Hurricane Dinner Party

It's been more than six months since my last entry here....I've been busy, and, when I have been cooking, I've mostly been repeating dishes that I've already posted here and/or forgetting to take pictures. Last week, the confluence of friends from grad school coming into town (some moving here, others passing through for a conference) and a hurricane provided the perfect excuse to stay indoors, cook lots of food, drink lots of good wine while we waited out the weather. The theme for this dinner party was Asian, or, more specifically, the Momofuku cookbook, which I have been reading a lot of but not cooking a lot of. Two of the four courses for this dinner were directly from the cookbook, one borrowed an ingredient from the cookbook to jazz up an old favorite, and the fourth dish involved me just cutting up some super fresh fish from Black Salt.

We started out the meal with a trio of raw fish. Here's an action shot of the dishes being prepared.

Here's a finished plate.

In the foreground are slices of ivory salmon (which I had never heard of before I walked into Black Salt looking for fish earlier that day) and king salmon. Being late August, king salmon are at their peak. I love the bold striations on this salmon. The ivory salmon was soaked in lime juice for a couple of seconds, then topped with a Spanish olive oil, smoked salt, and a lime zest. The king salmon was simply topped with some nice grassy tuscan olive oil and a bit of cracked pink peppercorns. The third dish, in the little bowls in the background, was an Ahi tuna poke. To make the poke, I cut the ahi into cubes (about 1 cm) and let it marinate in a mixture of soy sauce, sesame oil, and scallions with a dash of rice wine vinegar, and pinch of red pepper flakes. Just before serving, I tossed in some sesame seeds and then topped the poke with some strips of toasted nori.

Next came the veggie course: pan roasted asparagus and grilled king oyster mushrooms with miso butter and slow poached eggs.

Although I don't really like mushrooms, I really like the look of this dish. For some reason, the combination of the mushrooms and asparagus piled on top of the miso butter with the whole eggs has a really rustic, "farm to table" look to it. To make the slow poached eggs, you need to let the eggs sit in 140F water for around 45 minutes. If you were plating these individually (as they do in the Momofuku cookbook), you would spread out a bit of miso butter, artfully arrange the asparagus, and then place the poached egg across the top of the asparagus. In this family style preparation, the eggs would have all slid off to the side of the plate and, when serving, the yolks surely would have broken on the serving plate, leaving all of the yolky goodness behind. When served this way, everyone gets to crack their own egg, which is much cleaner and, besides, its fun.

The third course was miso and sake marinated sea bass with scallions, sunchoke puree, and bacon dashi. Sea bass is something I've posted before. It's a great dish for a dinner party since all the flavor comes from letting it marinate for a long time (in this case, 48 hours), but it is really quick to cook. While we were eating the second course, I just stuck the fish under the broiler for about 10 minutes. You will need to flip the fish about half way through so it cooks evenly and the sugar in the marinade doesn't burn too much. The bacon dashi is a pretty straight forward (and brilliant) recipe from the Momofuku cookbook. Just steep some konbu in water for a few minutes, remove, then simmer some smokey bacon in the broth for about 30 minutes, chill, skim off the fat, and reheat before service. For the sunchoke puree, just peel the sunchokes, boil until tender, and puree in a food processor with butter. Season with salt and pepper. If you wanted to make this really rich, you could simmer the sunchokes in cream.

For the last course, we had steamed Chinese buns that Abby had made earlier in the day (see the freshly formed buns, waiting for the steamer below) with roasted pork belly, quick pickles, and other accoutrements.

Like the fish, the pork belly is a dish where all of the work is done ahead of time. I cured the pork belly in salt, sugar, pepper, and five spice powder for 24 hours, then roasted it at 450F for 45 minutes followed by another 3 hours at 250. Then, I chilled the pork belly over night, sliced it, and reheated it just before serving. Here's a finished pork belly bun.

Asian style snapper baked in parchment

Baking fish in parchment is a great way to infuse a lot of flavor into the fish. It's also really easy to make, which is an added bonus. Just throw in the ingredients you want, wrap everything in a parchment envelope and roast for about 30 minutes. You can be pretty creative with the ingredients, but keep in mind that the whole concept of this type of cooking is that moisture released from any of the ingredients or generated from any liquid that you add will steam the fish. As such, more aromatic ingredients will probably do a better job of flavoring your fish. For this dish, I added lemon slices, ginger, garlic, cilantro, jalapeno and scallions. I also drizzled the fish with a little soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and sesame oil. Because you don't have to do any complicated prep work, this is the sort of dish that you can have done, start to finish, in under an hour.

