813 recipes. Page 1 of 34
Curry, stir-fry noodles, and Asian recipes
Hot dashi poured over a potato-starch crust starts softening it right away: the edges turn tender while the middle stays crisp only briefly. That brief contrast is the whole point, and the tofu goes from the oil to the bowl and straight to the table.
Soft milk bread wrapped around a generous ball of sweet red bean paste, anpan dates to 1874, when the Kimuraya bakery in Tokyo's Ginza paired Western bread with Japanese bean confectionery. The enriched dough with milk, butter, and egg bakes into a cottony crumb that pulls apart in strands. This version tops each bun with black sesame seeds.
Salt first, vinegar second: the salt draws water out of the mackerel and firms it, and a short soak in rice vinegar with kombu turns the surface white while the center stays pink and rich. That pink center is how shime saba should look, which also means the fish is essentially raw. Vinegar and salt do not kill anisakis, so the recipe only works with fillets sold for raw eating with a parasite-control freezing history. Kept at 4°C or below from thawing to serving, it is eaten the day it is made, with perilla leaves and shredded ginger on the side.
The name sounds like a vegetable pickle, but this Akita dish is mostly a chilled rice base cooked with sugar and sharpened with vinegar. Soaked rice is ground with a few grains left whole, which gives it a slightly nubbly texture. Cucumber and turnip go in only once the base is completely cold, to keep their crunch, and seasonal fruit sits on top.
In North Indian homes this potato dish shows up next to dal and rice on an ordinary weeknight, with methi (fenugreek leaves) bringing a bitter edge. Fresh methi is strongly bitter with an earthy smell that softens once it hits the hot pan, and it goes in only after the potatoes have cooked under a lid with cumin, turmeric and chili. When fresh leaves are hard to find, dried kasuri methi is rubbed between the palms and added at the end.
Each cup of the takoyaki pan gets octopus plus chopped kimchi and scallion. Sauce, mayonnaise, and bonito flakes still go on top as usual, but the kimchi comes through underneath, sour and hot.
Pull a piece and it breaks off cleanly instead of stretching the way all-rice mochi does. That is the wheat at work: a soft flour dough steams in the same basket as the glutinous rice, and the two are pounded together while hot. In the Nakakawachi and Minamikawachi areas of Osaka it was made around Hangesho, once rice planting was done, to give thanks and pray for a good harvest, and it is rolled in sugared kinako.
Chill everything first. Mango pieces kept in the fridge, cold yogurt, and cold milk give a thick, cold lassi with only a little ice, so the drink doesn't get watered down. Pour the yogurt and milk in before the fruit so the liquid covers the blade and everything blends evenly. Taste the mango before adding honey, since a very sweet one needs less, and keep the quarter teaspoon of cardamom: it is what separates a lassi from a mango smoothie. It's ready when no bits remain and it lightly coats a spoon; thin it with a splash of milk if needed and pour into chilled glasses right away.
Flying fish, called ago in Tottori, gives these bamboo-core fish cakes a darker color than ordinary chikuwa made mostly from pollock, and a skin that grills firm enough to make a sound under a knife. Tear them by hand as a drinking snack with soy sauce, or slice them into soups and simmered dishes.
Sweetened azuki beans and red-and-white rice dumplings sit in a lightly salted clear broth, putting sweet and savory in the same bowl. Itokoni from Yamaguchi Prefecture changes from area to area in its broth and ingredients, and this recipe follows the clear-soup style of Hagi. Setting dumplings tinted red beside white ones comes from the colors used at celebrations.
Despite the name, Gyoda furai is never deep-fried. This snack from Gyoda in Saitama is a loose flour batter spread into a 20 cm round on a lightly oiled pan, topped with long onion and thin pork, and pressed down again and again with a pot lid as it cooks. When brown spots appear on the batter it is brushed with Worcestershire-style sauce and eaten hot.
Thin slices of cucumber, eggplant, lotus root and carrot share the bowl with chewy wood ear mushroom, shiso and ginger, and each bite lands somewhere different on the crunch scale. Each vegetable is prepped on its own terms: the hard lotus root and carrot get a short blanch, while the softer cucumber and eggplant are rubbed with salt instead. The sweet vinegar with sliced red chili is boiled once and then cooled all the way down. Poured on while still warm, it costs the cucumber and lotus root their snap. Squeezing the salted cucumber and eggplant hard after rinsing keeps the dressing from going watery. Half an hour in the fridge is enough before serving it cold with its liquid.
