813 recipes. Page 34 of 34
Curry, stir-fry noodles, and Asian recipes
Sugar dissolved in bonito dashi makes this Tokyo-style rolled omelet noticeably sweeter than Kansai dashimaki. The roll is given a light brown outside and, still hot, wrapped in a bamboo mat to set its square shape.
Shrimp, sweet potato, eggplant, and shishito peppers share the same oil but not the same timing, and each piece comes out as soon as it is done. The batter is cold water and egg with cake flour, stirred only a few times with chopsticks and used while small lumps remain.
Chicken thighs are pressed skin side down with a spatula until the skin turns deep gold, then glazed over low heat with soy sauce, mirin, sake, and sugar, plus garlic and ginger, spooned over until it clings.
The thick cream from the top of the coconut milk is heated first until a little oil shows, and the green curry paste is fried in that before the rest of the milk goes in. Eggplant can cook until soft, but the shrimp go in last and come off the heat the moment they turn pink and curl. Thai basil and lime juice are added off the heat.
The duck breast is cooked slowly skin side down to render out its fat before it meets the curry, so the browned skin still tastes of the pan even in a rich coconut red curry. Bamboo shoots, red pepper and Thai basil go in with it.
With fish sauce as the only added seasoning, frying the yellow curry paste in a dry pot until it darkens slightly and turns fragrant does most of the flavor work. Cut large, the potatoes simmer quietly with the chicken and onion in the coconut milk until a chopstick slides in, staying in whole chunks that soak up the sauce.
Peeled boiled eggs simmer with the pork in coconut water, fish sauce and caramel long enough for the whites to turn deep brown. In Vietnamese homes the sauce is spooned over rice, and the eggs pick up even more flavor if the pot cools overnight and is reheated.
Long, translucent strands pushed through a wooden press give tokoroten its noodle shape, though it is really a jelly made from tengusa seaweed. Tengusa has been gathered around Shizuoka's Izu Peninsula for centuries, and households and small sweet shops there once sold tokoroten as an everyday children's snack. Local accounts say makusa, common on the west side of Izu, sets soft and slightly sticky, while obusa from the east side gives thicker, firmer strands. On its own it tastes of almost nothing, and the topping decides what it becomes: sweet vinegar, mustard, aonori, and sesame make it savory, while roasted soybean flour and dark sugar syrup turn it into a chilled sweet.
Five kinds of chicken offal share one pan: liver, gizzard, heart, kinkan (unlaid egg yolks), and himo (oviduct). They go into boiling sugar-soy sauce together and are tossed over strong heat until the small amount of sauce reduces to a glossy coat. The dish comes from Kofu in Yamanashi, where a soba shop is said to have created it to use parts that were being thrown away. Kinkan and himo rarely turn up in standard offal packs, so a specialist butcher is the usual source.
Ground chicken is pressed and broken up in the pan, joined by fine shreds of ginger, then cooked down in soy sauce, mirin, and sugar. Turn off the heat while a thin film of liquid still coats the pan, and every crumb carries a dark glaze while the meat stays moist. Spread over rice, it becomes a soboro bowl.
In Gujo, Gifu, cabbage pickles that had gone too sour and salty over the winter were, by local account, soaked to draw some of that out and then cooked again in red miso broth. Leek, eggplant, shiitake, and konnyaku join them, and the pot sits over the lowest flame until the cabbage is very soft and only a little liquid is left.
Small new potatoes are fried whole and slowly until their thin skins wrinkle, then simmered in dashi and rolled in miso, sugar, and mirin until a thick glaze clings to them. The dish belongs to Yuzurihara in Uenohara, Yamanashi. Seida honors Nakai Seidayu, an official who promoted potato growing after a famine in the late Edo period, and tamaji means small potatoes, a reminder that undersized tubers were never wasted. The fried skins turn savory while the centers stay fluffy.
A Shanghai soup dumpling holds both a pork filling and a mouthful of hot broth inside its thin wrapper. The broth begins as pork stock jelly, chopped and folded into the filling, which melts as the dumplings steam. Set one on a spoon, nick the skin, and drink the broth before dipping the rest in black vinegar with slivered ginger.
Spring bamboo shoots, split, boiled, and sun-dried, curl into triangular pieces that look like dried squid, hence yama-surume, mountain squid. In Kumamoto the dried shoots were restored throughout the year for farm-season meals, festival Buddhist dishes in the Kuma area, and drinking snacks. Simmered slowly in strong dashi and light soy sauce, the strips become tender yet springy. Dry wood ear strips go in only at the end, soaking up the last of the broth while keeping their crunch.
Made with a knife and no heat at all, this summer side from the Murayama and Okitama areas of Yamagata went onto rice by the spoonful during the hot farming season. The eggplant and cucumber are chopped small, and the myoga, ginger, shiso, long onion, and green chili finer still. Bonito flakes and dashi soy sauce go on just before it is served.
The name suggests a cold soup, but Yonezawa's hiyashiru is really ohitashi: blanched vegetables steeped in plenty of chilled soy-seasoned stock and eaten with their liquid. The stock comes from the water used to soak dried scallop, while porous freeze-dried konnyaku and dried shiitake soak it up. Spinach, cabbage, soybean sprouts, and carrot share the bowl with yukina, a local winter green given only a quick dip in boiling water to keep its snap. An hour to a night in the fridge lets everything take on the broth.
Boned, opened loach and thin shavings of burdock simmer in sweet soy-seasoned dashi in a shallow pan, then beaten egg is poured over to bind it all softly. Unlike marunabe, which cooks the fish whole, this Tokyo hot pot uses split loach, and the burdock goes in first to give the broth its earthy flavor. A sprinkle of sansho pepper goes on just before eating.
Cucumber, round eggplant, myoga, green chili, and miso-pickled daikon are minced almost as fine as rice grains in this northern Nagano summer side. Over warm rice it works like a fresh vegetable furikake, and it also goes with somen or chilled tofu. One story says the name comes from tossing in a bit of everything and chopping it all very fine. Squeezing the fresh vegetables hard keeps the mix crisp and stops their water from diluting the salty pickle.
Twice-fried chicken thigh in a potato starch coating is sliced onto torn lettuce and buried under sliced scallion and cheongyang chili, a sharp Korean green chili. The sauce, equal parts soy sauce and vinegar with sugar, is poured over just before eating.
A spoonful of yuzu marmalade goes into the soy marinade, so when you bite through the crust the chicken underneath tastes faintly sweet and of yuzu.
A dish from Oita's fishermen: sashimi-grade yellowtail rests for just ten minutes in a cold marinade of toasted sesame, soy sauce, sugar, and sake. One story says the recipe was learned from fishermen from Okinawa (Ryukyu); another says the name drifted from rikyu-ae, a sesame dressing. It goes to the table cold, or over hot rice, sometimes with tea poured on as ochazuke.