Day Ten - Marathon - Pages 40, 73, 178

I was busy all day making three dishes. The ramen broth took several hours of watching the pot boil and I'm not sure if the result was worth it. It had nice flavor but I think that I would have been just as happy with a simpler broth that had just a couple of flavor components instead of the chicken, bacon, pork, konbu, shiitake, and other veggies that the recipe called for. Or maybe make the whole concoction easier by putting all the ingredients in at once rather than in succession and removing each depending on your taste. It will be worth trying that the next time but for now we will have something to go with our New Year's ramen.

I used the plumped shitakes from the broth to make pickles and then made Spicy Pork Sausage with Rice Cakes.

This dish is a little of "throw everything you have in the wok" which isn't necessarily a bad thing but again, like the broth, there may be too many flavors in one place. In spite of the full cup of dried chilies the heat was pretty mild and I used my Kitchenaid food grinder attachment to grind a pork chop which was really fun.

The dok (rice cakes) made for a very hearty dish but what I find really satisfying is this:

Boiled dok drizzled with a little maple syrup.

Day Nine - Page 294 - My Sources

Just got back from L.A. where I got Xmas loot from Ava and Sun that will help me cook from Momofuku using the real ingredients. Starting at the lower left and moving counterclockwise: kochukaru (chile powder), denjang (fermented bean paste), kochujang (chile paste), then left: rice cakes, yuzu juice. And I went to A1 Market on Sunset where I picked up shiro (white miso), Vietnamese bottled shrimp (still looking for Korean salted shrimp in a jar), and fish sauce.

Last night I threw out the first attempt at kimchi and started over using my new bag of kochukaru and followed the Momofuku recipe closely using the right amount of salt and sugar. Already it looked so much better - that first batch was positively anemic.

Lesson learned: don't substitute essential ingredients because it just won't be delicious and if nothing else, deliciousness is the main component of Chang's recipes. I will never ever again use cayenne powder for kochukaru but I am thinking of using the savoy cabbage that is in the garden for my next kimchi...

While we were in L.A. we got to try a Korean barbeque restaurant: Soowon Galbi. In addition to four kinds of meat and all the small plates we had a bowl of stew (kimchichigae). I'm looking forward to making the Momofuku version soon.

Day Eight - Page 94 - Cauliflower, Kimchi Puree & Bacon

Last week we had some freezing days and then it rained for two. Today I went outside to survey the damage and was surprised to see that the cauliflower plants survived and this one actually grew to a nice size during the harsh weather. This is my first attempt at cauliflower and I'm really happy that I now have a fall vegetable that I can grow successfully. Thanks to Ellen, who gave me the starts, they had a really healthy beginning.

The kimchi is just starting to get stinky so it seemed like a good time to try Chang's Brussels sprouts/kimchi puree/bacon dish and substitute the cauliflower for the sprouts.

The kimchi puree sounded like a sort of odd thing to do but it turned out to be a delicious sauce and will be a good staple to mix with anything on hand. Fish sauce, garlic, and chilies are always going to be tasty. This, along with a pan fried duck breast and fried rice, was dinner tonight. Yum!

Day Seven - Page 74- Napa Cabbage Kimchi

I wanted to do the impossible: make kimchi without all the salt. After some searching I ended up using a recipe by David Lebovitz and used less salt and left out the daikon. It is basically cabbage and onions, salt, cayenne pepper, and garlic.


And because one pickle leads to the next and I found some really fresh-looking gai choy at May Wah in the city, I made up some of Rhoda Yee's Pickled Mustard Greens (Suen-Gai-Choy) recipe.
Do you know how hard it is to keep the camera clean while licking pickling juice off of your fingers? What's impossible is to wait for these to be fully pickled.

And then this is what happened over Thanksgiving!


I've posted some photos of Oaxaca on Flickr: HERE

Day Six - Mexico vacation

I was unable to post or cook the last two weeks because I was vacationing in Oaxaca. But I did eat as much as I could and discovered new ways of eating some favorite foods. There were some humongous pieces of chicharron at the big Sunday market in Tlacolula, a town about 40 minutes west of Oaxaca City.


A few days later we ate at Itanoni, a casual restaurant several blocks north of the centro in Oaxaca City, where maiz reigns supreme and tortillas are made to order using freshly ground native Oaxacan corn and cooked on a clay oven. It is the closest thing to what was eaten in the region centuries ago. Itanoni is trying to preserve the connection between the growers and eaters by eliminating the manufacturers and industrial producers of corn products. The food is natural, wholesome, subtle, and so delicious.

There are many fillings to choose from but when I saw a taco con CHICHARRON on the menu that was what I had to have - to start. It was the first time I've had them crunchy and here they were wrapped in the thinnest tortilla you can imagine and topped with a fresh pico de gallo. Biting into this was a revelatory moment.

I'll be cooking for Thanksgiving now but will continue with Momofuku in a few days. I will also let you know when I have my Oaxaca photos up on another blog or site.

