Hawaiian plate lunch...er...dinner

As is often the case, today's dinner inspiration came courtesy of my daily Allrecipes.com email and a recipe for shoyu chicken. Shoyu chicken is the Hawaiian version of teriyaki, basically, and it generally uses chicken thighs. I've written about my previous foray into a plate lunch after having it served from a Portland food truck (though really that post is more about getting a new Macbook...) but I see that I didn't write at all about the recipes. So I shall fix that here.

For my version of shoyu chicken I used skinless, boneless breasts (I don't generally buy them, but they were on sale) and marinated them in the following mixture.

Shoyu Sauce

1/4 cup of something I bought called "medium soy sauce" - it's quite sweet and molasses-y so no need to add extra sugar
2 T regular soy sauce
1 big, fat clove of garlic, smushed in a garlic press
2 t siracha
Black pepper
Two slices of crystallized ginger, finely chopped (I didn't have fresh and this works particularly well considering the sweetness already in the recipe)

I marinated the chicken for an hour or so, then grilled it on the indoor grill (waaaaaay too hot for the firepit today!). In the meantime, I boiled the marinade for a couple minutes so I could use it as a sauce. I basted the chicken halfway through cooking, and then dunked them in the sauce after they were done cooking.

Earlier I prepared the macaroni salad so there would be time for the flavors to marry and mellow; the onion can be somewhat harsh if eaten right away. The basic recipe is very simple and I got the basis here. I only added grated carrot to mine, to best match what I had in Portland. And I most definitely didn't use two cups of mayonnaise.

To finish this carbolicious plate, I made plain white rice, which I drizzled with the shoyu sauce. And because we needed some vegetable other than that bit of grated carrot, I made a salad of tomato, cucumber and rice vinegar with a teeny splash of oil.

Mai e `a! Aloha!