About the Recipe
As well as having a thriving Chinatown in the port city of Yokohama, Japan has thousands of restaurants dotted all over the country. In addition, you'll see "Chinese style" sections of menus in many other eateries - you get my drift? The Japanese are very fond of Chinese food. A little bit like Japanese curries, the Chinese food is tailored to Japanese tastes but the origins are firmly Chinese. One such dish is "chukadon" which translates as "Chinese food on rice." There are all kinds of chukadon dishes - I posted a chicken chukadon a while ago. This dish is along the same lines only with seafood. I use squid in this recipe along with king prawns. I know that quite a few people don't share my love of squid (everyone loves prawns, right?) so you could substitute another seafood of your choice. Maybe some chunks of white fish? The key, of course, is the sauce, which in this case is a mix of soy sauce, oyster sauce and cooking sake - the sauce shouldn't be too thick, so please don't overcook it - just heat until the alcohol from the sake has evaporated and then remove. That apart, this is a simple to prepare dish that you can have ready for your hungry diners in under 30 minutes. Enjoy!
Ingredients
250g pak choi, rinsed
4 button mushrooms, cleaned
4 baby corn, rinsed
1/2 red bell pepper
2 tbsp veg oil
1/2 tsp garlic paste
1/2 tsp ginger paste
12 uncooked king prawns
100g squid rings
for the sauce:
100ml water
1 tbsp japanese cooking sake
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tbsp soy sauce
2-3 tsp potato flour
400g / 14oz cooked rice
Preparation
cut off the bottom of the pak choi stem, then cut the leaves into bite size pieces
remove the ends of the babycorn, slice lengthways and halve
trim the ends of the mushroom stalks and slice
remove the bell pepper seeds and cut into bite size pieces
combine the sake, sugar, oyster sauce, soy sauce & potato flour to the water and mix well
heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the garlic & ginger for 30secs
add the pepper, mushrooms & babycorn and stir fry for 2 mins
add the pak choi and stir for 1 min
then add the prawns & squid and stir fry for 2-3 mins
stir in the soy sauce & oyster sauce mixture and stir fry until the sauce thickens a little
your Chinese style seafood chukadon is now ready - ladle over bowls of freshly made Japanese rice