I love eggs. And I love Japanese dishes. By logical reasoning then, I must love Japanese egg dishes. In fact, I love them so much that in the process of cooking one Japanese egg dish, I thought of two other Japanese egg dishes, and ended up stuffed all three concepts into one dish. #win

The novelty from an anime

It all started with the Bingka Ubi Special I made a couple weeks back. In doing my research for the article, I stumbled upon another dish from the very same anime that inspired the bingka ubi dish, and promptly saved it to my Trello board of weird dishes. The dish in question is the Transforming Furikake Gohan from episode 2 of Shokugeki no Soma (or chapter 2 if you read the manga).

In the non-anime world, furikake gohan translates to ‘seasoned rice’, as furikake refers to a common Japanese seasoning of seaweed, sesame seeds, and bonito flakes that’s often sprinkled on rice and vegetable dishes, and gohan means rice. But as far as I know, ‘furikake gohan’ isn’t an actual Japanese dish. I mean, it sure sounds and taste Japanese, but is really only considered a Japanese dish as much as ‘ketchup corn’ can be considered a classic American dish.

The Transforming Furikake Gohan from the anime though, is something quite different. It’s a dish of scambled eggs on rice, which sounds simple enough. But true to the anime, the protaganist, Yukihira Soma, whipped out a killer move in the form of a jelly made out of chicken broth, which when served on top of the steaming hot rice and eggs, gradually melts and coats the dish with a deep, umami savouriness.

So I set out to recreate the dish verbatim. But just as I was about to begin, I was hit by the idea of another Japanese egg dish – tamagoyaki.

The taste of tamagoyaki

Tamagoyaki is such an interesting piece of Japanese culinary art. It’s a Japanese omelette, made by folding up layers of egg curds as it cooks, and then compressed into a smooth rectangular block of eggy purity. The thing about tamagoyakis that really hooks me though, is the flavour. Instead of having just eggs and salt as a base, like most French or American omelettes do, a sweet dashi broth is often added to the egg mixture, giving it a delightfully sweet tinge at the end. And this balance of sweet and savoury is what I believe makes tamagoyakis so addictive!

So how did this thought of tamagoyaki affect the initial dish I set out to make? Well, instead of using a chicken broth like Soma-kun did in the anime, I opted for a jelly made of pure dashi broth to go with the scrambled eggs, in hopes of creating a flavour profile reminiscent of tamagoyakis! So instead of a Transforming Furikake Gohan, I set out to make a Transforming Tamago Gohan!

But thanks to my wandering, easily-distracted mind, halfway through making the dish, yet another Japanese egg dish hit my brainwaves — omurice.

The appearance of omurice

If you haven’t heard of omurice, you gotta watch this video. It’s a video of Chef Yukimura Motokichi in his Tokyo restaurant, Kichi Kichi, making his signature dish – Fluffy Open Omelette Rice.

Omurice — a Janglish amalgamation of omelette-rice — usually refers to an omelette that’s filled with rice. But Chef Yukimura’s omurice is a truly glammed up version of the dish. He first shapes the rice like a Scouts side cap, and places a super jiggly omelette on top. Then, with a deft flick of his knife, he slits the omelette open down the middle, and the barely-cooked curds would satisfyingly flap and dribble down both sides of the rice.

While it seems simple enough, it’s bloody difficult to get the technique right for this dish. Chef Yukimura probably practiced for years before his first successful omurice. So as someone with barely a fraction of the omurice tekkers of Chef Yukimura, I thought of a shortcut just as I was making the Transforming Tamago Gohan above. Instead of having the typically fully-cooked scrambled eggs that’s so common in Asian cooking, I opted for creamy British-style scrambled eggs. Then (and this part is a little weird) I sculpted the scrambled eggs onto the mound of rice, just like how you would plaster paper mache over a balloon to make a dome. This resulted in a convincingly creamy egg-on-rice dish that looks quite a bit like an omurice that’s been cut open. Hur-hur.

Putting it all together

So, we ended up with a dish with three distinct characteristics — the taste of tamagoyaki, the appearance of omurice, and the novelty of Yukihira Soma’s Transforming Furikake Gohan. My favourite aspect of this dish by far, is how much it looks like an omurice. True Japanophiles though, will probably flay me for butchering their sacred yoshoku dish, so it’s probably not wise to call this an omurice. Instead, let’s give it an endearing name like… scrambo-rice. 😂

Side note: As you can probably tell from the photos below, I tried to put more dashi jelly cubes on top of the rice, but they all just started melting and sliding down the sides of the egg-rice-dome. Ah well, I guess it ended up looking a little more like Kichi Kichi’s omurice eh, with demi-glace poured all around. Oh, and just in case you were wondering what the weird dots and swiggles are, I garnished it with sesame seeds, scallions, and swiggly pieces of salted kombu (thanks Flory! 😊).