Katsu Karē (カツカレー, cutlet curry)

Katsu karē looks like three jobs pretending to be one: rice, curry, cutlet. That is the worry, and it is a little comic because none of the jobs is clever. You cook the rice, simmer a mild brown curry, fry one plain breaded pork chop. Put them together and the spoon suddenly has a very good reason to exist.

This is honmono yōshoku, the real thing in the grammar of a Japanese home dish. The curry is not thin or fiery. It is glossy, rounded, lightly sweet from onion, and thick enough to hold to rice without standing like paste. A clear dashi gives it quiet depth beneath the roux. Don't bury it under every secret addition in the cupboard. A curry that tastes of everything usually tastes of confusion.

The cutlet decides the dish. Score the fat so the pork doesn't curl, bread it in flour, egg, and panko, then fry just hot enough that the crumbs crisp before the meat dries out. Slice it into bars and lay it where the curry touches only part of the crust. We eat this with a spoon, yes, but the spoon is not permission to drown the katsu. Leave a dry edge. That small mercy is the difference.