Asian Recipes

Prep 20min Cook 10min 4 servings

Go-ae (Eggplant with Crushed Edamame Dressing)

Boiled edamame, crushed into a thick bean dressing called go and seasoned with sugar, miso, and dashi, coats soft eggplant and fine strips of crisp myoga. In season the dressing turns a vivid green. The dish comes from mountainous Nichinan in Tottori, where scarce farmland made soybeans an important protein and ground beans were used to dress vegetables and mushrooms. Served cool, it is a mild summer side for rice.

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Korean Tomato Egg Fried Rice

This takes the Chinese home classic of tomato and scrambled egg (xihongshi chao dan) and adds rice to the same pan. Sweet-sour tomato juice stains the rice red, with big, soft pieces of egg running through it.

Prep 10min Cook 10min 2 servings

Noodles Hard

Vietnamese Beef Pho

Beef bones simmered for 6 to 8 hours with star anise, cinnamon, and fire-charred ginger and onion give this pho a broth that stays clear while carrying layers of spice and smoke. The long prep starts with soaking and blanching the bones, which keeps the stock from clouding over those hours. The star anise and cinnamon are toasted in a dry pan only until fragrant and pulled out at once, before they turn bitter. Fish sauce seasons the broth in portions at the end. Raw beef sliced thin is laid over the noodles and cooked right in the bowl by the boiling broth. At the table, bean sprouts, lime, and basil sit on the side so each person can tune the bowl's freshness and acidity.

Prep 30min Cook 480min 4 servings

Asian Medium

Go-dofu with Sesame Soy Sauce

Soy milk and dairy milk are set with kudzu starch and gelatin rather than the nigari used for regular tofu, giving glossy blocks that are pudding-soft but distinctly elastic. This Arita specialty from Saga is served with a sauce of dashi, soy sauce, and ground sesame and finished with yuzu peel or young sansho leaves. Local stories trace it to a kudzu-set soybean method learned from Chinese residents of Nagasaki in the early twentieth century. With brown sugar syrup and kinako instead, it becomes dessert, and the blocks are fried or added to miso soup as well.

Prep 15min Cook 20min 4 servings

Prep 20min Cook 10min 4 servings

Tororo-Jiru (Grated Japanese Yam with Miso Dashi)

Grated jinenjo, a sticky wild Japanese yam, is worked in a mortar and loosened little by little with cooled miso dashi until it pours in a thick ribbon over hot rice. Mariko, in present-day Shizuoka City, was the twentieth of the fifty-three Tokaido post towns, and travelers stopped there for its tororo-jiru. Jinenjo is dug from mid-autumn into winter, and some communities eat the dish on January second.

Prep 25min Cook 55min 4 servings

Hanoi-Style Pho Bo (Vietnamese Northern Clear Beef Noodle Soup)

With dry-pan charred onion and ginger as its only aromatics and no star anise or cinnamon, this northern-style broth tastes cleaner and lighter than spice-heavy pho. Brisket simmered for 40 minutes makes the stock instead of long-boiled bones, and the same beef, sliced thin across the grain, becomes the topping. With so few ingredients, careful skimming of fat and foam shows directly in the bowl, and cilantro and lime add the final lift.

Prep 15min Cook 20min 2 servings

Goan Fish Curry (Tangy Coconut Fish Stew)

Coconut milk makes it look rich and creamy, but tamarind gives it a sharp sourness, and it eats lighter than it looks. Fishing households on Goa's west coast eat this curry with rice every day, and locally the pair is called xitt-kodi. It carries traces of the Portuguese colonial period along with Konkani cooking traditions, and Goans of every religion and class share it.

Prep 25min Cook 25min 8 servings

Tororo Manma (Mountain Yam Rice with Miso Dashi)

Grated mountain yam, loosened with deliberately strong, fully cooled miso soup until it still clings to a spoon, is poured over freshly cooked hot rice. In northern and southern Akita and Yurihonjo, this was eaten during the first three days of the New Year and on the day after a celebration.

Prep 20min Cook 55min 4 servings

Hanoi-Style Chicken Pho (Pho Ga)

Chicken thighs simmered gently for 40 minutes make both the broth and the topping: once they pull apart easily, the meat is shredded along the grain and laid over the noodles. A hard bubble would cloud the stock, so the heat stays low throughout, and fish sauce is added only at the very end to keep its aroma. Onion and ginger charred dark on the outside give the stock a sweet, toasty depth. In the Hanoi manner, scallions and bean sprouts top the bowl, and in Hanoi pho ga is a common breakfast. Lime is squeezed in only at the table to keep its scent bright.

Asian Medium

Vietnamese Fresh Spring Rolls

Through the softened rice paper you can see pink shrimp and green mint, and since nothing is fried, the rolls eat light. Poached pork belly and shrimp share the wrapper with rice noodles, lettuce, and bean sprouts, while the peanut sauce on the side carries most of the seasoning.

Prep 30min Cook 20min 2 servings

Prep 15min Cook 20min 2 servings

Unadon (Japanese Grilled Glazed Eel Rice Bowl)

The eel cooks skin side down first so some of its fat renders out, then gets brushed with a tare of soy sauce, mirin, sake and sugar until glossy. Because of the sugar in the tare, the second coat goes on over low heat, just for shine. Sansho pepper and chopped chives are scattered over the eel once it is on the rice.

