Shitake Mushrooms via Tsubaki
We ate at Tsubaki and had a wonderful comp of Sautéed Shitake Mushrooms. We asked for the recipe and they gave us the ingredients, but not the proportion. Cathy guessed at them and I thought the recipe was a keeper. Season to your taste.
Sautéed in soy butter mirin
Green onions sesame seeds
Splash of sesame oil
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We really liked Wine-Braised Chicken With Mushrooms and Leeks. It was a bit of work however to make. It was worth it! We purchased the Chicken from McCall's Meat and Fish. The Chicken was excellent. We had some left over Grilled Octopus and adapted a recipe for: Spicy Grilled Calamari Salad Recipe to make a delicious Calamari Salad. We added sautéed potatoes to make a wonderful dinner.
Wine-Braised Chicken With Mushrooms and Leeks
New York Times
Adding crème fraîche and fancy mushrooms to a pan full of wine-braised chicken makes it ultrarich and extra special. This recipe is perfect for a festive dinner when you’re looking for a chicken dish that’s a little more dressed up than your average weeknight meal, but it isn’t overly difficult. Make it a day or two in advance, and, like all braises, it gets even better with time.
Ingredients
1 (3 1/2-pound) chicken, cut into 8 pieces (or use 3 1/2 pounds bone-in chicken parts)
2 teaspoons kosher salt (Diamond Crystal), plus more as needed
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more as needed
4 garlic cloves
2 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, plus more as needed
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup thinly sliced mushrooms (preferably specialty mushrooms, such as king, hen-of-the-woods, chanterelles or black trumpet, or a combination)
2 large leeks (4 cups), halved and thinly sliced into half-moons (use white and light green parts)
2 to 3 rosemary sprigs
¾ cup dry white wine (or use a dry red or rosé)
¼ cup crème fraîche, plus more for serving if desired
2 tablespoons chopped chives
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest, plus more for serving
½ cup finely chopped fresh parsley, leaves and tender stems
Preparation
1. Pat chicken dry with paper towels. Season all over with 1 1/2 teaspoons salt and the black pepper. Finely grate, pass through a press or mince 2 garlic cloves. Set aside half the grated garlic for finishing the dish. Rub the rest all over the chicken pieces. Set aside the chicken while preparing the other ingredients.
2. In a Dutch oven over medium-high heat, combine 1 tablespoon oil and 1 tablespoon butter. When the butter melts, add chicken in batches and cook until browned on both sides, 4 to 6 minutes per side. If the pan dries out, add a little more oil as needed. Transfer browned chicken to a plate.
3. Add remaining tablespoon each oil and butter to the pan. Once the butter melts, add mushrooms and cook undisturbed until well browned on one side, 2 to 3 minutes. Stir and cook for 1 minute longer.
4. Thinly slice 2 garlic cloves. Reduce heat to medium, and stir in sliced garlic, leeks and a large pinch each of salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until leeks are tender and golden brown, 7 minutes. Add rosemary and wine to the pot and let simmer, scraping up the browned bits, until liquid reduces by half, about 1 minute.
5. Nestle chicken, skin side up, into the pan and pour in any accumulated juices from the plate. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook, covered, until chicken is cooked through, 25 to 35 minutes.
6. Transfer chicken to a serving platter and tent with foil to keep warm. Pluck the rosemary sprigs from the pot. If the sauce looks thin, turn the heat to medium-high and let simmer until it thickens slightly, 2 to 5 minutes. Stir in the remaining grated garlic, the crème fraîche, chives and lemon zest. Taste sauce and add more salt if needed. Spoon sauce over the chicken and top with parsley, more lemon zest and a dollop of crème fraîche, if you like, and serve.
Spicy Grilled Calamari Salad Recipe
Eat This Not That
Squid is one of the most abundant forms of seafood in the global market, yet few Americans have ever enjoyed it in any other way than breaded and deep-fried with a marinara chaser. With that type of treatment, it could be a Blooming Onion and you wouldn't know the difference, would you?
This salad has all the trappings of the much-adored appetizer—crunch from the peanuts, tomatoes, a bit of spice—but so much more. We don't want to promise that you'll never go back to the fried stuff after this, but it's a distinct possibility. Instead of a heaping mess of fried dough, you'll be pleasantly surprised by the amount of flavor you can actually taste with our calamari version.
