This is a simple rice dish.
Brown rice.
Braised fried soy curd, which we call “Kitsune” in Japan.
A vegan egg.
Yum!
Kara-age is a Japanese style fried food, usually made with chicken.
Chicken is cut into bite sized pieces, marinated, coated with some coating flour (many have their own special coating mix), and fried.
This was one of my favorite chicken dishes my mother would make when I was a kid.
This turned out perfect!
Look how crispy outside.
Scrumptious!
My husband and I devoured all in no time.
This is how I made it…
- Cut one pack of firm tofu into chunks. Put them in a container and freeze.
- Microwave to thaw. Press to remove excess water (<-important!).
- Mix about one tablespoon of sugar and one table spoon of soy sauce, and sprinkles of garlic powder, onion powder, and powdered ginger, and coat the tofu with this mixture. Let it marinated for 10-15 minutes or so.
- Press again to remove the liquid. It’s okay if they crumble a little.
- Put some crumbles together, hold it tightly (<- important!) to make bite-sized pieces; I put the tofu in a plastic bag and did this over the plastic to keep the tofu from sticking to my hand.
- Make a mixture of 1:1 all purpose flour and corn starch. Coat each tofu chunks with this. Fry in oil until crispy.
I like trying new things.
I’ve tried different fillings for my vegan pot stickers.
From that experience, I’ve learned what I like and I don’t like.
So now I stick with what I like, which means I use the same mixture…
It’s super simple.
Basically garlic, ginger, onion, cabbage, and green onion.
I’ve tried tofu and mushrooms.
I typically like them in any dish, but for some reason they didn’t work out for pot stickers.
Love how crispy they are.
Once in a while I get craving for Japanese curry.
Japanese curry goes with anything, from rice, to udon, to spaghetti, to ramen noodles.
A bowl of hot soba noodle soup is always a good idea.
This doesn’t look fancy, but these are some of my favorite toppings.
Omu-Yakisoba is basically fried noodles (yakisoba) covered with thin omelet.
It’s a popular Japanese dish.
Another version you may have heard is “Omu-Rice” which is fried rice covered with thin omelet.
I like my Yakisoba with lots of veggies.
Looks pretty good already.
Vegan omelet is not that hard to make.
I typically puree/blend tofu and chickpea flour and use it as a base (and then you can add whatever to flavor and color, such as nutritional yeast, turmeric (for color), etc.) and add water to thin the batter until it achieves your preferred consistency.
Then you cook it in a pan like a crepe.
Drizzle Okonomi sauce (thick and sweet Japanese glaze) and homemade vegan cheese, and sprinkle Aonori (Japanese dried seaweed flakes).
Sometimes I think I got a good idea, but I’m nervous until I have the first bite.
I was feeling pretty good about this.
Well, cheeseburger tastes good, and sushi is always good.
So why not, right?
Well, it turned out that this was a good idea!
There are a lot of food that people get excited about when they visit Japan.
You should definitely enjoy authentic Japanese ramen, Sushi, and many snacks with sweet red beans for sure.
But what many do not know is that bakeries in Japan are absolutely awesome, and you don’t want to miss checking them out.
People take bread seriously in Japan, and there are so many bakeries from fancy expensive ones to tiny inexpensive places where only three customers can be inside together.
Their selection is huge too, from classics like croissants and baguettes, some more fancy European kinds, to things unique to Japan.
“Sozai” or deli bread is one of those very Japanese.
Whenever my husband sees me making these, he always says it brings him back to Japan.
“Sozai” bread has stuffing or toppings, such as cheese, bacon, sausage, mayo, chicken, ketchup, etc, not sweetened things like cream or read beans, and are eaten as a meal.
The bread itself is usually soft and slightly sweet, which makes this “Sozai” bread extremely tasty and popular among everybody, including small kids.
My mother used to make these when I was little, and she had several different versions.
Corn & mayo was one of them, and the only one that I could re-create as vegan.
I also added some curry powder for additional flavor and scallion for some fresh taste and the green color.
I hope my mother approves this change.
By the way these were what they looked like before a sprinkle of chopped scallion.
(You have to admit the green adds a nice touch!)
This is great for lunch or an after-school snack.
For lunch I like to serve it with some salad or/and soup.
This is what I wanted to make with my first homemade Chinese noodles (previous post).
It’s called “Ankake Yakisoba” in Japanese, but basically it’s “crispy fried noodles with vegetables and thick sauce”.
This was my first time making this dish with homemade noodles, and I absolutely loved it!
Homemade noodles really make a huge difference.
There are two important things about this dish, and one is that you want to make sure that your noodles are fried super crispy so that you can really enjoy the great combination of the crispy noodles and thick sauce, which is the second important thing (the sauce has to have the right thickness, not too thin, but not too thick either!).
YUM!!
Ramen for lunch!
To tell the truth, I couldn’t decide if I wanted Ramen or Mapo Tofu-Wood Ear.
What do you do when that happens?
Well, you have both!
This was SO GOOD!!
I found beautiful wood ear mushrooms at the local Asian grocery store today, and it was perfect for this.
