Teppanyaki (鉄板焼き, teppan'yaki?) is a style of Japanese cuisine that uses an iron griddle to cook food. The word teppanyaki is derived from teppan (鉄板), which means iron plate, and yaki (焼き), which means grilled, broiled or pan-fried. In Japan, teppanyaki refers to dishes cooked using an iron plate, including steak, shrimp, okonomiyaki, yakisoba, and monjayaki.
The originator of the teppanyaki-style steakhouse is the Japanese restaurant chain Misono, which introduced the concept of cooking Western-influenced food on a teppan in Japan in 1945.[1] They soon found that the cuisine was more popular with foreigners than with the Japanese, who enjoyed both watching the skilled maneuvers of the chefs preparing the food as well as the cuisine, somewhat more familiar than more traditional Japanese dishes. As the restaurants became popular at tourist spots with non-Japanese, the chain increased the performance aspect of the chef's preparation, such as stacking onion slices to produce a flaming onion volcano.
Okay... so last night Jules, Ed and I took Nico to his 5th-grade promotion dinner at a Teppan Table restaurant... The chef was Good....made a great volcano out of a white onion, but didn't flip anything good into anyone’s mouth :-( sadly!!! Nico had a great time even though he was stressing a lot about the misbehavior of a 3 year old at our table. I found it somewhat comforting (and amusing) that he is old enough to recognize finally, how distressing a Childs bad behavior can be!!!
The first thing the chef made was Jules fried rice. I was sorry I didn't have it when I tasted it and I have to say it was ALMOST as good as the one I used to make for my kids. So...here you go Jules this is how Mommy did it, sorry I never made you learn - you were just NEVER interested in cooking.
Lala's Fried Rice
about 3 slices of bacon - cut in small pieces
1/2 onion sliced thickly
1 egg
2 small zucchini sliced
1 small carrot julienne slices
1/2 cup bean sprouts
handful of sliced mushrooms
seasonings to taste (garlic salt, pepper)
soy sauce to taste
vegetable oil
2 cups cooked rice (sticky rice is best - we use brown rice)
2 tbsp green onion tops for top
Cook your bacon until brown and crispy, moving all around the pan (or grill) to flavor it...remove and reserve. Crack egg and cook it similar to an omelet and slice into small pieces and reserve.
Next add your sliced onion, cook a bit before adding carrots cook them a bit longer before adding zucchini. Make sure to move everything around the greased pan, permit it to soak up all the bacon juice you can. Dice the vegetables as they become tender adding mushrooms at the end, as they tend to cook faster. Cook until you reach desired tenderness, I prefer mine a bit crunchy. Move everything to the side of the pan where heat is NOT concentrated. Add the rice and some additional oil if necessary and flip the rice all around the pan. When the rice has been coated properly season to taste, add soy sauce to taste and mix the bacon bits, cooked vegetables and mushrooms to the rice. Serve steaming hot with green onion on top.
(NOTE: If you really want to makes this special after you have cleaned your pan (and that means scrapping the dirty residue off from the veggies) add another slice of bacon build your grease back up and cook some scallops and or shrimp in the bacon grease and serve with the fried rice. Some hot sake, scallops and fried rice yum!!!
I am fortunate to now own a outdoor griddle that works well as a teppan stove. In fact last night I realized we need to build a table around it as we could have a lot of fun with this. If you do not have one a woke - stove top preferably or an electric wok will do in a pinch. If you have none then a large heavy skillet will work. Make sure to get your pan really hot and if you are cooking inside turn on your fan.
ONION VOLCANO
The flaming onion volcano is a type of food performance demonstrated by chefs at some teppanyaki restaurants. It consists of a number of slices of onion stacked to look like Mount FujiMount Fujiis the highest mountain in Japan at . Along with Mount Tate and Mount Haku, it is one of Japan's "Three Holy Mountains" . An active volcano that last erupted in 1707–08, Mount Fuji is just west of Tokyo, and can be seen on a clear day...
, which are set on fire and then doused in liquid that bubbles up like lavaLavaLava is molten rock expelled by a volcano during eruption. This molten rock is formed in the interior of some planets, including Earth, and some of their satellites. When first erupted from a volcanic vent, lava is a liquid at temperatures from 700 °C to 1,200 °C...
.
In the traditional preparation, an onion is sliced into layers, and one layer from the top or bottom of the stack is separated out. This stack is then separated into individual "rings". The largest, outermost, ring is used as the base, with its wider side down. The smaller rings are then stacked on top, forming an open cone. The rings can be stacked because they are wider on the bottom than the top.
