The Food Canon

The Soba Master, Tatsuru Rai, preparing the noodles before the guests.

If you are familiar with cooking sous vide, you would have experimented by now with slow and low SV cooking of tough but flavourful cuts like short-rib beef. If you have well-marbled cut to start with, your can be sure that the results will be spectacular after 36 or 48 hours of cooking at anywhere between 55˚C to 60˚C. Check out my previous post here.

I use it to make a Japanese Rice Bowl recently for a party of 80. I will share with you my cooking notes.

Estimating at 50gm of beef per pax, we started with about 5 kg of Angus short-rib beef, cooking it at 56˚C for 36 hours. This was of course prepared a few days before.

After it has finished cooking, cut open the vacuumed beef packs and drain the juice into a cooking pot. Heat up the pot and when the juice heats up, the scums will turn solid. Strain and keep the juice.

Fridge the beef. It will be easier to trim and cut if the meat is chilled. To prepare, trim and cut the beef into small blocks.  Some short-rib cuts have tough tendon and fats which you need to trim. And yes, keep the fats (good for "heart attack fried rice", I heard!)! Next, coat it with soy sauce before you pan sear as it will make browning easier. See photo below.


Meanwhile, prepare a the salad of cucumber, tomato, silken tofu and lettuce. Slice it into small pieces for easier eating off the bowl. Prepare a lemon and ginger dressing. Keep chilled and dressed the salads before you serve.

As for the eggs, cook it at 62˚C for 45 minutes. Keep warm till your serve it.

For the sauce, we used the remains beef juices, mirin, soy sauce and cooking sake. We added sugar to sweeten it and beef bouillon to make it more intense. Then we add the slurry of corn flour to thicken it.

Cook the Japanese rice. 6 kg will feed 80 pax nicely.

Nearing the time of the dinner, we started to pan-sear the beef blocks. Season it and then  sliced it at a thickness of about 3-4 mms.

After this, it should be easy. Plate the bowls in this order: rice, beef, egg and drizzle some of the beef sauce. Garnish with furikake - mixture of seaweed, sesame seeds and other flavouring seasonings. Some diced spring onions will be good too.

Then placed dressed salads on the side.

Lay out the bowls on a serving table. Serving dinner in a bento bowl is fast and efficient.

Cost? About $4 per bowl and it looks pretty and taste gourmet :)

Slicing the "twice-cooked" Sous vide cooked and pan-seared beef

My girls love Japanese rice and meals.

This is one reason why I have made some effort to learn to cook it at home. I have posted a recipe for Chirashi rice. I like these one-bowl meals as they are convenient to make.

In this post, I will list out some details on how to make "Gyudon" or Japanese Rice Beef Bowl, using Short-rib Beef. What motivated me to cook this is the $60 bowl of rice with some beef which I had at a Japanese restaurant recently. I absolutely loved it but I found it too pricey. After making this, I really don't think I will pay for it again.

Japonica rice is widely available in our local markets and you should be able to spot it easily as the grain is shorter compared to Thai long grain rice. They come in various qualities. If you are new to cooking it, I will advise you just pick up any for a start. As you begin to cook it more often, you can try some better varieties. Go here to learn how to cook this rice and what type to buy.

I am a fan of Mackerel fish of any type. I love Kembung and Selar, plainly pan-fried or spiced up.

I have blogged the recipe of Chili fish here, which uses the Cencaru or Hard-tail Scad.

Of late, I have learnt to enjoy a good grilled Saba fish. They seem to come cheaper these days. If I have to cook a dish in a hurry, and if I want it to be something I will absolutely enjoy, it has to be this.

There is an interesting write-up on Japanese fish at Ieat where Saba is featured. There Leslie talked about the "Kokumi" in Saba:

It is election fever. So, what local dish should I blog on? Bak Chor Mee? Or "Mee Siam Hmm Mai Hum'?

Oh well, I better not. In my profession, I am suppose to be neutral and not take sides. Not that I think any of my members will take my political views seriously.

Should you rock the boat or go with the proven? You may like to read an earlier post where I attempted a political dig.

So, I will blog a dish from a country which was rocked very seriously recently: Japan. Let’s support this country, shall we?

I'd like to blog a sushi dish which I find to be very satisfying: a Chirashi Sushi dish which I learnt recently from Chef Shinichiro Takagi, who was one of the visiting Master Chefs for the World Gourmet Summit. He is the owner and main chef at the famed Zeniya Restaurant in Japan. iEat's Leslie Tay has also blogged about his cooking here.