Nobu- immutable but reliable

In a world of ever changing restaurants and menus, it's hard to keep up with what you should order where. Nobu is steadfast - stubborn even - in its never changing menu. They make a small effort to move items on and off the menu at seemingly random intervals, but anything that you have ever ordered is always available as long as they have the ingredients... especially if you're a celebrity.

The restaurant is rather dark as usual, so all the green things like the cilantro in the middle of the yellowtail jalapeno look black.

This is one of their most classic dishes, and is always a good starter. This reminded me that when I made it at home, I cut my fish a little too small, and my jalapeno pieces were too big.

Shishito peppers: Once again they're green in person. The pile of white stuff is rock salt. 1 in 12 is supposed to be spicy, but we didn't get any spicy ones in our batch! boo! Nobu makes another similar version that's tossed in a miso-based sauce with some roasted mushrooms.

Rock shrimp! Another classic. Just like the yellowtail jalapeno, it's gotten so popular that even famous chefs like Morimoto now have it on their menu. But somehow after all these years, Nobu still makes it the best.

Mixed mushroom salad. I've actually never had this before. It was good. It would have liked more mushrooms of different textures.

Fried rice cubes with tuna. Another item that I've actually never had before (I guess I'll have to post about Nobu at least 2 other times to cover all of the other dishes). It was pretty good, but the execution was poorly thought out. The tuna was cemented into a single block by the generous (probably mayo-based) sauce. It's hard to scoop with the little wooden spoon, and nearly impossible to scoop with the rice cube that's barely attached to is bamboo toothpick.

Wagyu beef gyoza. One of the best dumplings I've ever had that's not dimsum. They seem to have changed the dipping sauce into this thicker paste instead of the ginger soy. I take back what I said earlier about their menu being immutable!

...just kidding.

Sushi platter. Their sushi is extremely fresh. Their rolls aren't exactly fancy or creative, but that's not what they're going for. The temperature, rice, and tension of the rolls are always perfect.

Do you notice something wrong with this picture?

I did. There were 4 pieces of uni for a table of 9 people. This is no time to be polite.

We were still hungry so we added the miso cod on butter lettuce, which has a better picture in my previous post.

We also got this whitefish with chive and sesame. I'm not sure what's in this sauce, but it's a "warmer" version of the yuzu soy that's on the yellowtail jalapeno. I think that it's something mixed with slightly heated oil. We were actually trying to go for the whitefish with chilies and roasted garlic, but maybe we'll get that next time.

In spite of the stagnant menu, I really appreciate their reliability. Like a proper multimillion-dollar multi-national chain, the food is consistent from visit to visit, location to location. As long as I don't go every week, I have a great appreciation for that consistency. The menu is also long enough that I can visit 3 times in a row without repeating anything... except for the lychee martini, which I have at least one of during every visit.

Kung Pao Chicken

This is a great example of how making tender chicken can be really easy... and how restaurants fool you into thinking that they're making an effort.

Kung pao chicken (to me) is all about tender chicken and crunchy other stuff. All that really requires is making tender chicken. It's easier than you think.

Cut the chicken into little chunks with a knife or kitchen shears. Season with salt and pepper.

Now the important part: I add about 1.5 teaspoons of corn starch per pound of chicken, and just enough water so that the corn starch turns into paste and coats the chicken. If there's too much water, just dump it out. If there's too much corn starch... add more water.

I like to massage it all together with my fingers so that I know that the chicken is evenly coated. If you're a pansy and afraid of salmonella, you can use a utensil, but you have to make sure that everything is mixed really well.

It's hard to overcook chicken if you use corn starch. The paste encases the moisture.

You can also do the following 2 things to keep your chicken even better:

1. Only put the chicken in after your oil is nice and hot, so you should hear a sizzle right away especially since the chicken is a little moist. Because of that, you probably want to make sure your cornstarch and water mixture isn't too watery or inconsistently mixed so you don't burn yourself. This makes the chicken bouncy.

2. Keep the lid on while cooking. It makes things really noisy as the water drops into the burning oil, and it's probably not the best thing for your pot, but then your chicken cooks more evenly, and you don't have to move the pieces around all the time.

While you're saving time not stirring the chicken, you can cut up the celery and gather all the crunchy stuff like cashews, snap peas, and diced carrots. We just used celery and cashews.

