Tonight's Dinner - NY Steak made into another Japanese Dish....Gyu Don

Sometimes it's challenging to come up with a new type of way to use up leftovers, but it can be fun too, like a game.  It seems like there are only so many things that you can do with steak.  Also, when it's a good cut of NY Steak, you don't want to cook it long like in a chili or stew or something like that. It's typical to make the steak into a salad or sandwich, but I wanted something else. I was able to come up with Gyu Don, a Japanese way of cooking beef and putting it on top of rice.  I changed it up a bit, so it's not quite the same as Yoshinoya Beef Bowl...lol  To try to keep the meal healthy, I served it with Hiyayakko (cold tofu w/green onions, ginger, bonito flakes & soy sauce) and a salad.

Another steak from Dan Tana's...

When I bring home a doggie bag I realize how much food that restaurants serve!  I ate about 1/3 of the steak and had enough to make this dish and I still have some left for lunch!  Well, I did have a small portion of another steak too;o)  

Eringi Mushrooms (Trumpet Mushrooms)

I really like these mushrooms because they are very meaty.  It has a much lighter taste than a Portabella Mushroom, another meaty mushroom.

Onions & Eringi Mushrooms

Ginger for the Tofu

This is an old fashioned type of grater for the ginger.  I usually use a rasp, but most of the ginger gets stuck on it and I don't get much ginger out of it.  I thought I'd try my old grater and it worked a lot better ;o)

Green Onion & Ginger

I put the large pieces of the onion in the beef while it was cooking and used the smaller chopped pieces to top the finished dish.  The ginger was for the tofu, but since there was extra, I threw it into the beef mixture.

Daikon Grater

This is another old fashioned cooking tool.  I saw it being used at a restaurant called Asanebo in Studio City  and loved the texture of the daikon radish.  I couldn't find one out here, so my sister-in-law found one for me in Japan a couple of years ago.  She even had a hard time finding one over there! But now, it's become popular in Japan too, they've been demonstrating it on morning news shows and other media.  With this tool, you really need to  be extra careful not to grate your skin.  Even though it's all made out of wood, it's very sharp.  It seems that older daikon is harder to grate because they are firmer than young daikon.

The daikon is coarse when grated with this old fashioned tool, it has a nice crunch to it when you eat it.  The daikon is even good just eating it by itself with a little bit of soy sauce.  It's a pallet cleanser and helps with your digestion.

This is my other grater. It grates the daikon much finer...

The salad had lettuce, radish, carrot, celery leaves, & red onions with Japanese Onion Dressing.  Hubby likes salad, so I try to serve it with most every meal :o)

Beef ready to be served...

I sauteed the brown onions & mushrooms and while they were cooking I mixed together about a cup of water with dashi powder, sake, mirin, sugar & soy sauce.  When the onions were starting to carmelize I added the dashi mix and cooked it down until it became a thicker sauce.  At the end I threw in the ginger, sliced green onions and the beef and cooked just until the beef was warmed through...the end :o)

Some people cook it with egg in it, but I don't really like it like that.

Gyu Don

Gyu means beef and Don is short for Donburi which means bowl.  Most Donburi dishes have rice in them.  For instance, Ten Don is Tempura over rice, Tekka Don is Maguro (Raw Tuna) over rice, Katsu Don is some kind of cutlet such as Tonkatsu over rice.

I finished off the Gyu Don with the grated daikon, chopped green onion and a little bit of sauce.