813 recipes. Page 10 of 34
Curry, stir-fry noodles, and Asian recipes
Peanut butter does the heavy lifting in this sauce, with sesame oil supplying the sesame aroma, so the dish comes together without hunting down Chinese sesame paste. Soy, vinegar, sugar, and chili oil turn it sweet, salty, tart, and gently hot all at once. The noodles get a short ice bath that firms them up, and julienned cucumber and scallion cut through the dense coating. A cold, fast bowl for hot weather.
Boiled burdock root is coated thickly in a sweet green paste of mashed edamame, and the firm, fibrous bite meets something soft and sugary. The beans are boiled softer than usual and slipped out of their thin inner skins, or the paste ends up with rough bits of skin. The dish is a local specialty of Shigaraki in Koka, Shiga Prefecture, and it is served either freshly tossed or cooled to room temperature.
Sweetfish (ayu) flesh is pounded with its small bones and salt into a soft, thick paste and cured in the refrigerator, and it turns out so salty that a small spoonful is enough alongside rice or with drinks. Because the fish is never cooked, cold storage and clean tools matter from the first cut to the last serving.
Freshly cooked rice is pounded just until it holds together with some grains still whole, pressed thin onto a flat skewer, and ridged across the top with a fingertip. Those shallow ridges are what keep the sweet red miso sauce, ground with walnuts and sesame, from sliding off. In the mountains of central Japan, woodcutters and hunters made it the day before Yama no Ko, a gathering to pray for safety in mountain work; today it is a snack sold at sightseeing spots.
Biting into a Sichuan peppercorn leaves the tongue tingling, and in kung pao chicken that numbness matters as much as the heat. Dried chilies and peppercorns are fried in the oil first so the chicken is coated in that flavored oil, and the roasted peanuts go in at the very end to stay crunchy.
Cubes of sweet potato poke out of each round dumpling like stones in a wall, which gives ishigaki dango, stone-wall dumplings, their name. On the Sagamihara plateau in Kanagawa, where volcanic ash covered the fields, wheat and sweet potatoes grew widely, and these dumplings were a snack between farm tasks. Holding back some of the potato and pressing it onto the surface makes the stone pattern stand out.
Halved eggplant gets a thin layer of sweet miso glaze on its cut face and only a brief turn under the grill. The flesh underneath is soft enough to scoop with a spoon, and the glaze on top bubbles and picks up small brown spots. Eggplant drinks oil quickly, so be generous with it in the first cooking.
Goat meat, called hija in Okinawa, simmers for about three hours into a clear broth that keeps the animal's strong aroma. When refrigeration was scarce, slaughtering a goat meant sharing the meat across the community and cooking one large pot, and the soup became part of celebrations. Fuchiba, the local mugwort, is added briefly at the end. Rather than seasoning the whole pot heavily, each bowl comes with grated ginger and salt on the side so every diner can tame the goat aroma and set the saltiness.
Suguki turnips salted with nothing else are held at about 40°C for roughly 14 days, and lactic fermentation turns their purely salty taste distinctly sour. That warm stage, the muro, needs a dedicated fermentation room with temperature and hygiene control; ordinary room temperature or a fluctuating space is no substitute. Before warming, the shrunken leaves and roots should sit firmly under their own brine. The traditional season is winter, when the roots are sweetest, and the finished pickle goes out in small portions with rice, ochazuke or drinks.
Mori soba keeps the buckwheat front and center: cold noodles on a plate, a separate cup of chilled tsuyu, and just the tips dipped before each bite. Rubbing the noodles under running water until it runs clear strips the surface starch and gives them a smooth, slippery finish. The ice-water dip that follows stays short, since soaking too long washes out the buckwheat flavor. With only wasabi, scallion, and nori as garnish, a dipping sauce diluted too far leaves the whole plate tasting flat.
Fermented tea leaves, bitter and deeply savory, anchor this Burmese salad, while shredded cabbage and chopped tomato lighten their weight. Roasted peanuts and fried garlic chips add a salty crunch to every bite. Dressing the leaves first with lime juice, sesame oil and chili flakes, then letting them sit for 5 minutes, softens the bitterness before the vegetables join. In Myanmar it is eaten as a snack as well as part of a meal.
