Gyudon (Japanese Beef Bowl) - Recipe

RECIPE VERDICT - Make this Japanese staple at home.

I lived in Japan for a couple of years and gyudon is a staple there.  Yoshinoya (now with locations in the United States) was the place to go for a delicious, fast lunch.  The Yoshinoya here in Las Vegas is pretty darn close to its Japanese counterpart, but I live nowhere near one.

Ingredients:
Thinly sliced beef (read below)
1 medium onion
Dashi (read below)
Rice (Nishiki is my house preference)
Shichimi togarashi (red pepper mix) (optional)
Pickled ginger (cut) (optional)

Boil dashi.  Dashi is a very important part of any gyudon.  Dashi is basically a flavorful fish stock even though the final product does not taste fishy.  In my search for dashi, I went to my local Japanese market and asked.  They pointed out a rather expensive bottle that needed to be mixed with sake and mirin.  This is probably what I should have done for the best flavor.  However, I'm cheap and I bought a box of dashi powder.

This box came with 5 packets and no instructions in English or Japanese. 

I'm rather shy when it comes to fish flavored food.  I really did not want to eat fishy beef.  I used 1 packet in 6 cups of water, which might be weaker than it needed to be, but err on the side of caution, I say.  Salt the water.

Bring to a boil and add the onion, cut in half and sliced.  Boil for three minutes and add beef.

The beef has to be sliced super thin (seriously thinner than you are thinking).  Many American butchers can't do it.  Sometimes you can teach them, just have them freeze the beef for an hour or more before slicing and then slice it thinner than they think is possible.  The other option is finding an Asian market.  The beef used for shabu shabu is perfect.  This time I used beef brisket point which is flavorful, but not as delicate.  In the case of gyudon, fatty, marbled meat is a plus.

I have never understood the green plastic garnish.  It's everywhere in Japan. 

Put the beef, slice by slice, into the water.  Cook for 5 minutes.  Serve over rice right away if you are hungry.  If you want more flavor, put in the refrigerator for a couple of hours and reheat.

Traditionally, top gyudon with shichimi togarashi and sliced pickled ginger.  However, these are totally optional and acquired tastes.

Japanese Curry - Recipe

RECIPE VERDICT - Fast, easy and delicious, who could ask for anything more.

OK, I know now someone is going to say something about how this is a restaurant blog and not a recipe blog...blah, blah, blah, we get it, Dad.  But what is better than going out, but making it at home.  If you don't live on the strip than I think that this fits into my blog.

I can't cook.  Or rather, I can cook, but I need a recipe and complicated instructions.  It becomes a frustrating, throw-yourself-on-the-couch hassle.  So, I generally try to do recipes that are easy to make and frustration free.  Think spaghetti without sides.  Think grilled cheese sandwiches.  Think one knife and one pot.  You get the picture.

I lived in Japan and always got the Curry packets that they have in Japan.  Just boil the whole thing, add rice and voilà, dinner is served.  In America, because of health concerns, you can only get the packets without meat and only one brand.  Luckily, I had a Japanese roommate when I returned to the States.  She made Japanese curry for Greg and I twice.  It took hours and always ended up with a pot so burned on the bottom that we would have to throw it away.  It came out perfectly both times.

The thought of slaving away for hours over a meal and having to throw away cookware never appealed to me.  I started to think about it and decided, my old roommate always did things in the most difficult way.  One time she ate all the cheese in the house.  Greg said, "Did you eat all the cheese?"  She said that she did and she wanted to know if 7-11 had cheese, because she couldn't drive.  We said not to worry about it and that 7-11 didn't carry cheese.  She then said she was going for a walk at about 7:00 PM.  Four hours later she returned from walking to the nearest supermarket miles and miles away.  She bought cheese.  She gave it to us and promptly went to sleep.  She did things a little oddly, perhaps just maybe I should try making Japanese curry.  Oh and we found out later that 7-11 does have cheese.


First, you start with curry seasoning.  This is easy to do as they come in convenient packets.  I decided on Vermont Curry, because it seems like such a funny name for Japanese curry.  I do have to admit that when in Japan I always drank Georgia coffee, produced by Coca-Cola.

 

A touch of apple and honey?  I couldn't taste it, which is a good thing.

The recipe is right on the box.  I cut up 1 and a half onions into strips (it asked for 2), 2 medium potatoes into small chunks, and 2 carrots into slices (it asked for 1), and half a pound of pork into small chunks.  I threw that all into a Dutch oven on the stove and cooked it on medium.  If you don't have a dutch oven you can certainly use a large pot, but I highly recommend a Dutch oven.  We got ours at Costco for $50 and it makes you feel like Julia Child.

I stirred pretty regularly and I didn't think that everything would get cooked.  About 14 minutes later, all the pork was cooked through and the onions were translucent.  I added 3 1/2 cups of water and brought to a boil.  Then you add the chunks of curry mix and simmer it on medium/low for 20 minutes.  Ta dah!

 

I stole this pic off of the web.  My curry looked similar.

Just serve it over medium grain rice.  I really suggest a rice cooker.  It makes cooking rice hassle free and keeps the rice warm until you want it.  I use calrose rice only because I can never find Japanese varieties in Las Vegas.  Calrose rice is a California rice and is close enough.  UPDATE:  Nishiki rice is now the household favorite and is, by far, better than Calrose.

