813 recipes. Page 9 of 34
Curry, stir-fry noodles, and Asian recipes
Set with agar, this sweet potato yokan cuts with clean, upright corners, then the dense potato softens on the tongue. The boiled potato has to be pushed through a fine sieve while still hot, which leaves the coarse fibers behind.
Sukiyaki-thin slices of sirloin hit a very hot griddle for about 30 seconds, then a lemon soy sauce with grated onion and garlic is poured in around them. Being so thin, the meat soaks up the sauce and its own juices almost at once. In Sasebo, the leftover sauce and juices are stirred into rice once the meat is gone.
The Thai name translates roughly as bland soup, and next to spicy dishes like som tam or tom yum that is exactly its job: a gentle, clear broth that gives the palate a rest. It is still seasoned, with fish sauce, and the pork meatballs carry nothing but white pepper so the meat tastes like itself. Silken tofu, napa cabbage, and glass noodles fill out the bowl.
A bed of cooked rice, rice koji and salt matures under refrigeration for at least a month before any vegetable touches it. After that, cucumber, carrot, eggplant or turnip needs only one night in it. The pickle comes from Nihonmatsu in Fukushima, where it helped farming households keep abundant vegetables and gave them a ready side dish during the busy rice-planting season. The long wait happens only at the start, because the finished bed is reused for batch after batch.
Translucent rice sheets come out of the steamer soft enough to roll around chopped shrimp, then get a lightly sweet soy sauce poured over the top. Hong Kong dim sum tables rarely go without them, and street carts there steam them to order, filling them with char siu or beef instead, or rolling them plain. This version uses rice flour with cornstarch rather than tapioca, and because the starch settles fast, the batter needs a stir before every pour. Too thick a layer makes the roll heavy and doughy, while too thin a layer tears during rolling. The shrimp are done only when firm and opaque all the way through, not when the sheet turns translucent.
Okara (soy pulp) is dry-toasted until crumbly, then mixed with vinegar-cured sardine, salted cucumber and carrot, and sweet simmered fried tofu, all held together by a thick peanut and miso dressing. The dish comes from the Boso coast of Chiba, and each portion is squeezed by hand into a small rice-bale shape. Store-bought okara added straight from the pack carries too much water and turns the mix soggy, which is why it is toasted first. The salted vegetables and the vinegar-rinsed sardine also need to be well drained, or the shaped bales slump. Toasty okara, salty fish, sweet vinegared miso and yuzu peel land in a single bite.
Bird's eye chili, shallot, and fresh turmeric are blended into the paste for this Malay coconut chicken, which comes out hot, pale gold, and brothy rather than thick. It simmers uncovered and gently, and stops well before reducing to a sauce, leaving thin liquid around the thighs. Fresh turmeric gives an earthy, slightly bitter smell as the paste fries, while the lemongrass is only there to perfume the broth and comes out before serving.
This is the shortcake you see in Japanese bakeries: three layers of airy sponge, raised only by whipped eggs, filled with cream and sliced strawberries. Pick out the best-looking berries for the top before you slice the rest.
The name comes from fusuberu, the work of grilling freshly caught loach and drying it in the smoke of the hearth. That dried loach is ground to powder and simmered for about an hour with grated burdock, grated daikon and a red chili into a thick, spicy sauce, which is poured over hot, freshly pounded mochi. In Kurihara, Miyagi Prefecture, it has been eaten at New Year, weddings, memorial services and the turning points of the farming year.
Flour whisked into miso turns this eggplant and green pepper stir-fry into something closer to a thick, clinging coating than a sauce. Small dried sardines fry in the oil with the eggplant for a salty, savory note, and the finished pan should have no loose water beneath the vegetables.
In Ino, Kochi, dried sweet potato goes by hera, and yudebera means whole potatoes boiled for a long time, dried, sliced into rounds, and dried again. Rehydrated and simmered with azuki and sugar, they bring a chewy bite against the soft, mealy beans. Unlike sweet red bean soups with flour dumplings, this one is finished just moist enough to scoop with a spoon.
