Teriyaki Style Sweet & Sticky Sauce

– Jump To Recipe –

– Print Recipe –

My happiest times were

when

i was left alone in

the house on a

Saturday

― Charles Bukowski, “My Secret Life”

It all started with the illustrious Richard Chamberlain as Pilot-Major John Blackthorne and NBC’s Shōgun, the historical TV miniseries from 1980. Maybe I should also blame the author, James Clavell, on whose eponymous novel the miniseries was based. When it was eventually broadcast in South Africa, I was by then already a loner, closely following in the footsteps of my emotionally somewhat distant father. Pilot-Major Blackthorne demonstrated to a naïve schoolboy of the early 80’s – already uncomfortable in the presence of his peers – that you really could go at life alone, just as my father did. After all, he seemed in essence to manage the lifestyle quite successfully. All you needed was brute academic intelligence, technical ability, DNA-ingrained perseverance, and a healthy “screw the rest” attitude. And I had all of those by the bucket load.

Mr Clavell’s Asian Saga, a series of six novels written between 1962 and 1993, awakened a lifelong personal interest in Japan initially, and later on, the Far East. At one point I seriously considered giving up my undergraduate studies and future career in Chemistry to instead become a missionary in Japan. The Plan was to ultimately travel via a series of coastal freighters (working as a temporary deckhand) to Japan, settle there and thereby swat three birds with one stone:

· Doing something truly useful and “noble” with my life,

· Studying and immersing myself in the Japanese culture, and

· Proving to myself that I could successfully remain separate and aloof from the maddening crowds.

Yeah, I know: Japan and the madding crowds …

Those were my intellectually arrogant and emotionally stupid years. A vain and naïve period I've named “The Gullible Stretch”. Unsurprisingly, it took too many decades of frequent and mostly painful lessons – large and small – to escape that less than illustrious and empty period. Karma can be smug and turbo charged V8 bitch when you’re not paying attention.

Yet, the fascination for Japan endured, enshrined in terms such as the code of bushido and the histories of the Edo period and the preceding feudal shogunates, their related wars and Machiavellian machinations. Then there were the culinary concepts and terms clearly demarcating a cuisine totally alien to my heritage and culture: tataki, sushi, yikatori, teriyaki, udon, sashimi, the Tea Ceremony, kombu, bonito flakes, dashi stock – a seemingly endless procession of wonderful surprises and discoveries.

The apparently insane precision and perfectionism required for formal Japanese cuisine as well as the years of dedicated technical skill and experience needed, greatly appealed to a mild OCD sufferer such as me. I could clearly see myself functioning in that milieu: the fanatically dedicated and ultra focussed chef applying the code of bushido with rigorous ruthlessness to whatever was on the cutting board in front of me. Always aside, emotions under icy control, functioning within the herd, yet endlessly apart from the herd: remote, aloof and emotionally untouched.

TOP

Yet, my life did not turn out quite that way. Life has a nasty and ultimately sarcastic, but quite effective, approach of slowly and inexorably derailing the best laid plans of mice and men. In my limited experience it requires vast resources of inner strength, fortitude and discipline to ignore, resist and reshape the relentlessly incoming tide that is Life. Looking back with 20/20 hindsight and now crystal clear self knowledge, this mouse never stood a chance of having it his way.

The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small.

― W. Somerset Maugham

The house and household of my parents during the late 70’s to early 90’s were staunchly conservative and middle class in its nature and practice. We did not grow up with soy sauce (of whatever kind), rice vinegar, glutinous rice and fresh ginger. My dad, the industrious and ever impatient patriot, would’ve done reverse somersaults merely at the idea of having pickled ginger, bonito flakes or dried seaweed sheets under his roof. Not that you would’ve been able to find any of those staples locally during that era. And serving raw fish? God keep us all …

Now, many decades later, there is an opportunity to investigate those oh so tantalising dishes, methods, concepts and ingredients. And today we have the blessed and peerless duo of YouTube and Google to lean on, our sturdy and ever dependable staves on this journey of discovery.

So, here we’re doing a little twist on the “3-ingredients-only” staple of Google recipes and the standard teriyaki sauces found quite frequently on the shelves (with invariably shocking prices) of many of our larger chain stores today. We’re adding a wee touch of orange juice for a small Asian adventure that veers somewhat off the beaten path. Along with the orange juice, black strap molasses is not a standard ingredient either. Yet I find it adds a dash of extra depth to the overall flavour profile. The bitter sweetness from the molasses tempers the light soy sauce’s saltiness to some degree without having to add heaps of sugar to try and balance out the saltiness while simultaneously suppressing the essential, somewhat overpowering savouriness.

The sauce of this post has several uses:

· Use it as a stir fry sauce for egg, chicken or veggie fried rice or just plain vegetable stir fries.

· Drizzle it sparingly over hot and fresh French fries for an interesting experience, or mix it with twice as much mild mayonnaise as a Belgian-style fry dressing or a dipping sauce for roasted potato wedges.

· Generously glaze the top of a folded, puffy, three-egg omelette filled with mild cheddar cheese and chopped scallions.

