You got me turning up and turning down and turning in and turning round
I dreamed of yakitori. After reading Tony Bourdain’s rant about American fast food in Nasty Bits, I became obsessed with it. Chicken marinated and grilled hot on bamboo skewers – the kind of “fast food” that Bourdain gets gurgly over; not just gurgly from the salmonella that the chicken surely houses, but gurgly because the man loves his damn yakitori. I wanted some. I needed some. I couldn’t eat anything else until I got some. I dreamed of yakitori.
The part about not being able to eat anything else before I got the yakitori is a lie. I rarely go hungry, no matter what I’m really hungry for. I had a bowl of popcorn as big as a Volkswagen Saturday night, popped in peanut oil, doused in butter, salt, and Smokin’ Guns Hot rub, and washed down with a Sam Adams. It was perfect, steamy and crisp, salty, spicy and sweet. And I like beer. But while I gorged myself on enough starch to iron all the shirts in China, I dreamed of yakitori.
I wanted to make it myself, in the back yard, because dammit, give me the ingredients, some charcoal and one of my grills and I can make anything. I found a recipe. Sunday morning, before Sara was out of bed, after Daffy had gone back to bed, Milwaukee and I traveled to Tokyo. We wandered the street, looking for Bill Murray and Scarlett Johannson, hiding from wasabi disguised as avocado, and asking every street merchant with a little grill for a recipe for yakitori.
Finally, we found a little man who was willing to give up a recipe. I don’t know what his name was, but I know it didn’t have any R’s in it. His wrinkled face looked like the schematic of all the buried telephone lines in Okinawa, and he smelled like burned plastic and soy sauce. I told him of my yakitori dream, and he gave me a recipe. He gave me this:
The sauce:
• 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup Mirin (sweetened cooking sake)
• 1/2 cup sake
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
Mix ingredients over high heat and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until reduced to one cup. (About 10 to 15 min.) Set aside.
• 12 ounces of boned, skinless chicken
• 8 ounces of chicken livers
• 4 medium dried Chinese black mushrooms, soaked in hot water until soft
• 2 medium green bell peppers
• 1 medium leek
• 16 to 20 skewers
• 1 lemon, cut into wedges
• Soak the bamboo skewers in cold water while you cut up the ingredients.
• Cut the chicken into squares and the liver into squares and place the livers into the cold water and cover. Let stand 5 min. then drain and pat dry.
• Remove the mushroom stems from the water and cut each cap into halves. Then cut each green pepper into 1-inch squares. Cut the leeks into 1- inch lengths.
• Thread on the pieces of food on the skewers in alternating order, then place on a hot grill and baste with the sauce. Cook for about 3 to 4 min. Serve with the lemon wedges.
I had the grill, I had the charcoal, I had the recipe. HyVee didn’t have the Mirin or the mushrooms. I didn’t have the desire to buy a whole bottle of sake for a recipe that called for half a cup. Sara wouldn’t have gone near chicken livers, and if I eat any kind of liver, my gout will flare up so hot that I want to cut my feet off with the same Henckel steak knife I stabbed myself with last summer. My dream of yakitori died.
So I grilled some satay chicken with sauce from a packaged mix and it was freakin’ awesome.