813 recipes. Page 18 of 34
Curry, stir-fry noodles, and Asian recipes
A boneless pork belly slab is rolled, tied with twine, and braised for 90 minutes in soy sauce, mirin, sake, and sugar. Each slice then shows fat and lean spiraled together. Thin slices sold for quick frying cannot be rolled this way, which is why the recipe calls for a whole slab. Those spiral rounds are the familiar ramen topping.
The sauce holds just a teaspoon of gochujang, and what comes through is mostly soy sauce and sesame oil rather than heat. Cucumber, avocado, seaweed salad and chilled cubes of tuna sit in separate sections over brown rice, with the sauce drizzled on right before eating.
Ripe saba bananas are slit into fans, dipped in a rice-flour batter and fried, then given a rough, craggy shell by drizzling extra batter into the oil beside them and pressing the crisp bits on. That shaggy crust is the point of Indonesian pisang goreng, as opposed to a smooth single coat. Bananas with dark-spotted skins give the sweetness and softness the dish needs, and no syrup or sugar goes on top. Draining on a rack keeps the underside crisp.
Pinch two corners of a square of wheat dough together and it takes the shape of a mi, a winnowing basket. In Jikkoku, in Fujikawa, Yamanashi, that shape is said to scoop up good fortune, which is why the soup appears on New Year's morning and at celebrations. The dough goes straight into the broth with the root vegetables instead of being boiled separately, and the flour on its surface gives the soup a light body.
Scallion-infused oil, a hot wok and a quick toss of chili flakes give this red seafood soup its smoky, spicy base. The flakes stay in the oil only briefly, since even a little scorching leaves the whole pot bitter. Chicken stock carries the broth while squid and mussels add their own savoriness, and soy sauce ties the seasoning together and darkens the soup to a reddish brown. Wilted cabbage and onion soften the heat with sweetness. Seafood toughens with long boiling, so once the broth comes up to a boil it is ladled straight over chewy wheat noodles cooked in a separate pot.
Shredded daikon, carrot and cucumber are fanned out in rings with raw salmon in the middle, and everyone tosses the platter high with chopsticks just before eating. Plum sauce and lemon make the dressing sweet and tangy, and sesame seeds add a nutty finish. Pregnant people, children, older adults and anyone with weakened immunity should skip it, because the salmon is eaten raw and even fish sold for raw eating carries some risk.
Egg beaten with a generous amount of dashi and steamed in individual cups sets into a soft, trembling custard that is savory, not sweet. It firms at the edges while the center still wobbles, with the broth flavor up front. Shrimp, sliced shiitake and ginkgo nuts sit at the bottom, and each spoonful turns up something different.
In Tochigi, leftover rice gets a second life: soaked in water, kneaded with flour and miso along with corn, kounago (tiny sand lance fish), aonori seaweed and toasted sesame, then pan-cooked into thick oval cakes. The outside turns lightly browned and firm while the center stays chewy, somewhere between a rice cake and a savory pancake. Drain the soaked rice too thoroughly and it will not bind with the flour, leaving cakes that crumble while shaping.
Cooled cooked rice is rinsed, dried in a low oven for three to four hours, toasted in a dry pan until the grains puff, then bound with syrup into bite-size clusters. The grains need to be dry enough to snap under a fingertip instead of bending, or they stay soggy in the pan. Bits of colored dried mochi are scattered through.
White miso makes a mild, slightly sweet soup and red miso a darker, saltier one. Either way, once the miso is in, the pot does not boil again: the heat is turned off, and only then are the wakame and green onion added.
It is just udon in a broth of bonito flakes and kombu, topped with a few slices of kamaboko fish cake and some scallion. Nearly all the work goes into seasoning that broth so it stays clear and light rather than salty.
Buhari Hotel in Chennai is usually credited with introducing this South Indian fried chicken in 1965. Stories about the name point to a 65th menu item, among other theories, and none is settled. Thigh pieces marinated in yogurt, chili, garlic, and ginger get a sticky coat of egg and cornstarch and are fried twice, which gives a firm, deep-golden outside and a juicy inside. It spread across India as a bar snack with beer. Many restaurants finish it with fried curry leaves, but this version skips that step.