With no broth to dilute it, the soy, sesame oil, and oyster sauce mixture at the bottom of the bowl clings straight to the noodles, so every mouthful lands at full strength. A small splash of vinegar keeps the oil from feeling heavy, and a bowl that starts to taste greasy just needs one more toss from the bottom up.
Mala sauce, the numbing, chili-hot seasoning of Sichuan cooking, gets wrapped in cream, milk and Parmigiano, so the tingle stays but the burn is gentler. Chicken thigh is browned hard before the mala sauce is stirred in, so the meat picks up the spice before the cream does. Mala sauces differ a lot in saltiness from brand to brand, so the recipe starts with 1 tablespoon and leaves final seasoning until the cream is in. Pasta water, added a little at a time, keeps the cream sauce from splitting, and when it is right the sauce no longer pools in the pan but sits in the spirals of the fusilli.
Red taro stems (akadatsu) are blanched and steeped in vinegar and mirin, and as they chill the red color spreads evenly through the whole batch. Every strip of outer skin and tough fiber is peeled from top to bottom and the stems are rubbed with salt, or they stay stringy and taste acrid even after dressing. The stems bend but keep a light crunch at the center. That crunch depends on boiling the vinegar mixture to drive off the mirin's alcohol and then letting it cool completely; poured on hot, it keeps cooking the stems. With about twice as much vinegar as mirin, the dish tastes clearly sour before it tastes sweet.
Lifted from the center of the soy milk, Nikko yuba comes up doubled, thick, and rippled, and agemaki yuba is that tofu skin rolled into sticks, fried, and dried. The rolls simmer slowly in a sweet, mild dashi, and cooling them in the liquid is what carries the flavor to the center.
Sheets of buttered phyllo enclose two layers of walnuts and pistachios scented with cinnamon in this Turkish and Middle Eastern pastry, and a hot honey syrup goes over the pan once it leaves the oven. Over the next few hours the pastry absorbs it, staying crisp on top while turning moist and sticky below. Its sweetness is strong enough that baklava is cut into small diamonds and usually served with unsweetened Turkish coffee or bitter tea. Stored airtight at room temperature, it keeps for over a week, and some regions add rose water or orange blossom water to the syrup.
A modest scoop of rice gets its toppings arranged to taste: shredded chicken, thin egg strips, simmered shiitake, green beans, miso-pickled papaya, scallion, citrus peel, and nori. Hot chicken-bone broth is then poured over generously, and the bowl is eaten lightly, almost like soup. On Amami, the earliest form resembled seasoned chicken rice, and the custom of pouring broth over it spread in the Showa era and became standard. The bones simmer with ginger for an hour, and the tenderloin is poached in that same broth, which ties the meat and the soup together.
The name is Vietnamese for shaking beef, after the way the wok is shaken so cubes of sirloin sear on every side. It took shape in colonial-era Saigon, when Western cuts of beef arrived and Vietnamese cooks seasoned them their own way, here with oyster sauce, soy and garlic. Once the cubes have a dark crust, the onion softened earlier in butter goes back in, and lime is squeezed over just before serving.
Modeled on convenience-store cup tteokbokki, this one adds mala sauce to the gochujang for a tingle on the tongue. Chili flakes raise the heat, and more mala sauce raises the numbness. Brands of mala sauce vary a lot in saltiness, though, so start with a single tablespoon.
Glutinous rice soaked a full day in food-grade lye water, wrapped in bamboo sheath and boiled for about three hours, ends up with no grain left to see, just a glossy, amber, jelly-like block. The cake itself is unsweetened, so it is sliced and served with kinako. Use only lye water sold for cooking, and keep it off bare skin.
In masala chai the spices go into the pot before the tea does. Crushed ginger, cinnamon and cardamom simmer in water until fragrant, then the black tea and milk follow, and everything is strained before pouring. Boil the leaves longer and the tea gets stronger, but also more astringent.
Scooped of its white pulp and seeds, the thick, faintly bitter rind of akebi becomes a shell for maitake and shimeji cooked down with miso and myoga ginger. The filling has to be cooked until almost dry and fully cooled, or the rind will not close neatly around it when tied with string.
The name ends in teh, tea, but there is none in the pot; strong Chinese tea is usually drunk alongside. The broth is clear, yet the first thing you taste is the heat of crushed peppercorns, and the whole garlic cloves are soft enough to mash with a spoon.