Once your chicken is nice and white and not translucent, you can test to make sure that they're cooked and not pink in the center. I just stab a piece with a chopstick and note the color of the liquid coming out. If there's no liquid then you fell asleep at the wheel and your chicken is slightly overcooked, but that's okay because the cornstarch should have saved you. The chicken should be a little bouncy.

Now you can throw in whatever sauces you want and all the crunchy stuff!

Mix to your tastes until the veggies perfectly cooked. You can just time this by tasting the vegetables occasionally after they change color.

Ours was nice and spicy. Because of the corn starch, the sauce also sticks to everything.

We made enough to feed a family of 8. No wonder I'm having trouble fitting into my pants.

Scallion Pancakes

This is a situation where mother does not know best. There are 2 ways to make scallion pancakes: the liquid pancake batter version, and the dough version with layers. My mother always made the former, and I always preferred the latter, so I this morning I decided to experiment a little.

A coworker mentioned an old family recipe over dinner that involves rolling the dough and the re-rolling it to make the layers. I've heard of this method, but it got me thinking...

I want the pancakes to be nice and flakey, so that means less water. I decided to use hot water dough, because it requires less water. I poured boiling water into 1.5 cups of flour while stirring rigorously with a fork until it looks clumpy like the second picture. It probably took at most 0.5 cups of water.

I then kneaded the dough until it's homogenous. Be careful - it's hot. Then I covered the bowl and let it sit.

The defining ingredient of scallion pancakes has to be sliced very thinly, unlike the recipe for pajeon, which are korean pancakes. I just realized that I never posted about them, which is kind of surprising... But that's for another day when I have a few other ingredients.

Prep: I mixed some vegetable oil and sesame oil which will be both the oil that goes into the pancake, and the pan frying oil. The dough was separated into smaller pieces. With several dough balls, I can make the pancakes in several different ways and figure out how I like them the best.

Dough: I find that it's best to roll the dough into very thin long rectangular shapes. This is to make your life easier in later steps.

Filling: Since in Chinese, these are called cong you bing, or scallion *oil* pancake, you should be a little generous with the oil. I find that the best amount is just enough such that your fingers can move smoothly over the surface of the dough, but not so much that you can collect pools of oil. I also like to make sure that the oil goes all the way to the near edge, where you're going to start rolling. That way you get the maximum number of layers.

In the picture above is about the maximum amount of scallions you should put on your dough. I would use somewhere between 50%-75% of the amount shown in the picture for the best results.

You then roll up the dough, gathering the scallions into the roll as you go. I find that you don't have to wind this up so tightly such that there's tension on the dough, but don't wind it up so loosely that there are big air bubbles either. A few air bubbles never hurt a pancake.

The coil can also be somewhat relaxed. Just make sure to fold the end under the coil (seen in the picture above) so that it doesn't come apart.

To reflatten the dough, you can press it down with the palm of your hand, or go over it a few times VERY CAREFULLY with a rolling pin. The one above is by far the flattest of my pancakes.

Making this coil much bigger is almost impossible. This is why the dough should start off as a long rectangle, so you don't have to get too messy at this step.

Here is the one with the best coil tightness vs. pancake flatness. They are then pan fried in about a tablespoon of oil. You definitely want enough oil such that it really cooks into the dough and imparts that nutty flavor. The oil must be hot enough such that the moment you lower the pancake into the pan, you can hear the sizzle.

They're fried until golden brown.

I like to serve them with a spicy sauce.

I made a big old pile of these with varying flatness, amounts of oil/scallion, and coil tightness. I cut them up and went over each with the bf.

His favorite was what he called "the donut" which was just the coil very lightly smushed with the palm of my hand. I was a little upset... this was by far the easiest to make, and would have saved me a lot of smushing, rolling, and cleaning time. When you roll out the coiled pancake, wet dough and oil get onto the work surface, and then you have to clean it a little before the next pancake.

My favorite was the one that I've been describing in the recipe above: generous amount of oil with a sprinkling of scallions, and a relatively loose coil. The thinness means that the oil inside the layers of the pancake also cooked, making layers of fluffy crust.