Azara comes from Kesennuma in Miyagi Prefecture, where it was eaten in spring, once cabbage pickled since winter had turned deeply sour. That cabbage simmers with the flesh, head and bones of menuke, a fatty white-fleshed fish, in sake lees and miso, and the lees thicken the sour broth as they dissolve. No salt or soy sauce goes into the pot; the salt left in the pickle and the miso do all the seasoning.
These rice balls were handed out to mikoshi carriers at the autumn Yawatanmachi festival in Tateyama, Chiba Prefecture, which is why they are big and shaped to hold in one hand. Inside is pork belly and fried tofu simmered sweet and salty with bonito flakes. The simmering liquid is cooked down until little remains, since it gets mixed into the rice too. One batch makes twenty.
Mala xiangguo takes the numbing, spicy flavors of Sichuan hot pot and puts them into a dry stir-fry: beef, lotus root, shiitake, and bok choy get only a thin coat of mala sauce, with no broth at all. Everything is patted or shaken dry first: with nothing simmering, any water left on the ingredients just pools in the pan.
With no egg or leavening, the batter bakes into a thin, plain wheat crepe, and all the sweetness comes from the brown sugar rolled up inside. Rolling begins just as the sugar starts melting on the pan, leaving a sticky ribbon of brown sugar through the center of each piece.
White fish is blended smooth with coconut milk, egg white and red curry paste, spread in a thin strip on banana leaves, folded up and grilled on both sides. While the leaf edges char, the paste inside sets like a firm custard and takes on a faint smokiness. In Malaysia and Singapore it is eaten with rice or as a snack on its own.
Diced skin-on sweet potato stays in pieces, while raw sweet potato grated in at the end melts into the broth, giving mild sweetness and a rustic body. Hikado is a Nagasaki winter soup, and its name is linked to the Portuguese picado, meaning finely chopped; it is said to have grown out of a stew that arrived through contact with the West and was remade with local fish and vegetables. No flour slurry is used, and with yellowtail and chicken in the same pot, fish and meat flavors overlap.
Red turnip greens fermented with a live sunki starter and no salt at all make a pickle that is clean and sour rather than salty. The turnips are a red variety from the Kiso area of Nagano. With no salt in play, safety rests on acidity: the liquid is tested with pH strips or a meter and must read 4.6 or lower before anyone tastes it. Yogurt or ordinary kimchi juice cannot stand in for the starter. Mold, a rotten smell or stringy slime means the whole batch is thrown out untasted, and once fermentation is confirmed it moves to the fridge at 4°C or below.
Scallions cooked slowly in oil until they shrink, brown and turn crisp leave behind an amber, fragrant oil that becomes the sauce for these noodles. With only soy sauce, sugar and white pepper added, the result rests almost entirely on patience at the stove. Turning up the heat to hurry the scallions burns them black and leaves the oil bitter. The crisp pieces are lifted out and saved as a crunchy topping.
Larb comes from Isan in northeastern Thailand: minced chicken dressed with lime juice and fish sauce, heaped with sliced shallot and mint. Toasted rice powder is what sets it apart, soaking up the meat juices while adding a nutty aroma and a faint crunch. It is eaten warm or at room temperature, scooped into lettuce or cabbage leaves alongside sticky rice.
Little dishes of rice flour and tapioca batter go into the steamer and come out as soft discs, translucent at the rim and opaque white in the middle. This snack from Hue in central Vietnam is topped with dry, crumbly shrimp, toasted in a dry pan until every bit of moisture is gone; any left behind turns soggy on the cake.
Thin-sliced beef and onion simmer briefly in soy sauce, mirin, sugar and ginger and go over rice with their broth, and the ginger leaves a sharp edge at the end of all that sweetness.
The small potatoes cook whole in their skins, and in a mixed batch the little ones split while the big ones stay raw inside. Matching them by diameter is where it starts. Once the miso, sugar and mirin go in, the pot is shaken rather than stirred, glazing the soft potatoes without breaking them.
Ice shaved into fine, airy flakes and topped with syrup made from Nara strawberries tastes light and fresh rather than heavy. Nara's ties to ice go back a long way: Himuro Shrine there is said to date from 710, and an ice-offering ceremony has continued there.