Ramen noodles with ginger scallion sauce, ginger-honey-soy glazed pork belly, and stir fried broccoli and carrots

This dish is pretty straight forward. For the noodles, I followed this recipe from the Momofuku cookbook, and the veggies were just stir fried over high heat with a little ginger. Here's the recipe for the pork belly:

INGREDIENTS

1 lb pork belly

1 c soy sauce

1 c honey

~2 inch piece of ginger, grated.

5 spice powder

Preheat oven to 225F

Remove skin from the pork belly, rub five spice powder over the surface, and sear on medium high heat on all sides in an oven proof pan. Remove the pork belly and pour off most of the fat.

Add the grated garlic. You may also want to try throwing other aromatics such as garlic, bay leaf, or cloves. Cook for about a minutes, then add the soy sauce and honey. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring to make sure everything is combined.

Put the pork belly back in the pan and place everything in the oven and let roast for 2.5 to 3 hours, turning and basting occasionally.

When the pork belly is done, remove it from the oven and reduce the soy-ginger-honey mixture over high heat until it is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Add the pork belly to the glaze, and turn in the pan so it is thoroughly coated.

Slice and serve with the noodles and stir fried veggies.

Bibimbap

I went to an Asian market earlier this week and picked up a couple of dolsot (stone bowls), so I could make some legit bibimbap. Here's a picture of the finished product.

Bittman/Vongerichten fried rice

This recipe was posted on Mark Bittman's blog the other day. I thought I would give it a try. The crispy garlic and ginger was really good. I also added thinly sliced lap cheong since we had some sitting around our fridge. Here's the recipe.

Seared tuna, crispy rice cakes, and sesame spinach

INGREDIENTS
Tuna

• 2 servings tuna
• sesame seeds

Spinach

• Baby spinach (enough for 2 servings)
• 1 carrot
• 1 Tbsp toasted sesame seeds
• 1 Tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp rice vinegar
• 1/2 tsp dashi
  
• 1 clove minced garlic
  

Rice cakes

• 1.5 cups sushi rice
• 1-2 Tbsp rice vinegar
• Rice seasoning (Furikake), to taste

Cook the rice. Let it cool to and add vinegar as if you are making sushi rice. Mix in furikake to taste. Form the rice into patties and cook until crispy and golden brown on each side.

Julienne the carrot and cook until soft with a little oil. Add minced garlic and spinach. Cook until wilted. In a bowl, grind up the sesame seeds and mix in the soy sauce, vinegar, and dashi. Add this to the spinach and toss together.

Season the tuna with salt and pepper and coat one side with sesame seeds. Sear over high heat for one minute on each side.

(Pictured with a sauce made of miso, soy, dashi, ponzu, sake, and mirin)

Spam Musubi

Looked upon with some degree of revulsion by most of the world, Spam is a staple product in Hawaii, and this dish, Spam musubi, is a classic Hawaiian snack. It's one of those things that could only come out of Hawaii, where Spam is much loved, and sushi, or musubi, is common thanks to the large Japanese population. This is a super easy recipe, and, really, it tastes pretty good.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 can spam
• 2 cups short grain rice
• Soy sauce
• Oyster sauce
• Furikake (optional)
  
• Nori
  

Slice the spam into 8-10 equal pieces and marinate in a mixture of soy sauce and oyster sauce. I use about 3 Tbsp soy sauce and 2 Tbsp oyster sauce. Rinse and cook the rice. After about 30 minutes, cook the spam over medium heat in a non-stick frying pan. When the rice is done, you can season like sushi rice or just leave it plain.

When all your ingredients are ready, you can start assembling the musubi. First, cut the sheets of nori in half. Take one half and lay it on your cutting board. Place a musubi press in the center of the nori, spread a layer of rice inside the press, top with furikake (optional), a layer of spam, and another layer of rice, as shown below.
When all the layers are assembled, press everything down and wrap the nori around the spam and rice block that you have just created.
Turn the musubi over so the flap of nori is facing down. The weight of the musubi presses down the flap and the warmth and moisture from the rice will help seal the nori.

