Suteki Don (Steak Rice Bowls with Spicy Teriyaki Sauce

Colder than it has ever been in Nashville since we moved here.  In fact it is colder than Chicago.  We had another snow storm.  It didn’t start until late and ended here about noon.  Jim spent the rest of the day having fun snowplowing everyones driveways.  I stayed safely inside afraid of falling and did not like the cold.  got a lot done and redeemed my self with this meal.  I bought this cookbook called mastering the Art of Japanese Home cooking by Morimoto a long time ago.  It is scary and I keep looking at it and putting it back on the shelf.  As I had the whole day to experiment, I went for it.  It ended up being easier than I expected.  The one mistake I made was to used frozen oriental vegetables that were cooked in the microwave instead of making his vegetable stir fry.  Jim threw such a fit over the cleanup of that awful chicken recipe, I decided to keep the pots and pans to a minimum.  Big mistake.  Birds Eye  has never eaten in an oriental restaurant.

Ingredients:

1# skirt steak, outside fat trimmed, patted dry

Kosher salt and ground black pepper

1 T vegetable oil

1 C teriyaki sauce

4 T unsalted butter

1 T plus 1 t tobanjan (chile bean sauce), prefab a Japanese brand

1 t finely grated garlic

1 T corn starch

6 C cooked short-grained white rice

1/4 C thinly sliced scallions (green part only)

1 t toasted sesame seeds

Directions:

1. Prepare a grill to cook over medium-high heat.  Cut the steak crosswise into a few pieces if necessary to fit in the skillet.  Season both sides with salt and pepper and drizzle with the oil.  (I used my Soup Vide to make sure the meat would be medium rare and then just seared in my grill pan.)
2. Cook, flipping once until both sides are deep brown and the steak is cooked how you like it, about 8 minutes for medium rare.  Let the meat rest while you make the sauce.
3. (Actually I made the sauce first.)  Combine the teriyaki sauce, butter, tobanjan, and garlic in a small saucepan set over medium heat, and bring to a boil.  Meanwhile combine the corn starch with 1T water and stir until smooth.  When the mixture comes to a simmer, stir in the cornstarch mixture.Cook stirring occasionally, just until the sauce turn s shiny and thickens slightly, 3 minutes.  
4. Divide the rice among shallow bowls and spoon about 3 T of sauce over each one.  Thinly slice the steak against the grain.  Top each bowl with the steak slices, spoon on the remaining sauce and sprinkle on the scallions and sesame seeds.
5. Serve right away.  

We added the vegetables under the beef, but they were really lame.  The beef was delicious with the rice.  The sauce tasted very salty on it’s own, but was delicious on the rice with the beef.