Boso Peninsula fishermen in Chiba used to carry namerou, mackerel chopped fine with miso, up into the hills in abalone shells and grill or steam it there, and sangayaki grew out of that habit. The fish and miso are chopped together until the paste is sticky enough to lift as one mass, then mixed with ginger, onion and green pepper. Each shell is topped with a shiso leaf and grilled until the mound puffs and turns opaque all the way through. It goes with rice or with drinks.
Fishing villages in Shizuoka make this summer soup from raw bonito pounded with miso and umeboshi, then loosened with ice water. Since nothing is cooked, the bonito must be labeled for raw eating. It is pounded coarsely, leaving small pieces rather than a paste, and eaten as soon as it is mixed.
Shogoin turnip sliced paper-thin is layered with kombu and chili in a cooled sweet vinegar that the kombu turns slightly viscous. The Kyoto name means roughly a thousand sheets, a nod to the many thin slices. It is a short two-stage cure, one day in salt and one in sweet vinegar, meant to keep the turnip fresh and tenderly crisp.
Spread across a very hot pan and left alone for a moment, the noodles pick up crisp, browned patches while the centers stay chewy, and that contrast defines chow mein. It depends on dry ingredients: noodles boiled just short of tender and cooled, bean sprouts shaken free of water, and vegetables pulled before they weep. A thin coat of sesame oil on the drained noodles stops them from fusing into a clump as they cool. High heat from start to finish keeps liquid from pooling in the pan, where it would steam the noodles instead of frying them. Oyster sauce and soy give the strands a glossy, salty coating.
Kuzukiri starch noodles, wakame, sudare-fu, konjac, carrot, udo and cucumber are cut long and thin and arranged by color around a bowl of thick sesame and white miso sauce for dipping. Around Kaga in Ishikawa it was served at funerals and memorial services in place of sashimi, and the konjac is still sliced thin like raw fish. Each component is prepared its own way, so slippery noodles, springy konjac and crisp vegetables stay distinct on the plate.
Fried chicken gets one firm press in a mortar, enough to crack the crisp skin but not shred the meat, and a coarse sambal of red chili, boiled garlic, salt, and lime juice goes into the cracks. That is the Javanese idea behind ayam penyet, smashed chicken. Because the legs are first simmered with garlic, ginger, and salt, the oil only has to blister and darken the skin.
With no wheat flour, just tapioca starch scalded in hot milk and butter, these bake up stretchy and chewy like Brazilian pão de queijo, and the steamed sweet potato adds a gentle sweetness. Parmesan in the dough leaves a salty finish, so they eat more like bread than a sweet snack.
A half sheet of nori is joined to a full one to make the wrapper wider, and inside goes a generous line of sashimi-grade tuna, tsuyu-seasoned rolled omelet, cucumber, pickled radish and simmered burdock. Tuna, radish and omelet are cut into bars of about the same thickness, with fine strips of cucumber filling the gaps, and that is what gives each slice a full, even center.
At Sri Lankan street stalls, kottu is made by chopping roti on a griddle with two metal blades, clattering away; at home a knife and a single pan do the job. The bread soaks up curry powder and soy sauce among cabbage, carrot and egg, and only its edges turn a little crisp.
Flour from parched glutinous and short-grain rice takes in hot sugar syrup, added in four or five pours, and turns into soft mochi without any steaming or boiling. The toasted-rice smell stays with it. Once the slab has cooled right to the center, a knife dusted with potato starch cuts it into bars.
Coconut milk and palm sugar in the marinade caramelize on the grill, giving the pork neck dark, sticky edges. The meat is sliced thin and folded three times onto each skewer, with small gaps between the pieces letting heat reach the thickest fold quickly.
Soybeans soaked for a full night and day, simmered until their raw beany smell is gone and ground into a smooth paste called go, give this Fukui miso soup its body and a gentle nuttiness, and a soft foam rises as it heats. In Fukui it is still served as temple food at Hoonko, the major Jodo Shinshu observance around the anniversary of Shinran's death, known locally as Honko-san.
With only eggplant, red shiso leaves and salt, the pickle ferments at room temperature until a clear sourness, not the purple color, says it is ready. The salt is weighed against the eggplant alone. Only the dark brown liquid that rises on the first day is poured off, and after that the eggplant stays submerged in the brine that keeps coming up.