483 recipes. Page 10 of 21
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A runny poached yolk spills into warm hollandaise and soaks the toasted English muffin underneath, with crisp bacon or ham in between. The sauce is the delicate part. Melted butter is poured as a thin stream over a gentle double boiler; pour too fast and the emulsion splits. If it starts to separate, a teaspoon of cold water whisked in brings it back. The poaching water should only show small bubbles, never a hard boil.
Fish cakes from Kagoshima go by tsukeage at home, even though much of Japan calls them satsuma-age. The white fish paste is softened with squeezed cotton tofu and egg and sweetened with sugar, local sake, and light soy sauce. Warm, they are a side dish or drinking snack, and once cooled they go into lunchboxes or simmered dishes.
Each piece stands cut side up in a muffin tin, so a dark spiral of black sesame shows across the top. There is no croissant-style lamination: an enriched yeast dough kneaded with butter is spread with sesame paste and honey, rolled up and sliced.
Breaded pork loin fried to a deep golden brown is sliced thick and set beside a Japanese curry made sweet with well-browned onion and carrot. Where the curry touches the cutlet the crust softens while the rest stays crunchy, and each bite shifts between the two. Panko pressed firmly all the way to the edges keeps the coating from peeling away in the oil. The curry base cooks in a little of the reserved frying oil rather than fresh fat.
Split open a coin-stamped Korean 10-won bread and mozzarella stretches out in long strands, with sweet corn kernels scattered through the salty cheese. The batter is mixed only until no dry flour remains, since extra stirring turns the thin crust tough instead of lightly crisp.
Meatballs of ground beef and tofu simmer in anchovy broth, and when they fail, it is usually the mixture's fault. Tofu that still holds water, or a ball with a cracked surface, tends to fall apart in the pot. The tofu gets squeezed hard, and each ball is pressed smooth wherever it splits.
Tuna batter, mixed with chopped onion and carrot, is spread thin on single perilla leaves, and each leaf works as a base plate that keeps the patty in one piece when it is flipped.
Glass noodles, shrimp, squid, pork, napa cabbage, and wood ear fill a clear chicken broth, finished with half a hard-boiled egg on top. The dish came from Fuzhou in China's Fujian province, where it was a celebration food, and reached Kumamoto by way of Nagasaki in the late Meiji era. Today it appears at Chinese restaurants and home tables in central Kumamoto as lunch, dinner, or a meal after drinking. The seafood is added only after the pork and firm vegetables have cooked, which keeps the shrimp and squid from turning rubbery. To keep the broth clear, the glass noodles are boiled and rinsed separately, warmed in the soup only at the end, and the heat is cut as soon as the sesame oil and scallion are added.
Spinach wilted briefly in butter takes the place of bacon or ham, sitting between a toasted English muffin and a soft poached egg under hollandaise. Moisture is what ruins it: squeeze the spinach hard and keep the toasted halves spread apart so their steam does not turn them soggy. Fresh eggs hold a neater shape in the poaching water, and the hollandaise needs a gentle bain-marie, since too much heat splits it.
Eggs poach right in a thick, spiced tomato sauce, a pan dish cooked across the Middle East and North Africa. Cumin, smoked paprika, and peperoncino are fried in olive oil with onion and pepper before the tomatoes go in, so their aroma runs through the whole pan. The sauce is reduced until it can hold a hollow for each egg, and the whites set while the yolks stay loose. Tear bread, break a yolk, and drag it through the sauce.
A generous amount of black sesame paste bakes the loaf a deep grey-brown, and while it is in the oven the kitchen smells of toasting sesame. Only a little baking powder goes in, so it rises modestly and the crumb stays tight. The sesame flavor deepens if you wait until the next day to eat it.
A freshly fried pork cutlet is warmed briefly in sweet tsuyu broth with onion and bound with softly set egg, so the underside soaks up broth while the top keeps some crunch. Nicking the sinew along the edge of the loin before breading stops the meat from curling, letting it lie flat over the rice.
