i hope you eat good food, grow beautiful things, and have more love than you know what to do with.
I had an overabundance of lemons one week and in my quest to use them up, discovered pasta al limone. Whether by itself or as a base, it’s a delicious brunch that I can’t get enough of. Some people only use the pasta water rather …
Oh there are so many ways to use karasumi (dried cured mullet roe), that briny, delicious gift from the oceans. Today it tops my breakfast to elevate my first meal of the day into decadence… Ingredients 1 slice of Homemade Hokkaido Milk Bread, toasted (recipe …
Every Autumn I import a few boxes of cured Mullet roe, also called bottarga-karasumi-wu yu zi, from Taiwan to give out as gifts during the holiday season and it’s always a hit. Karasumi is a delicacy in Asia, made from the sacs of the mullet fish who begin their Fall run right into eager fisherman. Their roe sacs are salted and then dried in the sun until they become briny, crumbly, and so very umami, sticking to your teeth as you munch on thin slices that have been lightly toasted, sandwiched with garlic, daikon, or scallions. Slightly bitter, sweet, and salty, the complex flavors are a great accompaniment to alcohol.
Italians lovingly use it grated over pasta or eggs (or… anything), and at nearly $10 an ounce, it’s quite an expensive delicacy. In Japan, it can cost up to $120 for a single portion.
While most pasta recipes for Karasumi call for grating it, I prefer it shaved instead, especially when I want to treat myself with decadence on a crisp, winter day. This recipe is very simple, calling for just good olive oil, a nice flaked sea or himalayan salt, pepper, sliced scallions, and of course, Karasumi. Unfortunately I didn’t have daikon, but a little grated radish would go a long way too, but a wedge of lemon for a hint of acid and citrus does wonders too!
This past year I was given a bunch of miscellaneous peppers from our friends, which was great because for some reason my pepper plants failed to thrive so I had all but given up on them. However, the question then became “what do I do …
Yesterday, my sister came by with a box of supposedly “ugly” produce from Misfit Markets, which delivers said produce that didn’t make the cut right to your door (in NYC at least.) Up to 20% of produce are thrown away because they aren’t good looking …
A lot of my childhood memories of breakfast and late night snacks surround these fluffy, sweet, steamed breads that would accompany rice porridge and all sorts of salty pickles and other cured fare. We’d dip them in spicy doufuru (fermented tofu) drizzled in sesame oil with a dusting of freshly ground szechuan peppercorn. Or they’d be eaten with pork sung (pork floss), douchi (fermented soybeans), preserved bamboo shoots, soy sauce cucumber pickles, and salted duck egg. We’d use it to soak up soup, or cut in half as a makeshift guabao bun.
I now live about an hour away from the Chinese grocery store, and while much of the pickles and fermented foods I still keep in my fridge, I don’t often have reason to eat or use them. But today the craving for freshly steamed man tou overtook me, and I dedicated the morning to making them. It’s real easy with a bread machine that has the dough function, but mixing it by hand isn’t an issue either. It came out delicious and punched me in my nostalgic gut. You’ll have about 10 – 12 total, and they freeze well–just microwave wrapped in a wet paper towel and voila!
The dough is also suitable for making steamed buns, with both sweet and savory fillings.
My mom gave me a beast of a Zojirushi bread machine that she no longer planned on using. I had been making bread by hand at home, and this was a welcome change. One of the breads that I could never make quite right is …
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 usually only buy it at the supermarket as a special treat. Making it myself and then freezing portions seemed like the most cost effective way to keep it on hand.
On most websites, I can only find the seasoned (ajitsuke) version, which I don’t like as much since I often find the soy sauce and mirin flavor to be overpowering. I love what I thought was just the plain salted version, but after salt-curing the roe myself and taste-testing, it was missing something as far as flavor went.
I decided to experiment, and came up with this half-half version, where the seasonings are so subtle they only serve to enhance the flavor rather than mask it. It tastes just like the type we get at really nice sushi restaurants, with a slight extra umami oomph to it.
My only issue is that since I didn’t have the right tool to separate the individual eggs from the membrane, it took me about half an hour to do so by hand.
Ingredients
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 …