Chawanmushi

It's cold. It went from a light thin jacket weather to hoodie weather to this morning when I thought about maybe wearing my winter coat. I used to LOVE winter and cold weather.....until I moved to NYC from LA. I never needed a scarf or gloves in LA nor any super thick coats. But now once it dips into the 50s it's all the layers I can wear at one time, knee high socks, thermal undies, two beanies. But you know, it's also comfort food season. It's like gimme all the mac n'cheese, hotdish, beef stew, risotto, congee, lasagna, endless supply of fettuccine alfredo, and butternut squash soup!

My perfect cold day scenario is hugging a bowl of oyakoDON by the fireplace and it's snowing outside and I have a cup of green tea and maybe White Christmas is playing on TBS. Or Forrest Gump, TBS is always playing Forrest Gump. 

You know who is also hugging a bowl (well not an actual bowl)? Cynthia of Two Red Bowls and her husband Andy. They recently welcomed their little boy, Luke. So in honor of this, Stephanie of i am a food blog and Alana of Fix Feast Flair put together a virtual welcome baby Luke celebration. They were super cool to put together a nice group of food bloggers (full list below) and we all made things in bowls! Fun! Here's what I cooked up: CHAWANMUSHI!

This is cold weather comfort food times 100. Chawanmushi is steamed egg custard. It's super easy to make. It's basically eggs and dashi and the filling/toppings can be whatever you like. Though I have mostly seen it with chunks of chicken, fish cakes, shiitake mushroom, and ginkgo nuts.

For any Japanese recipes I only trust one source and that's Francis of Cooking with Dog. Have you seen Francis in action?! The recipe from Francis makes 2 bowls but to be honest it all really depends on the size of your bowls. And for obvious reasons I had to tweak the recipe to make 3 bowls. I had searched through the internet, looking at other chawanmushi recipes and the key is the egg to dashi ratio. What you want to have is 1 cup of eggs to 3 cups of dashi. Just scramble the eggs in a bowl and pour it into a measuring cup. How ever much you get times 3 will be the amount of dashi you'll need. Simple!

Happy days y'all!

• I am a Food Blog | Mac and Kimcheese Dolsot Bibimbap
• Fix Feast Flair | Dishoom's Chicken Ruby Murray
• The Fauxmartha | Mom Lunches
• A Cozy Kitchen | Cornbread Chicken + Dumplings
• Cake Over Steak | Salted Caramel Chocolate Crackles
• The Pancake Princess | Stovetop Pumpkin Bread Pudding
• Snixy Kitchen | Chicken Pot Pie with Chestnut Biscuits
• Lady and Pups | Egg Florentine in Pullman "Bowls"
• Betty Liu | Honeynut Squash Congee
• Style Sweet CA | Date Bourbon Cinnamon Rolls
• Warm Vanilla Sugar | Broccoli Quinoa Bowl with Avocado Sauce
• A Beautiful Plate | Coconut Cauliflower Soup
• Girl Versus Dough | Tomato Grilled Cheese Soup
• Fork to Belly | A Big Hawaiian Fruit Bowl
• Wit & Vinegar | Jerk Chicken Chili
• Constellation Inspiration | Salted Egg Yolk Custard Mochi
• twigg studios | Katsu Udon Soup wth Popcorn Chicken Croutons
• Edible Perspective | Acorn Squash Bowls with Pears, Pecans, and Vanilla Bean Cream
• Coco Cake Land | Asian Bowl Cut Sugar Cookies
• Southern Souffle | Sorghum Apple Biscuits In A Bowl
• The Bojon Gourmet | Smoky Sweet Potato & Lentil Tortilla Soup
• Flourishing Foodie | Sweet Potato and Pumpkin Soup
• What should I eat for breakfast today | Little Bowl with Creamy Polenta, Cheese, Onions and Mushrooms
• Top with Cinnamon | Squash & Crispy Kale Bowls with Pomegranate and Miso-Ginger Dressing
• the broken bread | Roasted Celeriac + Fennel Soup
• Fig+Bleu | Cauliflower Harissa Soup
• my name is yeh | Corn Dog In A Bowl
• Crepes of Wrath | Mini Scallion Pancake Challah Buns
• O&O Eats | Persimmon Cobbler
• Chocolate + Marrow | Parsnip + Potato Soup with Crispy Pancetta
• With Food + Love | Caramelized Golden Beet Soup with Fall Roots + Garlicky Yogurt
• The Pig and Quill | Slow Cooker Pumpkin Curry Beef Stew
• Hungry Girl Por Vida | Rice Cooker Oats with Bruleed Bananas

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RECIPE

Serves 3

- Cut up the chicken thigh into chunks. Each bowl should get at least 3-4 pieces of chicken. Marinate the chicken with 1 teaspoon of sake and 1 teaspoon of soy sauce. Let sit for 10mins to 30mins.

