Tag Archive for 'egg'

No Recipes vol. 3

Published
by
marc
on November 24, 2008
in No Recipes and Uncategorized
. 10 Comments

It’ll be a short and busy week at work followed by the arrival of my family from CA, then I’ll be in the kitchen all day Thursday doing Thanksgiving 24 style:-) Yep, we’ve been selected to do the FoodBuzz 24, 24, 24 event for Thanksgiving (see this post for the last 24 event), so stay tuned for more on that.

In case I don’t have a chance to post for a few days, here are some pictures and thoughts from the past week.

Lamb Fried Cous Cous… Fried cous cous is the new fried rice. I bought a box of cous cous that curiously had no directions on how to prepare it. It has recipes on the back, but the recipes referenced the “directions” for making the cous cous on the side of the box. After much head scratching (and showing the box to L to make sure I wasn’t missing anything), we concluded that they must have forgotten to include the directions. So in true No Recipes style, I went winged the water content… and missed. We had some slightly soft cous cous for dinner last night with our Lamb Kebabs, but I woke up this morning with an idea. I chopped up the leftover lamb, onions and bellpepper from the kebabs, and fried it along with the cous cous and some garam masala. In a word, it was awesome! I may even start making cous cous for the express purpose of frying it.

Concord Grape Granita - This is probably the simplest dessert ever and yet the effort to taste ratio is high. It’s just concord grapes that have been juiced either with a blender or foodmill then frozen. No cooking, no sugar, just grapes. Once it’s frozen you can take a spoon or fork and scrape out a bowl of granita. The grapes have the perfect tart/sweet ratio and what’s more, they’re the only grapes I know of that actually taste like grapes. Concord grapes a bit hard to find fresh, but if you can, they’re worth getting (the jarred juice just doesn’t taste the same). I imagine you could also throw this into an ice cream maker to make sorbet and I’ve even thought about making a grape ice cream.

Kuzu mochi with Grade B Maple Syrup - If you saw the Kuromitsu Pork Chop post, you may have been wondering what kinako and kuromitsu are normally used in, well wonder no more. The texture of this “mochi” is much lighter than a rice based one and for this dessert I’ve paired it with grade B maple syrup (which has a much more mapley flavor than normal maple syrup) instead of the more traditional kuromitsu (black syrup). I’m really digging the texture of these things and have started to think about other ways I might use it. I actually tried making vegan marshmallows with it, but that was a miserable failure, next I think I’m going to try gnocchi.

Garlic Chive and Egg on Rice - This is a great fast breakfast or dinner. It’s basically fried garlic chives with scrambled egg seasoned with light soy sauce, mirin, and dashi. It’s delicious on a bed of hot rice, but I think it would be equally good on a slice of toast if rice for breakfast isn’t your thing.

Maitake, Potato and Kale Miso Soup - I know this isn’t the most inspired thing to show up here, but the point I wanted to make with this is that you can put anything in miso soup. If you don’t have tofu, wakame and green onions laying around (and even if you do), experiment a little with different veggies. I’ve yet to find a veggie that doesn’t work.

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Smoked trout and buckwheat rolls

Published
by
marc
on August 3, 2008
in Appetizer, Dinner party, Seafood, Summer and picnic
. 17 Comments

On the way to the Union Square farmers market yesterday I was met with a downpour of torrential rain. Rather than wait in the steamy subway station I decided to make a run for the Barnes & Noble at the north end of the square. By the time I made it across the street to the bookstore, there was water dripping off my shorts. I threw a furtive glace at the stocky security guard by the entrance and made a bee line for the escalators, leaving a trail of water in my wake.

Upstairs, I hunkered down in the cooking magazine section and started flipping through the rack of cooking magazines. Regular readers know I rarely cook out of cookbooks. This also applies to magazines, which I don’t subscribe to since they have a tendency to wind up in an unread pile in my shoebox of an apartment. Still, I do occasionally enjoy flipping through them since they have more photos than words.

This recipe was inspired by a photo in this month’s Gourmet Magazine. I didn’t actually read much more than the caption and all I can recall is something about “forest wraps” with Romaine Lettuce and Bulgar. After the rain subsided, I went back out to the market and happened upon an amazing looking head of Romaine Lettuce that was still covered with spatters of earth.

I’ve gone on before about the virtues of cooked lettuce (here and here), but using blanched lettuce as a wrapper had never occurred to me until I saw the pic in Gourmet.

I can’t really think of any other dish that makes for an accurate comparison to this one. It’s somewhere between Dolmades, and Vietnamese spring rolls, but has a combo of flavours and textures unlike anything I’ve ever had. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how this was going to turn out and gave it about a 20% chance for success. But part of what I enjoy so much about cooking is experimenting, and this turned out to be a great success.

