Category: Asian

July 19, 2010

We had a birthday party to go to yesterday, so the afternoon was not as domestic as I wanted. It was leisurely, though, so when we did get home I had lots of energy and got right to work in the garden ripping out the spent peas and replanting the bed with radishes of all sorts. Some dried peas had already begun to sprout, so I gently moved them under the sunflowers at the end of the bed so they’ll have something to climb. Peas in the fall are nice, but daikon are better.

I made three big jars of pickles, which I’ll post as soon as I photograph them. Dinner was a combination of several dishes prepared separately and eaten all together; a bit more time could have turned this into an elegant multi-course meal if the occasion had called for such. As it was, we enjoyed it out on the screened porch with the breezes and the chirping birds.

I started by seeding and mandolining a couple of cucumbers into a bowl, then kneading them with salt until they gave up their liquid. I squeezed them out, then dressed them with the local soy sauce and cider vinegar. I took a sweet potato and steamed it, then made a variation on our beloved tahini-miso sauce using black sesame paste, white miso, and raspberry vinegar in place of lemon juice. I used the same pan with the steamer in it to cook a small head of local cauliflower that a friend gave us since their CSA had given them too much. I tossed it in olive oil, cider vinegar, and a bit of leftover green mash once it was tender.

July 14, 2010

Another hot-weather dinner, and another round of homemade sushi for the clamoring tribe. Sockeyes are in season, and though very not local, they are sustainably caught and most delicious. This has become somewhat of a weekly ritual for us while our local-ish source is out of town; we get the best fish we can and I make a variety of sushi while the family sits and devours it all. I eat mine intermittently throughout, sometimes with a nice plate at the end after they’re sated.

June 10, 2010

This all began with a High School friend posting on Facebook that she was smoking a pork butt as a precursor to making pulled pork for dinner. “Hmmm,” I said, “I have some pulled pork in the freezer, already smoked, braised, de-fatted, and pulled–ready to go, in other words.” So I defroze it, and made corn muffins, using the very same local coarse polenta that I used to dredge the quail. This polenta is going places; I had the chance to chat wth Don, who mills it, yesterday at the farmers’ market, and he told me some exciting news that is going to bode well for this region and the farmers thereof.

June 4, 2010

So herewith day three of our ocean-derived sustenance. It’s telling–and extremely wonderful–that the scallops we received on Wednesday, cooked tonight, were sweeter and fresher tasting than anything we’ve ever bought from a store. Anybody who reads this and happens to live in the Hudson Valley would be well-advised to seek out the Fishmonger and get themselves the royal hookup. It honest and for true does not get much better than this unless you’re a deep-sea angler. I cut these circles out of square wonton wrappers with a jar and a knife because I couldn’t find my biscuit cutter.

June 3, 2010

With a pornucopia of freshest seafood in the fridge, dinner this evening was pretty easy. That’s not to say that I didn’t make an unholy mess of the kitchen, of course, because that is the manner in which I roll. But the actual food was pretty easy. To start, because the family was deep into “My Side of the Mountain” (my absolute favorite book when I was about 7 or 8), a couple of quick salmon hand rolls for the cook.

May 31, 2010

I finally ordered some nigari (magnesium chloride) for making tofu. I had bought organic soybeans–both white and black–a while ago, but it took an age for me to get the order in. Once it arrived, though, the intervening time spent waiting helped spur me to quick action. I soaked some of the white beans overnight and re-read the tofu recipe I wanted to try from the Shunju cookbook. (Shunju is one of Tokyo’s finest restaurants,…

May 24, 2010

Friday night Mike and Claudia, our favorite celebrities, came over, but this time Mike cooked for us. It had been suggested by my wife that some Korean barbecue might be in order, since she had seen him make it on Bourdain’s TV show (he loaned us the DVD) and couldn’t shake the craving. (If you watch the Hudson Valley episode, you can see it too, as well as Mike’s then 10-year-old daughter completely pwning Bourdain…

May 19, 2010

OK, here’s that sushi. Our regular fish guy is on hiatus, so we’ve been missing him and the superb product he purveys. Feeling the sun-inspired urge for something clean and raw, I went to a nearby store that sometimes has good fish. Good timing; they had both wild Alaskan salmon and sushi-grade ahi. Score. Since we had leftover brown rice already in the fridge, this was beyond easy. I ran to the garden and massacred…

May 12, 2010

Upon return home, it was decreed by those who had languished for a week without being properly cooked for that were would be having barbecued chicken. And me? I’m not one to argue. I’m a lover, not a fighter. Everyone knows that. Thus, sustainably raised and then killed for our sustenance chicken legs found their way onto our grill (which, since we were out of charcoal, I had to fuel with foraged fallen maple branches, taking this fully into the realm of the old school). I made BBQ sauce with tomato paste, red wine, hoisin sauce, soy sauce, coffee, balsamic vinegar, and passion fruit juice, and also brown rice and a salad of greens from the garden. No pictures. Settle down.

April 30, 2010

Wok Hai (or Wok Hay) is a Cantonese expression that means, roughly, “breath of the wok.” “Hay” is “Chi” in Mandarin, so it’s as much “energy” or “spirit” as “breath,” but the idea is the same: the food has a particular flavor that can only come from quick cooking in a wok. It’s something I’ve known about for a long time, and it’s one of the qualities that has eluded my Chinese cooking for even longer. No matter how good, it never tasted authentic. Until now. See, our gas range in Brooklyn was OK, but not great. And the execrable piece of shit of a hotplate that came with this house, well, let’s never speak of it again. But the new stove–the gleaming, stainless beast that it is–was the missing ingredient. All of the circular cast-iron grates lift out, allowing a wok to sit down low and get very close indeed to the burner. And when the burner in question is 22,000 BTUs, that wok gets obscenely hot. The thin steel becomes a highly conductive membrane bathed in fire, so your food is cooking right in the flames. It’s bad-ass, and it makes the best Chinese food possible.