I always forget about Shogayaki….how easy it is and how delicious it is. In Japan, all grocery stores have packaged, thinly (like paper-thin) sliced beef and pork for recipes like this. Here in Minnesota I actually have to ask a butcher to slice pork loin for me. But the 1 special ingredient here is actually not the pork, since that’s readily available. It’s the cooking sake. (you can substitute a dry sherry or water if you’re alcohol-free). I would use cooking sake over Mirin (which is a sweeter cooking sake) but that’s up to you.
Let me introduce you to Cookpad, it’s kind of like the Japanese AllRecipes. I started with a recipe there that includes grated apple, because Tokyo Boy used to make his Shoga yaki sauce with grated apple. You can easily omit the apple and it will still be num-num. (Here’s Nami’s Just One Cookbook recipe that doesn’t use apple)
Half a pound of thinly sliced pork
1/4 onion
1 clove of garlic
about 1 inch of ginger
1/4 of peeled apple (if you omit apple, use 1 tspn sugar instead)
2 tbspn soy sauce
2 tbspn sake
About 2 cups finely shredded cabbage (I just buy bagged coleslaw mix at the grocery store; the shredded carrots are great, too)
Make the sauce by finely grating apple, ginger, garlic, and onion into a bowl. Mix in sake and soy sauce. Season your meat with salt and pepper. Take out a fry pan and pour a little canola or sesame oil in it. Saute the meat quickly and then dump the sauce over it. Put a thin layer of shredded cabbage on a dish. Pour the hot meat/sauce over the cabbage (so it kind of cooks it a bit). Serve garnished with scallions if you like, but definitely with rice!
What I Should Have Said 