Featured

Chicken Yakitori

Yakitori chicken. Surprisingly easy.

One of the things I always enjoy in an izakaya with a nice frosty Asahi beer, is Yakitori chicken. It has been demanded that we use the barbecue this year and so we did.

It turns out yakitori is not the hardest thing in the world to cook. put strips of chicken on a skewer, alternating with a couple of centimetres of spring onion. When preparing the sauce, reduce it by half so it’s nice and sticky. The sauce is nothing special, just the usual soy, mirin, sake and sugar combination. Once the chicken is on the grill, keep brushing it with sauce to add to the glaze.

Tare sauce typically looks like:

Don’t sweat the tamari/dark soy sauce thing. Just use Kikkoman lke a normal Asian. Taken from the Great British Chef‘s version of the recipe. And very tasty it was too.

Featured

Garlic

Hipster garlic

Garlic is a most important ingredient. It’s rare in our house we don’t use it. Whether it’s starting a tomato sauce by frying an onion or crushing into teryaki sauce it’s unthinkable to cook without it. You shouldn’t taste it in the dish, but it rounds out the finished product nicely.

The example above was acquired at the food festival in cardiff bay for a whopping £2.50. It’s from the Pyrenées and I’m sure it’ll be worth at as soon as we’ve eaten the garlic I got from the Italian deli. I blame the TV chefs of the ’80s who woke British cuisine up and stole everyone elses. Food in the UK is not streets ahead of where it used to be.

We also had Keralan fried chicken from Purple Poppadom for lunch which is always good.

Cantonese pork belly.

previous arrowprevious arrow
next arrownext arrow
Shadow
Slider

We have pork belly reasonably frequently at home, one way or another. It has two great benefits: it’s cheap and it’s tasty. This recipe elevates it to something special. This makes it fall-apart tender and has the added benefit of fantastic crackling.

Get a slab of pork belly, season it, cover the skin in salt, roast in a foil surround and then the important part: grill it gently until the crackling is perfect. Contrary to the recipe, I reckon half an hour under a gentle grill and then let it rest while you dish everything else up.

The recipe I stumbled on was from The Woks of Life and if I had my way I’d make it every week. A slab from the supermarket is enough four people or two with enough left over for a soup noodle and a sandwich.

Make this!