omurice with béchamel sauce

i only started liking omurice yesterday. i think my aversion to omurice was due to the fact that it's full of ketchup. i've never been a huge fan of ketchup--it just seems to overpower everything. so i never even thought of making it at my house until joshie was telling me about how delicious his omurice turned out. i made a white sauce instead of using ketchup, and i think it turned out quite nicely. i only made enough for one serving because reheated eggs are not tasty. actually, there was a little too much filling and sauce, but i just ate it over rice in the morning, and that was a pretty good breakfast.


ingredients for the béchamel sauce
25 g butter
25 g flour (1)
200 mL milk
pinch salt
pinch nutmeg

ingredients for omirice
2 large eggs, beaten
1/4 red bell pepper, chopped
1/4 small yellow onion, chopped
130 g chicken
clove garlic, minced
pinch salt
pinch dried red pepper
rice
vegetable oil

(1)フラワー

the nutmeg was here when i moved in. i got the dried red pepper at daiso. everything else is from e-town in kosugi.

i listened to gang starr--daily operation while cooking this dish.


let's go!

making the white sauce
1. béchamel sauce is really important because you can use it to make lots of other sauces. it's basically scalded milk thickened with roux. traditionally, an onion studded with cloves is used to flavor the milk, but i don't know where cloves are, so i wasn't too worried about it.

2. first, the roux. melt butter in a sauce pan. when it gets bubbly and frothy, add the flour.

3. mix the flour in with a wooden spoon. the goal is smooth and very thick with no flour chunks. keep stirring over heat for a couple of minutes, and then set aside.

4. bring the milk almost to a boil. add it to the roux while whisking vigorously. if your sauce gets too thick, you can add a little hot liquid (if you don't have any more milk, you can use a bullion cube dissolved in some hot water). add the salt and nutmeg.

making the omurice
1. cut up the chicken into small pieces. marinate it in oil, salt, garlic, and dried red pepper. i love the dried red pepper rings, and this time i followed seth's advice and used kitchen shears to cut them up.

2. sauté the chicken, onion, and bell pepper in a pan or wok over high heat.

3. turn the heat down a little. mix in the rice. ok, i really have tried to go metric here, as i am now living in the rest of the world, but how do i measure cooked rice? anyway, i used enough rice to fill up one of those ridiculously tiny beer glasses you get at enkais.

4. mix in about 50 mL of béchamel sauce until it all kind of sticks together.

5. in a separate pan, heat up enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan. pour in the eggs. spread the egg around, and make a thin omelet. put a couple ladles of filling in the middle, and fold over. carefully slide on a plate . it was all a little fast to take pictures, but i pretty much did what this guy did, except for the part where his comes out perfectly.

6. spoon some sauce over the omurice.

enjoy!
the sauce worked well with the omurice. my omelet wasn't as pretty as i hoped, but it was my first time, so hopefully i'll get better. it was really delicious though. i think it would have been good with some spinach, mushrooms, or tomatoes inside, too. i definitely want to experiment with different kinds of fillings in the future.

huevos rancheros

i've had a vegetarian at my house for the last week, so i haven't really been eating a lot of meat. but he cooks pretty well, so i haven't really been missing it. it's been ungodly hot around here, and i really didn't feel like going to the grocery one afternoon. niko rummaged around the cupboard, and this is what he came up with. yummy!


ingredients:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 clove garlic
2 tsp chili powder
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1 can black beans
3/4 can corn
3/4 can stewed tomatoes, chopped
4 eggs
cilantro (1)

(1) コリアンダー

the chili powder, olive oil, and black beans are from yamaya in takaoka. the cilantro is from himi vicki's garden (but i've also found it in jusco in tak). everything else is from jusco in takaoka.

for added deliciousness, listen to manu chao--clandestino while cooking.

let's go!
1. sauté the onion and garlic in the olive oil until tender. the onions will look kind of translucent.

2. add the chili powder, cumin, paprika, pepper, and salt. mix in, and let the flavors cook into the onion for a few minutes.

3. turn the heat down. add the beans, corn and tomatoes. black beans can be a little hard to find sometimes (and expensive), but you can usually find pinto or at least kidney, and i think either of those would taste just fine. niko wants me to tell you you can use fresh tomatoes, but make sure not to throw out the larval looking stuff on the inside.

4. stir everything together, but don't stir like this unless you're trying to be silly.

5. let everything cook over low heat for awhile, until everything cooks down kind of thick and out-of-focus like this.

6.now that the beans are done, you can make the eggs. mine were over medium, but you can make them however you want. silly faces are not necessary, but encouraged.

7. slide the eggs on top of a plate of rice.

8. spoon some bean mixture on top.

9. sprinkle some cilantro on top. now, cilantro can be hard to find sometimes, so when i see some, i just grab it and make something. if you're going to go searching, note that cilantro in japanese is not shirantoro, but korianda, because cilantro is the leaf of the coriander plant. but if you don't have cilantro, don't worry about it. this dish is still very yummy without it. i usually pull the leaves from the stems and then chop, but you can skip the first step, which is much faster.


enjoy!
we ate this with a spoonful of salsa. we lamented our lack of cheese or sour cream, which we both agreed would have set things off quite nicely. it was still very delicious. a couple days later, we had some leftovers with a dollop of guacamole, and that was really good, too.