cooking

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Otsumami, a cookbook review

Despite my slightly higher than average exposure to Japanese food and culture, I’ve not previously heard the word “otsumami.”  Per Atsuko Ikeda’s new book, “Otsumami,” it’s the word “given to snacks and simple dishes, designed to be eaten alongside a drink.”  I don’t drink much, but this cookbook caught my attention because the recipes more modern/more fusion than the Japanese cookbooks I own.

The book is divided into:

  • Party planning
  • What to drink with food
  • Cocktails
  • Furoshiki
  • Essential Ingredients
  • Kitchen Tools
  • How to cook rice
  • How to make dashi
  • Sauces and dressings
  • Flavoured miso
  • Flavoured mayonnaise
  • Simple light bites
  • Meat and poultry
  • Fish and seafood
  • Vegetables
  • Tofu and eggs

Some of the recipes I want to try are:

  • Rainbow dips (the red dip – has baharat, pink – has beetroots, orange – has butternut squash and ras el hanout, green – has cilantro and lime juice, brown – has mushrooms, yellow – has tofu and turmeric)
  • Ground meat on chicory
  • Balsamic chicken wings (see link at the end of this post for the recipe)
  • Meatloaf with ankake sauce
  • Chicken dumplings
  • Chicken ramen noodles in salty citrus soup
  • Miso and maple marinated salmon
  • Cold miso soup with smoked mackerel
  • Mushroom and miso gratin
  • Rolled Japanese omelette 3 ways

The first recipe I tried was the spicy tuna tartare on nori chips.  It’s basically a twist on the filing that you would use inside a spicy tuna roll (which typically uses sriracha or chili oil).  This version uses sushi grade tuna, pear, gochujang, soy sauce, sake, light brown sugar, garlic, toasted sesame oil, mayo, and fried nori chips (aka toriten).  I did  use plain nori instead of noriten but that’s because 1) I was lazy and 2) my Japanese market was missing the pre-made noriten on the snack shelves.  It’s mostly for texture so I wasn’t too worried about it.  I’m a fan of gochujang, so I really didn’t want to skip this recipe.  Results?  Lovely!  The crunchiness/juiciness/sweetness of the fruit was a great contrast to the tuna/gochujang.  And the gochujang changed the flavor  enough to make feel new.  While I liked it with the nori, I also took the route of serving it over white rice.  I liked the rice version better but I think it’s because it made it feel more like a meal.  If you’re truly aiming for serving apps and drinks, the nori chip version is the way to go.

The second recipe I made was supposed to be the cold miso soup with smoked mackerel, but my Japanese market didn’t have any shiso or myoga on hand (these ingredients are technically toppings, but they are bold flavors and I worried I was changing the recipe too much for this review by skipping both).  Instead, I made Ikeda’s version of smacked cucumber.  I’ve made a version of it before but the version I tried wasn’t interesting enough to stay in my cooking repertoire.  This version has soy sauce, rice vinegar, toasted sesame oil, sugar, garlic paste, and toasted sesame seeds.  (Shichimi spice mix is an optional ingredient.  I left it out because I couldn’t remember where I had stored mine.)  The recipe isn’t drastically different from what I’ve made before but the additional of the garlic puree definitely made it better.  It also added just the tiniest bit of spiciness. The only swap I made was to use toasted black sesame seeds instead of white, because that’s what I had. It’s a simple and easy salad to prepare, and to wolf down. I made a half batch and finished it in one sitting. (Don’t let the photo fool you. There was a larger portion off camera.)

For people who like pictures with every recipe, this book isn’t it.  But there are photos enough for me, and I think they’re well done.  The styling is very cozy and warm looking.  I’d rather this than lots of photos that I hate (super contrasted/pumped up colors, I’m looking at you). I’m optimistic that the rest of this book will be as good as the recipes I tested.  That’s in part because I have Ikeda’s previous book, Atsuko’s Japanese Kitchen, and I liked that one a lot.  (I realized halfway through Otsumami that the author was the same person. lol! I’m bad with people’s names.)

The book is out now, if you’d like to pick up a copy from your favorite book seller. If you do, let me know if you’re enjoying it as much I am.

Disclaimer – I kindly received a copy of this book from Ryland Peters & Small for this review.  I’m not getting paid for this post. The views and opinions expressed are purely my own.  