 

The results were amazing.  It tasted great, took little time, and did not create much of a mess.  It is going into my normal rotation of recipes.

Sushi Loca

VERDICT: Shove it in your face hole - Xtreme Sushi for the eternally hip that don't have time to be bothered with anything that doesn't come with a warning.

My first problem with Sushi Loca is the name.  It sounds like Mexican Sushi, right?  For some reason, all I can imagine is a California roll deep fried and smothered in cheese and enchilada sauce.  Luckily, that isn't on the menu, however, it was a hindrance in getting in the door.  Greg also refused to eat at a place with such misleading name.  I had to agree with him.  I long ago set the rule that I never eat Japanese food from a restaurant that has Chinese food for the simple reason that Chinese people can't cook Japanese food well.  I am pleased to announce that there isn't a taquito roll on the menu.  There are some spicy rolls and perhaps that is the association with the name "Loca". 

The atmosphere is slick, red, bright, and ultra-modern.  The music is a soundtrack of dance songs that have annoyed me throughout time.  All the way from "Kung Fu Fighting" to "Everybody Dance Now" to the Black Eyed Peas song that seemed to be written solely to get played at every Bar Mitzvah from now 'til eternity.  Way to corner the Jewish market, Black Eyed Peas!  These songs are blasted, too.  To the point that Greg could not hear me very well and he's got super hearing.  So, he ended up devolving into a go-go boy that had to bop to the beat, which can be quite distressing for me to watch.

We got the Jackpot roll and the Megabucks roll.  The Jackpot roll was OK, but Greg thought it was too spicy.  The Megabucks roll was cold, like it just came out the freezer.  I'm used to sushi being room temperature and I didn't care for the icebox sushi.  So, I don't recommend their "fancy" rolls.  I had every intention in "going cheap" and only ordering traditional rolls, but I always get sucked into trying house rolls.  As far as house rolls go, there are a lot of them, but there isn't much variation in them.  They all appear to be various combinations of salmon and cream cheese or crab and avocado smothered with different sauces.  I really should have just gotten the good ol' staples.  The California roll I got was delicious.  Greg said that I should be ashamed because the California roll seems like such an insult to Japanese food (compared to the Megabucks roll?!?  Ha!).  Anyway, if you are going to order sushi in this dance club of a Mexican/Japanese restaurant than I suggest keeping is simple: tuna roll, California roll, tamago...etc.

Greg also got the tonkatsu.  They did not provide karashi, but they did put the tonkatsu sauce on the side.  Since Greg doesn't like karashi, it wasn't a big deal.  I, on the other hand, would have been bummed out.

Osaka - Sahara Location

VERDICT: The most authentic Japanese restaurant in Las Vegas.

I lived in Japan for two years and consequently I ate food there.  I grew to love Japanese food even more than before I moved there.  Not just the stuff you are used to eating in generic Japanese restaurants, but also the regular, daily food....the meat and potatoes, if you will.  When I came back to America I was devastated that I could not find any restaurant that prepared it quite the way that I had it in Japan, nor the types of food that I had in Japan.  For example, I did not have teriyaki once in Japan...OK, I had it once at McDonald's of all places.  They had a teriyaki burger, which was absolutely horrible.  Here in America, you would be hard pressed to find a Japanese restaurant that didn't have teriyaki. 

One of my favorite dishes from Japan was tonkatsu, which is a pork cutlet pounded thin, deep fried with panko, and served with shredded cabbage, karashi (Japanese hot mustard), rice and tonkatsu sauce.  It's very simple and delicious.  The combination of flavors is exquisite.  So much so that if I eat tonkatsu without cabbage, I don't like it.  It all goes together magically.  Osaka does tonkatsu right.  I hate it when I go to a Japanese restaurant and order tonkatsu and they dribble the sauce over the pork rather than serve it on the side.  It just isn't right and it lacks the right flavor.  The other thing that I hate is when you ask the waiter for hot mustard (or karashi) and they act like you're absolutely insane.  At least, where I lived, on Hokkaido, karashi was always served.

They also have various donburi, which is a staple in Japan.  Their oyakodon is exactly Japanese style.  Oyakodon means family bowl.  While that sounds like it is food for the whole family, it is called that because you are eating the whole family, chicken and egg, cute and morbid, very Japanese.

They have a teppanyaki room as well (think Benihana), and a sushi bar.  I prefer to eat my tonkatsu in the tatami mat rooms though.  They also have shabu-shabu, which is a boiling pot that you cook food in at the table.  Greg doesn't like shabu-shabu, because who wants to cook when they go out.  He does have a point.  I don't like Osaka's shabu-shabu because they don't bring the best assortment of boilable vegetables and noodles. 

They even have onigiri, another daily Japanese food (you have to ask for it, not on the menu).  Onigiri is a rice ball and it seems like you can make it yourself, but it never turns out right for me.  They make it perfectly.

Their sushi is good, but expensive.  I usually get one roll, the Oh-My-God roll.  I don't know what is on it, but it will make your eyes roll back in your head from deliciousness.