Topped with hand-picked fresh kinome (sansho-no-me), leaves from the Japanese pepper tree (available in April-May in Seki City)
This dish goes well with freshly cooked Japanese rice.
Kuwayaki BBQ sauce is a multi-purpose sauce, and it is often used to marinate chicken, duck and fish fillet in autumn-winter dishes in kaiseki cuisine. If you add sugar, honey, or raw sugar to your taste, it is teriyaki sauce and unagi-kabayaki sauce, chargrilled eel.
Kuwayaki sauce was a great tip I was advised to make by a head chef at a Cha-Kaiseki Restaurant Kitami, Takadanobaba, Tokyo in 1981. He taught me to make it and keep it in an empty sake bottle. It made my life as a first-year apprentice cook so much easier when I had to whip up breakfast, lunch and dinner 6 days a week for a minimum of 8 and a maximum of 12 people when busier days including 7 chefs and the waitresses. Kuwayaki BBQ sauce literally goes a long way! I learnt how to make it 40 years ago.
published 23 May 2020
Pan-Fried Chicken Thigh Fillet with Kuwayaki BBQ Sauce Serves 4
鳥のくわ焼き 焼きネギ 木の芽
Ingredients
2 chicken thigh fillets (with skin on)
Green onions or leeks as needed (cut into 5 cm long, five pieces per person. If using leeks cut into 1cm medallions)
Kona-sansho as needed (Japanese pepper powder if available, or fresh kinome)
To make kuwayaki BBQ sauce: Combine 50ml mirin, 50ml sake, 50ml soy sauce.
1. Pan-fry green onions in a dry frying pan until golden brown and set aside.
2. Heat a frying pan on high heat and place the chicken thighs skin side down. Reduce the heat to medium-low and keep cooking until the skin is crisp and golden brown. (as a soba chef I normally save the chicken fat and add it to tori-nanban soup. Tori-nanban is soba noodles in hot soup with chicken thigh meat and green onions.) Flip the meat over and cook the meat side on medium heat until done.
3. Put the browned green onions back into the frying pan and add kuwayaki BBQ sauce all at once.
4. With a ladle swiftly pour the sauce over the meat again and again to glaze it. Be careful not to burn it.
5. Remove the chicken from the heat and let it rest for one minute. Cut the meat into bite-size pieces and plate the meat and the green onions and pour the sauce over it. Sprinkle Japanese pepper powder on top if needed.
To watch Shuji cook Kuwayaki Organic Chicken Thigh Fillets in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9mmbfGuOEU