Isumi in Chiba (where we spend most of our week-ends) has very good pork meat. It is not as famous as the one from Miyazaki in Kyushu, but it’s as delicious and local, which for me is enough. I don’t eat much meat anyway, only pork and chicken breast, and only when I know where it comes from. 

One of my favorite Japanese recipe to cook thin slices of pork cutlet is the “buta shoga yaki” (grilled pork with ginger). It’s one of the basic Japanese recipes. It’s also a standard in lots of Japanese style cafes. It’s usually served with rice.

Today I had nice thin slices of pork cutlet and a piece of fresh ginger, a good opportunity to make some grilled pork with ginger. 

My version is simple: I grat (I use the daikon oroshi type gratter) the fresh peeled ginger on top of the pork slices in a container. Then I add a bit of soya sauce and a little of cooking oil. I close the container and shake well before I leave to rest for 5-10minutes (time to start cooking the rice). Then I heat a frypan and delicately put the slices to grill. Since I’ve put already a bit of oil in the mixture there’s no need to add more. I like my pork to be golden brown, so I cook it until it has the desired color.

And since I really like ginger, I also used the fresh ginger roughly sliced to treat myself with a “hot ginger”. For that I just top the ginger slices with boiling water and a spoon of honey!

The dish on the bottom left are some turnips filled with miso and grinded pork. An experimental recipe that was really nice.