Abby's note: We usually don't slice our musubi up; we just sliced it here for that first photo, so you can see what the cross-section looks like. It's actually best enjoyed holding it in your hands and biting into it like an ice cream bar. Not only is it more fun, but you can size your bites as you wish.

Also, to all you doubters out there, don't knock it 'till you try it!! Spam musubi rocks and is one of my fave comfort foods. Plus, it makes a great snack that you can easily wrap in seran wrap, stack in the fridge, and then pick off one by one, or toss in your bag when you're stepping out. It's basically a candy-bar-sized package of sushi awesomeness. Once you go there, you'll never go back.

Steamed Red Snapper with Chiles & Ginger, Braised Baby Bok Choy

This is one of my favorite recipes - it's so quick, easy, and healthy, with lots of delicious yet playful flavors. I love how the snapper delicately absorbs all the spicy chile and ginger juices without any effort on my part at all. In general, the recipes that I (Abby) put up here will require a lot less culinary acumen than Sam's dishes, so you can rely on my posts for our more remedial meals. ;)

The ingredients aren't fancy:

• 1 (1-pound) red snapper fillet with skin (3/4 inch thick)
• 1 tablespoon medium-dry Sherry
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 (3-inch) piece fresh ginger, peeled and cut into 1/16-inch-thick matchsticks (1 1/2 inches long)
• 1 scallion, cut lengthwise into 1 1/2-inch-long very thin strips (1/3 cup)
• 2 fresh serrano chiles, seeded and cut lengthwise into very thin strips
• 1/2 teaspoon Asian sesame oil

All you have to do is score the skin of the snapper several times, rub both sides of the fish with a mixture of the sherry and salt, and place it skin side up on an oiled plate (or parchment paper) that can fit in your bamboo steamer. Meanwhile, bring the water in your wok to a boil.

Now, in a small skillet, heat the oil and saute the ginger, scallion, and chiles for about 30 seconds, until fragrant but not browned. Spoon all this over the fish, letting the oil seep into the scored parts. Then, all you have to do is place the plate of fish in your steamer, put the steamer over the boiling water in your wok, and cover it tightly. Steam the fish until it's cooked through, about 7-8 minutes. When you serve the fish over rice, make sure to transfer as much of the yummy juice as possible.

Sam and I like to add some cilantro (here added to the ginger/chile mix) and a squeeze of lime to the dish to top it off. You end up with a lovely mix of well-balanced, subtle flavors - with a bit of a spicy kick! You can check out the original recipe and other peoples' ideas at epicurious.com.

Braising the baby bok choy is also very simple. First, mix a teaspoon each of minced garlic and ginger. Then, saute it in a pan big enough to braise the bok choy in. Add enough water to fill the pan about a quarter of the way; a dash of soy sauce and mirin (about two teaspoons each); a quarter teaspon of dashi (which is a kind of japanese fish bullion that's good for soup bases like miso); and 2-3 tablespoons of sake. Leave it on medium-high heat and let the liquid reduce by about half. Reduce the heat to about medium and put the baby bok choy in (we used four small bunches for two people, cut in half). Cover the pan and cook for 6-8 minutes. You can use the braising liquid as a sauce after further reducing it - just remember to strain out the garlic and ginger before serving. That's it! Enjoy!

Sushi Party!

This weekend, we hosted a sushi-making party! The setup: each guest brought an ingredient or two of their choice, while Sam and I set up the chopping and rolling stations, provided the nori, prepared the rice, and cooked up other basics like tempura shrimp, soba noodles, and soy bean sprout salad.

Everyone showed up with a few goodies, which meant we had a lot of innovative ingredients to play with. On the seafood side, we had fresh tuna, salmon, yellowtail, sea bream, broiled eel, octopus, and squid. On the veggie/fruit side, we had mango, cucumber, avocado, asian pear, green apple, carrots, sweet bell pepper, scallions, jalapeno peppers, cilantro, tofu, mushrooms, tamago (egg), umeboshi (pickled plum), and more! Here are a few highlights of the evening:

Jon, Lindsay, and Sebastian fix the first rolls of sushi for the night, as Luke looks on.

Some ingredients on the table, including a bowl of spicy tuna sauce, made from a simple mix of mayo and sriracha hot sauce.

Maia perfects one of her artistic creations.

