i hope you eat good food, grow beautiful things, and have more love than you know what to do with.
Oh glorious beef tongue, Juicy, fat, and tender, You don’t take much to make people happy, To your delicious, smoky, beefy flavor I surrender Beef tongue is probably my favorite cut of beef for yakiniku style barbecues. No, let me amend that, it is my favorite …
I picked up a pound of sujiko, which is fresh salmon roe still in its sack, from Mitsuwa on our way back from an Aikido seminar yesterday. Both of my kids absolutely love ikura, which is the cured version, but it’s so expensive that I …
I’m an absolute fiend for uni (sea urchin roe) but the creamy, briney, full of ocean flavor disappears far too quickly when I eat it sushi or sashimi style. As a pasta sauce, I can savor it for longer and feel full, rather than regretting it ending all too soon.
While there are Italian recipes for uni pasta, I did it in a Japanese style way, with a dash of sake and soy sauce, and sprinkled with shiso flowers, which are in bloom right now. Their bright, fresh minty bursts are at its peak, condensed in the little bell shaped blossoms. Minced chives I found are optional, but that’s a personal preference. A few slices of mild red chili peppers give a beautiful color and some delicious bite.
I find cream too heavy for me, even possibly overpowering the uni, so I used half and half instead (but next time I may even go with milk). Rather than blend the sauce, which means a few precious drops will inevitably have to go down the drain, I just crush the uni with the back of a spoon, leaving pieces here and there, nestled between the spaghetti. You can use an immersion blender if you want a smoother sauce.
You all knew this one was coming–one can’t find a windfall of maitake and not make tempura with it. Maitake mushrooms, once what moisture was within it evaporates during the frying process, holds the crunch of the panko very well. It also retains its texture …
Fall is here and that means maitake mushrooms are out in full force! I finally crossed it off the bucket list of mushrooms that I wanted to find and eat this week when I came across several clusters nestled at the base of an oak …
Crab season is at its height here on Long Island, and the kids and I caught quite a few blue claws at the local docks. While I often love them plain with just a little butter and lemon, I wanted to do something special with these super fresh crabs. Kani miso, also known as crab tomalley, crab brains, or crab guts is the hepatopancreas of the animal, and is often thrown away in western cuisine. If you’ve ever opened up an intact streamed or boiled crab/lobster, the yellowish green paste is the much coveted kani miso.
Being someone who absolutely loves the slightly sweet, creamy, with a touch of bitterness that enhances the flavor of the ocean it brings, I couldn’t waste it while picking out the meat.
Kani miso, which is popular in Japan, is traditionally grilled in the shell, with a little sake and some scallions to bring out the full flavor. Here, I didn’t grill it because I threw away the shells before realizing what I wanted to do with them, and served it with scorched crispy rice. I also put some of the crab salad I made with the meat over it (but it’s really unnecessary.) Instead of scallions, I used minced shiso, but I’m sure scallions would have been amazing too.
I’m getting my bathroom renovated and the construction company is comprised of a group of hard working Polish immigrants and I’ve been giving them bags of produce to take home from my garden, where my tomatoes have exploded and I haven’t been able to keep …
On my bucket list of mushrooms to find, I knocked off chanterelles this year. I only have oysters and maitake left. I found the chanterelles quite by accident, when we went to my mother-in-laws for a swim in her pool, and again when I decided …
We went over to my mother-in-laws for a swim and I took a short walk through her woodsy backyard. Had it not been for my little daughter who excitedly shouted she found mushrooms, I would have completely missed the mass of black trumpets growing out of the ground. I collected about 2 pounds of them along with a handful of chanterelles. At first I was put off by the sickly sweet smell they were giving off–while some claim they smell like apricots, I would amend that description to “fruity chlorine”. I dried the larger ones in my dehydrator and kept the small ones for fresh use.
Black trumpets are an extremely easy to identify mushroom, with no toxic look alikes (although Satan’s Urn looks somewhat similar, it is bowl shaped with the edges curling in, instead of a trumpet flaring out.) They are also called, rather unappetizingly, “trumpet of the dead” due to the fact that there is some folklore surrounding them being trumpets played by the dead and buried. Their scientific name is kinder, Craterellus cornucopioides–cornucopia also known as the horn of plenty in Greek mythology which provides whatever food or drink requested of it.
I completely understand the fanaticism (and high price) of them now that I’ve made a simple cream sauce–they are said to take on truffle-like notes, but I would argue that they mimic truffles well enough that some people might even be confused.
I was getting a bit overwhelmed with the amount of mushrooms I had collected that were sitting in the freezer. I had about 2 pounds of various boletes and five pounds of trimmed chicken of the woods. A julienne seemed to be a great way …