· It makes an excellent marinade for pork chops and chicken pieces before grilling over a medium hot charcoal grill or roasting in a hot oven. Remember to add a healthy dash of lemon juice, a shot of fruity port and a wee glug of roasted sesame seed oil to the marinade.

· Alternatively, frequently baste your oven grilling chicken pieces, chicken kebabs or pork chops with the sauce for a lovely, lovely burnished glaze at the end. Sprinkle liberally with toasted sesame seed after a final, just-out-of-the-oven brushing.

· Use it in thick vegetable soup (containing some salted pork) as a substitute for Worcestershire sauce.

· Add it to Asian Inspired Creamy Potato Salad as part of the dressing.

· Toss freshly roasted butternut chunks or wedges with a teaspoon full or two with the sauce as a glaze just before serving.

· Sometimes I brush it over plain French Toast as a glaze to enliven an old standby in an unexpected way. Fry the first side until done, turn and immediately brush the sauce over in a quantity to your taste. When the second side is done, flip and transfer the toast directly to your plate and brush the just cooked side too. Decorate with finely chopped scallions and finely julienned red chillies (pips removed of course).

As an aside: I recently watched the 1980 Shōgun series again in 1080 hi-def format with the original VHS recordings cleaned up and colour enhanced. Unsurprisingly, the intervening forty years were not exactly kind to what I remembered from the early eighties. The acting is stilted; the dialogue clunky and almost all the actors show very limited emotion or facial expressions. Yet, those wonderful Japanese countryside panoramas and the enchanting nature scenes pop up now and then, somewhat compensating for the failings of the human actors. Fortunately the novel still delights to an extent. The prose is good; Pilot-Major Blackthorne’s character development is a bit slow; and unfortunately there is a scarcity of detailed parallel plot lines and secondary main character development.

Thus we live and yearn.

TOP

TERIYAKI STYLE SWEET & STICKY SAUCE

– PRINT RECIPE –

Recipe yields:

300ml or 400ml

Preparation time:

± 15 Minutes

Cooking time:

± 20 Minutes

Special Equipment Required:

1 x Microplane grater

Ingredients:

	± 300ml	± 400ml
Orange or grapefruit juice, freshly squeezed & strained	125ml	175ml
Light soy sauce	80ml	115ml
Water	60ml	80ml
Brown sugar	60ml / 57g	80ml / 75g
Dark molasses	15ml / 20g	20ml / 25g
Rice / Cider vinegar	10ml	15ml
Fresh garlic, finely grated (use a microplane grater)	5ml	7.5ml
Fresh ginger, finely grated (use a microplane grater)	5ml	7.5ml

For the cornstarch slurry:
Corn starch	25ml	30ml
Water	60ml	80ml

Optional:
Roasted sesame oil, or	1.2ml	1.5ml
Mirin, or	25ml	30ml
Lemon juice, freshly squeezed and strained	25ml	30ml

Method:

Combine the orange or grapefruit juice, soy sauce, water, sugar, molasses, vinegar, garlic and ginger in a small sauce pan.
Heat with frequent stirring over medium low heat until the sugar and molasses dissolve completely.
Simmer for 2 – 3 minutes, remove from the heat and strain while hot through a fine mesh sieve. Use the back of a teaspoon to press out as much liquid as possible from the material remaining in the strainer.
Wipe the sauce pan out and return the strained liquid to the pan. Reheat over medium heat with frequent stirring.
Whisk the corn starch and water together in a small bowl until a smooth slurry forms. Add it directly to the heating sauce.
Continue heating the sauce with frequent stirring until it starts to simmer. Adjust the heat to allow for a slow simmer.
Simmer the sauce for 2 – 3 minutes to allow the corn starch to fully cook until the milkiness disappears.
Remove the sauce from the heat, cover and allow it to cool to just above room temperature.
Add any of the optional ingredients now.
Transfer the sauce to a sterile container and refrigerate. Use within two weeks.

Comments:

Grapefruit juice yields a sauce with reduced sweetness and a delicious, very mild aftertaste of bitterness that lingers for some time on the palate. It is an ideal accompaniment to braised or stir fried cabbage dishes and also works very well over scrambled eggs or steamed green beans.
Do not be tempted to use more vinegar than indicated, as it will skew the entire flavour profile.

To avoid the hassle of peeling, slicing and chopping fresh ginger, use a microplane grater under these conditions:

Very fresh & firm ginger root: wash and scrub the unpeeled root thoroughly with a nailbrush. Dry thoroughly and grate as much as is needed with the root held perpendicular to the long axis of the grater to avoid fibers from forming. Firmly pack the cup of the measuring spoon to obtain an accurate measure of root.
Older, softening ginger root: wash and scrub the unpeeled root thoroughly with a nailbrush, dry thoroughly and freeze at -18°C in a sealed container. Grate the frozen root directly as is. The root will grate much finer than fresh, firm root. Firmly pack the cup of the measuring spoon to obtain an accurate measure of root.

Image Credit:

Cover Page, Shōgun Novel: Pinterest

– RECIPE INDEX PAGE –

TOP