Tamago Kake Gohan with Gyokuro Spent Leaves

Have you ever tried Gyokuro? It’s one of my favorite green teas to drink…and to cook with! I often feel bad getting rid of tea leaves after I brew them especially because I drink so much of it! I’ve used spent leaves in plenty of recipes but in my opinion, green tea is often the best for cooking. I’ve used gyokuro before sin a shrimp stir fry recipe here.

I was brewing this gyokuro to try before posting a giveaway with Sencha.app. You can find this gyokuro here.

I was trying to decide what to do with the gyokuro. I prefer to create simple dishes here on my blog because I want these recipes to be easy to create with accessible ingredients!

I was reminded about a chef’s table episode where the chef was talking about his time studying food and working in restaurants in Japan. He was taught about a classic Japanese comfort food called tamago kake gohan which translates to egg over rice!

The chef took hot rice and topped it with a beaten raw egg! He also added soy sauce and some seaweed type seasoning. It may have had some sesame seeds as well but I can’t remember. He mixed it together and ate it! This embodies the umami flavor. Umami meaning savory.

At first look, you think that eating a raw egg isn’t safe! After looking it up, it seems like if the egg is pasteurized it is ok. Consider also that if you are putting a raw egg on hot rice, it’s going to cook.

Unfortunately, after looking at all the eggs in my fridge, I noticed that none of them were pasteurized so I opted to do a poached egg so that I could feel a bit safer with my unpasteurized eggs but still get that delicious egg and rice flavor.

I also decided how to use the gyokuro. Instead of just the egg, rice and seaweed I wanted to be a little extra. I stirfried some garlic, salt, pepper, sambal olek and the gyokuro leaves! Once this became fragrant I set this aside with my other ingredients, the poached egg and soy sauce.

Confession: I had never poached an egg before so I found a video to help. It’s actually super easy. I found this video short and straight to the point.

The other modification I made was to use rice I had on hand and cooked which was a delicious red rice. If I were to do this again however I would definitely use a sushi or jasmine rice just for better texture.

Once you have all your ingredients prepped, add them all to the rice and mix with chopsticks vigorously until combined! Use soysauce to taste.

Here you get a hearty and comforting snack AND you don’t waste spent leaves :) The gyokuro gives this dish a nice bold flavor.

Would you try this??

Gyokuro Rice with roasted herbs and tomatoes

My brother brought me some gyokuro from his trip to Japan. Gyokuro is one of my favorite green teas and I have had good luck cooking with it in the past! You can find a previous shrimp recipe here.

This time I decided to take my love of rice on another test ride and cook it in gyokuro! I didn’t want to just use gyokuro so I decided to use a few other flavors with it as well. I wanted something savory and herbed.

Starting small, I used one cup of rice and only a few tomatoes but after trying this recipe I think I would like to have even more of the roasted ingredients in the rice and would definitely add more or even double the amount! I have timing for the roasted vegetables in the recipe but really you just want to make sure that they start to break down and give it a few mixes so that they soak up the oil and herbs.

After you take the tomatoes and herbs out, place them in a bowl so that they can soak in the olive oil and herbs.

When making rice, olive oil at the start is important to make it tender and flavorful. Instead of adding olive oil plain, the tomatoes + herbs + olive oil are mixed into the rice + gyokuro mixture before cooking. In addition to mixing, I also smashed up some the tomatoes further before putting this on the stove.

When adding in the roasted ingredients, I would also suggest a taste test to manage the salt and pepper level. I didn’t add anything additional at this point because I added it to the roasting pan but I wish I had!

The result is a richer and more flavorful rice. I’ve combined a few favorites of mine here. First of all, rice. But the reason I added the roasted ingredients is because it is similar to many Persian rice dishes where the meal is in the rice. You have plenty of ingredients blended up in the rice and in this case it was herbs and tomatoes!