Tenshinhan

This was Tenshinhan.

Rice covered with thin fried egg sheet cooked with crab (real or imitation) sticks, topped with savory sauce. It's a dish that you usually see on many Chinese restaurants in Japan, but funnily enough I don't think I have ever eaten it in my life. I rarely went to a Chinese restaurant while I was in Japan; my mother didn't cook it. I simply didn't have a chance to taste it. A few days ago I happened to see a recipe of Tenshinhan on Japanese cooking recipe portal. It looked nice and I was somehow able to expect what the taste would be like from the recipe and that I would like it. Moreover, there are some leftover crab sticks from crab and cucumber rolls in the refrigerator. All things suddenly strangely happened as if I was meant to make my first Tenshinhan... The recipe was easy to follow. First make a seasoned rice with minced onion, garlic powder, Japanese chicken soup powder, soy sauce, black pepper, and sesame oil. Put them along with rice and water in the rice cooker and push the start button. That's all. While the rice was cooking, I made the savory sauce. Mix water, soy sauce, Japanese chicken soup power, Sake, Mirin, sugar, black pepper, corn starch and sesame oil together and heat the mixture. Easy, isn't it? When we were ready to eat, I made two rice mountains for each bowl.

Next I shredded the leftover crab sticks and mixed them with 3 eggs and pan-fried the half of the egg mixture in a small pan, making a round sheet like a crêpe. When the egg was almost set but still soft, I moved it from the pan to cover the rice mountain. I repeated it for the second bowl.

Then, I poured some warm savory sauce over the egg/rice mountain.

A little bit of minced fresh chive on top for garnish. Some people seemed to like adding rice vinegar for taste. I thought I would try some after eating some without it. Then, I ate all, forgetting about the vinegar experiment. My first Tenshinhan was pretty good! J liked it too although he said it was out of his comfortable zone. Well, it was a totally unexpected dish for him, I guess. Laster I found out Tenshinhan was actually invented in Japan. So, it was a Japanese original Chinese-ish dish. I didn't know that!