Reference Links:

https://rylandpeters.com/products/otsumami-japanese-small-bites-appetizers?_pos=4&_sid=9795df4c3&_ss=r

https://rylandpeters.com/products/atsukos-japanese-kitchen?_pos=2&_sid=9795df4c3&_ss=r

https://rylandpeters.com/blogs/food-drink/balsamic-chicken-wings-japanese-recipe?_pos=6&_sid=9795df4c3&_ss=r

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Cooking with Japanese Pickles, cookbook review

Pickles as a category wasn’t really something I grew up with, probably because my parents didn’t care much for acidic/sour foods.  As for fermented pickles, Korean kimchi is really the only one I eat consistently.  (I don’t even eat sauerkraut much, or dill pickles.  On the rare occasion, I’ll eat some bread and butter pickles, or relish.)  Meanwhile, Japanese pickles aren’t something I’m familiar with at all.  So for my next book to review, I got a copy of “Cooking with Japanese Pickles” by Takako Yokoyama.  There are 97 recipes in this book, 76 are pickle recipes and the rest are recipes using the pickles made.

The book is divided into:

  • Quick pickles
  • Classic Pickles
  • Pickling with the season
  • Traditional pickling

Some of the recipes that interest me the most are:

  • Napa cabbage in ginger soy sauce
  • Eggplant in sweet mustard
  • Mizuna greens in mustard soy sauce
  • Rice bran pickled daikon radish
  • Frozen ume in sugar
  • Garlic preserved in soy sauce
  • Pan-fried garlic pork
  • Ginger in sake lees
  • Enoki mushrooms in sake lees
  • Mixed vegetable pickles

A lot of the recipes required more time than I had available, and I was trying my best to use what I had on hand.  So, the first two recipes I made were miso pickled shiitake mushrooms, and potatoes pickled in sweet vinegar.

The mushrooms were really easy.  You simple rehydrate some dried shiitake, then boil for a few minutes, drain, and spread some miso into the caps.  Let it sit at room temperature overnight, and then eat.

The potatoes were more effort.  You cut them into matchsticks, rinse and drain a couple of times, and then pan fry.  While still hot, pour a sweet vinegar mixture over it.  Weigh this down for 30 minutes and then refrigerate until ready to serve.

The mushrooms tasted pretty much as you imagine they would.  I tended to just snack one while I was making my lunch or dinner.  But I liked the potatoes more than I expected.  The potatoes are a touch sweet, a touch acidic, and mild overall.  I suspect that this is the perfect pickle for people who think they don’t like pickles. I mostly ate the potato pickles in salads.  

And then I was just eating the shiitake and the potatoes together in one salad.  If you were to add dressing to this salad, I think it’d end up too salty.  I kept it pretty simple with lettuce greens and tofu.

For fun, I took a recipe for mizuna greens in mustard soy sauce, and altered it around what I had on hand.  It’s supposed to be mizuna greens, salt, karashi mustard powder, and usukuchi soy sauce.  I used green cabbage, salt, standard yellow mustard powder, and Bragg’s liquid aminos.  The end result was good but I found it more difficult to pair the flavor with.  I tried it in a couple of different salads, and didn’t love it.  However, when I served it over plain white jasmine rice, I thought it was great.

Alas, no photos of my off-script batch of pickles because I kept forgetting to take one. Honestly though, it doesn’t look that much different from something like sauerkraut.

Overall, the cookbook is easy to follow. It’s great resource if you’re interested in expanding your repertoire of Japanese side dishes. The only downside is that acquiring some of the ingredients may be a challenge. I’m very fortunate in that there’s a Japanese market in my town, and I suspect that they carry everything I need. Otherwise, I don’t think I have a local resource for getting items like rice bran that isn’t just ordering online. If you’re feeling adventurous, I hope you pick up a copy!

Disclaimer – I kindly received a copy of this book from Tuttle Publishing for this review.  I’m not getting paid for this post. The views and opinions expressed are purely my own.  

Reference Links:

https://www.tuttlepublishing.com/japan/cooking-with-japanese-pickles

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Ovenly (2nd ed), cookbook review

I haven’t had the pleasure yet of eating at NYC’s Ovenly bakeries.  My introduction to Ovenly was watching Agatha Kulaga and Erin Patinkin, the founders, on Food52 making their accidentally vegan chocolate chip cookies (which I have made several times, and I like quite a bit).  I knew they had a cookbook but I never got around to reading a copy of it.

