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I've been practicing my maki rolling in anticipation of two upcoming bluefin tuna fishing trips next week.

These microwaveable rice bowls are great and adding my sumeshi right out of the microwave it produces passable sushi rice.

This was my attempt at a thicker tuna maki after making 3 standard size tuna maki. They turn out delicious but the seaweed ends up getting steamed a little too much from the warm rice and becoming both hard to slice and hard to eat. Should I let the rice cool down further before rolling? I've been going with the same ~95-100 degree temperature that I use for nigiri.

Yes, I have to practice moderation. :D Tonkatsu bento I bought did not look that big. I thought the addition of curry will be a nice compliment to tonkatsu bento, but it ended up a lot. I am all in for exotic foods eaten in Japan!

Enjoy the tuna fishing trip. Are you going to fish for tuna at off the coast of Cape Cod?

I am. I'm lucky enough to have a neighbor who is a charter captain. He lets me know when he'll have extra spots on the boat and this time he happened to have them for tuna. Usually I just fish for squid with him during the spring.

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Hi everyone,

I come in need of virtual support.

More specifically. I am trying to replicate a dish we ate in Kyoto that I have been dreaming about. Our friends are in Kyoto and actually visited the restaurant today and reminded us that it's the best thing ever.

The dish:

"Kyoto salt chicken" at Manzara Honten.
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I know that 90% of this dish is just the incredibly high quality chickens that Yoshinori & co get from their local source but I want to try to get as close as possible using our local birds.

I think it's a deboned thigh. I know they definitely dry brine it with salt. I'm assuming it's slow roasted and then finished under a broiler for the skin. Any help would be more than a little appreciated.

Also for any of you folks living in Japan, this is a dish I'd go out of my way to try if possible. It's a 4-5 minute walk from the RC Kyoto.

I'll take a stab. When you mentioned deboned chicken thigh with crispy skin, I immediately thought of this video:

The general recipe is this: https://cookpad-com.translate.goog/r...n&_x_tr_pto=sc (the liquor would be sake)
https://cookpad.com/recipe/7165409

I can’t quite tell from the photograph but it seems to have some unusual colouring. Is it possible that it was cooked or marinaded with squid ink?

Personally, I follow Mandy Lee’s method for making crispy chicken. But to make it more succulent you can first marinade it in shio kouji (and if you don’t have access to shio kouji/shio koji, try with a combination of yogurt and salt - lots of instructions on the internet to do this)

Thank you to both of you!

I don't think it had any squid ink, merely a bad lighting situation for my phone. I actually have shio koji in my pantry! I've been a bit scared to give it a use so this will be the motivation I need. Hopefully my local chicken guy is at the farmer's market on Saturday so I can give this a go.

Was wondering how the Manzara Honten might describe this chicken and noticed they are currently making a black version. https://www.manzara.co.jp/shop/honten/cuisine.html (3rd item down)
Then my imagination got the better of me and I wondered what a chicken salt marinade might be like with a little squid/cuttlefish ink in the mixture. I might try it out myself one day, a little ikasumi along with shoyu and see how it compares as a chicken marinade to shio kouji.

Seems to me that you have the perfect excuse to try out your shio kouji. Let us know how you get on, just make sure to get the skin as dry as you possibly can before cooking if you want to get it to crackle.

I would have loved to try that version as well.

The seafood carpaccio was just as pretty as it is in that picture. It would have been the highlight if we hadn't been so blown away by the chicken.

I promise to report back next week with pictures.

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Here is my first attempt. I had a heritage bird frozen so I thawed that and took a whack at the recipe.

I deboned, salted, and evened out each thigh and then left it for 15 minutes while prepping the rest of the bird for stock and roasting. I heated my pan to med-low with canola oil (going to use something else next time) and then once the oil was just barely bubbling, dried off both pieces completely and then skin side down until about 80% cooked through, the first 2-3 minutes with weights on each piece to flatten out. I spooned a bit of oil on them and then flipped. I think at this point I left them about 30 seconds too long because they weren't overcooked but they were close. I let them rest for 10 minutes while cleaning up and then sliced them up and served with salt/wasabi.

I'd grade myself a 75 for taste and 60 for visuals. Lots of room for improvement. It was also a fairly small bird so the thighs cooked much faster than the recipes would indicate. I am picking up another bird this weekend so I'll give it another go, this time with a shio koji step.

Nice work! Looks delicious.
I have taken to Mandy Lee’s advice on crispy chicken and to get the skin just so, as well as the pre-drying out part her suggestion is to to go with a non-stick pan and just put the chicken skin side down directly, no canola/rapeseed, no butter, no oil at all. Chicken has enough of its own.

That's how I do duck breast. I start it similar to bacon in a cold pan with cross-hatching in the fat and then medium heat to render the gobs of fat out.
I have been using canola oil and it has an off-putting smell above a certain temperature that I am tired of. I have some non-virgin olive oil and peanut oil I want to try next but I think no oil is a good option too.

We went out for a ramen night at one of our local restaurants and the kitchen forgot to put the miso tare in mine. Also it was served with what I think is fettuccine? Take me back to Tokyo :o

Am getting closer to nailing my own ideal of a cookie topped milk bread. The main bread dough was laminated with a sweetened milky layer, similar to how croissant pastry is made, and then cut to strips and coiled. Once it had proved for a while I added the cookie crust topping.
Inspired by Mont Thabor’s most famous offering.

This one was a bit too big and thus took too long to cook to be exactly what I want, but I got very close.

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