Secret of Miso Soup - Part 2: Finishing the Soup

Now that you have your beautiful dashi from Part 1 of this post, turning it into miso soup is a breeze.

If you haven't already, reconstitute the wakame in some warm water. It'll plump up nicely. Then chop your tofu into 1/4 inch cubes.

Dried Wakame (left) and Reconsituted Wakame (right)

Now bring your dashi up to the simmer, then add 1 tablespoon white miso.

White Miso

Then add 1 tablespoon red miso.

Red Miso

If you're only using white miso paste, you may wind up needing a bit more than two tablespoons to get it to the saltiness you like. For red miso, start with 1-1/2 tablespoon and add more if you'd like. Once the miso paste is dissolved, add your diced tofu (eyeball it, I usually wind up using a bit less than a box) and your wakame.

Simmer another five minutes to warm the tofu and serve with a sprinkle of scallion.

Secret of Miso Soup - Part 1: The Dashi

Japanese cooking has always intrigued me, but I've never mastered it (or anything close). It always seemed so labor intensive. Also, there's only so much you can get out of a book - many are poorly translated and (gasp) default to the dreaded metric system, requiring yet more work in converting everything to English measurements. And for better or for worse, Japanese cooking hasn't made it onto the Food Network so I never really got a sense of how things are done.

Last year, I was fortunate enough to take a cooking course from Hiroko Shimbo last year and really started getting the hang of things including the much loved miso soup.

There's only one secret to miso soup - you must have the right ingredients. Like much of Japanese cooking, there's not a lot of room for improvisation. Have you noticed how miso soup tastes pretty much the same at every Japanese restaurant? Can't really say the same for hot and sour soup at Chinese restaurants (Chinese cooking is defnitely more freestyle in comparison).

The ingredients may be hard to come by but they do keep well. All are available at Asian markets as well as online. These are the five ingredients you'll need for miso heaven.

Top row from left to right:

1. Kombu - also known as sea kelp. This along with the dried bonito flakes is the basis of dashi, a staple Japanese stock. You can find this at most Asian markets. I picked up a packet from a Chinese market marked "sea weed" but from the appearance of it (very dark, wide pieces, a "dusty" exterior appearance) that is was probably what I was looking for.
2. Katsuobushi - dried bonito flakes. I use the pre-packaged version which I seem to have an easier time finding in Korean and Chinese markets. Japanese markets will carry the larger bag (by large, I mean family size bag of potato chip large).
3. Wakame - seaweed garnish. Completely optional. I happened to see it in the store so picked it up. I like its slippery texture in a miso soup.
4. Tofu. I like the Japanese boxed variety, it's silky and pefect for soup. Pretty much available everywhere.
5. Miso. Commonly available at most markets. If you have a choice and only want to buy one, go with the darker or red miso.



Kombu (far left), Bonito Flakes (top center), Wakame (far right top), Tofu (bottom center) and Miso Paste (bottom right)


I like to use a combination of white and red miso. White miso is a bit sweeter and less salty. Red miso on the other hand is quite salty and has a deep, almost smoky flavor. I like a bit of a salt kick in my soup and when I'm using just the white miso, I find myself having to use a lot more to get the flavor I want. So red and white it is.

Below are a couple different types of packaging. A little goes a long way so unless you are going into the miso soup making business, go for the smallest package you can (which will still in most cases be more than enough for a long, long time).




Miso Paste Options and Packaging: Red Miso (far left), White Miso (top center), Red Miso (bottom center), and White Miso (far right)

  Ingredients:

8 cups water
2 inch piece of kombu
1 small packet of bonito flakes (or a handful if you're using it from the bag)
1 small box of silken tofu
2 tablespoon miso (to taste)
1 tablespoon dried wakame (optional)

Wipe the kombu with a dry cloth, add to water and bring to simmer. Remove kombu just as small bubbles are coming to the surface. You just want the umami essence of the kombu and not a hit you over the head amount of bitter, kelpy taste (which you'll get if you take it all the way up to a boil).

