ajisai

It had been a couple of years since Satoshi and I went to eat yakiniku.

We decided to try Ajisai for dinner the other night.

We started off with beef tongue.

Sirloin on the left and Kalbi on the right.

Hakusai (chinese cabbage) kim chee.

Choregi Salad...apparently "choregi" is a made up Japanese word, which supposedly means "torn into bite sized pieces".

Everything was so tender and tasty.

AND they gave us dessert!

A cream puff filled with vanilla ice cream.

Oh, and they gave us each a stick of gum too for any bad breath after eating...ha!

We'll be back

Ajisai
6-6-6 Ikegami
Ota, Tokyo
Phone: 03.3752.8058
Hours: Mondays-Saturdays 17:00-24:00, Sundays 12:00-24:00

yakiniku waou

Yesterday, my friend, Hiromi had an unexpected day off, so she contacted me to see if I was free for lunch.

After some walking (and talking), we checked out Yakiniku Waou.

Satoshi and I had dinner here which I wrote about here.

Yakiniku Waou also has a lunch menu, but it is only served during the week.

Hiromi chose the hamburger lunch, this was served with a oroshi-ponzu (grated daikon with citrus soy) or demi-glace sauce. She chose the ponzu sauce.

She liked that the hamburger is 100% wagyu, no fillers...980 yen (tax included). Her lunch came with a salad, rice and a clear soup.

I chose the yakiniku donburi...850 yen (tax included).

This came with a clear soup. The meat was a bit gristly but I liked the flavor overall. There was way too much rice for me to finish.

Pretty laid back during lunch hour, I don't think many people know about this place, yet.

They also have other items on their menu that I want to try...I'll be back.

It was a great day of chatting and eating...thanks Hiromi!

yakiniku waou

A relatively new yakiniku place opened up near our station called Yakiniku Waou.

It's up above Family Mart (a convenience store), so you can't really see into the restaurant, making it kinda hard to see if it is popular or not.

We took a chance and had dinner there this past Saturday.

They have a large menu and we decided to try the small portion course which you need to have at least 2 people to order...4000 yen plus tax each.

Dunno why Japan likes to make these constrictive rules on course menus...kind of hampers us trying two different course menus...

Anyway, our dinner started off with a large salad, nothing quite out of the ordinary here though I loved the crunchy sweet potato chips on top!

There was also 3 different banchan (fern shoots, soy bean sprouts and spinach), delicious!

And then came the beef tongue...cooked for just a little bit and then a little squeeze of lemon...so good! Melt in your mouth.

Chateaubriand and Sirloin Steak...

When Satoshi and I put the cooked piece of chateaubriand into our mouths we looked at each other because the meat just melted!

The sirloin was just as tender too.

And then some ribeye roast...this wasn't as melt in your mouth as the others but still very tasty.

They had also given us three different sauces but we didn't really use them, just the salt and pepper that most of the meats were seasoned with were enough.

Reimen (cold noodles) the salty broth reminded me of saimin broth and the noodles had a nice chew to them.

It was my first time to have these cold noodles with a slice of apple in it. It gave the whole dish a sweet-salty combination which I enjoyed.

To end we had a choice of vanilla, strawberry or matcha ice cream...I chose strawberry while Satoshi had matcha.

We agreed the quality of the meat here was way better than Mooh! and when we come back, we'll order a la carte instead of their course menu.

We'll be back.

Yakiniku Waou
2-2-14 Ishibashi 2F
Ikeda, Osaka
Phone: 072.761.2011
Lunch : weekdays only 11:00-14:00
Dinner: 17:30-24:00
Closed Mondays

easy dinner

I have a cookbook that gives variations of their recipes. Last year, I tried their recipe for Celery dressed with kim chee which was paired with a yakiniku bowl topped with oroshi daikon (grated daikon).

The other day, I made the same salad but with a miso flavored yakiniku bowl.

Serves 2 : from Orange Page "Natsu ni Oishi kondate"

200g sirloin, thinly sliced
150g kabocha (pumpkin) : about 1/8 of a kabocha
1 teaspoon butter
1/2 tablespoon sesame oil
400g rice

Sauce:
1 teaspoon sesame seed
1/2 tablespoon grated garlic
1/2 tablespoon grated ginger
1/2 tablespoon miso (preferably akamiso (red miso))
1/2 tablespoon mirin (sweet rice wine)
1/2 tablespoon sake (rice wine)
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon tobanjan (chili paste)
1/4 teaspoon oyster sauce

Cut kabocha to about 5mm thin slices.
Cut meat into bite sized pieces.
Put ingredients for sauce into a bowl and mix well.

Heat pan and put in butter, "fry" kabocha until a toothpick goes through smoothly.
Take kabocha out and put in sesame oil.

Cook meat in oil, when it turns color, add the sauce.
After all the meat is coated well with the sauce, put rice into bowls, add meat and kabocha.

Serve with kim chee celery salad.

Enjoy.

p.s. there is another miso recipe that I love during the summer because it uses fresh corn.

easy dinner

It has been really humid the past couple of days. Yesterday afternoon it poured with thunder and this morning we awoke to cloudy skies and more humidity, not very inspiring cooking weather.

For dinner, I decided to make something easy.... Donburi (dish in a deep bowl). I found a relatively easy recipe in a cookbook I have been using a lot lately, "Orange Page's Natsu ni oishii kondate"

Oroshinose-yakinikudon (grilled marinated meat bowl with grated daikon on top) Serves 2
2 bowls of cooked rice (about 400g)
200g thinly slice beef sirloin
3 cm daikon (long white radish)
3 leaves of shiso (perilla)
shiroi irigoma (white sesame seeds)

1/2 tablespoon sesame seed oil
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 tablespoon sake (rice wine)
ichimitogarashi (ground red chili pepper) to taste

Sauce:
1/2 tablespoon shoyu (soy sauce)
1/2 tablespoon mirin (sweet rice wine)
1/2 tablespoon oyster sauce

Prep: Cut meat into bite sized pieces. Peel daikon and grate. Wash grated daikon and drain well. Mince shiso.

Method: In a frying pan, put the sesame oil and heat on high. Place beef flatly and sprinkle salt and pepper on both sides. Cook in pan until beef changes color then add sake and ingredients for the sauce. Let the sauce coat the beef well and take out of the pan.

Plating: In a donburi bowl (deep bowl), put the cooked rice and place the cooked beef on top. Add the grated daikon and shiso on top of the beef. Sprinkle some sesame seeds and some ground chili pepper.

NOTES: This dish was delicious. The sauce didn't overpower the beef and went well with the cool grated daikon.

Another thing that I did was "toss together" a little salad. This recipe was also from the same book on the same page as the recipe above.

Celery no kim chee ae (Celery dressed with kim chee) Serves 2
1 stalk of celery
80g kim chee
1 teaspoon mirin (sweet rice wine)
1/2 teaspoon of sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon of shoyu (soy sauce)

Prep: Take the leaves off the stalk and break the leaves with your hands into easy to eat pieces. Slice the stalk of celery to 2mm (thinly). Slice the kim chee to 2-3 cm pieces.

Method: In a bowl add the mirin, sesame oil and shoyu, mix. Add in celery and kim chee.

NOTES: The leaves of the celery were quite bitter, but I liked the crunch of the celery stalk and kim chee.

Enjoy!