Well, that changes now!  Harper Collins was kind enough to send me a review copy of the 2nd edition, which is releasing today.  The second edition is updated and includes a few new recipes.  

The chapters are:

  • Essential tools and ingredients
  • Scones and biscuits
  • Quick breads and coffee cakes
  • Muffins
  • Cookies and shortbreads
  • Pies and tarts
  • Brownies and bars
  • Cakes and cupcakes
  • Baking for the holidays
  • Fillings, frostings, and sauces
  • Bar snacks
  • Bakeshop favorites

I believe that the new recipes are in the last chapter, so that’s

  • Lemon raspberry loaf
  • Apple oat muffins
  • Chewy ginger molasses cookies
  • Minty crinkle cookies
  • Hot chocolate cookies
  • Nutty toffee bars
  • Lemon lavender cake
  • Erin McDowell’s black bottom pecan pie

Since this book already exists in the wild, I thought I’d look up some of the poorer reviews online to see if they had any validity.  Here’s what I found:

“This wasn’t the cookbook that I had seen before. It was more of a “how to” lifestyle book for family life. With some recipes thrown in.”

Nope, this is definitely not a lifestyle book.  Unless your lifestyle heavily involves butter and sugar.  This is a cookbook through and through.

“I can’t imagine why a modern baking cookbook wouldn’t make weight rather than volume the standard measurements…I want a fair chance at success. This means weights. So I won’t buy a baking cookbook that doesn’t include weights for measurements and neither should you. I know I sound cranky, but there it is.”

Yes, you do sound cranky.  I like metric measurements too, but most of my cookbooks are from American writers and therefore do not have metric measurements.  It’s really not that big of a deal.  Maybe it’s because of the way I bake?  I tend to use grams for flour and sugar, but I’ll use volume measurements for nearly everything else.  (Hybrid method is where it’s at.)  Regardless, I’m not about to score a cookbook with one out of five stars because they went with American measurements.  What I will say is that the conversion chart at the beginning of the book is completely unhelpful if you want to convert the recipes.  Some ingredients in the book are listed in ounces so you can use the conversion chart to grams.  But the main ingredients in the book are in cups, and there’s no chart to tell you how to convert it.  

“Imagine my surprise when I gave Ovenly’s biscuit recipe a serious look. The recipe starts with 5 (FIVE!) cups of flour plus 21 tablespoons of butter (that is about 3/4 of a pound of butter!) to make a mere 8 biscuits! Just EIGHT!”

This review makes me laugh a little. Let me be honest up front and admit that I’m not great at making layered biscuits.  Having said that, I’m dying to try Fox In the Snow’s (aka Lauren Culley’s) recipe for biscuits.  I saw a video for it during quarantine, and it’s a behemoth.  And guess what?  It’s got 5 ½ cups of flour and 3 sticks of butter for 7-8 biscuits.  Professional baking is not like home baking.  Skimming through it, there is nothing wrong with the Ovenly biscuit recipe except that your body may hate you for consuming it.

I was originally planning to bake a recipe that someone said had failed, but I could not find a review that mentioned a specific recipe that didn’t work out.  So, for my test recipe, I’ve decided to make the Apple Oat Muffins because it’s from the Bakeshop Favorites chapter.  (But also, I really love muffins.)

The batter comes together pretty easily.  The recipe is vegan, and made with vegetable oil, almond milk, sugar, applesauce, apple cider vinegar, vanilla extract, flour, rolled oats, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, lemon zest (optional), chunks of apples, and ideally puffed quinoa and turbinado sugar for the top.  I had to skip the topping because I didn’t have puffed quinoa.  There is a note that you can sub the puffed quinoa with more oats, but I didn’t have turbinado sugar either so I didn’t really see the point.  In the long run, it didn’t matter because I’m an idiot.

I made these first thing Saturday morning… and I initially forgot the apple chunks.  I know, I know!  How does one forget the apple in an apple muffin?!  I am not perfect.  Then, I made the executive decision to pull the muffins out of the oven, and push some apples in.  (Good thing I skipped that topping, yeah?)  A questionable life choice to be sure, but darn it!  I wanted apples in my muffin!  Despite my clumsiness, these muffins are really good.  10 out of 10, will make again.

Other recipes that I look forward to baking?