Chicken thigh and shiitake are marinated in soy and oyster sauce, stir-fried, and wrapped in dried lotus leaves with sticky rice that has already been steamed halfway, then steamed again. Nobody moves it to a plate: the leaf is opened and the rice eaten straight off it, and the moment it opens, a rush of lotus-scented steam comes up. Cantonese dim sum restaurants bring it out in a bamboo steamer.
No commercial yeast goes in: a ferment built from glutinous rice and rice koji raises the dough and leaves a clean, sweet aroma in the steamed skin. In Taketa and Bungo-ono in Oita these buns were eaten for Children's Day, Obon, local festivals, and breaks in farm work. They take days, about one for the amazake and 2 to 4 more for it to ferment into a starter, before the red-bean-filled buns are shaped and steamed.
This soup comes from the Shimanto, Niyodo and Monobe river basins in Kochi, where it was made in autumn as the mitten crabs move downstream. The crabs are ground shell and all and strained, and as the liquid boils the crab protein gathers into soft curds; eggplant and a stalk vegetable called ryukyu go in with them. Raw freshwater crab can carry parasites and contaminants, so the recipe never uses crabs you caught yourself, only ones sold for cooking by a licensed supplier.
Thin sheets of buckwheat dough, cut into triangles, simmer with daikon and tofu and are lifted out one at a time for dipping in garlic miso. Each piece has a soft, thin edge and a slightly springier center. The pungent garlic miso carries the flavor, since the buckwheat, tofu, and broth are all mild. The name is local dialect for a piece or edge, and one story ties the dish to scraps left over from soba making in southern Aomori.
Soy sauce and cane vinegar reduce together into a dark, tangy sauce scented with garlic, bay leaves, and whole peppercorns, and the chicken thighs braise right in it. In the Philippines some cooks braise first and fry afterward, but this version sears the skin side at the start to render fat and build color. The vinegar goes in without stirring and is brought to a hard boil first, which drives off its sharpest smell.
Keep the fat that renders from the ground pork, because the onion cooks in it next and needs time to turn deeply golden; rushing that stage leaves the sauce pale. During the low simmer, the sauce is ready for the peeled eggs once it has thickened and the pork looks glossy, and the eggs stay in until their surface turns deep brown. Spoon both meat and sauce over the rice so the liquid soaks into the grains.
A thin, crepe-like wheat wrapper folds around smooth red bean paste, and a salt-preserved Oshima cherry leaf, veined side out, wraps it again so its aroma reaches the wrapper and filling. The Tokyo style traces back to 1717, when Shinroku Yamamoto, a gatekeeper at Chomeiji by the Sumida River, salted fallen cherry leaves and used them to wrap sweets.
Fat from pork small intestine melts into a soy-and-mirin chicken broth and turns it cloudy and rich in this hot pot from Hakata, Fukuoka. Cabbage torn into big pieces soaks up that broth and goes soft and sweet. Once the solids are gone, noodles or rice are added to the remaining broth.
Curry roux dissolved into dashi instead of water gives this bowl a savory, brothy depth that curry rice does not have. The roux turns the stock into a thick gravy that clings to fat udon strands and comes up with every lift of the noodles.
The dish began in Yamaguchi Prefecture when an elementary school nutritionist collected home recipes to widen the lunch menu, and it spread from schools to homes and restaurants. Chicken thigh and burdock root are coated in potato starch, fried, and tossed with edamame in a sweet dashi-soy sauce.
Once the salt-blanched tofu is in the doubanjiang sauce, the spatula is put away and only the pan gets shaken, which keeps the cubes square all the way to the rice. A sprinkle of Sichuan pepper at the end pushes it toward a proper mala taste.
Two kinds of sugar, together matching the bean paste in weight, are worked into it for about an hour before the rice flours go in, giving a dense, chewy, very sweet cake. Despite the word miso in the name, no miso is used; one explanation credits three main ingredients added by the cupful, another the dough's miso-like look. The paste cools to room temperature first, which keeps the rice flour from partly cooking and clumping as it is stirred in. In southern Akita it was packed into tiered boxes and shared at family gatherings and during rest breaks in the farming season.