Thursday, February 10, 2005

Not exactly teriyaki

In the vein of sukiyaki, sort of, last night's effort was a take-off on teriyaki. It started with some thawed chicken. After the usual bout of indecision, I asked myself why I couldn't mix together the usual components of teriyaki sauce and cook the chicken in that broth. No contrary answers being forthcoming, I went ahead and did it.

It's kind of surprising I didn't think of this long ago. I used Hiroko Shimbo's recipe for teriyaki sauce, which is one of those recipes that leaves the kitchen smelling like a Japanese restaurant. I simmered the chicken in the teriyaki sauce ingredients, rather than marinating or grilling or even baking. It smelled a little sharper than the last time I made teriyaki sauce, I think because the sake had a drier flavor than expected. I used Gekkeikan rather than the cooking sake but, interestingly, the Gekkeikan was somewhat sharper and drier in flavor than other bottles of the same brand I've bought recently. Even more confusing, the Gekkeikan seemed a little sweeter when sampled the following evening, but later went back to being drier than normal. Maybe I'm just losing my mind.

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