Year: 2015

Spam, Umeboshi, and Egg Musubi

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Spam musubi are rice balls (onigiri or omusubi) that are topped with Spam and wrapped with nori; they are different from sushi because musubi rice is plain or seasoned with salt, whereas sushi rice is seasoned with vinegar, sugar, and salt. They are a popular in Hawaii and are great as breakfast or a portable snack. They are easy to bring along for a hike. The simplest Spam musubi are made from rice, salt, spam, and nori, but many variations can be made. Musubi Cafe Iyasume, which was just around the corner from the hotel I stayed at in Honolulu, offers avocado egg bacon Spam, umeboshi cucumber Spam, teriyaki Spam, egg cucumber Spam, and shiso Spam. The umeboshi version is my favorite since it is salty from the Spam and sour from the umeboshi. The recipe below combines Spam, umeboshi, and egg; it makes 6 musubi using a “mini” 7 oz can of Spam. If you’d like to use a regular 12 oz can of Spam, then double the recipe but make 10 musubi. Tare is a Japanese term for a sweetened, thickened soy sauce; each …

Quick Pickled Cucumber With Umeboshi

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“Fortunately, canning is not a prerequisite for pickling. In fact, as long as you can commit to eating them within a week or two, there are countless pickles that you can make quickly and store in your fridge.” — Mark Bittman Quick pickles, also called refrigerator pickles, are unfermented pickles made by marinating vegetables or fruits in a vinegar or salt solution for a short period of time, usually several minutes to a few days. They don’t require canning if they won’t be stored for more than a few weeks, though they should be refrigerated. Usually recipes for quick pickles are simple and require minimal effort — often just cutting, mixing, and waiting. Slightly more complicated recipes may require blanching or may require the brine to be heated to dissolve sugar or salt, infuse flavorings, or lightly cook the vegetables. Examples of quick pickle recipes can be seen here (Mark Bittman), here (Food52), here (Smitten Kitchen), or here (The Awl). This quick pickle is recipe is one of the simplest types; it requires only cutting and mixing ingredients. These pickles …

The Long Way Home – New York to San Francisco by Train

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I recently traveled across the United States by train. It takes four days for a train to travel 3,000 miles — that’s the distance between the east and west coasts. When I began the trip this March, it was snowing in New York and some parts of the Hudson river still had ice. The trees were bare and the sky was grey. Our train followed the Hudson river northward, and then passed by small towns with lots of brick buildings. We had to wait at one of the stations in upstate New York for a connecting train to bring sleeper cars that would be attached to our train — the sleeper cars I would be staying in. We passed by one of the Great Lakes. Sometimes it snowed, but it didn’t stick to the ground. Our train pulled into Chicago late because of the delay, so we missed the connecting train and stayed the night in Chicago. No matter; you shouldn’t take the train cross country if you are in a hurry. Downtown Chicago is windy, just like everyone says, but it …

Okonomiyaki

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Okonomiyaki is a Japanese savory pancake. The word okonomiyaki means “what you like, cooked”. Accordingly there are many types and variations — most have cabbage and some sort of batter; often pork is included, though sometimes seafood is used. The recipe below is for a type invented in Osaka which is the most commonly found type throughout Japan. Lots of toppings are added, most commonly: a sweet-salty sauce (okonomiyaki sauce or tonkatsu sauce), mayonnaise, bonito flakes, and aonori (seaweed powder). You can draw designs with themayonnaise or marble the sauces with a toothpick . When the tissue-thin bonito flakes are put on top of the hot pancake, they appear to “dance” — they move about from the hot air rising. The version below uses thinly sliced pork belly (available at Japanese markets) — the notes at the end of the recipe explain how to substitute ground pork or minced shrimp. My favorites are the pork belly and the ground pork versions. I don’t recommend substituting bacon because its flavor is very strong; it overwhelms the pancake and tends to make the entire …

Shanghai

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I recently visited Shanghai for a week. I was surprised how new and modern it is. There are new buildings and skyscapers everywhere. There are also lots of commercial districts; every brand that I can think of seems to have a branch in Shanghai–the city is lush from China’s economic boom. There are many types of street foods (some of the variety can be seen LifeOnNanchangLu.com) but the most exciting street foods for me was the many types of dumplings that are available. Dumplings are conceptually simple–they’re meat wrapped in a starchy dough. But there are many variations and each has a different technique, taste, and often an intricate folding technique. I wanted to taste several different types on my trip in order to improve my dumpling making skills and to learn about new types. Shanghai is famous for inventing xiaolongbao (also called “xlb”, “juicy pork dumplings”, “soup dumplings”, or “Shanghai soup dumplings”). Another specialty of Shanghai are Shengjianbao (pan-fried buns). But there is also boiled dumplings (a style popular in the north of China), intricate styles such as four happiness dumplings, shumai (a …

Japanese Black Sesame Sauce (Goma-ae)

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There are very few sauces which are black-colored. Squid ink is one of the few well known ones. Japanese black sesame sauce (goma-ae) should be another; its shiny black color is mysterious and dramatic. Since the sauce is nutty and slightly sweet, it complements many types of blanched or cooked vegetables such as: fava beans, green peas, spinach (shown above), broccoli, broiled and peeled eggplant, edamame, and string beans. This sauce is made from just a few ingredients: raw (untoasted) black sesame seeds, soy sauce, sugar, and dashi. The first step is to toast and then grind the sesame seeds. The recipe starts with raw sesame seeds because once they are toasted, the oil can quickly become rancid. Raw sesame seeds stay fresh for much longer, so sesame seeds should be bought raw and toasted as needed. Japanese cooking almost always uses unhulled sesame seeds; thus tahini can’t be substituted for the sesame seed paste made by this recipe since it is made from hulled sesame seeds. The hulls give the sesame paste a coarser texture, a richer flavor, and a darker …

Potato Salad with Smoked Salmon

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I first tried the combination of smoked fish and potato salad at David Wilcox’s popup (which sadly ended early due to a small fire that broke out in the building’s flute). It is a natural pairing — the smokey and salty flavor of the fish accents the creamy potatoes. My potato salad pairs the land and the sea, with the sea represented by the fish and seaweed, in the form of aonori (powdered seaweed flakes), and the land represented by creamy potatoes, crunchy onions, chives, and shichimi togarashi (a Japanese blend of seven spices including red pepper). The fish should be the hot smoked type (wiki) which means it was smoked at a temperature hot enough to fully cook the fish and the fish can be eaten as-is with no further cooking. Unlike cold-smoked fish such as Nova-style, Scotch-style, or Nordic-style lox (wiki) which is cured with salt and smoked only long enough to add flavor but not to cook it (wiki), hot smoked fish has the texture of cooked fish because the heat of the smoking cooks the fish through. My source …