Cold Weather, Hot Meals

In the summer months, dinners are based on fresh vegetables and some meat for the most part, but as soon as the thermometer reads below 50 F we start making those slow cooked meals or we change from the summer version to the winter version of a favorite. We eat Japanese katsu (cutlets) with raw cabbage and rice and fresh tomatoes when it's hot. Today it is cold so we are having katsudon instead. Most of the time our katsu are made with turkey breast or chicken breast even though pork is the more common meat, especially in restaurants. Now that grocery stores in most urban areas have Asian sections most of the ingredients are easily available.

Katsudon for Four

2 large boneless chicken  breasts cut into thinner scallops (not chicken tenders but cut the breast horizontally across the whole length)
about half a cup of flour
1 or 2 raw eggs mixed with a little bit of water
about a cup of panko (Japenese bread crumbs)
Steamed rice for four
4 cups dashi (If you can't get dashi then chicken broth will do. With all the soy sauce and mirin the flavor is altered anyway)
One or two sliced yellow onions
Roughly chopped raw bok choy
Soy sauce and mirin
Dried seaweed optional

Moving from one bowl to another, dip the chicken into flour, then egg, then panko and place on a plate or cutting board until all the chicken is coated.
Fry these cutlets in shallow hot oil until brown on both sides.

Beforehand, make your udon broth. Where I live I can get dashi "teabags". Dashi is a clear fish broth made with shaved dried bonito that is very common in Japanese dishes. Asian food stores sell many brands but the one I use, because my mother-in-law used it, is Dashi-No-Moto from Hime.  For four people you want four cups of dashi.
In a saucepan, saute one or two sliced yellow onions (depending on how much you like onions) until they are soft but not brown. Add the dashi, and add 5 tablespoons of soy sauce, and seven tablespoons of mirin (Japanese cooking wine). Bring to a simmer.
When all the chicken is cooked and all the broth preparation is done to this point, slice the cooked cutlets into strips. Then scramble five or six more raw eggs and stir into the broth.
Put a serving of steamed rice in the bottom of a decent sized bowl for each person. Top with chopped up raw bok choy, then with the chicken strips. Then using a soup ladle or large spoon scoop the now very eggy onion broth over the entire bowl.  Some of the egg gets very cooked, some is more custardy and some just blends in the broth. You can top this with shredded seaweed if you like. All the flavors complement each other and you get warm from the inside out.