Matsukaze-Yaki Miso Chicken (Japanese)

This one chicken side dish tastes so Japanese (it uses Sansho pepper) and it's delicious and very filling.  The traditional version has poppy seeds (like that picture under of another time I cooked it) even though sesame is used in the book because poppy seeds are harder to find in Japan, and I've never seen this dish anywhere on any blog.  I took it from this totally educational gigantissimal book about Japanese cooking I bought when I started cooking daily and strictly Japanese, 3 years ago!  It's similar to a meatloaf but made with ground chicken.  I hope you'll give it a try!  Translated from "Le livre de la vraie cuisine japonaise" by Hiroshi Fukuda, Kôichirô Gotô, Eiji Ishikawa, Wataru Kawahara, Hirohisa Koyama, Yoshihiro Murata, Hiromitsu Nozaki and Masamitsu Takahashi (all skilled celebrity chefs).

(serves 4-6 as a side)

-500g ground chicken

-50 mL saké

-1 egg

-60g miso

-2tbsp sugar

-1tsp Sansho pepper powder OR ginger juice

-mirin

-poppy seeds or raw sesame

Preheat oven to 180C and garnish a 16cmx16cm oven cake tray with parchment paper.  

Mix half of the chicken with the saké and cook in a pan until almost all liquid is gone.  Crumble the chicken with your fingers, until there's no more big clumps. To this mixture add the leftover raw chicken, egg, miso, sugar and Sansho pepper or ginger juice and mix well by hand.

Spread the mixture in the cake tray and flatten it.  Wipe the edges of the pan clean.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, remove from oven, splash the surface with mirin and top with seeds.  Return to the oven and cook for 15-18 minutes.  The book says that when it's ready, the center of the chickenloaf should have the same consistency as the sides when you press them.  

Remove from the oven, let cool down a little, then unmold and cut in rectangles.

If you're wondering, the reason why you need to cook half the chicken first is if you skip this step, the meat will shrink too much as it cooks and the final result won't have a nice shape.