I'm so glad that I finally have a go-to scallion pancake recipe... and that I can make half of them without  doing the last step of re-rolling the coil!

Stuffed Lotus

I made this during the holidays and unfortunately lost some pictures.... like the pre-cut lotus and the meat filling.

Lotus root is one of those under-appreciated tubers in the Western potato-obsessed world. When you first get it, it's like a giant potato. You need to wash it, cut the ends of, peel it with a potato peeler, and then wash it again.

The roots grow in pretty murky waters underneath beautiful flat leaves and multi-petaled flowers. But they grow in murky waters. I've never seen a lotus root that's not muddy.

I cut my pieces crosswise about 3/4-1 cm thick.

I had some extra bok choy from a previous meal which I blanched and diced. It's then mixed with green onions, ground pork, and all sorts of random stuff that I wanted in my filling: ginger, soy sauce, mirin, salt, chili peppers, shredded carrot, and reconstituted mushrooms.

Stuffed and raw. It's like a lotus sandwich.

The stuffed lotus is then rolled around in a scrambled eggs and then flour, and pan fried. If I had a deep fryer, I'd dip it in batter and fry it, but I don't.

Here's the normal fried version! The lotus on the outside has a tiny bit of crunch and the inside is like a meat patty.

I had way too much filling, so I made some inside-out stuffed lotuses, which is basically a slice of lotus surrounded by the meat filling. Some might say that this version tastes even better!

I also forgot to take a picture of the pile of stuffed lotuses, and by the time I remembered that I needed a picture, they had already been eaten.

Lobster Egg Custard

The egg is somewhat symbolic of the new year - the beginning of a new cycle.

I also love love love cooking eggs.

Steamed egg custards have become extremely popular in top NYC restaurants. Brushstroke had one submerged in a sweet and savory dashi-based soup with a piece of uni floating on top, and North End Grill had a lobster one, that was more of a lobster bisque with lots of green onion and bonito flakes (They claimed that it had pieces of lobsters folded inside, but it didn't.)

I decided to make my own version that's a combination of the two.

It's a really simple dish, but because it's the holidays, I wanted to make it... a little more special.

I did what North End Grill claimed they did. I picked up 2 lobster tails, cut out the meat, rolled them around in hot butter, and put them at the bottom of my egg custard bowls (that need to be steam proof).

I wanted the lobster to have some fat clinging onto it, but given the steam time of 5-10 minutes, it should be cooked just from the steaming alone even when it's submerged in the egg liquid.

In a pot on the side, I recreated something similar to Brushstroke's sauce. I boiled some konbu (dried seaweed) and the lobster tail shells in a mixture of water and veggie stock, and then added soy sauce, mirin, sugar, and green onions. I let that boil for about 15 minutes before fishing the konbu and lobster tails out. And then I added a mixture of corn starch and cold water, and let it simmer to thicken.

The egg part is the simplest. I scrambled 4 eggs and added some green onions. In the usual version, you just add 1.5x water or stock to the egg mixture, combine, and steam for 5-10 minutes and you're done.  Even the green onions are optional. You can eat your custard with soy sauce or plain.

1.5x the egg mixture is about 2/3 of my stock. Since I made fresh stock, I had to let it cool before adding it to the egg mixture, or it would partially cook the egg, and the custard would no longer be silky smooth. If you want to be really fancy, you can strain the bubbles out, but I'm eating this with a sauce, and I really don't care.

I continued to simmer the remaining 1/3 of my stock so that the sauce would be nice and gooey and cover the bites of the custard nicely.

It puffed up while steaming probably because I left so many air bubbles inside. Oh well... But once you open the lid, it'll subside. I only steamed the custard for 10 minutes, because I cooked my 4 eggs in 2 batches. If you're not sure, just jiggle the pot a little. You can easily tell if it's set by the way the custard moves.

The custard is nice and flat once you uncover the lid. Here's a picture of it with a sauce! I guess it could be flatter. I took a knife and ran it around the edge of the bowl so that the sauce can seep in the side.

There was a piece of lobster in almost every bite. This is a dish best enjoyed hot. You can see the steam in the background of the picture.

Finally got a piece without lobster at the end. You can see the silky consistency of the egg custard - it's almost like silken tofu.

Now that we've had the egg... perhaps we'll have chicken next!