Adam shows off his diverse presentation skills with some tamago nigiri, yellowtail sashimi, and a tempura shrimp & avocado sushi roll.


Adam and Simon try their hand at sushi-making for the first time, while Sam and Kris plan their next moves...

Luke demonstrates how to prepare an inside-out roll, using the mat covered in seran wrap, to avoid getting rice stuck between the bamboo rods. This roll had a spicy kick!

Kim specializes in the veggie rolls...

Maia, Nathan, Sharlene, Elana, Sebastian, Matt, & Angie sit back to enjoy the fruits of their labor in the living room, aided by japanese beer and sake.

Kris, Lindsay, & Matt clean off their plates.


The most creative sushi of the night! Brian's "candy sushi", made of rice krispies and melted marshmallows, stuffed with maraschino cherries, chocolate syrup, twizzlers, and gushers...all wrapped in fruit rollup "nori"! It sounds crazy but was actually pretty yummy, albeit somewhat perilous - Kim was shocked into a sugar high for the rest of the evening.

Mark and Brian show off their "roast beef sushi", with a meaty substitute for nori. The goal of the night was to make creative yet tasty sushi. Mission Accomplished!

Ma Po Tofu

This is a dish that Abby and I make fairly often. Quick. Easy. Tasty. It's comfort food at its best.

INGREDIENTS

Mix together 3/4 cup of water
1 Tbsp of Chinese cooking wine
2 Tbsp of soy sauce and 1 tsp salt.
In a separate cup, mix together 2 tsp corn starch and about a Tbsp of water.

Mince 2 cloves of garlic, an equivalent amount of ginger, and two scallions. Reserve about 1/4 of the scallions for garnish.
Mince the pork. It helps to stick it in the freezer for about 15 to 30 minutes first. This allows you to cut the pork into very thin slices. After doing this, just run your knife across the slices a few times.

Cut the block of extra firm tofu into 1 cm squares.Once these ingredients are prepped, you can start cooking. First, stir fry the pork in 2 Tbsp oil. When using a wok, you should always have the heat up as high as possible. It helps to use an oil that can stand up to high heat such as sunflower oil.
Once the pork is done, set it aside in a separate bowl, but keep as much oil in the wok as possible. Stir fry the garlic, ginger, and scallions for a minute or so, then add a tablespoon of hot black bean sauce for another minute.

Add the liquid, bring to a bowl, and then add the pork and tofu.Let everything simmer for a couple minutes and then add the corn starch/water mixture. If there is too much liquid, you can turn up the heat to reduce the sauce or you can add more corn starch to thicken the sauce more. Finish with a bit of white pepper, sesame oil, and the remaining chopped scallion and serve over rice.

Curry noodles with beef

Over a year into the life of this blog, we finally have an entry from Abby. I didn't feel like cooking the other night, so Abby decided to try out a recipe for grilled beef with noodles in a Thai curry broth. Here are some pictures.

The biggest Chinese dinner I've ever had

Nearly two years after we began planning, our wedding weekend finally arrived, and with it came massive, massive amounts of food. The night before our wedding, the Kina and Moy families along with the wedding parties got together for a giant post rehearsal dinner at Evergreen Chinese Restaurant in Chicago. This place was a bit of a last second choice. We were trying to find the winning combination of someplace that was affordable (we were feeding 70+ people), clean, close to the church, and had good food, and Abby's mom was able to strike a deal with this place the week before the wedding. It was awesome. Unfortunately, I didn't get many pictures of the food itself, so you'll just have to take my word for it. Here are a couple of table shots though. As you can see, they are pretty crowded.
Normally, Chinese banquets feature a lot of dishes and piles upon piles of leftovers are the norm, but at Evergreen, they went completely overboard (in the best way possible). Abby's mom and I went to the restaurant a few days beforehand to put down a deposit and go over the menu. I didn't want shark's fin soup, which was one of the dishes on the banquet menu we selected, so they gave us three to four different dishes in its place (I guess shark's fin soup is pretty expensive). I don't remember how many dishes we had, but there must have been at least 15, including Peking dusk, spicy whole shrimp, shrimp with candied walnuts and mayonaise sauce, stir fried lobster, fried rice steamed in lotus lead, crispy Jon Dory (a really nice white fish), beef with broccoli, crispy chicken, stir fried green beans, tofu with chinese brocoli, at least one kind of soup...the list goes on.