  • Strawberry basil loaf
  • Feta, basil, scallion muffins
  • Harvest muffins
  • Cinnamon and ancho chile brownies
  • Salty super dark chocolate brownies
  • Boozy fig blondies
  • Flourless chocolate cake
  • Hot chocolate cookies

If you like baking, I highly recommend this book.  If there was a recipe in the original edition that did not work out for you, let me know.  I can try to test it out from the new edition.  (Hopefully, not first thing in the morning so that I’m less likely to forget major ingredients.  Sigh.  I’m not going to let myself live this down for at least another month.)

Disclaimer – I kindly received a copy of this book from Harper Collins for this review.  I’m not getting paid for this post. The views and opinions expressed are purely my own.  

With COVID-19 still in effect, I’m trying to stay home as much as possible.  So pardon me if I choose to skip an ingredient or substitute it.

Reference Links:

https://www.foxinthesnow.com/more-fox-in-the-snow/

https://www.oven.ly/

https://www.instagram.com/ovenly/

https://www.harpercollins.com/

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Happy New Year!

I meant to post this earlier but I was having technical issues. Anyway…

I thought it’d be fun to do a year in review, even though 2020 was basically a hot pile of garbage. But cooking-wise, it wasn’t so bad.

I discovered that I love the Basque style cheesecake. Even better, so does my family and it’s pretty easy to make gluten free.

It was also the year I revisited sourdough bread making. My previous attempts were too sour, lackluster, and generally ugly. I started by going to a cooking class with Eric Henning, and I learned a lot. But I was still making terrible looking loaves.

I discovered Bake with Jack and Foodgeek on Youtube shortly after my cooking class, and now my bakes are much cuter.

Self-quarantine started two months after that. My days were soon filled with trying to clean out my freezer, and experimenting with recipes that I normally might have been too lazy to make.

I was feeling pretty good about my cooking skills.

And then I ended up with tenosynovitis in my dominant hand. Cooking really suffered after that. I tried my best to cook with short cuts or minimal ingredients. On occasion, I’d try something more interesting.

I discovered a deep appreciation for the creative minds of Chef Stephanie Izard and Chef Lucas Sin.

And I closed the year off with lots of delicious BBQ from a local chain.

Here’s hoping that my hand/wrist continues to heal in 2021, and there will be a lot of successful cooking. I also dearly hope that I can sit down to a delicious meal, in person, with my favorite people. May 2021 go well for you too.

Reference Links:

Foodgeek – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7eLtGAzNECUqurqMdiNYJg

Bake With Jack – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTVR5DSxWPpAVI8TzaaXRqQ

https://www.instagram.com/lucas.sin/

https://www.goldbelly.com/girl-and-the-goat?ref=search

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Nom Wah cookbook review

I love dim sum.  In the “before times” (as my friends refer to life before COVID-19), I didn’t actually go that often, maybe a handful of times during the year.  And since COVID, I haven’t been at all, not even for take out.  “The Nom Wah Cookbook: recipes and stories from 100 years at New York City’s iconic dim sum restaurant,” by Wilson Tang with Joshua David Stein, helps to fill the dumpling shaped void in my life.

I have not been to Nom Wah (but I’ve walked past it during my visit to NYC last year) so I can’t speak to the brick and mortar location.  But I am having fun reading its cookbook.  It’s a blend of traditional recipes, untraditional recipes, and an ode to the faces of NYC’s Chinatown.  So far, this book is proving to be one of the very few cookbooks that I am interested enough to read through from start to finish.  I’m not done yet, but I’m enjoying the stories that are included so far.  (There’s even a story from Paul Eng/Fong On tofu store.  You might recognize him from a Buzzfeed Tasty video published at the beginning of this year.)

The main chapters are:

  • Bao
  • Dumplings
  • Rolls
  • Cakes
  • Rice
  • Noodles
  • Balls
  • Chef’s Specials
  • Feast
  • Vegetables
  • Desserts

Things I want to make:

  • Mantao (with EBTB seasoning)
  • House Special Roast Pork Buns
  • Pork Master Filling
  • Shrimp Master Filling
  • Sweet Potato Kale Wontons
  • OG Egg Rolls
  • Turnip Cakes
  • Taro Hash Cakes
  • Sticky Rice with Chinese Sausage
  • Garlic Eggplant Noodles
  • Stuffed Eggplant
  • Cantonese-styled Taro and Pork Belly Casserole
  • Steamed Red Bean Buns

In terms of recipe testing, I was really limited with what I could make.  The one day I made it to Hmart, it was really busy.  There were a lot of customers which made it hard for me to keep the COVID 6 feet distance, some things were hard to find, some things were sold out.  And there were lots of boxes around as employees tried to restock.  Honestly, I found it very stressful.

