Okazuya Food: Eggplant and Spam Tempura

Once again, the short week did me in.  I just cannot seem to get my act together.  And being pulled out for one of those four days didn't help.  I need to pull up my big girl panties because I will be out two days this week. 

I spent a few hours on Saturday at a band festival.  I am so NOT a band person.  The hook to getting people there was all-you-can-eat hot dogs.  Red hot dogs.  Hilo kine.  Anyone from Hilo knows exactly what I mean.  Always a step behind, I ended up buying all ten tickets D2 had to sell.  Fortunately, I had a few hungry friends (ollieMama and her crew and The Keeper) who were willing to give up a few hours on Saturday to eat hot dogs and listen to adolescent band kids perform.  KikukatMom and KikukatDad were also in the house.  I thing the band made $ off of us.  Nobody ate more than two hot dogs.  Oh wait.  I think The Help ate three five.

The band festival was in the gym at the high school down the road.  KikukatDad almost died there when a lady with horrific body odor sat by him.  He HAD to move.  How could the lady not realize she stinks?  How could the people with her allow her to get so stink?  This wasn't an old person. . .40-something.  No excuse.  And people sitting rows above could smell her too.

After the band festival, D2 had a few friends over.  They spent the afternoon and part of the evening hanging out.  I thought they might play in the pool, but the afternoon was overcast so nobody went in the water.

Believe it or not, I had a goal for the weekend.  The goal was to eat some poke.  Several times this week, I passed a sign outside of WikiWiki Mart advertising fresh poke.  It was a reminder that I haven't had my favorite poke in a while. . ."mixed plate" poke from Suisan.  I meant to get a half-pound of it this weekend, but by the time I was able to get to Suisan, there was hardly anything left.  I ended up with a half-pound of wasabi salmon poke (this is probably the only time I eat a lick of wasabi, and it's only because I can't taste any wasabi in the salmon poke), which I planned to have for dinner.

But on the way home, I didn't feel much like cooking, so The Help suggested we go out for dinner.  I'm not sure why he suggested it, but thirty minutes later, we found ourselves headed to Noodle Club in Waimea.  Yummm.  The bao buns are a no-miss.  The KFC (Korean Fried Chicken, which is not the Korean chicken I posted the other week) was a winner too.  In fact, I'm going to be attempting a copycat version of it with some homemade kochujang. . .when I'm done with all of my other projects.

After all that feasting, I turned to something simpler for Sunday, eggplant and Spam tempura.  This is something KikukatMom cooked occasionally.  Aunty Mo, my friend Colleen's mom also made it.  I see it occasionally at Hilo Lunch Shop, but I stopped buying it after I had a few bitter eggplant ones.  I even saw it at some small okazuya in Honolulu (located on a side street near one of the Kim Chee restaurants between Makiki and McKinley High School).  I have no idea where The Help has been all these years, but he thought I invented this dish.  He was skeptical of my "creativity", but he ended up eating mound of these.

I tried cutting the Spam two different ways:  as coins (Hilo Lunch Shop and KikukatMom style) and as logs (Aunty Mo style).  I think I prefer it cut as coins, but the coins only work if the eggplant has a certain diameter (1-1/2 inches or more).  Skinny eggplants should be cut as logs.  As with all fried foods, leftovers should be reheated in a toaster oven.

 click on recipe title for printable recipe

Eggplant and Spam Tempura

     4 long eggplant
     1/2-1 can Spam
     1 c flour
     2 tsp baking powder
     1/4 tsp salt
     1 c cold water
     oil for frying

Slice long eggplant into 1 1/2" slices (same as width of a piece of Spam).  Eggplant can also be sliced into coins, 3/4-1" thick.  Cut through middle of eggplant, but do not cut all the way through.  Slice Spam into 1/4" thick slices.  Cut Spam to fit into slits made in eggplant.  Set aside.  Heat 1 - 1 1/2" of oil to 375 degrees.  Sift flour, baking powder, and salt.  Add cold water and mix gently.  Dip Spam/eggplant pieces into batter and fry until golden brown.  Drain on paper towels.

Wi's Japanese Eggplant

Another busy week in the books!  I headed to Honolulu again on Monday to attend a training.  This trip had been planned for a while, but coming so close on the heels of an unexpected trip made it even more tiring.  A whole bunch of us from my school attended the training, and it was nice to be with colleagues.  I don't think I could've said the same about where I worked previously.  Taking a trip with any one of those clowns would've been hellish.  Oh, wait.  I did, and it was hellish.

