Today's Recipe

Ⅲ. Meat

1. Beef　And Potato

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Beef And Potatoes
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　(niku-jaga)

　This recipe is often called 'the Mom's taste' (ofukuro no aji). Personally, I named it summer sukiyaki. Sukiyaki is a pot dish which is often enjoyed in winter time as it is cooked on the table. This Beef and Potatoes tastes so similar to sukiyaki. My mother cooked this when we wanted to eat sukiyaki in summer because it was too hot to sit at the table with burning heat and to eat as we cook. I follow my mother’s example.

4 servings

1 piece (2 tablespoons) suet or vegetable oil such as canola, corn,…
450 g (1 pound) thinly sliced beef, cut into 7 cm (3-inch) lengths or hashed irregular shaped beef slices
　 (gyu no kiriotoshi)
1 teaspoon of Japanese pepper powder (kona-zansho), optional
300 g (2/3 pound) yam noodles (shirataki), rinsed and cut into 7cm (3-inch) lengths
2 large onions, sliced
5 medium size potatoes, peeled and cut into 4 - 6 pieces
5 tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup Japanese saké
4 tablespoons Japanese soy sauce (shoyu)
1/2 cup water

1.	Heat a pan, melt the suet, rubbing it around the pan or just heat the vegetable oil. Sauté the beef until brown. If the meat sticks to the pan, sprinkle in a little sugar. Sprinkle in 1/2 potion of the Japanese pepper.
2.	Add yam noodles, onions and potatoes, stirring well at each addition. Cover the pan, and cook over medium heat for 5 minutes or until edges of the potatoes turn translucent, shaking the pan now and then.
3.	Add the sugar, saké, soy sauce, and water and cover the pan. Cook over medium heat for 20 minutes or until most of the liquid is absorbed. Shake the pan a few times while cooking. However, do not stir the ingredients with a spatula or any other utensil, or the potatoes may be broken into small pieces.
4.	Sprinkle in the remained Japanese pepper. Serve while hot.

Note:
Some local potatoes get mushy while cooking. The potato named “May Queen”, however, keeps its shape for longer time than other species. Or you could add the potatoes a few minutes after adding the seasonings. I mentioned in the page of Topics of this Web page, rice is Japanese staple food. Rice has been the most important food for the Japanese. Other dishes than rice are eaten in order to enjoy more the delicious taste of rice. From my experiences through teaching Japanese cooking to the foreign residents in Tokyo over the past 35 years, I would say most of the foreign people who have lived for certain period of time in Japan definitely have become Japanese rice lovers.

Keiko　Hayashi