But that’s ok!  Because the recipe I ended up making was still one that I wanted to make.  I made a half batch of the shiitake mushrooms and lettuce recipe.  It was very simple to put together, just needed patience.  You rehydrate your mushrooms, and make a braising liquid from garlic, ginger, chicken broth, oyster sauce, sugar, black pepper, and Shaoxing wine.  It braises for an hour.  You lightly boil some iceberg lettuce, and then you assemble. 

Flavor-wise, I loved everything about this dish.  (Although, I was admittedly a bit heavy handed on the black pepper.  Ooops.)  It definitely reminded me of the banquets my mom would force me to attend as a child. The only thing I can’t figure out… is why my dish looked nothing like the photo.  lol!  I know the photo has been stylized and enhanced, but my results were very dark and not nearly as glazed.  I re-read the instructions three times as it was cooking to see if I had missed something, or gotten something wrong.  I really couldn’t figure it out.  But like I said, it was quite tasty so I don’t think I did anything wrong.  It might be something as simple as the quality of ingredients were different.

If you’re in quarantine and missing dim sum as much as I am, go pick up this book!  I just hope you have better luck getting ingredients than I did.  There’s so much more I want to make.  I might break down and try some substitutions and ingredient omissions.  For now though, I guess I’ll just finish reading all the interviews and imagine that I’m hanging out in NYC.

Disclaimer – I kindly received a preview from Ecco (an imprint of Harpers Collins) for this review.  I’m not getting paid for this post. The views and opinions expressed are purely my own.  

With COVID-19 stats increasing again in Massachusetts, my shopping options were limited.  I apologize that I could not recipe-test better.  

Reference Links:

https://nomwah.com/

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-nom-wah-cookbook-wilson-tangjoshua-david-stein?variant=32208084205602

https://youtu.be/zPwX5Fj08Oc
(the Paul Eng Tasty video)

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Unofficial Slow Cooker Summer Challenge

For the last couple of weeks in the Boston area, it’s been a little hot and a little humid.  It hasn’t been bad enough to be considered a heat wave.  When I take my late evening walks, it’s actually quite comfortable.

But when it’s that time of day to cook a meal, the stove is the last thing I want to use.  This makes me a little sad as making soups and baking things in the oven tends to be my default cooking style.

(Grilling is not something I’ve done on my own.  However, I’m determined to change that this year.  I’ve dug out an old charcoal grill left by a previous housemate that I will finally clean out and use.)

So, I’ve been playing with my slow cooker some more and I’m going to try using it as my main cooking method this summer.  I might as well.  I’ll be working from home for the rest of the summer (and likely for the rest of the year).

Here’s what I’ve done so far:

I’ve done a sweet Italian sausage/tomato sauce/bell pepper recipe.  Most of this batch went to some friends, but I kept what I couldn’t fit in the container.  It was pretty good, and something I’d like to re-visit with some changes.  While I like Italian sausages, I am health conscious, and try not to eat a lot of sausages in general.  (Having said that, I do several pre-cooked sausages in my freezer right now because I can’t afford to be picky shopping during a pandemic.)  I think the next version will be to make my own meatballs and cook in the same sauce.

Quick breads actually do pretty well in a slow cooker.  The cornbread in the photo was a slow cooker recipe.  And this weekend, I made my favorite sourdough discard banana bread in the machine – it was delicious.

If you’d like to make my sourdough discard banana bread, take a 6 quart slow cooker and line it with parchment.  Drop the whole batter in.  Cook on high for 2 hours, with a tea towel lining the lid.  The towel makes a huge difference for making baked goods in a slow cooker.  It keeps any condensation from falling onto your product.

I’ve actually been slowly working on a rotisserie-style chicken in a slow cooker for the past year.  I think I’m finally getting the hang out it.

I have a lot chicken bones in the freezer waiting to be turned into stock.  I think I’ll try my sourdough recipe in the slow cooker (yes, the texture will be altered COMPLETELY but if it still yields a tasty bread, I won’t complain).  I’ll have to figure out a good vegetable side dish to make because I don’t always want a salad even though it’s the summer.  I will NOT be braising any cabbage though.  It’s fine in the colder weather but the one time I made braised cabbage in the summer, several flies found their way into my apartment.  I think that’s the one downside of slow cooking in the summer.  Flies will find their way to you depending on what you’re cooking.  The last two times I made chicken, a fly found its way into the house (although, one fly is still better than the several from the cabbage round).

