Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Takikomi Gohan in Donabe - Japanese Pilaf cooked in Claypot -


Tori (chicken) Takikomi Gohan (Japanese-style Plaf)


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22 comments:

Fish Fish said...

Takikomi gohan... chou hoshii now. *aiyar~*

Fish Fish said...

btw, obachan, do u know that adding a piece of charcoal inside when cooking rice will make it taste even better? saw in tv, but never try by my own.

obachan said...

Hi fish fish,
Yep, I used to do that all the time (when cooking rice in an electric rice cooker. Never tried it with donabe). I heard that the charcoal improves the taste of rice by absorbing impure substances in water and smell of rice-bran. Also the minerals contained in charcoal are said to improve the taste. I got tired of washing the charcoal afterwards, so not using one any more :P But I do think the charcoal made a difference in the taste of rice.

Anonymous said...

Would it be possible to post the recipe? I would love to try this dish!

Anonymous said...

I love Takikomi Gohan. I've been buying those instant packages to add to the rice and cook in an electric rice cooker. Homemade must be a lot more tasty. I have a claypot and would love to learn how to do it from scratch. Would you mind sharing your hard learned technique and recipe that took a lot of trial and error to accomplish. Aloha, lance

Question Mark said...

Obachan,

I love all your dishes. I like rice cooked in a claypot too especially over charcoal stove. The rice is absolutely superb.

obachan said...

> Jonny, --- You mean miso soup? I soaked shijimi in salt water for several hours to remove sands, then boiled in water, added a little instant dashi powder and added miso.
About chijimi, I don’t know much about Korean food. I’ve tried chijimi only 4 or 5 times in my entire life, and all of them happened to be with flour-base. I thought any Korean-style pancake was called chijimi (with or without kimchi), but I’m not sure.

> Anonymous commenter --- OK. I’ll add it to the post, but I must warn you. It may not work the same for you...

> lance --- Well, same here. Don’t be too discouraged if you get a disappointing result…

> Phan --- Ahhhh, it must be sooo good when cooked over charcoal stove. --*drool*

obachan said...

Sure, the tea-bag style packets are sold at almost every suparmarket around here. Another (maybe more popular) kind is instant dashi powder like the one in this post. I like the powder better because it's more convenient to use. But the concentrate is MUCH stronger and tastes far better.

This "shirodashi" concentrate used to be used mainly by professionals for making traditional Japanese dishes, I heard. It's great because it gives wonderful dashi flavor and does not darken simmered food or dashimaki tamago like soy sauce does. I'm so happy this concentrate is now available at regular suparmarkets here.

purplegirl said...

hi, obachan! this one looks yummy! i actually tried making clay pot rice and you're right, it has to be trial and error. mine came out too soft and soggy. i've never used dashi stock before and i can't wait to try it. what else can i use it for?

Anonymous said...

Obachan,

Thank you very much for posting your recipe and instructions. Question? How much water should I add after adding the stock and ingredients? About 1/2 of the gou cup or a whole gou cup?

lance

obachan said...

Hi purplegirl,
Oh, you know how it is... it was a lonely struggle, actually. But I felt sooo good when it worked out! :D
We usually use dashi stock for most of simmered dishes seasoned with sugar, soy sauce, sake and mirin. Also dashi is used for making Japanese style soups: miso-soup, sumashi-soup, noodle-soup, etc. Oh, and sauce for donburi (rice and topping in a bowl), and also for sukiyaki, tamagoyaki, etc… and for takoyaki/okonomiyaki batter, too.

Hi lance,
Oh, you’re one brave person who’s going into the dungeon…. (kidding!);)
Sorry, I didn’t explain it clearly. Actually what I always do is, using teaspoon, measure soy sauce, sake, mirin and dashi into a measuring cup, then add water up to the 200 cc mark. OK, let me do the calculation… 1 tsp is 5cc, and the liquid seasonings make 5 cc x 9 = 45 cc? So, 200 – 45 =155 cc is the amount of water (Is this calculation correct? ) called for in this recipe. But again, you need adjustments. In Japan they say the amount of water should be 1.2 to 1.5 times the amount of rice when cooking plain white rice. In case of takikomi gohan, you need to think about the water coming out from the vegetable, so in my case, 200 cc in total worked OK. Hope this helps.

obachan said...

Hi OsloFoodie,
Oh, I never see what you do as an ill-thought project. I like your challenging spirit ;)
Oh, BTW, you know what? I got 2 small dogrose plants! Maybe I can enjoy rose-hip tea next year!

Unknown said...

happy holidays obachan...i think this dish is tailor-made for my kittens. must try as soon as "...the christmas rush is through"-karen carpenter.
i wish you all the best for the upcoming new year-of the rooster too.

obachan said...

Happy holidays drstel,
Mmmmm…If your kittens could tell the rice cooked in a claypot from that cooked in an electric rice cooker, they must be real gourmets.
I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. (OMG, that reminds me. I gotta get rooster graphics for my new-year’s cards and emails…)

Winslow said...

Hi obachan,

Thanks for posting the yummy-looking photos and the recipe. I've got a donabe that I'm still learning to use, so I'll probably put off trying this until I get more comfortable with it. But it's something to aspire to!

obachan said...

> OsloFoodie --- Thanks : )

> Winslow --- Oh you have a donabe, too? What do you use it for other than cooking rice?

Winslow said...

Hi obachan,

I've only used my donabe a couple of times -- I got it last spring, so only now are we getting back into donabe season. I've cooked chicken and egg donburi in it, and I've also cooked a tuna and leek hotpot dish. I have an electric stove, but the donabe seems to work fine on it (although the heating element's pattern is now branded into its underside). I have enough trouble cooking rice accurately in regular pots and pans that I hesitate to use the donabe for rice at this point. I'm just a bit paranoid about heating and cooling it too quickly and cracking it. I guess that as I use it more, I'll get more comfortable with its capabilities.

obachan said...

Hi Winslow,

The tuna and leek hotpot sounds like a good winter dish. I heard that donabe may crack if heated over high heat when its bottom is wet on the outside. But my grandma said if the crack was small, cooking rice porridge in it will sort of fix it. The porridge will fill the crack and glue it, she said.

Winslow said...

Hi obachan,

Thanks for the tip about the rice porridge. Not that I'm trying to crack my donabe ;) but that gives me hope if a mishap occurs. I've read a lot of warnings about cooking with the donabe if there's any moisture at all on the bare earthenware part of the pot, so I'm extremely careful when I wash it. It has a nice design with the lucky cat motif, and I would hate for anything to happen to it just because it looks so nice.

I hope to try some more stews and hotpot-type recipes with it this winter.

obachan said...

Enjoy cooking! :)

cindy said...

hi obachan,

Is there a difference when I buy the dashi concentrate? When I went to my Japanese grocery store (in the US) I couldn't figure out which one was the dashi liquid stock since very few of the names in english contained the word dashi. I saw a lot of "soup and noodle" based liquids. The few liquid bottles that had the word dashi had other words in the title, none of which said shirodashi

obachan said...

Cindy

Hi Cindy,
Sorry I didn’t respond earlier. I’m not sure what kind of difference you are talking about, but shirodashi (dashi concentrate) and dashi-based soups are different. Shirodashi or shiradashi is supposed to be thinned with water, and often other ingredients like soy sauce, sake, mirin need to be added to make soup. Dashi-based soup already has such seasonings added, so you can probably use it as-is or you may need to thin it down with water, but that’s all. I can’t say anything for sure unless I actually see the bottles you are talking about, but if the liquid in the bottle looked like soy sauce, it’s not shirodashi.