Ingredients
1 lb squid, cleaned, tentacles reserved for another use
1⁄2 Tbsp peanut or canola oil
Salt and black pepper to taste
Juice of 1 lime
1 Tbsp fish sauce
1 Tbsp sugar
1⁄2 Tbsp chili garlic sauce (preferably sambal oelek)
4 cups watercress (Watercress isn't always easy to find. Baby arugula, or even a few handfuls of basil leaves, can easily take its place here.)
1 small cucumber, peeled, seeded, and cut into matchsticks
1 medium tomato, chopped
1⁄2 red onion, very thinly sliced
1⁄4 cup roasted peanuts
Steps
1. Preheat a grill.
2. Toss the squid bodies with the oil, and generously season with salt and lots of black pepper.
3. When the grill is very hot, add the squid and grill for about 5 minutes, until lightly charred all over.
4. Combine the lime juice, fish sauce, sugar, and chili sauce in a mixing bowl and whisk to blend.
5. Slice the grilled squid into 1⁄2" rings.
6. In a salad bowl, toss the squid, watercress, cucumber, tomato, onion, and peanuts with the dressing.
7. Divide the salad among 4 plates.
File this under won't make again. On paper Bacon and Onion Pasta had everything we like: Bacon, Onion, Pasta. For us it was too spicy. We even used the special Romano Cheese from Italy that our friend Guillermo brought us. Didn't help. Oh well, try it you want, you might like it better than we did. The Asparagus with Brown Butter and Fried Egg was excellent.
Bacon and Onion Pasta
New York Times
Building off of the simple but powerfully flavorful Italian dish pasta aglio, olio e peperoncino, this wondrous pantry recipe gets much of its flavor from bacon fat and caramelized onions. The one-two-three punch of spicy red-pepper flakes, aromatic garlic slivers and savory herbes de Provence bloomed in fat provides the umami-rich base for this easy workday meal. Red vermouth creates a rich, jammy pasta sauce edged with sweetness. Don’t sleep on angel hair pasta: It’s got the right airy bounciness that’s excellent at soaking up seasonings. Threaded with parsley and Parmesan, these generously oiled noodles are a dream to eat.
Ingredients
8 ounces bacon
2 medium red onions
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt and black pepper
8 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon red-pepper flakes
1 teaspoon herbes de Provence
1 cup sweet red vermouth (vermouth rouge)
1 pound angel hair or capellini
1 cup finely chopped fresh parsley
½ cup finely grated Parmesan or Pecorino Romano
Preparation
1. Take the bacon out of its packaging with the slices still stuck together and place on a cutting board. Cut the bacon, still stacked, crosswise into ½-inch slices to create little bacon pieces, also known as lardons. Add to a large rimmed sheet pan. Halve and thinly slice the onions. Add to the sheet pan as well. Drizzle the olive oil over the bacon and onions, season with salt and pepper, and toss until evenly coated.
2. Place the sheet pan in a cold oven and then heat the oven to 450 degrees. Roast until the bacon has rendered much of its fat but is still pink and the onions are slightly charred in spots but not too dark, 20 to 25 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of water to a boil. Smash the garlic cloves with the side of your knife and thinly slice them. When the bacon and onions have had their 20 to 25 minutes, remove the sheet pan from the oven and stir in the garlic, red-pepper flakes, herbes de Provence and vermouth. Place the pan back in the oven and continue cooking until the vermouth is almost evaporated, and the bacon and onions look jammy and caramelized but not burnt, 5 to 10 minutes.
4. Cook the pasta according to package instructions. (Don’t overcook it, as angel hair can go from bouncy to soggy in seconds). Reserve 1 cup of the cooking liquid. Drain the pasta and return it to the pot.
5. Carefully transfer everything from the pan to the pot with the cooked pasta. Add the parsley and Parmesan to the pasta, and toss until evenly combined, adding some of the reserved cooking liquid if the sauce needs thinning out. Taste, adding more salt and pepper as needed, and serve immediately.
Cooking at Home
David Chang
Make my take on galbi jjim
Serves 4 to 6
My mom makes galbi jjim-which, to me, tastes like a better version of teriyaki-every Thanksgiving. Sweet, salty, saucy, and comforting stewed 6 short ribs, it is our special-occasion food. She has never and will never share the recipe with me, so I came up with my own version based on just eating hers a lot. I'll be up-front: This is probably the furthest thing from traditional. For example, I don't pre-boil my short ribs, which a lot of recipes call for. I don't think there's anything wrong with pre-boiling, but it's just faster to skip the step, and you still end up with a delicious end result.