Kombu - Cut off Two Inch Square for Stock

Bring Kombu up to Simmer, Remove before Boil

With the heat off, remove the kombu and add the packet of bonito flake. Let it sink to the bottom and steep for about 10 minutes.

Adding Bonito Flakes Off Heat, after Removing Kombu

Strain through a lined seive to remove all the flakes and kombu sediment. You'll be left with a clear broth that tastes subtly of the sea. Your dashi is now done.

Beautiful Dashi

Next post, making it into miso soup.

Christmas Dinner: Savory Bread Pudding

Topped with Cheese, Ready for Baking

Instead of posting the details of the rest of the Christmas meal (baked ham, mashed potatoes, roasted vegetables) which I'm sure most of you have mastered, I decided to feature one of my favorite side dishes, also known as stuffin muffins. Easy to make ahead then bake along with whatever you're roasting as the main course.

They also freeze beautifully - just reheat in a low oven.

Savory Bread Pudding with Ham and Cheese

Ingredients

8 cups cubed firm white bread (Italian is fine, if you have brioche even better)

3 tblspoon melted butter

¼ lb bacon, small dice

½ lb ham, cut into ¼” cubes

1 large onion, small dice

2 stalks celery, small dice

1 parsnip, small dice (optional)

2 large cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 teaspoon dried thyme (or 1 tblspoon fresh)

½ teaspoon sage

2 cups grated cheese (anything goes, manchego is good so is jack) -- separate into 1.5 cup and .5 cup

3 eggs

1 cup milk or cream

Pinch nutmeg

1/4 to 1 cup chicken stock to moisten (see below)

Muffin tin/foil baking cup

Croutons

• Toss bread with melted butter, salt and pepper
• Place on baking sheet in one layer and bake at 350 until light golden, about 10 to 15 mins. You will need to stir about ½ way. Remove from oven and cool.

Croutons out the Oven

Ham/Vegetables Mixture

• Cook bacon on medium heat until fat is rendered and bacon is almost crispy, about 10 mins
• Lower heat, add ham and sauté until lightly browned, about 5 mins
• Using slotted spoon remove bacon and ham, leaving behind rendered fat
• If fat isn’t enough to coat bottom of pan, add a tblspoon butter
• Raise heat back to medium. Add chopped onion, celery and parsnip and sauté until softened, about 10 mins
• Add garlic, thyme, sage and continue cooking another 2 to 3 minutes
• Salt and pepper to taste (at this point, you can add more sage or thyme if you’d like)

Custard

• Beat eggs with milk or cream until thoroughly incorporated. Add nutmeg, salt, pepper

Putting It Together

• Mix Ham/Vegetable mixture along with any liquid/fat that has accumulated with croutons. Eyeball the proportion, it should be about equal portions of ham/vegetable to croutons. You may wind up not using all the croutons.
• Add in custard mixture
• Add 1.5 cup cheese
• Depending on how dry the croutons are, you may wind up adding ¼ cup to ½ cup chicken stock. The consistency you are looking for is fairly moist – if you press down on a few pieces of crouton with your fingers, it should yield to the touch but still hold its shape and not be too 'drippy"
• Let sit in fridge until ready to bake, or bake immediately. If not baking immediately, give it a mix before you fill the cups to redistribute any liquid that accumulates at the bottom of the bowl.

Mixture of Croutons, Vegetables, Bacon, Ham, Spices, Egg and Milk and Stock

Baking

• Spray or lightly butter muffin tins or foil baking cups
• Spoon in bread mixture. Don’t pack it but do give it a little push to make sure everything is making contact.
• Sprinkle top with remaining ½ cup cheese
• Bake 35 to 40 mins in 350 oven until golden and set





(Almost) Southern Christmas Eve

Family's here and it's time to cook! We don't have any traditional Christmas Eve dishes in our family so it's pretty much anything goes.

