(speaks foreign language)
- Wow! Amazing!
(speaks foreign language)
- [Alvin] Hello there.
Welcome back to another episode of "Anime with Alvin."
Today I'm gonna be taking a look
and making the katsudon from "Yuri!!! On ICE."
This dish is somewhat of a pork cutlet bowl
simmered in sauce and egg
and spooned over fluffy white rice.
I picked up some shokupan
from a local Japanese bakery that I like.
This is a sort of a daily eating bread
that is used to make panko.
You can use dried panko if you want,
but I'm gonna show you guys why I like to make my panko.
I do like to trim off the crust.
This is for two reasons:
one, it helps the panko stay a nice snow white,
and two,
I get to make some snacks with it.
So after tearing up the meat of some of these slices,
I'm pulsing it in a food processor little by little.
This ensures that the bread does not get broken down
too finely.
We still have these nice fluffy textures in there,
and just like that,
you've made panko!
Congratulations!
All right, now go sit over there
while I do some other stuff.
Back to those snacks I was talking about.
So I'm just laying down the crust on a tray
with parchment paper,
lining them up,
and brushing them with just melted butter,
followed by a sprinkling of granulated sugar
or whatever sweetener you have around the house.
Then give the pan a little shake.
All right. Wait, hold up.
Is this salt?
Ooh.
Yeah, that's salt.
Then I'm gonna put a little bit of salt on top
because sweet and savory is king,
and I will fight whoever disagrees
unless you're really strong.
In that case, I will give you a snack,
just like these guys.
They're golden brown.
They smell great.
It's gonna be really, really good,
and because we use shokupan,
the bread is a little fluffier and sweeter than normal.
Honestly, this is one of my favorite things about cooking:
you can use the leftover and scraps
of things you're already making
and turn it into something delicious
for the people around you.
In the show, there seems to be a cabbage condiment
that pairs with the katsudon
prepared in what looks like the ohitashi style.
After spending some time on the internet,
it seems to be a method
that infuses vegetables
with an umami
or savory style broth.
So after giving this whole head of napa cabbage
a bubble bath in just some salted boiling water,
I'm gonna split it up and start the flavoring process.
Here I am, sniffing the cabbage to see if it's cooked.
I don't know why I did that.
While the cabbage cools off,
I'm making a savory broth
by combining dashi, soy sauce, and meat.
If you're curious on how we made the dashi,
we actually made it a while ago
for the ichiraku ramen from "Naruto" episode.
And once that's been heated,
I'm gonna go and quarter the whole head of napa cabbage.
Oh.
Uh.
That's undercooked.
Okay.
Guess that sniffing technique did not work out so well.
Back in the bubble bath you go.
And once the cabbage quarters are actually cooked,
I'm transferring them into a pan,
which is the perfect vessel
for me to pour in that wonderful broth we made.
This is the cabbage's third bath of the day,
and this is gonna go into the fridge
where it can soak up all those great flavors.
Moving on to the star of the show with the pork cutlet.
I have here two really nice cuts of pork loin.
I'm trimming off any chunks of fat stuck to the outside
and then scoring it along the membrane and tendon
on the outer rim to make sure that this does not curl up
during cooking.
After the chops have been prepped,
I'm wrapping them both in Saran wrap,
and, well, there is no other way to say this,
"I'm gonna pound my pork."
Sorry, kids.
Once the meat has been sufficiently flattened,
I'm now gonna set up the good old breading station.
That means flour on one pan, beaten up eggs in the second,
and our freshly made panko in the third.
I'm gonna do this twice:
once with our fresh panko
and once with the dry panko.
I just realized I forgot to season the pork,
so I'm gonna season the flour instead with salt and pepper.
If you've ever breaded or fried anything before,
you know the drill:
first, throw it in the flour,
give a little pat so that the flower comes off,
then into the egg,
and then, oh, don't do that,
use your chopsticks.
