The Twelve Days of Japan: Oishii desu!

EHHH??!!??
[/Japanese voice]

I've really fallen behind on these posts, but now I finally come back to you with a detailed account of my trip to Japan this April!

Get ready because you're in for a lot of reading....

Dinner Recipe # 097: Curry Vegetable Tofu

It's not often that I will actually cook a meal for myself (ie. non-microwaveable), but when I do it tends to me extremely simple. Today I'd like to share one of my secret recipes with the rest of the Internet, so prepare yourself to be underwhelmed with the amount of effort involved!

Frozen Organic Surprise

Lunch time at work for me usually means something involving a loaf of bread, the salad bar or take-out, and it is rare I deviate from this pattern. In Wegman's the other day, I decided to cruise the organic/natural section a little more intently then usual and found these Organic Bistro line of frozen meals. There were only like 3-4 kinds, including this "Thai Style Yellow Curry with Chicken" and they all looked promising. Normally I get all my frozen meals from Trader Joe's, and even then I don't spend more than like $4 a piece. Also, I only eat them at home. But here I was, on my lunch shopping trip from work, and I thought "fuck it... I'm going to GO CRAZY AND BUY THIS FROZEN MEAL FOR LUNCH, EVEN THOUGH IT'S NOT ON SALE" (it's difficult and pathetic to explain why this is a big deal for me in any way at all).

Not the actual picture I should have taken to exemplify the following point...

So when I get back to the office to pop this thing in the microwave, the first thing I notice is that the chicken appears to be raw. Uncooked, frozen chicken in a frozen dinner? That seemed ridiculous, so I asked my co-worker what he thought and he was equally perplexed. Then I noticed the little note at the bottom of the cooking instructions:

* Internal temperature needs to reach 165° F as measured by a food thermometer in several spots

What the hell? That's way too much effort for a frozen meal and it only further supports my thoughts of the chicken not being cooked yet.

Then I calmed down and thought about it for a second... obviously this thing made it to the shelf somehow, so I'm sure they know what they're doing. I also noticed how the rest of the stuff in the bowl looked pretty fresh and "real", for lack of a better word, so maybe they're on to something here

 

After playing global thermonuclear war with it, the chicken still bothered me. It looked like, and had the consistency of tuna, maybe a side effect from being cooked in a microwave? No idea. All I do know is that it was actually the best chicken I've ever tasted out of a frozen meal. It was super tender, juicy and overall had a good taste. In addition to that, all of the vegetables tasted equally as fresh. This came as a real surprise, especially since it wasn't even in a special cooking container. It makes all the people at Hot Pockets and Stouffer's look like assholes for taking years to develop those reflective sleeves and cooking trays only to have this company get the job done with nothing more than a paper bowl in a loose cellophane bag.

After mixing all the ingredients together

Last but not least, the actual curry sauce was pretty good, too. The best part is that there was just enough of it to go around and the rest of the items weren't swimming in it. All of the ingredients were allowed to "speak for themselves" and all was right in the world.

So yeah, I'd say this was probably one of the best frozen meals I've ever had, and I've been around the block a few times when it comes to frozen meals. If you've got $5 that you're committed on spending in the frozen foods section, I don't think you'd be disappointed with one of these.

From the makers of Pocky, here's Curry!

Kare Raisu (Japanese curry rice) is bit of an anomaly to most people, at least it was to me when I first heard of it. However it's one of the most popular Yoshoku (Japanese interpretation of Western cuisine) dishes in Japan and has about a million different variations. Wait... I probably already talked about this in my previous post about microwave-ready Curry Rice.

Curry Rice On The Go

Today I decided to make some Japanese curry rice (kare raisu) at my office for lunch. For those of you not familiar with the dish, here's what it normally looks like:

As you can (kinda) see, it's not really anything like Indian curry, except it does use curry powder/garam masala. It's more like a thick stew with curry spices, apparently it's based on "English curry"... I could Google it to better inform myself, but I don't feel like it.

Normally kare raisu is made with potatoes, carrots, onions, some kind of meat, various spices and quite often something sweet like apple and/or honey. It's very popular in Japan and is eaten in restaurants and made at home; families and restaurants usually have their own secret recipes. Per the name, it's served with short-grain sticky rice, or sometimes over a big piece of fried pork (tonkatsu). And... sometimes over spaghetti... the Japanese have some interesting takes on Western food, but I'll talk about that some other time.