Author Archive for marc

No Recipes vol. 2

Published
by
marc
on October 27, 2008
in No Recipes
. 13 Comments

For this week’s No Recipes roundup, I have for you 2 classic Japanese dishes along with 2 pseudo-Indian ones. If you’re wondering what the deal with all the dashi inclusive dishes is, I had an audition for The Next Food Network Star today and needed to bring my signature dish pre-plated and I also had to do an on-camera 5 minute demo. I decided to do the demo on making home made dashi, so I’ve been playing with different variations all week.

As the Angry Asian Man points out, there’s really a dearth of yellow folk on The Food Network, so hopefully season 5 marks an end to that;-)

If I have time this week, I’ll post my first video blog (a practice run of the demo I caught on tape).

This week’s No Recipes isn’t completely devoid of instructions because I’ve posted about this dish before. This is one of my all-time favorite dishes, so I make it relatively frequently (much to my cardiologists chagrin). The pork belly braises in dashi for several hours in a low temperature oven which renders out a lot of the fat and releases a ton of collagen that makes the meat just melt in your mouth. I used this for the “plated dish” part of my audition today.

Here’s another winter Japanese dish called Nabe (which literally means pot). It’s basically a Japanese hotpot (aka steamboat) dish that you cook at the table. It’s a broth made from dashi with light soy sauce and mirin that you cook lots of veggies, some tofu, pork and mushrooms in. You can really put just about any combo of meat, seafood (I really like crab) and veggies in this one and it’s about the easiest thing in the world to make. It makes for a hearty warming meal yet it’s relatively light and healthy. You could easily make this vegetarian by omitting the pork and using a dashi made with kombu and mushrooms.

I took the liberty of topping this one with an onsen tamago (or slow cooked egg). If you’ve never had one before it’s a transformational experience because it’s not like any egg you’ve ever had before. I’m planning on posting a recipe for it later this week, so hang tight.


I’m a total novice when it comes to cooking Indian food, but I had some cauliflower and butternut squash in the fridge, so I made this veggie “tikka masala”. I use the term loosely because while it did have tomato and cream in it, I went a bit light on the cream so the tomatoes came through a bit too much.

I don’t know if I ever mentioned this before, but I absolutely hate wasting stuff. I had some pizza dough left over from a few days back and it occurred to me that it might make good naan if cooked it on the stove in my cast iron skillet. This was the result.

Similar posts

No Recipes vol. 1

Published
by
marc
on October 19, 2008
in No Recipes
. 17 Comments

When I first started this blog I wanted it to a be a place where I could share cooking inspiration. I’d planned to post pictures and write about the ingredients I used and perhaps share some history about the dish. It quickly became apparent to me that that wouldn’t fly, so I scrapped the idea and I busted out the measuring cups and started fastidiously documenting everything I made.

At first I worried it might stifle my creativity, but to be honest it’s actually been a pretty good exercise for me. Probably the biggest benefit is that I’m actually able to reproduce successes with some consistency. I also have a horrible memory, so documenting stuff here has ensured I can make something I liked again even if months have passed since the last time I made it.

Still, work and life have kept me busy and accurately measuring out and writing down ingredients and a reproducible process takes time. When time is scarce, I tend to throw together whatever is in the fridge, sometimes recycling left-overs 3-4 times, turning them into a new dish every night. That’s not something I could write a recipe for even if I tried, so until now these frankencreations have gone unshared. Well, you asked for them, so I’ll be posting a weeklyish roundup of all the stuff I made that I didn’t have time to document with a step-by step recipe.

Here’s the No Recipes roundup for this week:

I went and saw Body of Lies today after going to the Japanese market and this is the result. Scallop sashimi with smoked salt and yuzu with a dusting of middle eastern spices including cumin, corriander, cinnamon, and cayenne pepper.

L made a 4 cheese pasta earlier this week and as a result we had a ton of random cheeses sitting in the fridge. I also had half a butternut squash sitting in the fridge and a lone apple that was nearing the end of it’s edible life, so these two pizzas were born. I used Jim Lahey’s no-knead dough and topped it with olive oil, ricotta insalata, butternut squash, pecorino romano and salt and pepper. I’m not a huge fan of ricotta, but ricotta insalata is a dryer saltier version that works very well with the sweet butternut squash. Ideally I would have topped this with sage, but basil is what we had in the fridge, so it got a scattering of torn basil once it came out of the oven.

This one’s a bit more unusual as far as pizza’s go, but the flavours should be familiar… I call it the “cheese plate” because it’s got all the stuff you’d find on a cheese plate at a restaurant. The sweetness from the honeycrisp apples juxtaposes the salty Ewe’s Blue cheese while the nutty walnuts compliment both. The fontina adds some creaminess and a drizzle of honey as it comes out of the oven finishes it off.