Yes, HELLISH.  I took a trip with a colleague pickier than D2.  She kept saying she "wanted to try new things", but everywhere we went, she ordered the waitstaff to cook things SHE would eat, not what was on the menu.  She even admonished the waitstaff about lying to her about a dish.  I'm not kidding!  And probably the worst part...she stole hotel towels, something most people outgrow before their 21st birthday.  I know I will never room with her again, lest the thievery be mistakenly attributed to me.  I might be a bitch, but I am not a thief.  In kindergarten, someone at the sitter told the sitter that "kikukat takes things from people's lockers".  The sitter reported this to kikukat Mom, who proceeded to admonish me.  The next day I got in bigger trouble because I punched the girl in the mouth for talking smack about me.  Like I said, I might be a bitch, but I am not a thief, even way back then.  And a big "fuck you" goes to the sitter, for being an adult and just repeating shit she heard from a 5 year old.  Dumb wench!

Taking stock of my travels, I spent 5 days of the past 2 weeks in Honolulu.  That translates to 5 days of eating out.  I normally eat at the same places every time I go to Honolulu, but I actually broke new ground during these 2 trips.  We dined at Liliha Bakery, Aiea Bowl, Gyotaku, Kulukulu, Morimoto, and Kunio.  After 5 days of eating out, it was nice to come home and eat "home food".  The Help was nice enough to have prepared the Ds favorite, shoyu-sugar hot dog.

I did not grow up eating shoyu-sugar hot dog, but many of my friends say it was something served at home.  One thing I remember being served a lot of while growing up was eggplant.  It was sliced, seasoned, floured, and fried.  I enjoyed eating fried eggplant, but now I eat it another way, thanks to Wi.

My friend Wi (not the girl I punched in the mouth) has shared some great recipes over the years.  Nobody makes jello like she does.  Her layers are also perfectly level.  Kikukat Mom says Wi makes the best warabi rice she has ever had.  Wi's warabi rice is indeed ono and has a nice caramel color all over.  Maybe one day I will make it and post the recipe.

Wi happens to be a generational friend.  She comes from an old Hilo family.  Her parents know my parents and their siblings, and her grandparents were good buddies with my grandparents.  They went to the same church, had kids around the same age, and lived on the same street.  In fact, it was Wi's grandma who made me fall in love with botamochi decades before Wi's mom became known as a Hilo mochi maven. 

Years ago, when we were both pregnant, we'd email back-and-forth about cravings we were having.  Okay, even when we aren't pregnant we email each other about cravings, but the pregnancy seemed like a good excuse at the time.  One craving Wi had was for eggplant, and she shared with me this preparation method.  This has since become my go-to way of cooking eggplant.  Now that The Help is watching what he eats, this is something we can both enjoy. 

click on recipe title for printable recipe

Wi's Homestyle Japanese Eggplant

     Japanese eggplant, cut into 1 1/2" chunks
     1 tbsp oil
     Japanese dressing (mayonnaise & shoyu mixed together)

Heat oil in a medium saucepan.  Add eggplant, skin touching oil.  Cover and cook until side flattens, about 3 minutes.  Turn eggplant so another surface (still skin-side) will be in contact with hot pan.  Cook another 3 minutes.  Repeat 2 more times.  If necessary, cook a little longer until eggplant is soft.  Serve with Japanese dressing.

Cooked eggplant doesn't look so flattering in pictures, but trust me...this is delicious.

Batayaki Fever

I'm finally back at work for a seemingly endless stretch of days.  Its gonna be a brutal stretch.  43 more days of work until the end of the school year, and the only holiday in sight is Memorial Day.  For you non-Zone people, its 40 days and no holiday. . .Memorial Day will be the day just before the official beginning of your summer (I'm so jealous).

I think it was overkill with the anticipation of Easter (to me, Easter=all kinds of candy & sweets), but I feel like the only stuff I've been making has been sweets.  Right now, we have Easter sugar cookies (bunnies, eggs, chicks), orange slice cookies, brownies, hopping bunny buns, and mandarin orange cake.  I HAD TO buy a few boxes of Cadbury creme eggs too.  I wonder how many bags of Brach's pastel malted milk eggs Brucie boy bought this year.  Neither of us have  blood sugar problems. . .yet.  There is also a big box of See's Easter candy and some jellies from Grandma Help. 

I was unable to get motivated to cook dinner on Easter.  My excuse is I had a Dorito Locos taco from Taco Bell in the mid-afternoon, and that put me under.  The Help shelled out big $s for a gorgeous rib eye roast, but I could not bring myself to cook it.  I need to stop tweaking sugar and snap out of this high!  I need to get inspired to cook regular food again. If a rib eye roast won't do it, then maybe batayaki will, after all, the best batayaki is made with thinly sliced rib eye.

The kikukat house loves batayaki nights because there is something for everyone.  Batayaki nights provide an opportunity to exercise will power. . .you need to pace yourself with the cooking-eating cycle.

