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Monday 28 September 2009

**Comfort Food Special** - Chicken and Egg on Rice (Oyako Don)


Chicken and Egg on Rice - Oyako Donburi 

This is one of my favourite Japanese recipes - it is comfort food at its best, very fast and easy to prepare, a regular at our home.  There are many variations on this dish, but it is essentially rice topped with eggs, onions in a delicious dashi broth.



Ingredients
  • 175 ml strongly flavoured dashi stock
  • 75 ml sake
  • 4 tbsp light soy sauce
  • 4 tbsp mirin
  • 1tsp sugar
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 300g free range chicken breast, slantly and thinly sliced
  • 6 eggs slightly beaten - top quality and very fresh as briefly cooked
  • 600g cooked sushi rice - about 300g uncooked
  • 1 onion thinly sliced - lengthways
  • 4 dried shiitake mushrooms
  • To garnish - baby cress or spring onions, 1/2 sheet of toasted, crumbled nori (seaweed), red pickle ginger, black sesame seeds (all optional)
Method
  1. Cook the sushi rice, keeping it warm in four or two separate ceramic bowls.
  2. Place mushrooms in a small bowl, cover with boiling water, let it stand for about 20 mins until tender. Drain, reserving the water, discard stems and slice caps.
  3. Gently mix the eggs in a bowl without beating them with a fork.
  4. Prepare the garnishing ingredients - thinly slice the spring onions, or wash the baby cress, crumble the nori sheet. Although optional, I would recommend using the garnish as it will add extra flavours to the dish and make it look pretty.
  5. Meanwhile, bring the dashi stock, soy sauce, mirin, sake, sugar and salt to a simmer in a largish saucepan (that has a lid!), but do not boil it to avoid making the dashi stock bitter.
  6. Add the chicken, mushrooms and its reserved water, the onions, cover and cook gently for about 3-4 mins until the chicken is cooked through.
  7. Gently pour the egg over the chicken mixture in a circling movement, from the outside inwards, covering the chicken mixture completely. Cook uncovered for 1 minute.
  8. Cover and cook for another minute. The mixture should have thickened and the eggs just began to set. Remove from the heat.
  9. Pour the egg mixture on top of the warm rice.
  10. Garnish with baby cress or spring onions, crumbled nori sheet, black sesame seeds and top it with a little red ginger pickle.
This quantity will serve 4 as a small starter or 2 as large mains. If you have any questions on any part of this recipe or just need to know where to source any of the ingredients listed, please contact me. Enjoy it!




4 comments:

  1. ooohh delicious!! i'm a big fan of comfort food, and chicken and rice are a real favurite, this is a lovely variation!! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. there's a similar, much simpler filipino dish that's probably the first dish i learned to cook. it's just fried egg on steamed rice with soy sauce.

    i make it whenever the larder is empty or when i can't be bothered to cook an elaborate meal. and it always makes me feel better.

    btw -- lovely to meet you last night at wahaca. i look forward sharing more recipes and food experiences with you!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Luiz! It was great meeting you last night at the wahaca do - oyako don is one of my favourite things to cook but strangely enough, I've not made it in a while... I think it's time to start again!

    ReplyDelete
  4. @ Bex - thanks for your comment, I also loved your Hummingbird brownies posting, very wittily written as always!

    @ Kelsie & Mel - how lovely to have met you on Thursday at the Wahaca do and then for dinner at our home here. We need to get talking seriously about dates for our Cookery Club and possible cuisine/cookery books to cook from, I think we will some great meals coming our way!!

    @ Su-lin - it was lovely to finally meet you at the Wahaca do, as you know I am a great fan of your blog.

    ReplyDelete

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