Food. Tonkatsu

In the February edition of the BBC Good food magazine there was a recipe for Tonkatsu which also had a recipe for an apple based katsu sauce. I like tonkatsu (breaded pork fillet, somewhat similar to Weiner schnitzel but with pork rather than veal) a lot. I have had it with proper katsu sauce, and with ponzu sauce, but mostly I have had it with curry sauce, which is how I tend to make it (with Japanesecurry paste I buy at the Oriental supermarket).  The homemade sauce didn't look too complicated, so I decided to have a go, halving the quantities so I was making sauce for two rather than four.  You'll find the recipe here (the only variations I used at this stage were to use mild rather than medium curry powder and fresh ginger instead of powdered, simply because that is what I had - and we had it with oven chips not rice and peas and pak choi, becaue I felt like it!)

It was all very tasty, but the sauce was definitely on the too sweet side for me.  I added extra soya sauce, curry powder and sesame oil before I served it.

I decided to have another go.  I didn't have any pork left, so used a chicken fillet  instead (I like chicken katsu even more than I like pork katsu!!!). This time I used a Bramley apple instead of Braeburn eating apples, I halved the amount of honey and doubled the amount of ginger, and I added extra soya sauce.  Once again we had oven chips not rice, and this time we had baby brussels sprouts, peas and broad beans on the side.  It was much less sweet and the extra ginger gave it a bit of extra bite. It was even nicer than the first time; I don't like savoury food that is too sweet.  I also don't like chilli in quantity so the addition of the extra ginger was all to the good. Kick, but not heat!

I've kept the recipe, with my amendments.  I shall definitely make it again. It's not time consuming or difficult to make.  But I might give it a whirl with Japanese curry paste instead of the mild Indian style curry powder and see how that goes.