These rolls make for a great light meal while having a lot more substance than a salad. The smokey buckwheat and sweet smoked trout come together with the creamy boiled egg to make a delicious crumbly filling. The steamed lettuce leaf holds it all together, adding its own green vegetal flavour and crunch. The rolls are finished with some minty yogurt sauce and pine nuts that add a creamy tangy bite and freshness to it all.
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Chirashi Sushi

Published
by
marc
on June 29, 2008
in Japanese and Seafood
. 14 Comments

For those of you that have never had it, chirashi sushi i a bowl of vinegared sushi rice topped with a bunch of colorful stuff. At most sushi restaurants this means covering the rice with slices of various raw fish, but that’s not always how it’s made.

Growing up my mom used to make a vegetarian version with simmered shitake mushrooms, carrots, egg, sugar peas and benishoga (red ginger) for any potluck or party we’d go to. It makes for a great party dish because it’s something you eat at room temperature and the ticker-tape-confetti of toppings makes it look very festive.

My rendition is a bit more decadent, capturing the essence of the sea. The ingredients aren’t cheap, but it’s still cheaper than going to a local sushi restaurant and it isn’t nearly as hard to prepare as it looks. I made this in about an hour, but if you make some of the stuff ahead of time it can be assembled in even less time.

If you’re squeamish about uni (or any of the other ingredients) you could obviously sub them out, but steamed uni is not nearly as off-putting as the raw kind they have at sushi restaurants. Cooking it gives it more structure making it more cheese like in texture (though not flavour) while retaining its sweet creaminess.
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Tortilla d’oro

Published
by
marc
on June 13, 2008
in Spanish and Vegetarian
. 12 Comments

Despite my penchant for mid afternoon naps, rice and seafood dishes, and good red wine, no one has ever mistaken me for Spanish. But as I looked at a display of pheasant, duck and ostrich eggs at Whole Foods today I suddenly got a craving for eggs and potatoes cooked in a pan until golden brown and crispy on the outside while soft and luscious on the inside.

The dish of course is a Spanish tortilla (not to be confused with a Mexican flour or corn tortilla which are tasty in their own right). I’m not even going to try to claim authenticity for my rendition as I’ve added cream and cheese to it, but my experience with tortillas have been that there is no set way to make them.

I gave it the name (which translates to tortilla of gold) because I used sliced Yukon Gold potatoes which along with the eggs gave it a golden color all the way through. If you want to go for a more traditional shape, use a smaller pan so the tortilla comes out looking more like a wheel of cheese. I went with a thinner tortilla as I was hungry and didn’t feel like waiting for a thicker one to cook through. It also makes it a lot easier to flip and crisp (though it doesn’t have as creamy a center as a thicker one).

I served it with a tomato and pimenton (smoked paprika) jam and grilled morcilla and chorizo. The spicy sausages and sweet smokey jam made wonderful accompaniments. I’ve also taken to serving almost everything lately (as I’m sure you’ve seen in the photos) with baby green salads tossed with a drizzle of olive oil, a squeeze of lemon, a grind of pepper and a pinch of smoked salt.

If you have leftover jam, it’s great the next morning on some crusty multi-grain bread with some slices of cheese.

What’s your favourite egg dish?
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Grilled sea bass donburi

Published
by
marc
on April 1, 2008
in Dinner, Japanese and Seafood
. 5 Comments

Grilled sea bass donburi

I had some bass left over from another dish I made, so I dropped it in some all-purpose Japanese marinade and turned it into this donburi.

There’s a layer of dashi tamago (japanese style scrambled eggs) between the rice and the bass that adds some sweet richness to the dish and the sansho (a.k.a. sichuan pepper) powder on top adds an herbal kick. This works best with an oily fish like sea bass or salmon, but you could use other fish as well if you’re looking for something lighter.

cooked rice

for grilled bass
1 batch of Japanese marinade
2 pieces of fish with high oil content (sea bass, yellow tail, salmon)

for dashi tamago
2 eggs
3 tsp concentrated dashi
1/8 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp Mirin
1 heaping tsp sugar

Marinate the fish in the Japanese marinade overnight.

Prepare some rice.

Grill the fish either over a barbeque or in a broiler until cooked and the marinade has caramelized to form a deep mahogany finish on the surface of the fish.

For the dashi tamago, whisk the ingredients together, heat a non-stick pan over medium heat until hot. Swirl a bit of oil around then add the egg. Turn down the heat to medium low and use a heat-proof silicon spatula to scrape up the cooked egg from the bottom. Let another layer cook then scrape it up too. Repeat until you have big fluffy curds of egg that are still a little wet (it will be fully cooked by the time you plate it).

Put some cooked rice down in a bowl, layer some egg on top and set the fish on top of the egg. Garnish with a sprinkle of powdered sansho and some green shiso.

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