San-shoku donburi

I thought I'd post a "recipe".  Maybe Leiya will see it and remember eating this when she was at home and try to make it herself.

This is called San-shoku Donburi.   San means three.  Shoku means color.  And donburi means rice bowl.  So this is a Three Colored Rice Bowl dish.

Let's see...  I have ground chicken (but you can use ground pork or beef I suppose).  Snow peas.  Eggs (in the end I only used two eggs.)  You can ignore the block of tofu and the bag of fresh seaweed there.  I used that for the miso soup that I served with the donburi.  I consider miso, soy sauce, mirin, sake and such as condiments so I didn't bother to put them out.

No step by step pictures.  Too easy.

Make a pot of rice!

Next boil the snow peas in salt water (briefly, they taste better crunchy!) and slice them diagonally.

Next scramble some eggs and cook them with sugar and water.  (The water makes them a bit finer in texture).  I do this all in one fry pan from beginning to end.  Snow peas first, remove from pan; eggs next, remove from pan; and then the meat, and I don't wash the fry pan between the different uses. The eggs are done when the water is all evaporated (so you don't want to use too much water or you'll be stirring that pan for a long time.)

Next simmer the ground meat with a little water, soy sauce, and sugar.  This is to taste.  Sweet is nice.  If you're going to be authentic then add a little dashi powder (fish stock powder) and maybe some sake or mirin (which is a type of sweet sake).  But you don't really need all that. If you don't have it in the house don't bother going out to buy just a tablespoon's worth...  Also I had a little left over ginger root in the fridge so I added some chopped ginger to the cooking meat.

Anyway.....  When you've got your three colors, browned meat, green snow peas and yellow eggs, then you arrange them on a bowl of rice.  There.  That's done.  If you have some red ginger that Japanese love so much then it makes a pretty accent to the domburi but I didn't have any (I don't much like the artificial red color).

Oh well.  Here is that fresh seaweed for the miso soup.  It comes in "fronds" and it is packed in salt that I wash off before cutting the seaweed into bite sized pieces.  Seaweed and tofu miso soup is a standard combination.  I guess I threw in some green onions too before serving.

So, there is our fast dinner.  Donburi is great because there aren't many dishes to wash up either!!