Karaage Bowl

It seems the older I get the more I love all things Japanese - sushi, karaoke, Iron Chef. And now karaage bowls.

Tracey and I have been treating ourselves to karaage bowls this week, a yummo treat from the local sushi bar. But they're $8.50 a bowl.

Having spent nearly $50 on them in a very short span of time, and since the little kids are starting to demand a share of our dinner instead of hooking into their Hungry Jacks burgers, I decided I better learn how to put them together myself.

In a nutshell, they're easy - a bed of rice with sushi seasoning, on top of that a dash of soy sauce, some chicken, some mayo, some pickled ginger, a bit of lettuce and tomato. The soy we splash into the rice, the mayo is squeezed directly on top of the chicken.

Then, depending on the quality of the result you want, you upgrade the individual ingredients.

We wanted it as close to the bought ones as we could, so the first stop was the local Asian supermarket for the trickier ingredients - Japanese mayo (it makes a HUGE difference - this is not the ingredient to skimp on) and good pickled ginger. Our usual supermarket provided the sushi rice and rice seasoning.

The first bowls I made we used crumbed chicken (bought from the deli, shallow fried), but after that I've just been putting in chopped up cooked chicken breast, which has been lovely. What I'm going to try this week is preparing the chicken in cornstarch and frying it. Considering KARA means 'empty' and AGE means 'fried' I guess I have to do it like this to make it more authentic. And because Tracey says I have to.

This has been such a huge hit with the kids we've made it three times in twice as many days. And the thing is it takes hardly any time at all to prepare. Easy to make, and tastes great. Win. Win.