Mushroom chicken ginger donburi (rice bowl)

One of my seniors gave me a request to Poppin' kitchen!  It was the first request from someone except my family.  Thanks my senior, I am so happy:)  She wanted a recipe for mushrooms.  Sure!  I LOVE mushrooms also♡

Unfortunately it's difficult to find a lot of kinda mushrooms in Boston actually and in addition except normal mushroom, almost mushrooms are kind of expensive.  In Japan, I could find several kind of mushrooms especially in fall and buy one pack of mushroom at less than $1 usually but here normally the price of mushrooms is about $3!  I don't know why but anyway it's so surprising!!  Fortunately a neighborhood grocery store had a couple of kind of mushrooms at cheap price and I found an oyster mushroom called Hiratake (平茸).  It's pretty similar to grifola frondosa called Maitake (舞茸).

This is an oyster mushroom.

This is a maitake mushroom.

You see!  looks similar!!

Maitake mushroom is one of the popular mushrooms in Japan.  Maitake means "dancing mushroom". (Mai means dance.)  I think it literally looks dancing, don't you think so?  Both oyster mushroom and maitake mushroom have thick body and crispy texture.  Maitake has stronger taste than oyster mushroom but both taste not so strong like shiitake mushroom so they go well with any food.  Mushrooms are kind of fall ingredients so the cold day like today is a good day for having mushroom dish!


Mushroom chicken ginger donburi (rice bowl) (2 serves)

mushroom chicken ginger

• 2 rice bowls of cooked rice
• 4 oz of oyster mushroom
• 0.3 lb of eggplant
• 0.3 lb of chicken thigh
• 1 green onion
• 1 Tbs +1 tsp of sesame oil (☆)
• 3 Tbs of soy sauce (☆)
• 2 Tbs of mirin (☆) 
• 1/2 Tbs of sugar (☆)
• 1 Tbs of ground ginger (☆)

Omelet

• 3 eggs
• 1 Tbs os mayonnaise
• 1/2 Tbs of butter

1,  Cut eggplant and chicken thigh into small cubes and soak eggplant in water for 10 minutes to remove harshness.  Tear oyster mushroom to appropriately sized pieces.

2,  Put all of  (☆) in a small bowl and mix them well
3,  Heat a pan and 1 Tbs of sesame oil with medium fire until quite hot.  Add chicken thigh and stir-fry until light brown.
4,  Add eggplant and stir-fry until brown and soft then add oyster mushroom and stir-fry quickly.
5,  Add  (☆) and stir-fry until dry like this picture then add 1 tsp of sesame oil and 1 tbs of white sesame seed.  Stir-fry quickly and remove from a pan.

6,  Make an omelet.  Mix egg and mayonnaise.  Heat a pan and butter until butter melt and change color a bit of brown and add egg mixture.  Wait for 5 seconds and stir quickly.  After there is no uncooked egg left, remove from a pan.

7,  Put cooked rice in rice bowls and put mushroom chicken ginger and omelet on each bowl.  Put green onion on it.

The mushroom chicken ginger has strong taste so it's better to eat mixing mushroom chicken ginger and omelet.  The omelet tastes pretty mild so they help each other's taste!  I even add a bit of Japanese red pepper, which was also nice. 

I recently prefer to have hot drink more than iced drink at table.  For me, it's a sign that it's totally autumn now. Tomorrow will be a cold and windy day in Boston like today.  It seems like that Tokyo and my home town Nagano are much warmer than Boston.  Ummm... I'm jealous!!

Anyway, please take care of yourself not to catch a cold!!

Images are from eHOW home and Blob perriconeMD.  Thanks.