For those of you not familiar with batayaki, please allow me to explain.  Batayaki goes by several other names:  teppanyaki, yakiniku.  Thinly sliced meats and vegetables are cooked on a griddle which has been primed with butter.  Once cooked, the meats and vegetables are dipped in a shoyu-based sauce and eaten with hot rice.  Batayaki is a cannibalized word:  bata meaning butter and yaki meaning to cook.  Now I'm wondering if batayaki is a Hawaii word.

In the 70s, 80s & 90s, Restaurant Fuji in the Hilo Hotel was THE place to go out and enjoy a teppanyaki dinner.  Yukata-clad servers would bring a giant plate of raw food and a small dish with a block of butter to the table.  There were two options for teppanyaki:  teppanyaki which had an assortment of meat and some seafood and umi-no-ko which had only seafood.  The servers  would fire up the propane and begin the cooking process.  This is not the same as what you get at Benihana.  There were no fire knife theatrics.

To be honest, I never enjoyed teppanyaki at Restaurant Fuji.  I would always be disappointed when we got seated at a teppanyaki table because that meant I wouldn't be able to order anything from the regular menu.  They had two items on their regular menu that were awesome:  shrimp tempura and grilled butterfish.  I would have much preferred those things instead of batayaki.

When I lived in Honolulu in the 90s, there were (and still are) tons of yakiniku places.  Many of my family members would rave about Edokko or Yakiniku Camellia.  I went to one of those places with some friends, and I was not impressed.  It was a little different from Restaurant Fuji in that you went to a long buffet to load up your plate with raw items and then return to your table (with grill) to cook what was on your plate.  Same thing...cook food, dip in sauce, eat with rice.  Boring.

It didn't occur to me until I was older (close to 30) why I didn't enjoy batayaki/teppanyaki/yakiniku.  I never liked the dipping sauce.  The sauces were either too sour or just blecchhh.  The turning point happened when Mr. Dependable's friends suggested a batayaki dinner (I wasn't enthusiastic about this) and they insisted on bringing the sauce.  The sauce they brought was almost perfect and changed my whole take on batayaki.  For the first time in over 2 decades, I realized batayaki was something I could like. 

If you were lucky enough to have disposable income when Restaurant Fuji went out of business (mid/late 90s), you might have been able to score a table with a built-in propane griddle.  I don't think most people were so lucky (there were less than a dozen).  For most people, the most popular way to have batayaki at home is to use a table top griddle (I think mine is made by Presto) upon which a generous pat of butter is placed.  Some people use a frying pan on a butane burner for table top cooking.  If the cooking part isn't so important, everything can also be cooked in a skillet on a range and brought to the table already cooked.  I do the latter when I'm trying to finish the leftovers on the 2nd night. . .after the cooking drama from the 1st night is over.

What gets cooked varies from family to family.  We normally have  beef and pork (batayaki meat is sliced paper-thin).  Sometimes we have chicken.  Salmon is a non-negotiable.  Scallops and shrimp are good too.  I like eggplant (takes long to cook), won bok (napa cabbage), bean sprouts (mung), and mushrooms.  The best mushrooms are alii oyster (eryngii) mushrooms.  I've been told that some families will even cook sliced hot dogs and kamaboko (pink & white fishcake).  Mr. Dependable liked to have zucchini (yuck).  D1 will eat anything except mushrooms and eggplant.  D2 will eat only the leafy part of the won bok.

There is also great variation with the dipping sauce (each diner gets their own bowl. . .a community bowl would be disgusting).  Most sauces have some element of pucker, and in many cases, its too sour for my taste.  Ironically, pucker was the missing factor when Mr. Dependable's friends came over.  The sauce they brought was tasty but lacked any hint of tartness.  I fixed it with some minor adjustment of the ingredient amounts and the addition of lemon juice.  The grated daikon gives the sauce a slight heat, which is also important.

Speaking of heat. . .everytime I think we are going to start seeing warmer weather, a new storm system comes around and gives us days of rain.  I'm still having to turn on the electric blanket every night.  It doesn't matter what the weather is like because batayaki is something that can be enjoyed year-round. 

click on recipe title for printable recipe

KCs Batayaki Sauce

     1 c shoyu
     1/4 c sugar
     1/4 c mirin
     1 c chicken broth
     juice of 1/4 lemon

     5" piece of daikon, peeled & grated

Combine all ingredients, except grated daikon, in a medium saucepan.  Heat gently, stirring until sugar is dissolved.  To serve, place desired amount of grated daikon in a bowl.  Ladle sauce over.  Replenish sauce and daikon as needed.

Regarding the food in the pics:  Costco sells thinly sliced rib eye (yes, they have prime beef).  KTA and Marukai sell thinly sliced beef and pork.  Doesn't the salmon look gorgeous?  Its wild Alaskan king salmon courtesy of cousin Kento and his fabulous, non-fish-eater wife Julie.  They go on a yearly fishing expedition to the Waterfall Resort in Alaska and are generous in sharing their spoils.  Thank you!