By MIHOKO TERADA/ Staff Writer
September 22, 2022 at 07:00 JST
Fried rice with ground pork and dried skipjack tuna shavings (Photo by Atsuko Shimamura)
Editor’s note: In the Taste of Life series, cooking experts, chefs and others involved in the field of food introduce their special recipes intertwined with their paths in life.
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In a home cooking class that she has been giving for more than 10 years, chef Miyuki Igarashi tells her students, “I am a cook but also a mother.”
In the small class, which has a homelike atmosphere, Igarashi listens to each student’s problem and tries to help them solve it together. She draws upon her own experiences as a child and as a mother to offer advice.
“Even though I cook meals for my child, I don’t get a ‘thank you’,” said a student.
Igarashi advised the student to “pay attention to the presentation of the meal” and “try serving it with some fruit.” She told the student, when the person who cooks incorporates small caring gestures in the meal, the person eating it will notice and both sides will become mindful of each other.
“People preparing meals is such a noble task,” says Igarashi, who remembers feeling happy when her mother cooked for her when she was a child.
Out of gratitude, she continues to give the cooking class to impart home cooking that can be prepared at ease without trying hard.
In 2014, the chef gave birth to her son and became a mother herself. Since then, she has made it a point to introduce dishes that use dashi stock in her cooking class.
When she visited Southeast Asia on business a few years after her son was born, she made pho and other dishes using stock made from the boney parts of fish. The local people said they tasted delicious.
Hoping to “start serving dashi to children when they are small,” she began sharing her affinity with other parents.
This week’s “fried rice with ground pork and dried skipjack tuna shavings” featuring the shavings that give dashi stock solves the problem of “not getting the spot-on taste.”
“People tend to heavily flavor dishes by adding salt, soy sauce or Chinese soup stock powder,” says Igarashi.
When dried skipjack tuna shavings are added after cooking the meat in the frying pan, a fine aroma rises. The only other seasoning to be added is soy sauce. It is a flavorful fried rice rich in the savor of dried food.
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Miyuki Igarashi is a chef-owner of a Chinese restaurant born in Tokyo in 1974. She drew attention when she appeared on the cooking program “Iron Chef” at the age of 22. She opened Chugoku Ryori Miyu in Tokyo in 2008.
BASIC COOKING METHOD
Main Ingredients (Serves two)
100 grams ground pork, 5 grams dried skipjack tuna shavings (katsuo-kezuribushi), 250 grams warm cooked rice, 1 egg (L size), 2 stalks green onion (aonegi type), 1 Tbsp sesame oil, 1 and 1/2 Tbsp soy sauce.
1. Chop green onion into 2- to 3-mm-thick slices.
2. Add sesame oil and ground pork to frying pan and cook. Add dried skipjack tuna shavings and cook further.
3. Place rice in bowl, break egg into it and mix lightly. Add this to pan in (2) and cook thoroughly.
4. Pour soy sauce on side of pan to give aroma. Add green onion as a final touch and cook lightly.
About 450 kcal and 2.2 grams salt per portion
(Nutrient calculation by the Nutrition Clinic of Kagawa Nutrition University)
The goal is to make tasty fried rice that is “moist, fluffy and not sticky.”
The rice and egg should be mixed lightly only twice or so using a pair of cooking chopsticks. If mixed too many times, the rice will turn sticky. Also try not to pan-fry excessively. Stop cooking when the rice grains separate and remove from the stove before they become too dry.
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