After constructing the cone, oil is poured into the center through the open top, then diluted ethyl alcohol, and then the mixture is set on fire. The alcohol burns off in a few seconds, leaving a steam of unburned alcohol streaming out of the top like a smoking volcano. For an added touch, teriyakiTeriyakiTeriyaki is a cooking technique used in Japanese cuisine in which foods are broiled or grilled in a sweet soy sauce marinade...
sauce can be poured in after the flames die down, and the oil, heated by the grill, will cause it to boil out of the top like lava.
If you want to make a volcano onion you might want to watch this video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDe13GbFGTM&feature=related
Lets Cook with Viola Brown
I had taken my dauthers 10 year old son Nico to see "Julie and Julia" last summer and she recently rented the movie. Nico told his mom that Lala would love that cook book, and I am now the proud owner.
Nico loved the movie, which surprised me. We had spent the summer going to all the movies he wanted to see and I told him finally after about ten kids movies it was my turn to choose. So reluctantly, very reluctantly he went with me to see Julie and Julia. He laughed out loud several times at Meryl Streep's authentic portrayal of Julia Child. She totally caputed the comedy of Julia. He liked the movie, but was disinclined to start a blog himself. I suggested he write about 365 days of Pizza. Not just your ordinary pepperoni, the only kind he will eat, but Egg Benedict pizza grilled, or Chicken Alfredo Pizza (yummy white sauce), or dessert pizza with an Oreo cookie crust. All the idea made him want to do was order Domino's...
I decided yesterday (Christmas Day 2009) when I opened this gift, that I too would cook my way through Julia's book. As I began reading it this morning I realized there was something missing from today's cook and even perhaps from Julia's. Now I am not criticizing her book or her value and example. She brought French and Gourmet cooking to us, both of which appeal to my culinary sense and taste buds. But now with Pacific Rim, Fusion and the Food Channel we are all into food presentation as well as taste, and freshness. All good but shouldn't we be able to enjoy, in moderation and on occasion, some of the good old country cooking I grew up on. You know chicken and dumplings, where the chicken is browned in bacon grease. I know, I know, hearts are palpitating at the thought of heart attack on a plate supers, but my grandmother lived to be 96 years old and never owned a range where there wasn't a can of bacon grease decorating it's stove top.
Viola Brown or Grammy to me was a dirt poor chicken farmers wife. She had five children to feed as well and nothing...I mean NOTHING was ever wasted. She had recipes and used them but she knew her recipes so well that she didn't have to use them to fix a meal. And just because something called for carrots didn't mean she couldn't add broccoli too if she was so inclined or had it left over from Sunday super.
She was so known for her cooking that my mother often joked that my father married my mother for her mothers chicken and dumplings. The truth is Grammy drove him nuts, but he did love those chicken and dumplings.
As a child and a young woman I was exposed to the never waste a thing cooking mentality of the lower income families of the 1950's. It is not to say that julia or anyone who ate prime rib or porterhouse steaks for Sunday super would waste food. I am sure they didn't either, most had lived through the depression and knew better. But, as I continue to read Julia's book I realize just how poor my grandparents were. Aspic salads would be something the man my grandfather worked for family would serve. Grammy did not have luncheons, or even attend one unless it was a church social but, she knew how to feed her family and then eventually their families.
Calories were never lacking and every meal included home made bread or biscuits and butter. And bones were cooked down until every single spot of meat had escaped.
Julie talked in her blog about how long it took Julia to fix meals. This Christmas I did what every good cook that is not a baker should do at least once. I made cookies and candy. My grandmother was both a cook and a baker and if baking weren't so tedious I might be more inclined to whip up some sugary delights or high carb breads more often. As I was making pinwheel cookies and chopping (finely chopping) 3 cups of pecans I realized I could put them in one of my handy machines and do them in a heart beat. My tireless brain reflected on the fact that Grammy not only chopped her nuts by hand, she had to shell them, discard the shells and most likely picked them off the tree.
Even the landscape had a food value no Feng shui clipped decorative trees could be found in the front of their farm house. She had walnut, pecan, pomegranate, apple and apricot tree's, a full vegetable garden and even grape and berry vines.
So yesterday when my daughter was saying how GREAT her Christmas Eve dinner came out, I realized something. She has become a fantastic cook but, today's young woman knows nothing of two generations back, where recipes were just the beginning of a good dish. Where imagination, ingenuity and left overs were the heart of the meal.
Julia Child opened doors to my mothers generation about French and Gourmet cooking, but how will my daughter and her children ever know about grammy's cooking if I don't share what I learned. And learn I did, although it took sometime for this girl who was known to burn water.
So I decided to add a twist to my exploration of Julia's book. Not a "Betty Crocker", or a Julia Childs French cooking" blog, but more like a "Viola on the Prairie", recipe blog that will have some things in common with Julia's recipes.