I always like to start out with a soup. Easy to make ahead and keeps everyone busy while I finish off the rest of dinner. One of my favorites is cream of mushroom. It was something we made at the Culinary Institute boot camp and their recipe here is fairly similar to what I made.

I started by rendering four pieces of chopped bacon until crispy, saving the bacon for garnish and using the rendered fat to sautee a chopped medium onion, three cloves of garlic and three packages of eight-oz button mushrooms (hand-crumbled to speed cooking - it all goes in the blender anyway so no need for chopping). Once vegetables are beginning to soften, I added a tablespoon of flour, cooked for another minute then deglazed with 1/4 cup of Madeira. Finally added in a teaspoon of thyme, salt, pepper and about 6 cups of chicken stock and let it bubble away for an hour.

After it's cooked, I let it cool (one too many experiences with blenders and exploding scalding hot liquid) and run it through a blender (food processor or emulsion blender works fine too - I prefer a blender for a smooth soup). When ready to serve, add 1/2 cup cream and thin with water or stock to desired consistency. Garnish with a bit more cream and reserved bacon bits. Easy and very yum.

Cream of Mushroom Soup

Green beans were very straight forward. Blanch beans for five minutes, shock in ice water. Render a few pieces of bacon, remove the crispy bits for topping (seeing a theme here) and caramelize 1/2 a thinly slice onion in the fat. I also added a couple cloves thinly sliced garlic - slow sautee until brown and crispy. When everyone is seated and diving into the soup, reheat the green beans with the onions and garlic. Add a splash of balsamic at the end and salt and pepper to taste. Oh and don't forget to top with bacon.

Green Beans with Bacon

Another veg was collard greens. Paula Deen's recipe is perfect and very easy. I used a smoked turkey wing for the meat portion, let that cook for an hour. Added the cleaned, chopped collard, garlic powder, red pepper flakes, salt, pepper and bay leaf and cooked for another hour or two (pretty low maintenance, just keep enough liquid to keep the greens covered). Removed the turkey wing, shredded the meat, returned to the pot and finished with a splash of red wine vinegar. Make sure there's hot sauce on the table, greens love hot sauce.

Collard Greens

The meat was smoked chicken thighs and drumsticks finished in the oven. I brined the chicken in 1/4 cup brown sugar and a couple tablespoon sugar for a few hours. Patted it dry, sprinkled with rub and put it in my electric smoker skin side down for an hour at 225 degrees using a couple hunks of peach wood I purchased online (don't you just love the Internet?) After an hour in the smoker, brought it back in the house, put it on a baking rack and pan lined with foil, doused with more rub and continued to cook in the oven at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. Flipped to skin side up at 500 degrees for about 10 minutes.

Add a bit of water to the bottom of the pan to prevent the rendering fat from smoking. This was adapted from one of my favorite recipes - spice rubbed picnic chicken recipe from America's Test Kitchen. I added the smoking step to the beginning for an added smoky flavor which I love but the recipe is fantastic as is.

Smoked Baked Chicken

Here's picture with everything on the table including a few baked potatoes I started cooking in the oven before the chicken went in and finished with the chicken. I can eat baked potatoes every day.

The Dinner

Mmm... baked potato. 

Partially Eaten Potato - Couldn't Wait

I don't cook dessert much but what the heck it's the holidays. I saw this ingredient macaroon recipe while flipping through Food and Wine and it looked easy enough. It was a breeze to throw together while everything else was cooking and very very impressive.

Easy and Impressive Macaroons

Freezer Diving: Shrimp Bisque, Seafood Paella

Need to make room for the holidays and decided to see what was in the freezer hoard. I've been tucking away baggies of shrimp shells for a while and decided to cook them up into a shrimp stock.


Also had a couple of frozen squids from last week's dinner, a few red peppers frozen from the summer and about 1/4 pound of shrimp. Clams were on sale so I added that to the shopping list along with a splurge on a small container of lump crab meat.