- In a pot, add the 2.25 cups of water. Put on low heat on the stove. Add hondashi, sake, soy sauce, and pinch of salt. Stir to dissolve hondashi. No need to boil the water, just warm enough to dissolve the hondashi. You can use the microwave also. Take pot off the stove to let it cool.

- Scramble the eggs.

- Heat a pan up on medium flames on the stove. Add oil and brown the pieces of chicken. Don't worry about cooking them all the way through since you'll be steaming them later.

- Slice up shiitake, fish cakes, and scallions.

- Make sure the dashi broth has cooled down, you don't want to cook the eggs. Add eggs into dashi broth. Then pour the mixture through a sieve. This ensures a smoooooth custard.

ASSEMBLE!

- Place few pieces of chicken, shiitake, fish cakes, and scallions into each bowl. Pour in the egg/dashi broth.

- Get a steamer ready.

- Before putting the bowls into the steamer, wrap each one with plastic wrap.

- Put the bowls into the steamer and steam on high for 5 mins. Turn the heat down to low and steam for 13-15mins or until the custard is ready. Use a skewer or toothpick or chopstick to poke a hole in the custard. If the liquid is clear, it is done.

OPTIONAL!

- Sprinkle extra scallions or your favorite furikake or shichimi togarashi.

3 eggs

1 chicken thigh

Handful of shiitake mushroom

Few slices of your favorite fish cake

2.25 cups of water

2 teaspoons of hondashi

1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon of sake

1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon of soy sauce

Salt + pepper

Scallion

Xi'an Style Noodles And Flirting With Forty

"I don't wanna regret doing nothing cause of a tomorrow that might never come." - Simon, Gurren Lagann

I don't like eggplant. As far back as I could remember, I don't like eggplant. It's one of those things where my mom would force me to eat it and I eat it. Don't get me started with bitter melon, it's terrible. Now that I'm an adult, I get to decide what to eat. And I'm finally at that place in my head that I'll try eggplant. I even bought some last year at the farmers market. They were okay. I don't hate eggplant anymore but I wouldn't buy and cook with them. What kind of person are you? I'm just mostly flowing down a river. I've gone through most of my life always wondering the "what ifs". What if I had done that instead of being afraid to open up? I'm a shy person and rarely does much outside of my comfort zone. Moving to NYC helped a lot though. I was forced to interact with strangers and make new friends. To be honest, I'm still a little shy but once in a while I'll do crazy things like being on Time Out NY's 2013 Date These Singles (hi, slide #8).

I just watched a movie for work, starring Heather Locklear called Flirting with Forty. Forty used to sound old and now that I'm slowly inching towards forty I'm getting a little scared. The random body aches remind me that I'm getting older but if you ask my mom she will say cause I don't exercise enough. My sister is 42 and she likes being over 40. I freaked out a bit when I was 29 but then 35 was awesome. Now 38 is scaring me.

While watching Stranger Things few weeks ago, it made me felt nostalgic. Thinking about my childhood in the 80s (and even if they reboot He-man it will never live up to the original) and the 90s. If I was in that show, I would've probably been that one kid where I would've been too scared to go look for my friend or do anything reckless (aka staying in my comfort zone) and most likely get picked on. I did get picked on in junior high but that was mostly my fault (actually my parents for buying my clothes) for wearing stupid shorts that said HONDA, KODAK.....ESPIRIT. Not sure why my parents thought that was cool. It's all about being cool, man.

So what does all this have to do with Xi'an style noodles? I'm not too sure except that this was my first time making any sort of noodles from scratch and really should've done it a lot sooner. I know making noodles from scratch isn't anything earth shattering but it's a start. You gotta start somewhere so why not noodle making? I keep thinking that I want to travel back in time to high school and redo everything. Ha, I spend a lot time regretting the things I didn't do in high school. I wasted too much of my youth worrying about this and that. I could've learned how to make noodles and could've given eggplant a try instead of straight up rejecting it. Be a stronger person than a shy/quiet high schooler. Be open to things a lot sooner rather than now as I'm flirting with forty. Oh gosh, forty.

The point, don't wait. Time doesn't wait and you shouldn't too. Have an idea? Something you're interested? Go learn it, go do it.

