Chicken Ramen Salad

I got this 'recipe' from a friend. I guess I've adjusted it a little, but it's a salad so improvisation is usually acceptable. A delicious salad, either as a side dish or even as a main. I made this the other night for the kids' dinner, but they didn't really like the cucumber, lettuce or green pepper. I hope they eventually will like green veggies!


Chicken Ramen Salad

lettuce
tomato
green pepper (and/or yellow and red pepper)
cucumber
carrot
...or any of your favorite vegetables for salad
1 boiled chicken breast, chilled and shredded
1 package chicken ramen
Italian dressing (Pietro brand dressing in Japan)

Basically this is a salad with shredded chicken and crushed chicken ramen. You can crush the ramen in its package, it's not as messy. Pour the salad dressing just before serving, so the ramen is still crunchy when you dig in! My friend who taught me how to make the salad swears by Pietro brand, but I used Good Seasons Italian dressing, and it was just as good.

Simmered Chicken Mini-drumsticks or Wings

Sorry, I have been slacking off on this blog. I do have some recipes to share, just no pictures or no translations of certain words. Sorry!! Here is one of my favorite summer chicken recipes. This is delicious hot or cold, and terrific with beer! From MIJ, thank you so much!

At first I am going to give metric measurements. I'll try to put conversions up, but in the meantime I suggest using this site (if you don't have metric measuring utensils) to help you out.

Simmered Chicken Mini-drumsticks or Wings

1 kg mini-drumsticks or wings
120 ml mild rice vinegar
25 ml sake
80 ml soy sauce
30 ml water
1-3 garlic cloves
1 bay leaf
red pepper or shichimi togarashi
paprika
sesame seeds for garnish

Place chicken in a bamboo colander. Quickly pour boiling water over chicken and drain (or simply rinse in cold water). Lay chicken in a shallow pan in one or two even layers. Add all other ingredients, and simmer over low heat for 1-2 hours (or as suits you), turning occasionally. Discard bay leaf, pepper and garlic cloves. Serve hot or cold, with a little of the simmering liquid.



As you can see, I add a LOT of paprika. I love it! It was a bit spicy but even so, my kids loved it! The simmering liquid will most likely gel up when cold, so if you're not serving it hot, be sure to remove the chicken from the liquid.

Teriyaki Chicken Thighs

This is another recipe from a book. Bento Boxes, by Naomi Kijima. I really wish I had first found this book when I was single and living on my own, because the recipes are good for small meals (not just bentos). This recipe is actually good for a family, too, because you get a lot of teriyaki marinade and can make up to two thighs with this.

I would like to take the time to point out that Japanese cooking seems to have four main seasonings: sake, mirin, shoyu (soy sauce) and sugar. If something is meant to be more sweet, use more sugar and less sake. More salty, us more shoyu. Less sweet, leave out the mirin. Pretty simple. I guess vinegar is pretty important in making sushi and pickles, but I don't like (and so don't make) sushi, and pickles are difficult (or so I'm led to believe.)

Usually I just serve this dish on a plate, but this time I had some lettuce I needed to use up, and surprisingly, the teriyaki sauce tasted great with it! I highly recommend serving your chicken on a bed of cold, crisp lettuce.

Chicken Thighs Teriyaki (from Bento Boxes, by Naomi Kijima)

1/2 boneless chicken thigh, skin on

1 Tbsp each mirin and soy sauce
1 tsp sugar
1/2 Tbsp cooking oil

1. Trim excess fat from thigh. Marinate in the mirin, soy sauce and sugar for 30 minutes. Drain, reserving marinade, and pat dry.

2. Cook the chicken in the oil, skin side down. When browned, turn and cook the other side.

3. Add 3 Tbsp water to the reserved marinade and pour over the chicken. Cover and simmer until cooked through. Remove the cover, [take out the chicken], raise the heat, and reduce the sauce to a glaze. [Slice the chicken into strips, arrange on a plate and then cover with the glaze.]

(The brackets are my 'additions', but the basic recipe is Ms. Kajima's)

Honey BBQ Buffalo Wings

When I first came to Japan, it was difficult finding foods from home. It was possible to go to the big city to get 'American' foods, but that usually ended up being Quaker instant oatmeal, Dove chocolates, the occasional bag of marshmallows and English teas. It was a bit of a pain for me to go to the big city, luckily I only lived about 40 minutes away (by bus and train.)

There has always been FBC (which I have never ordered from, even to this day) where one could order things that have been shipped from the US, or could be ordered and then shipped from the US. Quite often, the things that I wanted had to be ordered in bulk, which meant a higher price and about fifteen more boxes than I wanted (limited space in my apartment.) Also, I never had internet in my home so online ordering meant a trip to the city.

Costco has been a great option, though not everything I could hope for. One thing they carry that I've always been grateful for is lean ground beef. Can't find that too often in Japan. As a warehouse-type store, of course things are sold in bulk, too, but usually in manageable sizes. Costco has been in Japan as long as I have (in fact, for a few months longer than me! I have been very lucky to live in Fukuoka.) It's a great place, especially if you want some non-Japanese pizza!

My post today is about buzzard wings. My new favorite store is Kaldi Coffee Farm. It is a wonderful store full of foreign foods (not just American (or 'western') foods but also Chinese, Thai, Indian and some others). I especially like the availability of baking products (like Crisco!) and spices. It's also great for jarred spaghetti sauce because they sell little jars, which is perfect for my small family (at the moment). I go often to see if they have anything new and a couple of weeks ago I was excited to find this bottle of buffalo wings sauce.

(see how cluttered my kitchen is??)

It was very easy to prepare; the directions are on the bottle (I carefully peeled the Japanese instruction sticker off the bottle). I cooked the wings in my Helsio steam oven (on water grill to cut down on fat) and then tossed them in the sauce. These were so delicious, even Sasha enjoyed them!