Chicken Katsu Don

Mum says I'm like my dad in many ways. Especially when it comes to food. When a certain food comes to my mind and I crave it, I tend to do everything I can to get my hands on it. Dad tells me that he foresees me flying between continents in the future, all for the sake of food. I might need to save up a lot of money to be able to do that! :p

I was chatting with my friend Karen in Singapore this morning, and one of the things we talked about was how cool it would be if we both lived in the same city and we could have dinner parties and cookouts. From there, it led to what's cooking in our kitchen this weekend and we both decided we'd try cooking a donburi (rice bowl) dish.

I was planning on making oyakodon during the weekend, but as it is, I happened to come home early from work today with katsu don on my mind and since mum hadn't started on dinner yet, it was perfect timing for me to take over. A quick trip to Cold Storage and Tesco for my ingredients and then I'm on my way to cooking my katsu don (recipe adapted from Nami's awesome blog).

Ingredients: (for 3 portions)
6 fillets of chicken meat
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 egg
1 cup Panko breadcrumbs
Oil for deep frying
2 onions, sliced thinly or cut into rings
2 eggs, lightly beaten
Seasoned seaweed
Spring onions

Seasonings:
2/3 cup dashi stock (Japanese soup stock made of dried bonito flakes and dried kelp)
1 1/2 Tbsp mirin (Japanese rice wine)
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sugar
1 1/2 Tbsp sake (optional)

Directions:
1. Season chicken fillets with salt and pepper, then dredge in flour, eggs and panko.
2. Deep fry the chicken meat until golden brown, then drain excess oil away. Set aside.
3. Prepare seasonings and stir to combine well. Pour the seasonings into a frying pan and bring to a boil. Add in the onions, lower heat and let the mixture simmer until the onions look soft.
4. Put the chicken katsu into the pan, and turn up the heat to a medium high. Pour egg evenly into the pan.
5. When the egg is half cooked, turn off the heat.
6. Serve rice in a bowl, with the chicken and egg mixture. Garnish with seasoned seaweed and spring onions. I served my katsu on brown rice because that's what we eat at home.

Lessons learned from my donburi attempt:
1. Turn the heat really high just prior to adding in the egg so that the egg cooks fast and the katsu remains crispy. I was a little too slow so my fried chicken ended up losing its crispiness (what a waste of my deep frying effort because I really dislike getting burnt by spitting oil).
2. My katsu seemed like a mess when arranged on the rice. Next time I must remember to slice up the meat and arrange it nicely in the pan before I pour the egg in. That way, I'll be able to scoop up the meat and egg together and put it straight on top of the rice instead of doing it the other way around and end up with a yummy but not-so-aesthetic-looking piece of meat! :p