You'll probably need to add liquid periodically to prevent your galbi from burning but be judicious-don't make the mistake of adding too much liquid too late, or you'll dilute the flavor. My mom adds almost no liquid, puts a giant lid on the short ribs, and doesn't look at them until 3 hours later. To this day, I have no idea how she does this without burning them. There are lots of newer versions of galbi jim that add different kinds of chiles, rice cakes, and even cheese. But at home, I want the version like my mom's.
Soak 4 pounds of bone-in short ribs in water overnight in the fridge to leach out the blood (soak for a few hours, until the water turns red, if you're short on time). Meanwhile, in a food processor, blitz a few glugs each of soy sauce and honey, a piece of fresh ginger, a few cloves of garlic, a drizzle of toasted sesame oil,1 Asian pear, cored and roughly chopped (or apples, or pear or apple juice-you want the malic acid to add that sweet-tart flavor), a handful of toasted sesame seeds. Taste and adjust the seasoning if need be. This is going to be your sauce.
I made this sauce a few times, never measuring, with different ratios and it was okay each time! Delicious in a different way! In a large pot, combine the sauce, cracked black pepper, and enough water to cover the meat once you stock add it in-taste and make sure this is the salt level you want. If not, add salt. Add the short ribs, cover, bring to a boil over high heat, and then let the meat keep boiling at medium to medium-high heat for about 2 hours, adding water to maintain the level you had before.
After that time, the ribs should be well cooked, but with the meat still clinging to the bone. Add 2 large carrots, chopped, 2 white onions, chopped, and a large handful of baby potatoes (or 1 large potato), chopped into bite-size pieces. Add a little more water, reduce the heat to a simmer, and cook for 30 to 40 minutes, until
the veggies are cooked through and the short ribs are tender but not vet falling off the bone. You should be able to press your thumb against the meat and have it leave an imprint while lightly springing back.
Garnish with chopped scallions, a drizzle of toasted sesame oil,
and toasted sesame seeds. Serve over rice.
On a bit of a culinary loosing streak. Black Pepper Beef and Cabbage Stir-Fry was ok, not great. We even got special Cambodian Pepper for it. Oh well, it was fun to try.
Black Pepper Beef and Cabbage Stir-Fry
New York Times
Coarsely crushed black peppercorns star in this quick weeknight dish, which is built primarily from pantry staples. Don’t be shy about adding the entire tablespoon of pepper, as it balances out the richness of the beef and adds a lightly spicy bite to the dish. A quick rub of garlic, brown sugar, salt, pepper and cornstarch seasons the beef; the cornstarch helps tenderize the beef and later imparts a silky texture to the sauce. Feel free to marinate the beef up to 8 hours ahead and cook when you're ready. If leftovers remain, tuck them into a crunchy baguette or roll them into a wrap.
Ingredients
1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns, coarsely crushed with the bottom of a cup or pan
3 garlic cloves, grated
2 teaspoons light brown sugar
1 teaspoon cornstarch
Kosher salt
¾ pound sirloin steak, thinly sliced crosswise
3 tablespoons sunflower oil or other neutral oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce
½ head small green cabbage (about 8 ounces), thinly sliced
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds, crushed with your fingertips
2 scallions, thinly sliced
Cooked rice, for serving
PREPARATION
1. Add peppercorns, garlic, brown sugar, cornstarch and 1 teaspoon salt to a medium bowl and stir to combine. Add sliced steak and toss to coat.
2. Heat the oil in a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high. Add steak and cook, stirring frequently, until some of the edges are lightly browned, 3 to 4 minutes. Add soy sauce and toss beef to coat, about 1 minute. Using a slotted spoon, transfer beef to a bowl or plate.
3. Add cabbage to skillet, spread in an even layer and let cook, undisturbed, for 1 minute so that some pieces caramelize in the pan. Toss and cook cabbage, stirring occasionally, until crisp-tender, 4 to 6 minutes. Stir in vinegar and season with salt.
4. Add steak and any juices back to the skillet, and stir until well combined with the cabbage and warmed through, about 1 minute. Top with toasted sesame seeds and scallions; serve with rice.