Dinner tonight - shrimp and crab bisque, crab balls, balsamic asparagus and seafood paella. Asparagus is an easy recipe from food.com http://www.food.com/recipe/roasted-balsamic-garlic-asparagus-appetizer-114923, great warm or at room temp.

Balsamic Asparagus Spears

Felt like frying something tonight and I've never liked crab cakes so it was crab balls. Modified a Paula Deen recipe slightly (panko for bread crumb, skipped house seasoning and added sour cream to the tartar sauce recipe). http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/crab-balls-recipe/index.html. Turned out quite pretty -- deep frying will do that, I suppose.

Fried Crab Balls

Next is the bisque. Shrimp stock is simply shells sauteed with half an onion, a bit of sherry and water to cover. Ina's recipe is one of the best out there. Since I had the crab, I added a bit of that too http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/shrimp-bisque-recipe/index.html.

Shrimp Bisque

Finally it was on to the paella. Looked through a ton of recipes but it was back to Ina for this one. Skipped the pernod and added some diced kielbasa (another freezer find). Punched  up the color with a few sprinkle of Goya Sazon Azafran. Added shrimp, clam, squid just as rice came to a boil, turned it to simmer and 20 minutes of simmering. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/easy-lobster-paella-recipe/index.html

Paella in the Making

The Finished Paella

Another Sunday done. Holiday weekend is next - can't wait!

Korean Extravaganza

I'm just a short drive from Flushing and and over the past few months, I've collected a lot of ingredients/equipment including a very large bag of Korean pepper flakes, soy bean paste, various misos, and a Korean grill (couldn't resist) that I thought I'd put to good use. Thin sliced beef was on sale at the H-Mart so I used that as the starting point and raided my cupboard and fridge to supplement.

The start of Sunday night dinner - the sauces. From bottom to top: 1) sweetened soy sauce with some grated ginger for the pan-fried tofu appetizer (forgot to photograph), 2) homemade gochujang (Korean chili paste) from a great recipe from Shizuoka Gourmet for the bulgogi, 3) dipping sauce for the haemul pajeon (Korean seafood pancake) from Food & Wine, and finally 4) a mixture of daenjang (Korean bean paste, soy and some ginger) - a bonus sauce, had the daenjang around and thought why not.

 

Homemade Korean Sauces

My edited attempt at banchan - on top left, daikon and carrots in a sweetened vinegar marinade (equal parts water, white vinegar and sugar to taste with a bit of salt), top right is a homemade quick kimchi from an Epicurious recipe (surprisingly good - the whole fermenting for days on the countertop bit in traditional recipes always seemed like too much work), bottom left are chilled braised daikon cubes (simmered daikon in equal part water and soy plus a bit of grated ginger, crushed garlic and a spoonful of Korean chili flakes) and finally some Chinese pre-packaged marinated jellyfish I had sitting in the fridge.

Pickled Carrots and Radish (top left), Homemade Kimchi (top right), Braised Daikon (bottom left), Marinated Jellyfish (bottom right)

Here is the haemul pajeon cooking on the stove - should have used a larger skillet, duly noted for the next time out. Used a cup of Korean pancake flour mixed with 3/4 cup of water and a mixture of a sliced squid, a few shrimps, cooked clams, a good handful of sliced scallions.

Seafood Pancake Cooking

A (blurry) picture of the bulgogi cooking on the Korean grill that's been sitting around for months and waiting to be used. I had half a bottle of teriyaki marinade in the fridge so I used that and toned it down with some soy and ginger.

Bulgogi Cooking on Korean Grill Pan

The finished pajeon. Miso soup on the side - I love miso soup, so easy and delicious (will post recipe soon) -- a quick dashi, a few scoops of miso, scallions to top and ta da.

Pajeon and Miso Soup

And the finished bulgogi, ate it in butter lettuce along with rice and of course the sauces.

Finished Bulgogi