I haven’t been to enough Filipino restaurants to be able to say this is at all authentic, but it’s got vinegar in the braising liquid which tenderizes the meat and gives it a pleasant tang. Other ingredients include soy sauce, brown sugar, ginger, garlic and scallions.

Similar posts

Cherry Vanilla Granola

Published
by
marc
on October 18, 2008
in Breakfast, Brunch and Vegetarian
. 8 Comments

When someone says “granola” it conjures up images of a wholesome high-fiber breakfast cereal that’s widely considered healthy. The reality is that most store bought granola is loaded with sugar and fat and costs a fortune to boot.

This version uses unprocessed rolled oats, wheat germ and grade B maple syrup as the sweetener. It’s probably not the healthiest cereal in the world, but it should be better for you that most store bought granolas. It’s also a bit on the expensive side the first time you make it because of the cherries, almonds, and wheat germ, but you should be able to make 3 or 4 batches out the ingredients you pick up.

This granola goes beyond just crunchy and is almost crispy. The vanilla and maple flavours really shine through and the little bites of cherry add some chewy fruity tartness that sets it apart. I had been enjoying the first batch I made for for a while but I didn’t realize just how good it tasted until I went in to work one morning, opened a new package of “gourmet” granola and poured myself a bowl. I’ve always liked the granola they have at work, but even a new pack was stale by comparison and it had a faint aroma of cardboard.

You could substitute the almonds, cherries and vanilla and using a different sweetener should give it a different character as well.

Continue for more >>

Similar posts

My day job

Published
by
marc
on October 15, 2008
in Note
. 3 Comments

Yes, I admit it, my posting has been flakier than a fresh baked croissant the past few weeks. For those of you that have been following along, my day job is as the head of marketing for an Internet startup here in NYC. We’ve been busy building an online personal financial advisor to help people in their 20’s and 30’s overcome their financial woes and thrive.

People in this age group (people like me), have had the choice of dishing out hundreds of dollars to hire a financial advisor, or to use tools like Quicken to get their finances in order. The problem with the first option is that it’s not affordable for many people and the problem with the second is that you need to know a lot about finances before you can actually use these tools effectively.

We’ve been busy building something that will help anyone who’s ever felt overwhelmed and confused by their finances. I’m happy to announce that we’ve officially launched Thrive, a free online personal financial advisory service. Thrive starts by organizing your finances in one place, next it assesses your financial health based on your situation, and then it will give you advice to help you improve your financial health. As your financial health improves, you can make plans and save for the future whether it’s for something small like a new KitchenAid, or for something big like retirement.

Thanks, for bearing with me through my lack of posting and my little pitch, but I honestly believe that what we’re building will help out a lot of people (which is why I haven’t left my day job yet for a career in food). Hopefully, now that we’ve launched, I’ll have a little more time to keep this blog up-to-date:-)

P.S. You can also read the financial musings of myself and my colleagues on our blog.

Similar posts

Oyster and Fava Bean Stew

Published
by
marc
on October 5, 2008
in Seafood and Soups & Stews
. 16 Comments

I’ve once again fallen delinquent in my posting. It’s not so much that I haven’t been cooking as much as the fact that I’ve been cooking without recipes, or more precisely that I’ve been cooking and not documenting the recipes. Part of it has been because it takes more time to measure out and document stuff, and part of it has been because the things I’ve been making (mostly Japanese) involve ingredients that most people probably don’t have lying around. I know that there’s nothing worse than seeing something that looks good and then realizing you’ll need to plunk down $50 in “exotic” ingredients to make it, or worse yet, that the ingredients aren’t even available in your area.

So I’ll leave it up to you. Leave a comment if you think I should blog about dishes that I make even if it means it doesn’t come with an exact recipe. I’ll post photos, maybe even talk about what went into it, but there won’t be any proportions or recipe to speak of. If enough people want it I’ll bring it;-)

Today’s recipe came together from random items in the fridge and some oysters I picked up today. It has a lot more vegetables than a traditional oyster stew, but I like the variety of texture and the sweetness the veggies impart. If you want it to be more about the oysters, you could omit the butternut squash and strain the stew before you add the roux.

I also used soymilk because that’s what was in the fridge (and it was surprisingly creamy), but if you feel like this is sacrilege, by all means, swap out the soy milk for real milk. If you wanna go for the full coronary, you could even add a bit of cream at the end.

This would also work well with some diced fennel in the moir poix, or with a splash of Pernod at the end. You could also add other seafood, like clams, shrimp or fish if you wanted to. I was also thinking that it would make a great filling for a pot pie, but you’d probably have to refrigerate the filling and put the oysters into the pie raw before going into the oven to prevent them from overcooking.

This one’s getting entered in the Marx Foods contest for the month. If you have a great oyster recipe, enter for a chance to win 4 dozen oysters (and tell them who sent you ;-).
Continue for more >>

Similar posts