After the dip in the egg bath,
into the panko,
a little snowy white bread tomb for our pork.
I like to press it in
so that you can get as much of a crust as possible.
Now we're gonna do the version with dried panko.
You've probably seen this stuff before.
So same drill: flour, egg,
and dried panko.
There's quite a big difference in color, texture.
And look, I'm not saying one is better than the other,
but if you do have freshly made shokupan
or milk bread near you,
it's worth a shot.
Here I am waiting for the oil to reach 350 degrees.
Once the oil is hot enough,
I'm first dropping in the version with the fresh panko,
frying it pretty normally,
just moving it around to make sure that it doesn't stick.
And then once it is deep and dark and golden brown
texture is really cool.
It reminds me of those (fumbles).
One of them comes from the ground,
one of them comes from the ceiling.
This is the one from the ground.
I don't know. Rocks.
Now we're gonna put in the dry version,
and, as you can see,
this one is frying up a little bit differently.
The crust is staying a little closer to the pork,
and it is still beautiful,
but they're very, very, very different
in texture compared to the fresh panko.
While the two cutlets hang out for a little bit,
let's check on the cabbage.
It's now cool, which means it is ready to slice.
I'm taking out one of the quarters and cutting the stem
and the tip off.
This piece right here makes
about three really nice segments,
which means it's a snack for me.
Ooh, that's good.
In the show, this seems to be plated up
with a very tight rolled up standing configuration,
so I'm gonna try to find
which segment can fit that the best.
Once I found the prettiest girl at the prom,
I'm gonna start making the sauce
for the katsudon.
All right. Time to bring everything together.
I'm making a sweet and savory sauce
with dashi, soy, mirin, and sugar
to cook everything together.
I'm gonna heat this sauce in a small pan
along with some sliced onions.
And while the onions soften and relax in their flavor bath,
I'm cutting up the pork cutlet into slices.
And after a few minutes,
I'm placing the pork right in the middle,
and you're probably wondering,
"Man, you're kind of ruining the crispy exterior
that you just made."
And you'd be right,
but I don't think the point of this dish
is to eat a crispy pork cutlet.
What I see here is a chance
for that wonderful breading
to absorb the sauce and the flavors
of everything that we're gonna throw in here.
And one of my favorite things about katsudon
is the egg that goes on top.
To avoid getting arrested,
I only partially beat my egg.
This will help create these white and yellow streaks
across the pork when it's done.
The egg not only serves as a flavor binder
between the pork, the sauce, and the onions,
but also acts as a sponge to absorb any of the excess sauce.
And while this steams for roughly 30 seconds,
I'm getting a bowl ready with fluffy white rice.
This is, after all,
a rice dish.
Once the lid comes off
and the steam clears,
the egg has now created a beautifully marbled streak
over the entire dish.
This is the tricky part.
The goal was to transfer everything in this pan
on top of the rice,
and with a little bit of shaking
and a little bit of wiggle wiggle
and hope, I present to you our version of katsudon.
And to go with our katsudon,
the ohitashi cabbage
with a little bit of bonito flakes on top.
One final touch for the katsudon,
three perfectly green peas on top.
I'm not really sure why,
but it looks really pretty.
This is my first time ever making katsudon,
and if I do say so myself,
I'm pretty proud of the way it turned out.
It looks pretty good.
The egg has absorbed the sauce
and binds really well with the onions and the pork.
And honestly, I'm just really excited to dig in.
If you looked up comfort food
in the Merriam-Webster dictionary,
there should be an entry for katsudon
because this is exactly what it is:
eggs, pork, soy sauce, onions over a bed of fluffy rice.
Oh, that cabbage is nice too.
You could serve this dish to anybody in the world
besides vegans,
and they'd be like, "Man, this,
this slaps."
So, without further ado,
I'm gonna go enjoy this by,
oh wait, just kidding.
Looks like some people are hungry in the studio.
We should feed them
'cause that's what I like to do.
(chill music)