Day 50 - Pages 172-173 - Pork Belly Ssam & Mustard Seed Sauce Page 84 - Chicken and Egg (w/o egg & w/ ramen) + Cereal Milk, again

*FINAL POST*

This past week has been a mad dash to the finish line and I'm happy to report that for today's lunch with Andrea and Janet I made the two recipes that will complete my project to cook the Momofuku cookbook.

I roasted a 2-pound piece of pork belly for the ssäm. By now I've done this a few times but today I tried cooking it on the barbeque. Unfortunately, the temperature in the Weber was either too hot or too low and the meat was either burning or not cooking. A Momofuku pork belly should cook at a temperature that melts the fat, browns the meat, and does it relatively quickly so the meat stays juicy and tender.Today's roast was not my best. omg! I'm critiqueing a pork belly like I know what I'm doing!?

Well, I went ahead and let it chill in the fridge, then sliced and grilled it.

 The Mustard Sauce used Pickled Mustard Seeds, a preparation Chang "copped" from cooking at Craft and "a staple of Tom Colicchio's cooking." I boiled the seeds in rice vinegar and sugar until they plumped up and softened.

I mixed the pickled seeds, cucumber pickles, Kewpie Mayo, Dijon and hot Chinese mustards together. The sauce was just a little spicy (i.e. next time I'll use a hotter Chinese mustard) and the seeds gave it a lightly bitter flavor and crunchy texture.

 Here is the assembled ssäm:

Chicken and Egg was inspired by oyako-don, a type of donburi, in which chicken and other ingredients are piled on top of a bowl of rice. I made only the chicken as a topping for ramen. First I deboned some chicken legs. Not a difficult thing to do when the chicken is fresh and the meat is firm. The rest of the recipe is identical to the confit with chicken wings that I described in in the first part of this previous post.
After I removed the drumsticks and thighs from the pork lard, I browned them outside in smoking hot cast iron over the Big Kahuna burner until the skin was nice and crispy.

The alkaline noodles that I had made yesterday were in packets in the fridge.When we were ready to eat the ramen I boiled the noodles, spooned broth over them, and arranged chicken, garden peas, pickled cucumbers, and scallions on top. The chicken was tender, juicy, and not surprisingly, everyone thought it was pork.

Because it was so good the first time, I made Bill Corbett's Cereal Milk Ice Cream for dessert. But instead of using walnuts in the frosted flakes I toasted pecans. I beat brown sugar into egg whites together and folded in cornflakes and the nuts. The mixture baked in a slow oven while I turned it every few minutes until it was dry and crispy. Tip: with milk, this makes a great breakfast.

 

 

Thus concludes Mi Momofuku. There are a handful of recipes that I didn't attempt and I'll get to them when I get the right ingredients (e.g. Benton's country ham, Maine Jonah crab claws). For now, I'm happy to have learned how to make - and eat - foie gras, pig's head and skin, ssäm, sous vide, and sashimi and to have shared it with my family and friends. It's been fun and delicious!

Day 49 - Pages 18 7-188 - Pan-Roasted Dry-Aged Rib Eye

I sort of made this recipe. My version was not dry-aged nor a 2-1/2 lb steak but I got the basic idea and it was a true revelation. I now know that it's the butter basting that makes the steaks at Peter Luger and Ruth's Chris so popular. I hadn't cooked a steak in years and when I make one again, no doubt soon, this is how I'll do it.

After searing the meat on a smoking hot cast iron pan, it went into a 350 degree oven for a couple of minutes. Immediately after I removed it from the oven, I put the butter, garlic, shallots, and thyme in the pan and basted the steak until it reached a medium rare state. That was all there was to it. I think the most daunting part will be to find a dry-aged gigantic rib eye for my next try.

(Kids, this will be on the menu for your next visit)

Day 47 - Pages 166 - 167- Bo Ssäm and Ssäm Sauce

(reminder: you can click on the photos to view enlargements)
It was Wayan's birthday and a good reason to gather some friends around to celebrate with a bo ssäm for 6-8 people.  First: I got a Marin Sun farms pork butt, bone-in, 8 pounds. Covered it with salt and sugar and refrigerated it overnight.

The next day, I was up before sunrise to put it in a 300 degree oven. I went back to sleep for a couple of hours and by the time I got up the aroma was overwhelming the entire house (not necessarily in a bad way but...) so I took it out of the oven and put it in the Weber barbecue.  After 8 hours it was meltingly tender and the meat fell away from the bones without much effort.

While it was cooking there was time to prepare the condiments.  Clockwise, from upper left: Ava's black bean and garlic cucumbers, ssäm sauce (a mixture of ssämjang and kochujang), pickled cantaloupe, ginger scallion sauce, week-old kimchi.

John shucked 50 extra small Tomales Bay oysters.

I was really glad that I was not the only one taking photos and holding up the feast. 

One of the things I like about ssäms, aside from the deliciousness, is that each eater gets to compose their own little version of the dish. This bo ssäm offered lots of choices to put on a lettuce cup.

Everyone dug in without hesitation.

Day 46 - Pages 245 - 248 - Ko Kimchi Consommé, Pork Belly, Oysters, & Napa Cabbage

Today, chefs are experimenting with consommés using the gelatin technique developed by Harold McGee. The Momofuku consommé uses the traditional egg white raft method
to make a clear, flavorful soup that ties together Chang's reinterpretation of the Korean bo ssäm. In this dish, the kimchi becomes a consommé that was somewhat difficult but incredibly fun to make.

First, I whipped egg whites and folded in some lean ground pork and chopped onions.