Korean street vendors sell this egg bread in winter; here it bakes in a home oven. Muffin cups stand in if you lack the special molds, and eggs left at room temperature cook more evenly on top. After about 15 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius, the white is set and the yolk sits between soft and firm.
Each perilla leaf is folded around a thin layer of beef and tofu, and a bite goes through the egg coating to the leaf's aroma before it reaches the meat. Packing in more filling would bury that aroma under the beef, which is why it is spread thin, right to the edges of the leaf.
It tastes like Chinese home-style tomato and scrambled egg turned into a noodle soup, with sweet-sour tomato broth, soft egg curds and fresh noodles. The eggs are folded briefly and lifted out while still slightly wet, then return for only a minute at the end; fully cooked at the start, they would toughen in the final simmer. Pressing the tomatoes as they cook draws out the red juice that lets the pieces and the stock blend instead of sitting apart, and cooking them down well deepens the savory flavor. A little soy sauce and sugar only round off the tomato's acidity. Fresh noodles cook fast in the hot broth and come off the heat while the centers are still slightly firm.
Pale yellow with no browning outside and barely set, almost custardy curds inside, a French omelette gets rolled into a neat oval. The French call that soft center baveuse. With so few ingredients, heat control and how you move the pan decide nearly everything. The eggs are beaten only until yolk and white are even, without whipping in bubbles, and poured in while the butter is still foaming, before it browns. From the moment the eggs hit the pan, the whole thing should be done within 90 seconds; too much heat colors the surface and tightens the texture. Keep additions to herbs such as chives rather than heavy fillings.
A large scallop shell serves as the pot here, not as a source of meat: miso broth simmers in it and an egg sets into soft curds. The broth comes from grilled dried sardines and katsuobushi, salted with red miso, and flat sheets of dried wheat gluten called itafu soak it up before the egg goes in. It is a home dish from Tsugaru and Shimokita in Aomori, eaten with rice.
Split one by hand while it is still warm and a strong roasted sesame smell rises from the grey crumb. Black sesame powder is mixed into the flour, and the dough is brought together with cream and egg instead of milk, then pressed into a 2.5cm round without kneading.
Big flakes of smoked haddock and halved hard-boiled eggs show through rice tinted yellow with curry powder. Haddock is a cod relative, and the smoked fillets used here are the kind sold for cooking, so they need to be cooked through, not eaten straight from the pack.
Coarsely chopped roasted peanuts crunch through a soft, buttery crumb in these mold-baked street cakes. Grinding the peanuts too fine keeps the nutty flavor but loses the crunch. They stay chunky, with a few pieces set on top for looks.
Ham, imitation crab, king oyster mushroom and scallion, all cut to the same length and threaded in turn, make up kkochi-jeon, a regular on ancestral rite and holiday tables. One bite brings the salt of the ham, the spring of the crab stick, the firm grain of the mushroom and the scallion's green smell all at once.
Pork back bones and trotters boil hard for hours until their collagen and fat emulsify into a milky broth thick enough to feel sticky on the lips. Soaking and blanching the bones beforehand cuts down the porky smell. That rolling boil is the opposite of the gentle simmer used for clear stocks, and it is what separates tonkotsu from an ordinary pork soup. When the pot runs low, it is topped up with hot water, never with a lower flame. Thin, firm noodles, pork belly chashu braised in soy sauce and mirin, a soft-boiled egg, and sliced green onion top the bowl. The chashu slices thin most easily when made a day ahead and chilled, and the eggs marinate in its braising liquid.
Thick slices of bread soak up a vanilla and cinnamon egg mixture, then brown slowly in butter until golden outside and soft in the middle. Day-old, slightly dry bread absorbs it more evenly, and medium-low heat with no pressing lets the center warm through before the outside darkens.
The negi go into the dry pot first, no oil, and brown at the edges before the warishita is poured in, a premixed blend of soy sauce, mirin, sugar, and sake. Cabbage, shiitake, grilled tofu, and shirataki each get their own patch of the pot, and the thin beef goes in a few slices at a time, lifted out as soon as it is cooked.