"Just don't be distracted by the what-ifs, should-haves, and if-onlys. The one thing you choose for yourself, that is the truth of your universe." - Kamina, Gurren Lagann

Love anime wisdom

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This idea came to me while attending Valentina's matcha crepe workshop. I wanted to incorporate matcha into things and came up with this idea to borrow Lady & Pups' Xi'an style noodles with matcha powder. Also cause I've been craving for the cold matcha noodles at Mission Chinese.

But anyways, I like to start off by saying.......FORGET the matcha powder! It wasn't enough to give the noodles any flavor and probably it would've been more effective if I had just dusted some afterwards. Also, I don't think I got the correct flour. My dough didn't want to stretch that much like Mandy said it would and after boiling them they weren't smooth like actual noodles. But I'm going to try again and again until I get it right. The fire has been lit. I can feel my cosmos. Burn cosmos!

Find the Xi'an style noodle recipe over at Lady & Pups.

For my version, instead of spicy cumin lamb, I did grated garlic, grated ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil, mirin, and salt + pepper.

1 tbsp grated ginger

1 clove of garlic, grated

1 tbsp soy sauce

1/2 tbsp sesame oil

Dash of mirin

Pinch of salt + pepper

In a bowl, mix all the ingredients together. Let it sit while the noodles cook. Once the noodles are done, drain them and toss the noodles into the bowl while still warm. Mix well.

At this point, the bowl of noodles is pretty darn good but I thought it would be a little boring so I made some marinated mushrooms (recipe by Marc from No Recipes) to go with the noodles also cause I had bought some mushrooms at the farmers market.

Great Food Photos: Molly Yeh

Can you tell me what you’re trying to capture when you take your food photos? Images that are informative about the food, the process, the location, and the season in an appealing, inviting way. I like to bring people into my kitchen and make them feel like they’re at home there and welcome to a slice of cake. I want them to feel like they can put their elbows on the table and be the first to dig in and not feel like they’re interrupting anything too mysterious.

So I've known you since...2009. And you were taking pictures of food for your blog. I think you were trying to eat at a different restaurant each night for a month kind of thing? How has photography changed/evolved for you from then to now? Can you believe we’ve been friends for seven years?! Oyoyoy. Remember one of our first lunch hangs when we went to a fried chicken place (go figure) by Shake Shack… Hill Country Chicken! I think that was it. It was on a corner and it was so orange. I had just gotten my little Canon Rebel and I was snap snap snapping away like I had never seen a fried chicken before and you stopped me in line and said, “Molly, think about the picture before you take it.” And right then and there you shaped my approach, even though it took a good few years before it started showing through. Did you know that that still echoes in the back of my brain nearly every time I take a photo? And it’s gotten more extreme recently, like, I’ve been trying to challenge myself to get *the* shot with less and less attempts, a real “measure twice, cut once” mentality. You’d think I was shooting with film. It’s gotten me to pay more attention to the styling, lighting, and set up, all of the things that go into the photo before it’s actually taken.

I think I’ve also just gotten more selective about my lighting over the years. I’m so spoiled by the dark moody cloudy light of the upper Midwest, I likely would not lug my big ass camera to an orange fried chicken place these days.

Do you think there are similarities between playing music and photography? Yes, there’s the whole, “lock yourself in a room and do it over and over and over until you get better at it” thing that applies to both music and photography. But the similarity that I’ve been thinking about most these days is the importance of negative space. In photography, the difference between boring composition and exciting composition is so often the negative space, not necessarily the subject. And in music, if you don’t play the rests as carefully as you play the notes, you kinda ruin it. You really ruin it, actually.

Do you think Grand Forks has influenced/changed your photography style? Or anything about photography? Yeah, so, because Grand Forks is in the middle of the flattest land in the world there’s not a whole lot that obstructs your view. You see the land to the horizon and maybe a few tractors tooling about, but really not much else. And I love that minimalism! You can focus on one object and one line and it’s simple but energizing. I try to bring those same lines into my work and I think that not being surrounded by a million zillion things and buildings and people all the time gives me the patience or push or whatever to be minimal in my composition.

What inspires you for your recipe and photography? I love learning about my new town through their cuisine, which is very Scandinavian and vintage Church cookbooky, and I also love keeping my heritage alive in a place that otherwise wouldn’t really see Jewish or Middle Eastern food. Wherever I go, I love cooking with ingredients that I can’t find in my town. I was just in California and could not stop with the stone fruit and fresh herbs. And I’m on my way to Tel Aviv right now where I’m going to bath in a pool of tahini and make it rain za’atar. I like making recipes that are inspired by my travels and meaningful to the cultures that I identify with, and hopefully, through them, others can learn about those places and cultures too.