This blog will tell you Grammy's answer to each of Julia's recipes - a poor man's style of food serving from the farms around the 1950's Food I grew up eating. At least as I would interpret them based on the experience I gained from the best cook I ever knew, Viola Brown. Lets see how far I get!
Nico loved the movie, which surprised me. We had spent the summer going to all the movies he wanted to see and I told him finally after about ten kids movies it was my turn to choose. So reluctantly, very reluctantly he went with me to see Julie and Julia. He laughed out loud several times at Meryl Streep's authentic portrayal of Julia Child. She totally caputed the comedy of Julia. He liked the movie, but was disinclined to start a blog himself. I suggested he write about 365 days of Pizza. Not just your ordinary pepperoni, the only kind he will eat, but Egg Benedict pizza grilled, or Chicken Alfredo Pizza (yummy white sauce), or dessert pizza with an Oreo cookie crust. All the idea made him want to do was order Domino's...
I decided yesterday (Christmas Day 2009) when I opened this gift, that I too would cook my way through Julia's book. As I began reading it this morning I realized there was something missing from today's cook and even perhaps from Julia's. Now I am not criticizing her book or her value and example. She brought French and Gourmet cooking to us, both of which appeal to my culinary sense and taste buds. But now with Pacific Rim, Fusion and the Food Channel we are all into food presentation as well as taste, and freshness. All good but shouldn't we be able to enjoy, in moderation and on occasion, some of the good old country cooking I grew up on. You know chicken and dumplings, where the chicken is browned in bacon grease. I know, I know, hearts are palpitating at the thought of heart attack on a plate supers, but my grandmother lived to be 96 years old and never owned a range where there wasn't a can of bacon grease decorating it's stove top.
Viola Brown or Grammy to me was a dirt poor chicken farmers wife. She had five children to feed as well and nothing...I mean NOTHING was ever wasted. She had recipes and used them but she knew her recipes so well that she didn't have to use them to fix a meal. And just because something called for carrots didn't mean she couldn't add broccoli too if she was so inclined or had it left over from Sunday super.
She was so known for her cooking that my mother often joked that my father married my mother for her mothers chicken and dumplings. The truth is Grammy drove him nuts, but he did love those chicken and dumplings.
As a child and a young woman I was exposed to the never waste a thing cooking mentality of the lower income families of the 1950's. It is not to say that julia or anyone who ate prime rib or porterhouse steaks for Sunday super would waste food. I am sure they didn't either, most had lived through the depression and knew better. But, as I continue to read Julia's book I realize just how poor my grandparents were. Aspic salads would be something the man my grandfather worked for family would serve. Grammy did not have luncheons, or even attend one unless it was a church social but, she knew how to feed her family and then eventually their families.
Calories were never lacking and every meal included home made bread or biscuits and butter. And bones were cooked down until every single spot of meat had escaped.
Julie talked in her blog about how long it took Julia to fix meals. This Christmas I did what every good cook that is not a baker should do at least once. I made cookies and candy. My grandmother was both a cook and a baker and if baking weren't so tedious I might be more inclined to whip up some sugary delights or high carb breads more often. As I was making pinwheel cookies and chopping (finely chopping) 3 cups of pecans I realized I could put them in one of my handy machines and do them in a heart beat. My tireless brain reflected on the fact that Grammy not only chopped her nuts by hand, she had to shell them, discard the shells and most likely picked them off the tree.
Even the landscape had a food value no Feng shui clipped decorative trees could be found in the front of their farm house. She had walnut, pecan, pomegranate, apple and apricot tree's, a full vegetable garden and even grape and berry vines.
So yesterday when my daughter was saying how GREAT her Christmas Eve dinner came out, I realized something. She has become a fantastic cook but, today's young woman knows nothing of two generations back, where recipes were just the beginning of a good dish. Where imagination, ingenuity and left overs were the heart of the meal.
Julia Child opened doors to my mothers generation about French and Gourmet cooking, but how will my daughter and her children ever know about grammy's cooking if I don't share what I learned. And learn I did, although it took sometime for this girl who was known to burn water.
So I decided to add a twist to my exploration of Julia's book. Not a "Betty Crocker", or a Julia Childs French cooking" blog, but more like a "Viola on the Prairie", recipe blog that will have some things in common with Julia's recipes.
This blog will tell you Grammy's answer to each of Julia's recipes - a poor man's style of food serving from the farms around the 1950's Food I grew up eating. At least as I would interpret them based on the experience I gained from the best cook I ever knew, Viola Brown. Lets see how far I get!
Thursday, June 17, 2010
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