Alright, so the other day, I got this sudden urge, you know? I just had to make some toritake negima. Sounds all fancy, doesn’t it? Chicken and leek skewers. Figured, how hard can it be? Famous last words, as usual.
First things first, I trekked to the store. Needed chicken, obviously. They always say chicken thighs are the way to go for this – juicier, more flavor. So, thighs it was. Got ’em home, and then the “fun” began. Chopping that chicken into roughly one-inch pieces. Sounds simple, but try making them all look somewhat uniform when you’re just a regular person in a regular kitchen. It’s a messy business, let me tell you. And the leeks! Or “negi,” if you want to be proper. You only want the white and light green parts, apparently. So I sliced those into chunks, trying to match the chicken size. My cutting board looked like it had hosted a tiny, green and white food fight.
Prepping the Skewers
Then came the actual skewering part. You’d think, “Oh, just stick ’em on a bamboo skewer, easy peasy.” Nope. Not if you want them to look halfway decent and cook evenly. I was there, carefully alternating chicken, then leek, then chicken, then leek. Trying to get them snug but not too tight. And trying my best not to impale my own fingers, which is always a bonus. I must have spent a solid half hour just on this bit. My back was starting to ache from hunching over the counter.
Oh, and if you’re using bamboo skewers, you’re supposed to soak ’em in water first. So they don’t just turn into charcoal on the grill. Nearly forgot that part. Added that to my mental checklist of “things that make this simple dish not so simple.”
The Sauce Situation
Next up, the tare sauce. Now, you can find recipes online with a million ingredients, stuff I’ve never even heard of. I decided to keep it real. I grabbed some soy sauce, a splash of mirin – because I actually had some – a bit of sake, and a spoonful of sugar. Whisked it all together in a bowl. Looked like tare, smelled like tare. Good enough for me. I wasn’t about to brew some artisanal concoction that takes three days to mature. Who has that kind of time?
Time to Cook ‘Em Up
Finally, cooking time. I don’t have one of those fancy Japanese charcoal grills, sadly. Just my trusty old frying pan. A cast iron one, though, so it gets nice and hot. Plopped the skewers in, a few at a time. The sizzle was satisfying, I’ll give it that. The trick is getting the chicken cooked through without turning the leeks into sad, burnt little crisps or the sauce into black gunk. I was flipping them pretty constantly. Basting them with that tare sauce I mixed up, watching it bubble and hopefully caramelize a bit. Some ends got a little more charred than I’d like, others looked a bit pale. It’s a real balancing act. My kitchen started smelling pretty amazing, though.
The Verdict
So, how did they turn out? Honestly, pretty darn good! The chicken was tender, the leeks were sweet and a bit smoky. That simple sauce did the trick. But man, was it a bit of a production for what’s essentially chicken on a stick. You see them in restaurants, all perfect and lined up. They must have a whole assembly line going or something. Or just way more patience than I do.
Would I make them again? Yeah, probably. Maybe on a weekend when I have more time to potter around. It wasn’t a disaster, far from it. But it was definitely one of those cooking adventures where you learn that “simple” looking food often has a bit more elbow grease involved than you’d think. Anyway, we ate them all, so that’s a win in my book. That’s the joy of home cooking, right? You make it, you might grumble a bit during the process, but then you get to eat it.
