A night at the Teriyaki Restaurant

I know, the title of the post sounds like we went to the local Teriyaki restaurant, but that just isn't possible with our new food requirements. I love Asian food!!! Love, love, love it! Growing up, we didn't eat Asian food often and when we did it was chow-mein from Chun-king. Not the real deal AT ALL. I wasn't very fond of it. We did have a couple of nice Chinese restaurants in our town and very rarely, we got to go one of them. I liked the food. A LOT! I think we didn't have Asian food much when I was growing up because at that time, my dad just didn't like it. I think it reminded him too much of Vietnam. Whatever the reason, we didn't have it often and my brother still doesn't like Asian food. My dad has gotten over it and loves it almost as much as I do.
Growing up in a town in Kansas didn't really expose me to much variety in Asian food (and yes, I know that it's really very American, not what true Asians eat). We had the two Chinese restaurants, House of Ma and New China and then Yan-Yan's opened up right next door to Pizza Hut where I worked. Yan-Yan's was revolutionary for me, they delivered. I was introduced to Crab Rangoon, fried rice, hot and sour soup, I loved it. My waistline did not, but my mouth was happy.
Then, I visited my aunt in Kansas City a few times and we tried a Japanese Steakhouse, a Thai restaurant and a little Chinese takeout place. Then came the west coast and I tried Teriyaki. Happy Teriyaki and a little hole in the wall in our new hometown, they were great, one of my favorite things. I even felt a little better about the fact that the food wasn't fried. And then, we had to cut out gluten and dairy from our diets. So long Asian food? Well, no. Mostly it was so long Asian restaurants. The soy sauce has wheat and if the food is breaded and fried, it has wheat. So, it was up to me if we were going to have Asian food. So far on our journey into this I have made egg rolls (I'm still working on perfecting that recipe, so you'll have to wait on it) using rice wrappers. I've made General Tao's chicken (I didn't have to change anything about that recipe except I used gluten free soy sauce). Last night I made Teriyaki Chicken with rice and salad with Asian restaurant salad dressing. It was fabulous! Colin made sure that he got to take the leftovers (a sure sign that dinner was a hit). The Teriyaki Chicken recipe actually came from a Japanese exchange student who was staying with some people we know from church. She shared the recipe with their family and the mom put the recipe on her blog. I took the recipe and tweaked it to make it gluten free and also to add a little bit more depth to the flavor. The Asian Salad Dressing recipe is something I just made up based on the salad dressing I've had from Teriyaki restaurants. Hope you like them.
Happy Eating!
P.S. As a little bonus, here's where to find my favorite fried rice recipe:
Benihana's Fried Rice
It should be simple to convert to gluten and dairy free, just use gluten free soy sauce and dairy free margarine instead of the butter.