alright, this is all for now, I'm gonna finish eating this teriyaki goodness and catch up on some readings and homework. Laterz y'all.