Then I pureed a cup of week-old kimchi

 
and added it to 2 cups of ramen broth and water. I placed the egg white mixture on top of the broth and simmered it, lightly stirring and basting the whites to keep them moist.

After about 30 minutes, particles in the broth migrated up to the egg whites and formed a semi-solid mass - the raft. I removed the raft and filtered the broth and any remaining bits through two layers of cheesecloth. The elixir was clear, slightly tinged with red from the chiles, and the perfect essence of kimchi.

Next, I roasted the pork belly. By now, I'd done a few times so it was pretty easy.

I cut a triangle into the base of each cabbage leaf to remove the tough, white part and then blanched the leaves in boiling water for a few seconds.

I drove up to Tomales Bay Oyster Company and picked up some of their extra smalls. When got home, I shucked the oysters carefully preserving the liquor in the shells and heated scalene triangle slices of pork belly over a hot grill.

I plated all the elements and poured some of the warmed consommé up to the rim of the oyster shell. I was really happy to see it all come together and it was indescribably delicious.

Day 27 - Crack Pie

Momofuku's Crack Pie recipe has appeared on the Web in a few places and the latest version, the one I used today, was recently published in the LA Times . Christina Tosi is the pastry chef at Momofuku and when asked in a 2008 interview about how she got into making desserts she said, "I’ve always had a sweet tooth. It’s actually a very nasty habit. I rarely eat regular food." Yikes!

My friend, Joyce, does a bake sale every year to raise money for Heifer International and this year she was going to get a Momofuku sweet from me.

All I can say about crack pie is that I finished making it before dinner and one taste killed my desire to eat anything else for the rest of the evening. Sort of like...you guessed it. The recipe makes 2 - 10 inch pies that are chock full of almost a pound of butter, over 2 cups of sugar, 8 egg yolks, and a cup of cream. Except for a teaspoon of vanilla, there isn't any other flavoring. The crust is a crumbled 9" x 13" oatmeal cookie mixed with butter and pressed into pie tins. A little goes a long way with this dessert and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my Crack Pie does the same towards helping a beneficiary of Heifer International.

Day 22 - Page 210 - Momofuku Shortcakes, Page 102 - Bacon Dashi w/ Potatoes & Clams

The first strawberries of the season are now available in the markets and I couldn't resist. These are from Watsonville and not truly local. They are merely a lead into the West Marin season of delicious berries that starts in May and continues into fall but tonight they were the topping for Momofuku shortcakes.

My go-to shortcake recipe is the one from Chez Panisse Desserts. It's biscuit-like dough is what I always think of when think of shortcake. So reading through the Momofuku recipe was like analyzing a foreign grammar and in spite of my strong resistance, I forged ahead with Chang's instructions. It was also my first time making shortcakes with a mixer since I have always used my hands in order to keep the dough crumbly and light. The initial blend of butter and lard (I substituted pork lard for the shortening) and flour was fine but when I poured in the cream I could see that right away the mixer was going to make a sticky dough and so I opted to use a spatula. I knew that, above all else, I wanted my shortcakes to be flaky and the mixer was going to over beat the dough. 

The dough must be thoroughly chilled before it can be handled and formed into balls, rolled in powdered sugar, and baked. These have a high sugar content and are like puffy, cakey cookies.

And put together with the berries and whipped cream, they're another outstanding Momofuku treat. This was my first attempt at a dessert from the cookbook and now I'm hooked. I just wish that there were more desserts in the book.

Today John jumped in and contributed Clams in Bacon Dashi. He got the clams from Tomales Bay Oyster Company, our favorite source for bivalves. We thought it was like Chang's version of clam chowder, deconstructed and put back together in his own unique fashion.

Day Sixteen - Super Bowl Sunday - Page 79 Momofuku Pork Buns, Ramen, pickles + a loaf of bread

Today we had a pre-game pork bun and ramen extravaganza. I started the broth and pork belly at 8 AM and made the shiitake and cucumber pickles. Wendy came later to help roll out the noodles.

Some notes on the prep:
1. I used my reductionist/simplified method on the broth. Browned the pork bones in the pot and set them aside. Simmered together the konbu, shiitakes, and chicken but removed the first two after 20 minutes. Then added the pork bones, onions, and carrots and removed the chicken and vegetables after 1 hour. Then simmered the bones for a couple of hours more. I eliminated the bacon and tare but this was still a full, rich broth.

2. I ran out of lard so used butter for a second batch of buns. Not the same. Entirely different texture and not recommended unless you want your buns to be less light, and have a cake-like texture. So unlike the soft and smooth Chinese buns that inspired Chang. Here are the lard buns at the second rise before steaming.

3. Don't forget to remove the skin before roasting the pork. I didn't and it looked great when I took it out of the oven but it was too hard to slice - and eat. I removed it from the belly and broke it up in little pieces. They were pretty good for some added crunchiness in your bun but watch your teeth!

4. This time I didn't drain the noodles in a colander. Instead, I (actually, Wendy did this) dropped an individual portion in boiling water, as soon as it floated to the top, scooped it out with a spider strainer (flat wire scooper w/ a bamboo handle), drained and dropped the noodles into a bowl, and poured the broth over it. This prevented the noodles from becoming a mass of doughy glop in the colander. I think I saw this method at a saimin restaurant in Lihue, Kauai.

Here is Andrea's demonstration of two-fisted Momofuku fun.

We' ve been experimenting with Jim Lahey's no-knead bread and here is my attempt earlier in the week. You can find the recipe on this page of the NY Times Minimalist column.

For a moist loaf that doesn't dry out quickly, your dough should be very moist. Use at least a 1/4 cup more water than the recipe. Considering the small amount of energy that goes into it, this is a pretty good loaf of bread.