Cooking; also, Today's Organic Cereal Report

[solarbird]

Last night I made a beef dish that started out as teriyaki beef based on a sauce recipe I found on the web, but which veered sharply towards sukiyaki as I improvised a tiny bit. I liked what came out of it, so I'm posting it here. The sauce is a modified teriyaki sauce; most of the stuff I used are things I always have around anyway.

INGREDIENTS:

Sauce:
1/2 cup mirin
1/3 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic, minced
2/3rds cup dashi stock
Dash of furikake (around 1t, but really to taste)
To revert this to a base teriyaki sauce, remove 1 clove garlic, all dashi, furikake, and rice vinegar, and add 1T sake. If you have no mirin, use sake instead, and add honey - but I don't know how much. I'd guess 2-3T. You need to sweeten the sake a lot, as mirin is just sweet cooking sake and you're trying to replicate that.

Everything else:
1lb beef
8 baby red potatoes (or one large regular potato)
Green onions

PREPARATION:

Mix all sauce ingredients together; stir well to insure that sugar dissolves. Set aside. Slice beef thinly (about 3mm slices is good) and cut slices into segments. Baste beef in sauce for about 10 minutes. While basting, cut potatoes up into small pieces - about, hum, 15mm wide. (A large baby red would be cut into eight pieces.) Slice green onions by cutting off roots, then cutting the dense white base section to make many small rings; cut the stalks into 5cm tubular sections. Then two options, one of which is slower but less complex:

Slower method: Put sauce, beef, and potatoes into a large pan; pepper and cook slowly on medium. The potatoes will take a while. About halfway through, add finely-cut onions; when closer to finish, add 5cm onion sections.

Faster method (saves about, oh, 15 minutes of simmering): Put sauce and beef into large pan, pepper, and cook on medium-high; simultaneously, put cut potatoes into microwave on high for 4 minutes. When beef is browned, add potatoes and reduce heat to medium; simmer for a bit, add finely-cut onions; when closer to finish, add 5cm onion sections.

The resulting broth is similar to sukiyaki in flavour and (I'm pretty sure) can be re-used like sukiyaki sauce. It's missing some of the flavours - particularly the chrysanthemum and yam noodle tastes - but is still very satisfying with much less work. Maybe you could call it Simplified Sukiyaki. ^_^ As prepared, serves four with some leftovers. Serve with rice and salad.

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Also, in Today's Organic Cereal Report:

I've still been poking around trying different organic cereals, as I've mentioned a couple of times before. I note that I'm beginning to be awfully tired of Honey Nut Cheerioes, the regular kind; I've started picking up on kind of a chalky taste to it that I've grown to kind of dislike.

Since last time, I've tried two new cereals, both superficially similar:

Nature's Path Raisin Bran (USDA organic): Not a winner. Crunchy enough with a reasonable texture, but the flakes' taste is kind of bland and uninteresting. The raisons are also not particularly good, and have a tendency to clump together. Not awful, but not very good.

Nature's Path Organic Millet Rice Oatbran Cereal (USDA organic): Grabbed it on a whim, and have been very pleasantly surprised. I've not got a big history of being a fan of either oat or rice cereals, but they've hit some sort of balance in this one which combines the tastes and produces an unexpectedly flavourful without being in your face about it cereal. (Honestly, who needs breakfast cereal to be in your face in the morning? Certainly not me.) The impression held up across three tastings, so I'm adding this one to my regular rotation, probably to replace Honey Nut Cheerioes.

I really like cereal. Can you tell? ^_^

Comments

[domestinatrix.livejournal.com]

Honestly, who needs breakfast cereal to be in your face in the morning?

Better in your face than on it.

[solarbird]

<snerk>

perhaps I am still not getting enough sleep. ^_^

[lickingtoad.livejournal.com]

I had some Cinnamon Toast Crunch the other day, and it was all "IN YO FACE, lickingtoad! WHAT NOW?! WHAT NOW?!"

Yeah, 7:00 AM isn't the time. :D

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Even though it's not something I'll probably make (just not a big fan of Japanese food), It warms my heart to see such a clearly written and laid out recipe. It seems like it should be an easy thing, but I see far too many people writing mangled, confusing or otherwise unhelpful recipes.

I'll have to recommend this to a couple of friends who do like Japanese.

Also, I am a big fan of Millet, so I'm happy to see someone seems to have managed to work that into a cereal pretty well. I'll have to pick up a box of that one of these days.

[solarbird]

Even though it's not something I'll probably make (just not a big fan of Japanese food)
sukiyaki is SO GOOD tho', particularly fresh off the grill.

It warms my heart to see such a clearly written and laid out recipe.
I was kind of worried it was hard to figure out. My timings are very ambiguous here. Yay not!

And yeah, get some of that cereal. I've seen it at Top Foods and Thriftway and some other places, it doesn't seem difficult to find, unlike some varieties.

[wytwolf.livejournal.com]

Oh man, that recipe sounds great. I have got to try that... I just got a bento set, I'm thinking this would make a nice lunch. Thanks for sharing!

sometimes you have to put your food in its place

[blues-kun.livejournal.com]

That recipe sounds fucking delicious.

Also, yay cereals.