I’ll also take this opportunity to revisit cookbooks I have (Martha Stewart’s Slow Cooker and The Easy Asian Cookbook for Slow Cookers), but I’ll probably draw most of my inspiration from whatever I have available.

I guess we’ll see how it goes.

In case you missed it, my favorite banana bread recipe can be found here:

https://awesomesauceeats.wordpress.com/2020/05/13/how-to-stop-wasting-flour/

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A Place At The Table, a cookbook review

“A Place At The Table”, a new cookbook edited by Rick Kinsel and Gabrielle Langholtz, is a compilation of recipes from 40 beloved chefs across the US who are all immigrants.  The contributing chefs range from Dominique Crenn (France) to Marcus Samuelsson (Ethiopia/Sweden) to Michael Solomonov (Israel). The subtitle is “New American recipes from the nation’s top foreign-born chefs,” but I feel like it’s not descriptive enough.  Some of the recipes are fusion types, and some are recipes taken from cultural heritage. And then, there is a smattering of recipes that are just high end restaurant cooking.

There are no chapters.  The book is simply divided up by chefs.

The photos are beautiful, and it looks like every recipe has a photo.  However, there is a caveat… Not all photos exactly match the written recipe.  The most obvious culprit of this was the pegao norteño (a Chifa lamb dumpling dish by Carlos Delgado).  The photo is of the restaurant version, made obvious by the large flecks of gold leaf garnishing the dish.  

Overall, the recipes themselves sound enticing.  I think my only real critique is that not all the recipes are home friendly for me.  I know some homecooks like the occasional large project, but I don’t like fussy recipes with an ingredient list the size of the entire page (*cough*geoduck tartelette*cough*dominique crenn*cough*).  Nor do I want to look for ingredients that are hard to come by.  I live in a city, and I go to several supermarkets and ethnic markets pretty easily but if I have to go online to shop for an ingredient, I lose interest very quickly.  For example, I cannot make the smoked honey yogurt with whey snow and white grape syrup recipe because I have never seen smoked honey for sale in my area.

Luckily, there are still other recipes that appeal to me.  The ones I am most curious about are:

  • Shrimp and okra pancakes and charred scallion dipping sauce
  • Soy- and sugarcane-glazed grilled pork chops and tomato-peach salad
  • Winter melon soup
  • Banana bibingka (I almost made this… but didn’t only because I’ve had too many sweets lately)
  • Coffee-braised brisket
  • Banana layer cake with vanilla cream and candied walnuts
  • Hand-torn noodles with cumin lamb
  • Pancake stack cake

 

In the end, I opted to make Nite Yun’s coconut milk marinated pork.  It’s pretty straightforward – you marinate thin slices of pork loin in coconut milk, brown sugar, garlic, fish sauce, and black pepper.  However, it does need some pre-planning because the instructions tell you to marinate for 4-24 hours. Then, you cook up in a grill pan for a couple of minutes per side.

My attempt looked nothing like the photo.  I’m pretty sure the photo version cooked the pork on a real grill which I don’t have.  To be fair, I used a regular pan and not a grill pan, but I had trouble getting the pork to really brown because there was just too much moisture on the surface.  No pan was really going to fix that.  (Note, I did try to remove as much of the marinade as possible.)

The first photos I took looked a bit terrible (so I’m not posting them) but I originally served the pork with some of the leftover mushroom rice I made from my last post. Honestly?  I was a little underwhelmed. I sliced the pork as thinly as I could by hand, because the instructions indicated thinly sliced pork no further specifics. My recommendation now is to not go less than a quarter of an inch.  I might even suggest half an inch slices, just to reduce the likelihood of overcooking.  

Sizes of slices aside, I couldn’t taste the marinade in the meat that well even though I had the pork marinating in the fridge for about 16 hours.  4-24 hours seems completely unnecessary to me. But the marinade itself is fantastic. I didn’t have the heart to throw it out, so I boiled it for a few minutes to make it safe for consumption and kept it as a sauce.

The photo below that I will share is the second serving of the recipe, dressed with the leftover cooked marinade and served with plain cabbage.  (You can scroll the photo over to see the book photo.)  I loved this version! I’m thinking that next time I’ll cook the pork (probably in the oven to pinkness), then separately take the other ingredients and serve as a sauce.  