Prep 15min Cook 30min 5 servings

Saba Somen (Simmered Mackerel with Somen)

Grilled mackerel is braised in a sweet soy broth, and that same liquid then seasons somen noodles served around the whole fish. The dish belongs to the Kohoku area of Shiga, where mackerel arrived easily over the Saba Kaido, the old road linking Wakasa and Kyoto. It ties to a May custom of sending grilled mackerel to a married daughter busy with rice planting, and to festive tables at Nagahama's Hikiyama festival.

Prep 15min Cook 30min 4 servings

Gonza (Daikon Simmered with Flattened Soybeans)

Uchimame are soybeans softened, flattened with a wooden mallet, and dried, and because they are already thin and split they cook alongside daikon in the same pot. This simmer from eastern Fukui City, also called gonji namasu, was once tied to Hoonko gatherings and ceremonies and is now everyday home food all year.

Prep 20min Cook 35min 10 servings

Uzumi (Rice Hidden under Tofu and Shiitake Soup)

What arrives looks like a clear soup of tofu cubes and sliced shiitake; the rice only appears when a spoon reaches the bottom of the bowl. That hidden portion is kept small so the soup and tofu can cover it completely. The broth comes from kombu and fresh shiitake and is skimmed during simmering to stay clear, and the firm tofu cubes are cooked gently so they hold their edges. Scallion, minced mandarin peel, grated ginger, and crushed sesame go on at the table, each diner adding as much as they like.

Prep 25min Cook 15min 2 servings

Sara Udon (Crispy Noodles with Seafood Thick Sauce)

Crisp fried thin noodles are buried under a hot, glossy sauce of pork, shrimp, squid, and vegetables thickened with potato starch. Chen Pingshun of Shikairo created it in 1899 as a soupless version of champon. Nagasaki still distinguishes the original thick-noodle style from the thin, crunchy style most people eat today, and this recipe follows the latter with store-bought fried noodles. Kamaboko, bean sprouts, and shiitake are added late so the sprouts keep their snap. Where the sauce soaks in, the noodles soften, and the rest stays crunchy.

Asian Medium

Goyori Mame Soybeans with Dried Small Fish

Small fish and shrimp from Osaka Bay, sun-dried together, go into this sweet-salty bean dish as goyori: the mixed catch left over after the saleable pieces were picked out. Dried soybeans are cooked tender with coarse sugar, sake, mirin, and soy, then reduced with the dry-roasted goyori until no liquid remains and the beans shine. It comes from Osaka's Senshu and Kawachi areas, and in Kawachi it also goes by jako mame.

Prep 20min Cook 140min 20 servings

Prep 12min Cook 12min 2 servings

Yaki Onigiri (Japanese Soy-Glazed Grilled Rice Balls)

Salted rice balls grill over medium-low heat, each side left alone for a good while, with a thin coat of soy and mirin glaze brushed on at every turn. The outside becomes a thin, crisp shell, and only the edges where the glaze gathers turn a little chewy. A strip of nori goes around the base, with miso soup and pickled radish alongside.

Prep 10min Cook 15min 2 servings

Rich Sea Urchin (Uni) Cream Udon

Half the uni melts into the cream sauce, spreading its briny sweetness through every strand of udon, while pollock roe (mentaiko) sauteed with garlic stands in for salt. The other half is kept raw for the top, so the same ingredient arrives in two forms: dissolved and creamy in the sauce, cool and custardy on top.

Prep 15min Cook 20min 3 servings

Yaki-saba no Nitsuke (Grilled Mackerel and Onion Simmer)

A mackerel that has already been grilled whole is broken into large pieces and simmered a second time with onion. In inland Tottori, grilled fish kept and traveled well, and cooking it again this way became the habit. Even with the head and backbone gone, small bones stay in the grilled flesh, and a fingertip run along it finds them. Ginger is used twice: thin slices go into the broth, and fine shreds go on top.

Prep 20min Cook 15min 2 servings

Yakitori Rice Bowl (Soy-Mirin Glazed Grilled Chicken over Rice)

Chicken thigh and green onion are threaded onto skewers and cooked in a skillet, then brushed again and again with a thin coat of tare, a sweet glaze of soy sauce, mirin, and sugar. Thigh meat has enough fat to stay juicy through that repeated searing. Laid over hot rice, the glaze runs down between the grains and no extra sauce is needed.

Prep 20min Cook 20min 2 servings

Shan Noodles (Burmese Flat Rice Noodles with Turmeric Meat Sauce)

Served without broth, these Shan-style rice noodles from Myanmar are tossed at the table with a topping of minced chicken cooked in soy sauce, fish sauce, and chili flakes. Garlic and onion sizzled until translucent form the aromatic base, and a final drizzle of warm pan oil carries that fragrance into every strand. The amount of chili flakes alone sets the heat. The noodles come out of the pot 30 seconds short of the package time, so they keep their bounce through the mixing. If the rinsed strands start to stick, a teaspoon of oil tossed through them first keeps them apart.

Asian Hard

Gua Bao (Steamed Bun with Braised Pork)

A soft, folded steamed bun holds a thick slice of pork belly braised in soy sauce, sugar and five-spice, topped with cucumber pickles, cilantro and crushed roasted peanuts. It started as food eaten around the Lunar New Year and is now a night-market snack in Taiwan.

Prep 25min Cook 45min 2 servings