Day 44 - Pages 157-158 - Roasted Mushroom Salad, Braised Pistachios, Pickles & Radishes + Milk Bar's Blueberry & Cream Cookies

Chang describes this dish as "a hodgepodge of ideas cribbed from dishes...eaten over the years." I liken it to the Food Network show, "Chopped", where 4 chef contestants are each given a basket of weirdly diverse ingredients and are asked to prepare an appetizer, entree, or dessert using those ingredients. This salad is a stretch because of the unusual combination of ingredients and consists of several parts that require lots of time to prepare. At least that is how it felt for me when I was making it.
I first prepared the pistachios - the prettiest nuts on the planet.

The nuts were boiled in dashi until soft and then pureed with water. I stopped short of blending until smooth since I wanted mine to be slightly chunky.
Radishes and sunchokes (I used apples instead) were pickled.

The mushrooms (I used portobellos) were sliced, sauteed, and dressed with a garlic, butter, and vinegar sauce.

I left out the enoki mushrooms and my micro-greens consisted of a few sprigs of baby chives but there were still plenty of things to work with when I put it all together.

I now know to google Christina Tosi when I'm craving something sweet. Here is her recipe for Blueberry & Cream Cookies . It uses one of Tosi's favorite ingredients: nonfat milk powder. When I made Tosi's cereal milk I had to buy a 2 pound box for the 3 tablespoons I needed. I thought it would languish on the pantry shelf collecting dust but I do use the stuff whenever I want to add an extra bit of milky sweetness to my cooking. This recipe consists of the dough and Milk Crumbs, a dry, crumbly mixture that is the "cream" in the cookie.

The recipe calls for glucose but a good substitute is corn syrup. I didn't substitute the European butter though because it was available at the market and the European is so irresistibly smooth and creamy. The crumbles, along with melted white chocolate, and dried cherries (my market didn't have blueberries) were folded into the dough. The cookies browned really quickly but I didn't mind that because the crispy edge was a nice contrast to the chewy interior. An accompanying glass of milk is de rigeur!