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The scene
The two youngest sisters are alone in the house. Suzu is taking care of the laundry while Chika is cooking.
Chika then calls for Suzu because dinner is ready.
Suzu thinks Chika's curry is delicious. Chika says she doesn't really remember what her mother's seafood curry tasted like, but this curry with chikuwa (fish sausage) she does remember. Their grandma used to cook it all the time and it's what she thinks of when she thinks of curry. Yoshino and Sachi don't really like it but sometimes Chika just has to have it, so she cooks it for herself.
Suzu then reveals she actually lied when she said she hadn't eaten shirasu don before (whitebait with rice). Their father cooked it all the time for her back in Yamagata. Chika says she doesn't remember much about him but since Suzu does, Chika would love it if Suzu could tell some stories about their father sometime.
Suzu says their father loved fishing and used to take Suzu along with him often. Chika, herself a keen fisher, is overjoyed to hear that.
The food
Well, we know exactly what it is: a curry with chikuwa! The Japanese have several different kinds of fish surimi (fish paste) products, perhaps the most well-known of which would be the imitation crab sticks. Others include narutomaki, kamaboko as well as chikuwa. What's common amongst all of them in my experience is that they all have a fairly mild fishy flavour and their texture is firm but spongy.
Recreating the food
I actually made this dish back in early May. When I started preparing for this project at the end of last year, I was fairly certain that I'd have no chance of getting chikuwa in Finland. However, one day I was shopping at Tokyokan and asked about if they'd ever get chikuwa, the staff pointed out that they did in fact have it in the freezer at that very moment. It was about to expire and there were only two packages left, so I decided I'd buy one and make the curry soon. It was quite clever of me to buy the chikuwa then and there because I've never seen any at Tokyokan since - nor in any other shop in Helsinki, for that matter. In the end, this was actually the third dish I ever made for this blog.
I think if you can't find chikuwa, you could get a similar effect with surimi sticks, narutomaki or perhaps some kind of mildly-flavoured white fish.
Chikuwa looks fairly funny/weird.
Luckily, it turned out I wasn't the only one who wanted to make this curry. Our Little Sister is based on the manga series Umimachi Diary by Akimi Yoshida which of course also features food prominently, prominently enough that a recipe book about some of the dishes featured in the series was released in 2015. Unfortunately it's only in Japanese, so I never got around to ordering it thinking I wouldn't get much out of it. However, Khursten Santos of the blog Punked Noodle does have the book and actually made the exact curry Chika is cooking in the movie!
Grandma's curry is somewhat more complicated than mom's easy curry: along with the chikuwa and curry roux blocks you'll need pork, various vegetables, an apple and yoghurt. The recipe calls for four pieces of chikuwa but I only had two, so I logically used half of everything mentioned in the recipe.
I again used Golden Curry's roux blocks for this curry but as I was making Japanese curry for the first time, I wanted to test the level of spiciness, I went with a medium one this time.
If you're completely averse to any kind of spicy foods, by all means, go with a medium or even milder curry. To me, however, this medium hot curry didn't feel any kind of spicy at any point. Still delicious, though!
You start by frying the garlic and onion for a moment before adding the pork. When the pork is starting to get cooked, add all the other ingredients. Simmer on low heat for 20-30 minutes while occasionally skimming the scum from the top of the pot, then add the curry roux blocks and mix.
Trying to recreate the photo from the start of the post. The chikuwa pieces have expanded to double the diameter at this point!
The list of ingredients is much more extensive than mom's seafood curry and it takes more time to cook, but this curry too is still really simple and easy to do.
Here's my recreation of Chika's grandma's curry! Again, it might not look incredible, but the taste is another matter entirely.
Trying it out
Honestly, it's been way too long between making this curry and writing this post, so I can't be sure exactly how good it was anymore. I believe it was really quite good, however, because when I made it, I realised how delicious Japanese curries actually were for how little effort they required. I believe the apple and tomato gave it an interesting fruity and sour twist.
Japanese curry is such a delight that it's almost difficult to explain. It's simply so effortless to make and the curry roux blocks make it taste exactly like the stuff you'd have in Japan. I strongly recommend you try making one at home for a real taste of Japanese homecooking wherever in the world you might be!
Recipes used
Chikuwa curry recipe: Punked Noodle
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