Blue Dragon - Katsu Curry Mealkit

Homemade Katsu Curry, originally uploaded by chored.

Japanese Curry Rice and Katsu Curry are Japanese dishes that I really like. I had never even thought of attempting to make Katsu Curry at home until we saw the Blue Dragon Katsu Curry Mealkit in Sainsbury's.

In the kit you get:

2 x Curry Sauce pouches
2 x Boil in the bag rice
Panko breadcrumb mix

You also need:

Chicken/Sweet Potato/Butternut Squash
2 Eggs
Oil for frying

It's all ready meal ingredients, which seems a bit like cheating, but next time we'll try and do things from scratch, now that we know it's possible to make this at home.

You need to boil the rice on its own. Beat the eggs together and then dip the chicken/sweet potato/butternut squash into the eggs and then into the Panko breadcrumb mix, then stick that into some oil and fry it until it's crispy and golden brown. Heat the sauce up in a pan.

To serve, put the rice on a plate, put the katsu on top (slice up the chicken) and then add the curry sauce over the top.

As I said before, it is a bit of a cheat since it's basically a ready meal, but next time it should be easy enough to make the breadcrumbs and I'm sure I can get a recipe for Japanese Curry sauce.

Anyway, the mealkit is pretty tasty, it's great fun and the sauce is good, but not amazing, so I'd give the whole thing 3.5/5

Taco Rice

Taco Rice, originally uploaded by chored.

When we were in Okinawa in March, we came across a little cafe place near our hotel which sold only one thing, "Taco Rice". This strange Okinawan take on Tacos is a big thing in Okinawa and in the same way as how every Omiyage (Souvenir) shop in Hokkaido seemed to be selling Curry Rice kits, in Okinawa, they were selling Taco Rice kits.

So back in the UK and we've been meaning to try and recreate this for a while. I don't really know the recipe, so we just winged it and our first attempt was actually pretty tasty. So if you want to make Taco Rice at home, you will need:

Beef Mince
1 Onion
Taco flavouring
Cheese, Salsa, Mayonnaise for garnish
Lettuce
Japanese Rice

First of all, we made the basic Taco beef, for our first attempt, this consisted of frying some beef mince and the onion and adding Uncle Ben's Taco Seasoning (Next time we might splash out and try and spice the mince ourselves). The only other thing in the mince aside from the seasoning and onion was a few drops of ra-yu (Japanese chilli oil).

At the same time as frying the mince, we boiled some Japanese rice.

Once both the rice and beef are ready, it's time to plate it up, start with a bed of lettuce, then add the rice, then squirt mayonnaise across the whole thing. Add the taco beef on top of the rice and top with grated cheese and salsa.

There you have it, Taco Rice, quick and easy to make and very tasty.

Chilli Poppers v0.1

While shopping in Sainsbury's we noticed that they had some rather large Green Chillis in their chilli section, these seemed a good size to attempt to make Chilli Poppers.

Not actually knowing what was in them, we decided to go for a stuffing of Mozzarella and plum tomatoes and grill them in the oven rather than coating them and frying them. So the chillis had their tops chopped off, we scooped out the seeds and insides and stuffed them with strips of Mozzarella and the plum tomatoes. We then pinned the tops back on with skewers and grilled them in the oven until both sides looked cooked.

The results were edible, but a little disappointing. The Mozzarella didn't have a strong enough flavour to compete with the chilli and the chillis had a slightly bitter taste to them. Next time, we're going to use a stronger cheese, perhaps cream cheese. We might even try to coat them and fry them rather than grilling them.