Halcyon Repose

Early last week, I took a step towards bettering myself. I went to a Japanese market with the intention of buying something other than Japanese sweets. A week or so ago I got the urge to look up a curry udon recipe to see how difficult it would be (http://japanesefood.about.com/od/udon/r/curryudon.htm). Totally manageable, so I then started on the next and hardest part of my quest. I knew the ingredients that I needed, in fact, they were all familiar to me. Joe had introduced me to dashi once when he was in town when we made an oyakodon, and the curry I was well familiar with, even though I had never actually made any before.

My biggest fear was that I would get to the store, and I would be up against a wall of various colored liquids in a bottle as I vainly tried to figure out what the kanji for Mirin was. So I steeled myself and made the journey to Mitsuwa, where things were not as bleak as I had imagined. There was typically at least one brand of whatever I was looking for that had blissful romanji on the packaging, and the shelve tags were all in romaji as well. It turned out my biggest difficulty was in trying to decide what type of udon noodles to get. There had to have been over a dozen different kind of dried uncooked udon noodles, and I had no idea which were the ideal for my curry udon. After finally settling on a type, I ended up finding some frozen udon noodles in the freezer section, and seeing as how they were more immediately recognizable, I cheated and got a package of those instead.

I went a little crazy while I was there and got every thing I needed for my curry udon, plus some more curry for a possible night of standard curry, and some chicken and panko bread crumbs for a chicken katsu donburi.

I got home and immediately discovered that among the food that Joe had left me when he left the country, I had enough rice noodles and dashi to feed myself on donburi for the rest of my life (not quite but I did have a lot). I ended up making a donburi for myself, Kenny, and Kara that night. Kenny got the first batch since he has an aversion to onions, and as such he got to be my first test subject. He said it was good, but apparently the rice noodles were still a bit chewy. I realized that I hadn’t used any water, just soy and mirin, so when I made Kara’s and mine, I threw in generous amounts of water to soften the noodles (it wasn’t until later that I remembered that this is what we used the dashi for when Joe first showed me how to make it). The second batch came out well, I must say, even though I ended up scrambling the eggs in with everything too much, and there was no real juices left to soak into the rice. I still need to work on that bit, but it was still mucho tasty. I think a smaller pan will help a lot for when I decide to make some again.

Tonight I decided to try my hand at the curry udon. It was about 5pm, and I was trying to decide if I should cook something, or go to the gym. Seeing as how I was extremely hungry, the gym lost. So I ran to the store to get some potatoes and carrots for the curry, while I was driving back, I saw a cute girl jogging down the road. This sort of sparked some inner guilt, so I got home, threw every thing on the counter and went to the gym for a few hours. Upon returning I set about my project.

First up was the beef, which I had purchased earlier in the week. Into the skillet along with the onions and carrots. While they simmered I got out the largest pot I had, and mixed up the 8 cups of water required by the single package of dashi. In went the potatoes, curry, and the beef and veggies from the sauté pan. I brought to a boil, let simmer, and then added 4 servings of udon noodles. Added a little soy sauce (taste test confirmed this made a huge difference), and then I let it simmer for as long as possible. I should mention that the curry was about half an inch away from the top of the pot.. so this recipe will feed a small army. About 10 o’clock my hunger overtook me and I spooned out a bowl for myself and spooned the remaining udon into 3 tupperware containers which went into the fridge (4 servings on the nose).

I must say, while it was not the best curry udon I have had (Shin-Sen-Gumi’s has kick ass curry udon if anyone is interested), I will say it was better than most I have tried. I can imagine that left-overs will be even better after everything gets to soak up the curry for a few days. All in all I will say this was a big success. And of course I have overcome the hurdle of the first try. I won’t be as hesitant to try cooking some again, and I have a couple of ideas on what I will do differently next time. All in all, it is a pretty cheap meal considering how many people it feeds. After I get finish polishing off the left-overs, I think I’ll pick up some more chicken and try some chicken katsu curry. Yum!