Chicken skin with grated daikon and ponzu 雛皮と大根おろしのポン酢あえ

This is another nothing dish but a perfect drinking snack.

I often make microwaved sakamushi (酒蒸しsake steamed) chicken breast. This is very handy to have around. You can make all kinds of small dishes and even sandwiches with it. I usually cook it with the skin on because it keeps the breast meat from getting dry while cooking. When I use the meat, I usually remove the skin before slicing the chicken but I do not discard the skin. Instead I leave it in the container with the remaining meat and chicken juice. I use the same technique with raw chicken. When I remove the skin, I sometimes discard it but other times I prepare small dishes from the skin. If I am preparing the chicken skin from scratch, I prepare it by first boiling in water with sake, scallion and ginger added. But when I am using the skin of sakamush chicken, I need not to do these preparations.

Unfortunately, chicken skin has a layers of fat attached to it. I removed the fat with a knife as much as I could before slicing it into thin strips. I also sliced the scallions, which were cooked with the chicken breast, on the bias about the same size and length of the skin. I mixed and dressed them with ponzu shouuyu (pozu wih soy sauce). I also grated some daikon 大根 and squeesed out the excess moisture.

To assemble, I sliced some cucumber (American minicucumber) and fanned out the pieces putting them on one side of the plate (in this case, I used a lacquered square ichi-go masu sake measuring cup 一合升) .  I placed a small mound of grated daikon next to the slices. Then place the dressed chicken skin and scallion next to the daikon and cucumber. For slight heat, I sprinkled on 7 flavored Japanese red pepper flakes or shichimi tougrashi 七味唐辛子.