Yakitori Skewers and Rice

Here's a nice Japanese recipe from a few weekends ago, when S and I made a yakitori plate. I adapted this recipe from Jane Lawson's Yoshoku and a really fantastic website called VideoJug. It has video how-tos on all kinds of recipes and other hilarious things from how to get out of a car without showing your knickers and how to be the perfect boyfriend. To all that I say, it's never to late to learn!

But anyways, for the yakitori, the first thing to do is to marinate chicken thighs (whatever you have from 300 - 500 grams) in the following sauce recipe courtesy of VideoJug's How to Make Yakitori.

Marinade for chicken:
100 ml soy sauce
50 ml sake
50 ml mirin
2 Tbsp sugar

The VideoJug recipe recommends marinating for at least 5 hours, but I did it for one, used teriyaki sauce instead of the sake, and it turned out fine. (If I cooked this again and was sakeless once more, I would add more mirin instead of teriyaki, as mirin is more like sake by virtue of being an alcohol).

Mise en place:
Bamboo skewers, soaked in water for at least 30 minutes.
For chicken skewers:

• marinated chicken thigh fillets, on fillet cut into three pieces
• 2 baby leeks or fat spring onions, white part only, cut into eight short pieces

For asparagus skewers:

• 4 thin bacon rashers, pre-cooked for a few minutes and cut in half
• 8 5-cm lengths of asparagus

Thread 5 morsels on the chicken skewers starting with chicken, then leek or onion, then chicken, then leek or onion and ending with chicken. Thread two asparagus bundles wrapped in bacon per skewer. Arrange skewers on foil on a baking sheet, and fold the edge of the foil over the bare ends of the wooden skewers to keep them from blackening.

Cook in a hot oven (I did it under the broiler) for about 15 minutes, turning and marinating from time to time with a commercial teriyaki sauce. Serve with rice.