Listen to the Rain

Just yesterday I learned that "teriyaki" comes from 照る (teru, "to shine"), referring to the glistening sheen that teriyaki gets.

Yesterday, lisekatevans messaged me and asked if I wanted to hang out this week. I was busy two of the days she proposed (I'm going to an Anime Chicago meetup on Thursday and to a theatre event on Friday), but that night I was free, so I suggested we hang out at my place and I made dinner. Through coincidence I had been looking at a recipe for chicken teriyaki earlier that day, so I figured it'd be a chance to make it.

It turned out great:

I bought teriyaki sauce a week or so ago, but I never realized how easy it was to make. That recipe above says:

½ cup sake
½ cup mirin
½ cup soy sauce
¼ cup sugar

All of which I have. The real mirin, too, not the "aji-mirin" you get in most American stores which is basically mirin-flavored sugar water. The recipe for teriyaki seemed like a bit too much sugar, though, so I only put in 3 tbps instead of four--even that was too much, 2 would probably be enough--put the chicken in the wok upside down, and set to tending it while lisekatevans chopped and sautéed the hakusai (白菜).


This is about halfway through, after I had flipped the chicken a couple times and sat there for ten minutes repeatedly spooning the teriyaki sauce over the chicken. It certainly wasn't difficult, but it was time consuming and I was glad that I had someone else there to help with prepare the vegetables. While lisekatevans made the hakusai and chopped the tomatoes my parents had brought from their garden, I kept spooning the teriyaki sauce over the chicken as the sauce reduced and thickened and the chicken was slowly stained darker and darker. By the time I was done, the sauce was about a third of its original volume and syrupy, like the teriyaki sauce that you get out of a bottle, but done by myself using just four ingredients. You can see how it's reduced in that photo.


Here's the finished meal! It's true that I poured a bit more of the sauce on top of the chicken before I took the photo, but that's what you're supposed to do with chicken teriyaki. And you can definitely see the shine in this picture.

It was delicious! The chicken was juicy and the sauce was sweet and a bit tangy. The hakusai, despite lisekatevans's concern that it was water-logged, was delicious and delicately flavored from the soy sauce, ponzu sauce, and rice vinegar she had used to cook it. The tomatoes were fresh. The rice was...well, it was rice. 🍚

lisekatevans also brought some sake with her, so we had that and peach-ginger tea with dinner. It was delicious!

I actually had a discussion with my Japanese tutor about rice, about how I used to get white rice cravings before I moved to Japan but never get them anymore, though maybe that's because I eat rice almost every day. She mentioned how she'll make two or three cups of rice at a time and then she and her boyfriend will eat it all, whereas I'll make a half-cup for myself but have it almost every day with breakfast (and sometimes with dinner), so maybe we eat the same amount, it's just that I eat it gradually over time and she eats it in spurts.

We also spent a bit of time complaining about Japanese food prices in Chicago. I would have been going to Misoya Yakisoba, a yakisoba branch of the Misoya ramen restaurant, that just opened in Lakeview, but since I always make yakisoba at home from scratch I had forgotten that yakisoba sauce traditionally contains oyster sauce and thus is treif (hence why I make it at home). The only thing on the menu I could eat was kara-age, so I decided not to go. But also the yakisoba costs twelve dollars. Twelve dollars for noodles and sauce!

It'd be like an appetizer that was just spaghetti noodles and red sauce and it costs $12. I'm sure it's good, but I can make my own yakisoba, thank you. I can even make yakisobapan myself, and it won't cost anywhere near $12. $12!

Well, the benefit of being able to cook is that I can just make the food.