Cooking niku-jaga (Japanese braised beef and potatoes)

So, I finally got the itch to cook again. I get it once in a while, when I see a dish I want to eat. :) Today I tried out niku-jaga, a Japanese dish. I saw this recipe when I went to the Nijiya Japanese Market in San Mateo. They had this rack with lots of recipes and this one seemed delicious and easy enough that I decided to get it. :)

Ingredients:
200g of sliced beef (the fattier the better ^^)
2 potatoes (~400g)
1 onion (~200g)
1/2 table spoon of cooking oil
2 cups of dashi stock or water
3 table spoon of sake
3 table spoon of sugar
2 table spoon of mirin
3 table spoon of soy sauce

Directions:

1. Peel and cut potatoes into slightly larger than bite size ( each potato into 8 sizes is a good benchmark).
2. Skin onions and remove the heart. Then cut the onion in half slices.
3. Slice the beef in bite sizes.
4. Heat the oil in a pan and then take it out of the heat.
5. Coat the slices of beef with the oil.

6. Put the pan back to medium heat and stir fry the beef. Make sure the pieces don't stick to each other with chopsticks.
7. When the beef changes color, add onions and potatoes and stir fry.

8. Add dashi stock (or water) , basically enough to cover everything.
9. Bring everything to a boil and remove any scums that floats to the surface.
10. Add the sake, sugar, mirin and soy sauce in that order.

11. Bring everything to a boil, reduce the heat slightly and cover it.
12. When the liquid is reduced to one third, and flip everything (so that everything is coated).
13. Tilt the pan to a size and reduce all the sauce.
14. Spread everything on a pan to cool.
15. Serve with rice. :)

Cooking wasn't too hard, eating it was even easier. ^^ A few comments, mirin sauce is a sweet cooking sauce used in teriyaki. It has a nice taste to it, make sure not to add too much, or it will over power everything. Dashi stock is the base flavor in miso soup. :) I substituted sake with Chinese cooking rice wine and it turned out not bad.