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.
Choosing that book may be cheating a tiny bit but it's a really good choice. That simple sauce sounds just ideal to me on a bleak January day. Isn't it more of a cheat to have your own in-house food stylist and consultant?
ReplyDeleteIs it really cheating to have your own staff who you have trained completely yourself? Surely not!
ReplyDeleteYou got some great books there!!
ReplyDeleteAnna - they're fab, aren't they? Haven't made anything from the Flavour Thesaurus yet but really enjoying reading it.
ReplyDeleteoh look at Adam, helping out, bless him!... I adore Chicken Yakitori and I am going to copy this recipe this weekend... what lovely books you got for Christmas and so varied.. lucky you. Glad you're back and blogging (hope you are...?) and thanks for taking part, I feel honoured... now where's Steve's entry?
ReplyDeleteHarumi's books are HUGE in the shops here, but I've never bought one (there's a habit here of plastic wrapping books so you can't browse - grrrr) - so it's great to have a recommendation!
ReplyDeleteoh... and the soy sauce. Hmm. Was planning to bring back a case of it, but we're not allowed food in our container, so I'm scratching my head (also I don't want them to think we're an import business!) Will do my best!
ReplyDeleteLove getting new cookbooks, hope you enjoy them all... especially drawn to the choccie one :)
ReplyDeleteLucky you! Can't wait to see some recipes from the Paul A Young one, I met him a few years ago and he was absolutely amazing, such a lovely and talented guy with a great backstory.
ReplyDeleteThanks too for your kind words about my mum. Have decided 2012 can only get better from here! x
Dom - yup - struggling with time these days. I think I am going to try to stick to one blog post a week. This should make things manageable.
ReplyDeleteMacaroon - don't worry about the soy sauce - I'm sure we will be able to source some nice soy sauce here somewhere which is what we'll have to do in the long term. If we buy from an import company, we can buy in bulk and share the postage.
If you buy a Harumi book, don't get this one as you can borrow it from me. Her recipes are all fairly straightforward and she comes across as simply lovely!
K-J - I was drawn to the chocolate one too - bit cheeky getting him a book I wanted for his Christmas! :)
Lucy - What was the backstory? I'm intrigued now.
I hope 2012 is full of happiness for you. xx
I got The Flavour Thesaurus for Christmas as well and I'm really enjoying all the interesting facts and ideas. I'm hoping it will inspire me to do more recipe development.
ReplyDeleteThey all look like great books. I've got the Paul A Young one, but haven't made anything out of it yet I don't think. I've wondered about the flavour thesaurus, so would be interested to hear your thoughts on it. The yakitori looks great!
ReplyDeleteOhh it's so sweet that you both got each other cookbooks! The yakitori looks really good!! You can get good soy sauce here from health food stores, the ones at chiantown are abit more generic. Tamari is the wheat-free, aged soy sauce that's got a great intense flavour, esp for dipping(: I use shoyu too, for cooking.
ReplyDeleteOOh how I envy your new book collection. Intrigued by the Japanese Nigella.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds yummy! I got the flavour thesaurus too - what an amazing book! It slightly boggles my mind every time I look at it - but in a good way.
ReplyDeleteLooks good! Hope you had a great festive period.
ReplyDeleteI've got the flavour thesaurus and it's a great book. Although I don't find it as useful as I hoped it's still a lovely idea and great to have as a reference.
Chris
Looking forward to reading all the baking and cooking from these books.
ReplyDeleteI just love how beautifully Adam is arranging the salad!
Great selections of cookbooks. Can't wait to see recipes from Adventures with Chocolate :)
ReplyDeleteMaria
x
I think I would have struggled to choose a book out of that selection. But I'm now very tempted to buy this book. I had no idea teriyaki was so straightforward and looks so delicious. A very good choice! GG
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