Any food photography heroes? If not any photography heroes? YOU, Donny!!! You’ve taught me so much and you are my greatest photography mentor and since I met you I’ve wanted to be on this site and now that I have I feel like I can sort of give up and move on and take up basket weaving or crayon drawing or something.

Toby Glanville is another hero. He shot the Rose Bakery cookbook, Breakfast, Lunch, and Tea, which contains the first food photography that I ever fell in love with. Look at it, it’s nothing too styled or precious, just understated beautiful food shown at its best, in its natural territory. It’s as if he just walked into the bakery, took a few stunning photos when no one was looking, and was off on his way. I love that so much. I tracked him down one summer in London right after college and basically begged to just be in his presence for a moment. We went and got lentil soup together on Portobello road and when we were served I got out my camera and took a few pictures. I could kind of tell he disapproved of this. When we finished there were our bowls left on the table with the remains of the soup that our spoons couldn’t scrape up and baguette crumbs scattered all over. He looked at the bowls and then looked at me and said, well, now, there’s your interesting shot. And that changed everything. Since that moment I’ve really valued the idea of keeping those human/imperfect/rustic elements that I might have otherwise freaked out about.

I’ve also recently gotten so into Summer Min’s photos, she is a queen of lighting and realness and I wish she’d blog more, and Renée Kemps, whose photos are so honest and bright.

Best meal you had in 2016 so far? Ron and Leetal from NY Shuk had me over to their house in Brooklyn last month and taught me how to make couscous from scratch. I had never had real couscous before, just the boxed stuff, and this just blew my mind. It was like a cloud of wheat. And there was some meatball wizardry that Leetal whipped up with the kind of spice and flavor that will ruin you for every other meatball. Even though the dishes on the table were new-to-me foods, they were instantly familiar and comforting. I want them to cook for me every day. Oh! And it ended with their homemade marzipan DUSTED WITH GOLD. I cried.

Why do you like cake so much? Cake is the ultimate symbol of celebration and happiness and making cake is like building an edible sculpture. So fun. The most fun.

*Please be sure to pre-order Molly's book, Molly on the Range, coming out in October.

All photos courtesy of Molly Yeh

Curry Braised Pork Spare Ribs With Coconut Saffron Rice

So I'm a terrible person. I didn't really take down notes. I did mental notes instead. This is by no means an exact recipe but really how you feel that day and how spicy or curry flavor you want. And also you really should just use 1 onion instead of 2. I had binged on Youtube recipes on French onion soup and had this crazy idea of caramelizing a bunch of onions for this recipe. You certainly don't have to. And of course if you can't wait for 3hrs, go ahead and use ground pork or chicken or fish balls.

Of course the beauty of this dish is to let every cook....slow......and low. Really draw out the flavors of the ingredients.

As for the rice, it just so happened I had a pinch of saffron left. A gift from a friend. It's optional and you can totally experiment with other spices like cardamon or cumin.

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INGREDIENTS

Curry Pork Ribs

• Pork ribs
• Couple potatoes
• 2 medium size onions
• 1 stalk of lemongrass
• 1 tablespoon grated ginger
• 1 tablespoon grated garlic
• Coconut milk
• 2 tablespoon curry powder
• Salt + pepper
• Scallions

Coconut Saffron Rice

• Rice
• Coconut milk
• Pinch of saffron
• Pinch of salt

Get a real big pot or Dutch oven hot on a stove. Season the ribs with salt + pepper. Add enough oil to cover the bottom of the pot and brown all the ribs. Do in batches if needed. Remove the ribs and let them hang out a bit.

Add more oil if the pot is dry. Toss in the lemongrass and grated ginger and garlic. Stir. Add in the onion slices. Stir to mix everything together. Lower the heat to medium and slowly cook the onions till they start to caramelize, about 15-20mins. Sprinkle in the curry power and stir well.

Add the ribs. Add a whole can of coconut milk and than pour enough liquid (water or stock) to barely cover the ribs. Turn the heat up to high and bring the mixture to a boil. Once it start to boil, lower the heat to low, cover, and let it braise for couple hours.

Give it a good stir every 30mins.

2 hours later.....give it a taste. More coconut milk? Too much coconut milk? More curry powder? This is a good time to tweak it to your liking.

Add in the diced potatoes and cook till the ribs and potatoes are tender.

* I really wanted a thick curry, so I turned up the heat, after putting in the potatoes, and let the mixture cook without the lid.

To make the rice, cook the rice according to the directions on the package/box. And since it was my first time making coconut rice, I did half coconut milk and half water. Add saffron and a pinch of salt. Stir the uncooked rice. Cook the rice.

To serve, scoop the rice onto a plate, add couple ribs, add sauce, and sprinkle some scallions.