Katsu curry

A plated dish about keeping the crust dry: sauce to one side, cutlet sliced at the last second.

Pork. Not vegetarian — contains pork.

Ingredients

• 4 pork loin cutlets, crumbed as for tonkatsu
• 800 ml Japanese curry sauce
• 4 portions hot rice
• 4 tablespoons fukujinzuke
• oil, for deep frying
• 1 tablespoon parsley, chopped

Method

1. THIS PAGE IS THE PLATING, and it says so rather than pretending otherwise. The cutlet is made exactly as on the tonkatsu page and the sauce exactly as on the Japanese curry page; neither is repeated here. What decides whether this is any good is what happens in the last thirty seconds.
2. SAUCE TO ONE SIDE, NEVER OVER THE WHOLE CUTLET. Ladle it onto the rice and let it meet one edge of the katsu. Poured over, the crust is soft before the plate reaches the table and there was no reason to crumb anything.
3. Diners who want it all covered can push it there themselves; the reverse is not available.
4. SLICE THE KATSU AFTER THE SAUCE IS ON THE PLATE, not before. Cut early, it steams itself from the inside and the crumb softens along the cuts.
5. Slice it in 2 cm strips and keep the strips touching so it holds its shape.
6. HAVE THE CURRY ALREADY HOT AND THICK before the cutlet goes into the oil. The katsu dictates the timing because it is the thing that cannot wait; curry will sit happily for an hour.
7. If the curry needs thickening, do it now -- a thin sauce runs across the plate and under the katsu, which is exactly where it must not go.
8. Rice banked up one side of a wide shallow plate, curry over the rice only.
9. Katsu laid on the dry side, slightly overlapping the sauce's edge.
10. Fukujinzuke in a small heap at the rim and a little parsley over the sauce. Serve at once.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Japan · All recipes