Yakitori Chicken

It has been 2 years since we moved to Waterloo, Sydney. I love this suburb as it is close to the city and a reasonably quiet area. There are also many factory outlets around Waterloo. This is very enjoyable during weekends when we have no plans on what to do. Wandering around factory outlets! The recent one that we went was a book factory outlet called "Book Margins". There were plenty of cooking books in this shop and the prices were really good.

As I haven't got a proper Japanese cookbook, I chose "Taste of Japan" by Masaki Ko. Her home-cooking style is very simple and easy to follow. So, I spent last weekend trying a recipe from this book: Yakitori Chicken. I added asparagus salad served with the yakitori sauce. Thu and I were very happy with the result!

Ingredients:

• 6 chicken thigh fillets (cut into chunks)
  
• 1 red capsicum (cut into medium-sized squares)
  
• 1 green capsicum

Yakitori sauce:

• 150 ml soy sauce
• 0.5 cup sugar
• 5 tsp sake
• 1 tbs plain flour

Salad:

• 1 bunch asparagus (cut into 8 cm segments)
• half red capsicum (minced)
• alfalfa sprouts
  

Preparation:

1. Stir the soy sauce, sugar and sake in a small sauce pan to make the sauce. Bring to boil and add the plain flour. The sauce should be quite thick.
2. Marinate the chicken chunks with 2/3 of yakitori sauce for 15-30 mins.
3. Blanch the asparagus in the boiling water (with added salt and oil) for 2 mins. Wash with cold water and drain.
   
4. Thread the chicken and red/green capsicum alternately to the bamboo skewers.
5. Grill under medium heat for 15 mins or until the chicken is cooked but still moist
6. Dilute 1/3 of the yakitori sauce with warm water until the sauce consistency is thin. Add this diluted yakitori sauce to salad and the kebabs.