So, this book… hard to review because it’s a compilation.  I can’t really judge the book on one recipe but I’m not a “cook the book” type of person either.  I’m recommending this book to foodies who want to sample recipes from critically acclaimed chefs, cooks looking for creative inspiration, and people who want to learn more about the chefs featured (there’s a nice little bio page for each chef).  If you’re someone who identifies as a functional cook, check the book out from the library before deciding you want your own copy.  

Will I cook from this book again?  Definitely.  Will it be in the immediate future?  Probably not.  Take that as you will.

Disclaimer – I kindly received this book from Prestel for this review.  I’m not getting paid for this post. The views and opinions expressed are purely my own.  The book is released September 24, 2019. 

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The Gaijin Cookbook, a review

“The Gaijin Cookbook” is a very different creature from its predecessor “Ivan Ramen,” both books by Ivan Orkin and Chris Ying.  When “Ivan Ramen” came out, it was self evident that the recipes were from the noodle restaurant of the same name, and artisan ramen is a complex process.  The Shio Ramen chapter itself is divided into making the eight components of the dish. “The Gaijin Cookbook” is practically the antagonist to the first book.  It’s about cooking Japanese food at home for a weeknight or for a party.

The layout of the book is a bit odd.  I’ve added quotes from the book about what each chapter is about.  And each chapter had some recipes that were grouped together, and sometimes recipes that only related to the chapter and not to each other.  So I’ve done my best to reflect that.

  1. The Recipes by Category
  2. Eat More Japanese – “… foundational recipes and flavors that taught [Ivan] to understand Japanese food”
    1. The Vanishing Japanese Diner
    2. Natto [Fermented Soybeans]
    3. Feeding Our Kids
  3. Open to Anything – “… fusion… recipes that have mingled… leading to new and delicious collaborations”
    1. (various recipes)
    2. Sandwiches
  4. Empathy – “nurturing through food”
    1. (various recipes, mostly rice and stews)
    2. Nabe
  5. Otaku [Geeking Out] – “more intensive recipes”
    1. (oden, dan dan noodles, gyoza)
    2. Frying
  6. Good Times – “dishes that are conducive to sharing while you sip on an adult beverage”
    1. (various recipes)
  7. New Year’s – “symbolic snacks that will ensure prosperity in the coming year”
    1. (various recipes)
    2. Jubako
  8. Pantry

 

If this were a novel, I’d be ok with this layout.  But as a cookbook, I find it a bit confusing if I’m looking for a recipe.  It almost feels random instead of intentional. If there’s a specific recipe you’re looking for, it’s the index you’ll need to depend on.

But the recipes themselves look good.  Here are some of the recipes I want to try:

  • Seasoned Ground Chicken (Tori Soboro) – I want to compare this version to the soboro I already make today
  • Mentaiko Spaghetti
  • Miso Mushroom Chili
  • Pork and Tofu Meatballs with Buttermilk Sauce
  • Smoked Fish Donburi
  • Okinawa-Style Soba with Pork Belly and Tatsuobushi
  • Salmon and Miso Hot Pot
  •  Sweet Dashi-Poached Prawns
  • Candied Sardines
  • Sesame Furikake
  • Katsuobushi Furikake

 

For my inaugural recipes, I made shimeji mushroom rice from the Empathy chapter, and the chicken meatballs (tsukune) from the Good Times chapter.  Both were straightforward to make, and ingredients were easy to come by where I live.

For me, the meatballs were decent but not necessarily a recipe I will remake as written.  It’s just a very ginger forward flavor even with the accompanying sauce. But I still like the general instructions, so I’m thinking about messing around with it, maybe using Chinese black bean paste as the flavoring agent.  It’s just a personal preference, not a critique on the recipe.

That’s when I decided to make the mushroom rice.  I wanted to see how a second recipe would work out, and I loved the results.  It’s a light flavor, and the cooking instructions are spot on. I used haiga rice (haiga is a semi-polished short grain rice where the bran is removed but not the germ, and cooks like white rice), and skipped the bonito flakes.  The recipe instructs you to soak the rice for at least 20 minutes, and up to 1 hour. I chose 30 minutes. For garnish, I just used scallions (no photo documentation, but I also used store-bought furikake as a garnish when I was eating leftovers).  Next time, I’ll use the katsuobushi and see how it changes the flavor. I can see myself making this regularly going forward as it stores in the fridge well and is great for meal prep.