In addition to eating tons of food, Abby and I also performed a tea ceremony at the rehearsal dinner. Tradittionally, the bride serves tea to the groom's married relative before the wedding, starting with the parents
and then proceeding to aunts and uncles in order of age. In exchange, we get marital advice and red envelopes stuffed with money. By drinking the tea, the relatives signal that they are welcoming the future bride into the family. I am happy to say, all my aunts and uncles drank their tea.

Sushi Yasuda

Last night, Abby and I went out to Sushi Yasuda with Alex and Jane. This is one of their favorite places, and I heard rave reviews from Abby after she went there last fall when she was in NYC interviewing with law firms. I had been looking forward to eating here, and I must say, this is hands down the best sushi I have ever had.

If you go, I would suggest sitting at the bar. Call ahead to see if you can get a place in front of Yasuda-san (pictured above). We just let him serve us what he thought was good, and since he knows more about seafood than I, or just about anyone else, can hope to know, that's really the best way to get a great dining experience. He's a really personable guy, and offers his views on sushi to you, explaining how important things like texture and temperature are to the taste of sushi.

Sushi, at its best, is very subtle. The decor at Sushi Yasuda reflects this idea. The heart of the restaurant is a long, blonde wood bar. The walls, ceilings, and floors are all the same, giving the restaurant a clean, understated look. When you sit at the bar, leaves, rather than plates, are your serving dishes. Each dinner gets a little pot of soy with a dipping bowl and plate, but these are unnecessary. You eat right off of the leaf as the chef serves you, and each piece of sushi is perfectly seasoned. Dipping it in soy would just ruin the delicate balance.
I have always heard that the quality of the rice is what really distinguishes great sushi from good sushi. Getting high quality fish is about judgment and knowing the right purveyors. Yes, cutting the fish just so is a hard learned skill, but making great sushi rice is a craft that people spend years learning. At most places you go to, the rice sticks together and, when you eat the sushi, it more or less stays stuck together as you chew it. At Sushi Yasuda, the rice sticks together nicely, but each grain is distinct. When you put the sushi in your mouth, it gently falls apart, allowing you to appreciate the texture of each perfectly seasoned grain of rice.
Temperature, timing, and attention to detail are all very important to making perfect sushi rice. You must rinse all of the starch from the rice and let it dry out thoroughly so that the grains don't stick together. You must cook the rice in just the right amount of water at just the right temperature for just the right amount of time. You must spread it out and fan it in a wooden bowl that will absorb some of the moisture. And, finally, when the rice has reached the proper temperature, you must season it with just the right amount of vinegar. At Sushi Yasuda, all of this is perfectly done. The amount of vinegar on the rice really livens up you taste buds and allows you to appreciate some of the more subtle cuts of fish.

While the rice is impressive, its just one half of what makes this place great. The selection is outstanding. All of the standards are hear...uni, unagi, squid, toro.
But you don't just order, say, yellowtail, you can choose a specific type. Yasuda decided to give us a yellowtail tasting, offering four different varieties of yellowtail (below). For just about every type of fish on the menu, you have several options.
You can also eat some things that you may not be able to find anywhere else. There were certainly a number of firsts for me. The scallops are a great example of his creativity. Normally, you just eat the adductor muscle of the scallop. Yasuda will serve this to you (top right), but you can also get the scallop tentacle, or gills that go around the fringe of the shell (bottom left), and the liver...I'm not sure if its actually a liver, but that's what he called it (bottom right). In the top left of the picture below, you see all the different parts of the scallops on Yasuda-san's cutting board. The color of the liver varies by gender (bright red or gray).
Here are a couple more types of sushi....I can't remember all of them. The best one I had all night though, was the Peace Passage Oyster (from my home state of Washington) pictured in the top right below. I can't describe how good this was.
Every last piece of sushi we had was amazing. Yasuda seasons each piece with wasabi, a squeeze of lemon juice, a brush of soy, and/or a sprinkle of sea salt. I had never thought of putting sea salt on sushi before... this idea is a Yasuda original....but it is really, really good. It adds just a little bit of crunch and saltiness that is completely unexpected. It is especially good with the uni.

Yasudu isn't only about sushi, though. There are several interesting appetizers. Above, we have a bowl of different fish livers....another things that I had never had before. Do order this if you ever come here. It's delicious, just like everything else on the menu.