Japanese fried chicken and cold long walk at the beach

You might be thinking what is Japanese fried chicken. In Japan, we call this "Tori no Tatsuta age". It is little bit different from regular fried chicken because this require marinade and use of potato starch instead of flour. I like regular fried chicken but sometimes I crave for this Japanese fried chicken.

I used to make this sometimes when I go to pot luck party or something but I haven't made this for a while. So I had to give it a try again and see if I can still make a good Japanese fried chicken.

Here is how I made it.

Ingredients
Boneless skinless chicken (breast or thigh)   2 lb
Garlic          4 cloves (about 1 table spoon after grated)
Ginger         about 3 table spoon after grated
Soy Sauce   1/2 cup
Sake            1/2 cup
Potato starch  250g~300g (You can substitute with corn starch if you can not find potato starch)
Vegetable oil   2 cups

1. Cut chicken into the size you would like (I cut them into bit size pieces but you can cut it better than that if you prefer) and place them into a container.

2. Add grated garlic and ginger to the chicken.

3. Add Soy sauce and Sake to the chicken and mix. Make a hole into chicken with fork for better marination.

4. Place marinade into fridge and let it marinade for at least 3 hours.

5. Prepare deep pot and heat the oil.

6. Coat chicken with potato starch (I used ziplock bag for this).

7. Fry the chicken until they are golden brawn. You need to repeat the coating and frying process for a few times because you can not fry them at once.

8. I like adding grated daikon radish and julienned Shiso leaves on top but this is optional. Since the chicken has flavor already you don't need to add any sauce.

9. Serve them with rice.

My husband said they are like chicken nuggets. I guess I cut them maybe a bit too small. I would like to make it little bigger next time. But he liked them a lot.

It was very cold but sunny yesterday. I went for a long walk at the beach with my husband. During the holiday, my father-in-law found this huge beautiful shell on the beach. (which looked like a small conch, different color but shape was similar to conch)

I try seaching same kind of shell at the beach but I only found broken ones. But I found other kind of pretty shells. Since we did not have any bag and we also stopped for a tea, we only brought back one shell home.

We also found some pieces of glass. I remember when I was in kindergarten, my teacher showed us pieces of glass which were washed away by the wave so many times so the shape has been changed. All the sharp edges were gone and it was round and very pretty. I remember being so surprised to the fact that the waves can do this to a piece of glass.

It is funny how you remember some things from long long time ago. I did not think about this memory for a long time but when I saw a piece of glass at the beach today, those memories came back to me.

The glass we found lost its edges and was not dangerous anymore but it was not round enough yet. I wonder how many waves will it take for a piece of glass to become like the beautiful stone. 1 year? 3 years? maybe 10 years. Who knows.

I just thought it is amazing that the nature can make this man made grass into something looks so natural and beautiful over time, very slowly but surely. It was a moment which I felt the power of nature. It is amazing.