Another thing that I enjoyed about this book was the photography.  The food photos are enticing. The portraits of Ivan scattered among the pages give insight to his personality.  And because I’m a romantic at heart, the photos of Ivan and Mari are endearing.

If you don’t have a cookbook on everyday Japanese cooking or don’t have one you like, give “The Gaijin Cookbook” a try.  I think it’s very home cooking friendly, and there’s a good diversity of recipes.  

Disclaimer – I kindly received this book from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for this review.  I’m not getting paid for this post. The views and opinions expressed are purely my own.  The book is released September 24, 2019.

Reference Links:

https://www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/The-Gaijin-Cookbook/9781328954350

https://www.ivanramen.com/

 

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Sometimes, it’s ok to call it quits

In a perfect world, I’d be experimenting with sourdough breads regularly.  I’d create boules of beauty, and share them with friends and family.

However, this isn’t a perfect world.  A handful of close friends are gluten free.  I rarely get to share the things I cook and bake because I’ve messed something up just enough that it doesn’t feel fit for sharing, or I’m just make enough food for myself for the week.  At the end of the day, I’m just feeding myself.

I do make bread on occasion.  I even had a rye sourdough starter going for over a year.  But those two statements?  Rarely done at the same time.  When I make bread, it’s usually with SAF instant.  When I was maintaining my sourdough starter, I was just finding ways to cook the discarded starter.  I was almost never making proper bread with my starter.  It even got to a point where I forgot I had a starter hanging out in my fridge.  I literally did not notice it in my fridge until about two months after its last feeding.

Even then (!!!), it took me a couple of weeks to finally toss it in the trash.  Some part of me hated feeling like I was giving up on a project.  But logically, it didn’t make sense to try again.  More so, because I have a place in a 10 minute walk away that does a wonderful sourdough.  I’ve started going there a bit more frequently because I absolutely love their sourdough pizzas, but you can pick up bread to take home.  I can spend 2-3 days making sourdough bread on my own, or I can spend $4 – $7 at my local restaurant.

It will do me more good than harm to recognize what I am willing and not willing to do.  If I didn’t live so close to awesome bread, I’d probably feel differently about this.  Or if I had a large family to feed, which I don’t.

But you know what they say: when one door closes, another opens.

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Martha Stewart’s Slow Cooker, a cookbook review

My most recent cookbook acquisition is Martha Stewart’s Slow Cooker, which I was pretty dang excited about.  I appreciate a good slow cooker recipe, but the only other slow cooker cookbook I have is America’s Test Kitchen’s Slow Cooker Revolution.  I have used the ATK book, but probably not as often as I should.  Amazingly, I feel like the recipes in each book are different enough that the books complement each other in my cookbook collection.

9780307954688

The good things about Martha Stewart’s Slow Cooker:

  • Good variety of recipes.  The book is divided into these sections: meat, poultry, seafood, meatless, side dishes, breakfast, sweets, and stocks/sauces.  There is a decent global feel to each of the sections.  For example, chicken section includes the following recipes: chicken tagine, Tex-Mex chicken and beans, chicken mole, Hainanese Chicken, and Ethiopian Chicken Stew.
  • Every recipe comes with a photograph.
  • Most of the recipes are not intimidating.

The (possibly) bad things about this book:

  • Some of the recipes require stove top cooking as part of the prep work.  In the boullabaisse recipe, you have to soften in a skillet the vegetables, aromatics, and then cook down diced tomatoes.  After all that, then you get to load up the slow cooker.
  • This might just be me being greedy, but I’d prefer if most of the sections had a few more recipes.  The meat section has a little over 30 recipes.  The poultry section has 18 recipes, 4 of them are duck recipes, and only 1 recipe is turkey related.  The breakfast section only has about 9 recipes.

Honestly though, I have high hopes for this book.  I made the chicken korma recipe this past weekend.  Overall, I was very pleased with the results.  It was a little unusual for a chicken korma recipe since it involves cashew butter and almond butter (it does mention that you can blend up nuts instead of getting the nut butters), but I think it does add to the texture of the korma sauce.

Disclaimer – I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.  I’m not getting paid for this post.  

Reference Link:

http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/215168/martha-stewarts-slow-cooker-by-from-the-kitchens-of-martha-stewart/