Tuesday 24 January 2012

New Year, New Book.

Well, Steve and I received four new cookbooks for Christmas this year.

He got Adventures With Chocolate by Paul A. Young from me.


  From him, I received The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit.  


From his Auntie and Uncle we got Maw Broon's Kitchen Notebook.



 From my Sister-in-law I got Everyday Harumi: Simple Japanese Food For Family and Friends by Harumi Kurihara (I think she's the Japanese Nigella and just as beautiful!).


They are all wonderful books and it is rather exciting having new books to cook from.  I wasted no time in joining in with Dom's Random Recipe Challenge for this month - New Year, New Book.



I randomly chose a recipe from Everyday Harumi.  I have to admit to cheating and not randomly selecting the book - I just knew I would get a recipe from here which would make a delicious and healthy meal for us all and I wasn't disappointed.

The recipe I was given was Yakitori.  The recipe is for chicken and baby leek skewers with teriyaki sauce.  I didn't have any baby leek or skewers so I just made it freestyle and served a salad with grilled asparagus.  

I asked Adam to put the salad on the plates for me while I finished the chicken and it turns out he is definitely a food blogger in the making - check out the food stylin' going on here!




So here is a bit of the recipe.  For Harumi's much classier skewers I suggest you buy the book - really simple but beautiful Japanese family-friendly meals.

Teriyaki Sauce.

Ingredients - 
100ml soy sauce (umm, that's my fancy soy sauce all finished - any room in any of your packing cases for the trip home, Little Macaroon?) 
100ml mirin
4 tbsp caster sugar

Method - 
Put everything into a small saucepan and gently cook for about 20mins.  Skim the surface of any scum if necessary.  Coat the chicken in the sauce once cooked. 

Any leftover Teriyaki chicken makes an excellent Bento box filling.  I filled mine to take to work next day with the chicken, asparagus and salad.