Kayaku Gohan

Posted July 18th, 2012 in Food 2 Comments »

As you may know, Japanese people eat lot of rice.  Nowadays they don’t eat as much as they used to, but rice is still a must-have food for most people there.

I was raised in a typical Japanese family who eat rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  My grand parents had rice fields (now my dad’s inherited them), so rice was always there in the kitchen.  Because of that, I also became a person who needs to eat rice everyday – at least once a day.  Otherwise my body doesn’t feel right.

Here in Perth, Japanese rice is so expensive.  They are available at Nippon Food and other Asian grocery shops, but I’ve only bought a discounted bag with broken packaging before.  I usually just use Sunrice medium grain rice.  It’s cheap and ok.  I sometimes mix mochi-gome (mochi rice = sticky rice) to the medium grain when cooking so that the rice becomes more like Japanese rice; sticks together. I like the mochi-mochi texture.

Kayaku-gohan is steamed rice with various ingredients and seasoning cooked together.  I must say it’s one of my favourite food.  I can go several bowls at once!

You can find abura-age (fried bean-curd) in freezer section at Asian grocery shops.  Konnyaku is usually in the fridge, or sometimes sold at room temperature on the shelves.

<Kayaku Gohan>

• Rice medium grain 3 cups
• Mochi Rice (sticky rice) 1/2 cup
• Chicken Thigh 50g
• Carrot, small 1
• Konnyaku 1/2 pack
• Abura-age 1/2 sheet
• Shiitake mushroom, dried 2 〜3
• Ginger 1 small block (about 10g)
• Soy Sauce 2 tbs
• Sake 1 tbs
• Mirin 1 tbs

1. Soak dried shiitake in 1/4 cup of water for 30 minutes.  Keep the shiitake water.
2. Slice chicken, carrot, konnyaku, abura-age, shiitake, and ginger into small pieces.
3. Place them in a sauce pan with the shiitake water, another 3/4 cup water (so 1 cup total), soy sauce, sake and mirin.   Bring to gentle simmer and cook for 10 minutes over low heat.  Leave to cool.
4. Place washed and drained rice into a rice cooker.  Level the surface. Scoop the chicken and vegetables and place on top of rice – level surface – to cover the rice.  Add the stock from “3” to the rice cooker.
5. Add more water to adjust : I always use my finger to measure the water amount when cooking rice.  Place your index finger 90° to the rice, and add water up till the first line on your index finger.
6. Turn on the rice cooker.  When rice is cooked, leave at least 10 minutes before serving.

Enjoy!

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