Day Five - Page 66 - Pickled Apples

The four-year-old Braeburn apple tree has come through again and is still loaded with sweet, crunchy, and juicy fruit. So,


I decided to throw in some Sichuan peppercorns because it's cold today and a little numbing wouldn't hurt. And anyway, I'll bet this is what they're eating in Chengdu at this time of year. The recipe says, "These will be ready to eat after an hour in the brine and should be eaten the day you prepare them." Definitely not a problem.

We had the pickles for dinner along with roasted spareribs (not a Momofuku recipe but marinated in my homemade catsup, soy, and leftover fish sauce vinaigrette from Day Three). Is there a more perfect combination than apples and pork? I highly doubt that.

Day Four - Page 90 - Pan-Roasted Asparagus Poached Egg & Miso Butter

I think that this dish establishes Chang as a true original. The miso and butter mixture is such a basic, simple sauce but the nutty oily smoothness of it is masterful. This photo doesn't capture the slippery unctuousness of it as the yolk oozed out of it's soft casing and blanketed the asparagus in a pool of yellow but there wasn't enough time to fuss because John was eating it up too fast to photograph.

This has to be one of my favorite dishes in Momofuku and probably the simplest to make. I sauteed the asparagus in olive oil instead of butter and poached the egg in the traditional manner (in simmering water) but I'll try it with Chang's soft poached egg in the shell method another time. For now, eating asparagus out of season was something that just had to be done and I have no excuses for that transgression!

Day Three - Ramen Redux & Page 160 - Roasted Brussels Sprouts w/ Fish Sauce Vinaigrette

Today I gave the ramen recipe a second try. The first noodles turned into a doughy mass when I stored them in the refrigerator. This time I also had a new tool that made the kneading a lot easier:


Thanks to Wayan I made the leap and got this little robot at Bed Bath & Beyond and I will be a happier mixer and kneader from now on. For this batch, instead of dividing the rolled noodles into piles, I am drying them a little before I package them for the refrigerator. I also rolled them one notch less on the roller so these are thicker than the first batch. A cross section would show a square about 1/8 inch wide.


I topped the noodles with some leftovers and they were devoured in a second. Somewhat chewy and really smooth. Much better mouth feel on these!


That was lunch. For dinner I roasted Brussels sprouts but left out the puffed rice and deep fried cilantro. The fish sauce vinaigrette is a giant blast of umami and this is another delicious way to eat the newly discovered vegetable that suddenly is so popular and seems to be on everyone's menu these days.

Day Two - Page 100 - Pan Roasted Bouchot Mussels with OS

Today was unseasonably hot and a perfect day for the 10 minute drive up Highway 1 to Tomales Bay Oyster Company. Just a handful of very lucky people were enjoying the windless and sunny Monday afternoon barbequeing and eating oysters. I got 2 lbs (about 22 mussels) for $10 then stopped at the Palace Market for some sake. I was going to make Chang's pan roasted mussels with OS substituting Maine's Bouchot for some Pt Reyes morsels. Chang has an explanation for OS (oriental sauce!) but I still don't buy it.


I cooked this outside on the Big Kahuna because ventilation is a problem. But it was a full moon and I had a headlamp on so managed to see what I was doing. This is just after pouring in the sake:


I used white miso instead of Korean fermented bean paste. I'll have to look into that but I assume it's similar to the Chinese bean pastes. We're trying not to use much bean paste because it is so salty and a little goes a long way especially if you are already seasoning w/ soy sauce. (Momofuku dishes don't skimp on the salt.) But what is great about these recipes is that you can do lots of substituting, just go with what you have on hand and so far it has turned out pretty tasty.

Day One - Page 48 - Ramen

Let the rumpus begin. Got started today on Momofuku, the cookbook, with alkaline noodles (aka ramen). Luckily, John had an old, unopened jar of sodium carbonate up in the darkroom so I didn't have to find a source for it before trying my hand at Chang's handmade ramen. Wikipedia says, "Most noodles [the ramen kind] are made from five basic ingredients: wheat flour, salt, water, and kansui which is essentially a type of alkaline mineral water, containing sodium carbonate and usually potassium carbonate, as well as sometimes a small amount of phosphoric acid. Originally, kansui was named after the water from Inner Mongolia's Lake Kan which contained large amounts of these minerals and was said to be perfect for making these noodles. Making noodles with kansui lends them a yellowish hue as well as a firm texture."

I didn't have potassium carbonate (Art says he has some in his darkroom so I'll try adding some of that next time) but since it only required 1/8 tsp for the portion I was making I didn't think it would matter too much.

These barely need cooking. Just throw them in boiling water and remove them right away. I made Ginger Scallion Sauce (page 57) - lots of scallions in the garden right now - and tossed them with the noodles for dinner. Now I'm dreaming of making a trip to Inner Mongolia and making alkaline noodles on the banks of Lake Kan.