Recipes by Ingredient + Prep – Page 29 – Writing With My Mouth Full

Sesame Noodles with Spring Vegetables

Ever since I started working in Connecticut, I’ve missed Asian food. I spend my weekends back in the city eating what I can’t get at work during the day: banh mi, bulgogi, Sichuan-anything, pho, congee, rice and noodles. I’m usually tired of the commute when I get home, but I use the little energy I have left to make myself an easy meal with every bit of Asian-ness I can muster.

You may use any long pasta for this recipe. I used spaghetti because it’s all I had the night I wanted to make this. If you have soba noodles, even better. And don’t feel like you have to use the vegetables I have here. This is a good dish to make to experiment with the spring vegetables you’re seeing out in the markets right now. If you like some crunch, toast the sesame seeds before sprinkling or shower the dish with crushed cashews.

Ingredients:
1 package of spaghetti
1 packaged of extra firm tofu, sliced in manageable squares
1 small Kirby cucumber, sliced
a handful of baby carrots, chopped
a handful of baby corn, halved
a handful of sugar snap peas, destringed
sesame oil
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 spring onion, chopped
sesame seeds
salt

1. Cook the spaghetti al dente in a pot of boiling water. Drain and set aside until ready to use.
2. In a large skillet, heat some sesame oil. Sauté garlic until light brown. Add spring onion and cook until soft. Add all the vegetables and cook by tossing. The pan should be hot enough to cook the carrots and the corn.
3. When carrots are half-cooked, add the spaghetti. Toss to combine well. Add more sesame oil so that it doesnâ€™t dry up. Add the tofu and gently combine. Itâ€™s okay if your tofu gets crushed a little. Sprinkle with salt to taste and some sesame seeds before serving.

Baked Asparagus With Shiitake, Bacon and Couscous

I saw this original recipe in the New York Times last week. I was reading it and thinking, Oh, I have asparagus, and oh, I have shiitake–here’s dinner for tonight. But I didn’t have prosciutto. I did have some more Mangalitsa Pig bacon in the fridge, so I substituted a more expensive fat for an already expensive fat.

I was very pleased with this recipe. It didn’t require much prep and the cooking was basically hands-off. Double the couscous and you’ll have enough for lunch the next day.

Ingredients:
1 bundle asparagus, tougher ends trimmed, chopped in 1-inch pieces
a handful of dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked in water for 10 minutes, drained, then chopped
4 slices of bacon, chopped
1 cup of couscous
1 cup of chicken broth
oil, salt, pepper

1. Heat oven to 200º. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper twice as long as the sheet. Lay asparagus in a pile in center. Scatter mushrooms and prosciutto on top. Drizzle with some olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Toss vegetables to coat evenly.
2. Fold parchment to completely enclose vegetables, and fold top and sides shut. Transfer pan to oven and bake for one hour.
3. In the meantime, put a small pot over medium-high heat, and bring the broth to a boil. Stir in couscous and remove pot from heat. Let stand for 5 minutes and then fluff couscous with a fork.
4. To serve, divide couscous in serving bowls and top with a scoop or two of the baked asparagus with some mushrooms and bacon.

Golden Beets and Citrus Salad

After my bike ride with Jase and Kate around Central Park, they came over my apartment to eat brunch. I had roasted some beets the night before to prepare this salad because I wanted something very spring-like without having to do any cooking the next day. There were all kinds of citrus in the supermarket the night before, too, so I also bought a few of them to add. Feta cheese may sound weird here because goat cheese is the usual beet partner, but I think the saltiness of the feta worked well with the tanginess of the orange and the subtle bitterness of the grapefruit. I threw in some frisée to add a nice green touch to the yellows and oranges.

Ingredients:
6 large beets, washed and trimmed
juice from 1 orange
2 oranges, rind removed, sliced
1 grapefruit, rind removed, sliced
half a head of frisée, torn to smaller pieces
1/3 cup of crumbled feta cheese
1 small shallot, finely chopped
oil, salt, pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 400º. Wrap the beets in aluminum foil and place on a roasting pan and roast for about 1 hour or until tender. When cool, peel and cut them into chunks.
2. Make the dressing. In a small bowl, whisk the orange juice with the shallot. Marinate the shallot in the orange juice for 10 minutes, then whisk in the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Toss the beets in the dressing and let sit until ready to use.
3. On each of your salad plates, put a handful of frisée, and then top with a few slices of oranges and grapefruit. Remove the beets and the shallots from the marinate with a slotted spoon and divide among the plates. Drizzle with the beet dressing. Toss and sprinkle with feta.

Arugula-Stuffed Flatbread

While walking in the Andersonville neighborhood of Chicago, Anna and I stopped by a store that was lacking in spirit but selling every spice imaginable from Africa, Central Asia and the Mediterranean. My pantry is stocked up with spices I smuggled from our Tunisian trip, so I was in no hurry to buy curries or harissas. Everything was less expensive than Penzeys however, so I kept it in mind for the next time I would need something exotic for my kitchen. It was only on our way out when I noticed the lavash for sale–at less than $1.50 for about three sheets.

Lavash, or flatbread, is a soft, thin bread reportedly of Armenian origin. I was intrigued by flatbreads because they showed up on every Chicago menu I perused. Having lunch by myself one day at Sepia, I ordered the flatbread of the day which was topped with sous-vide onions. If you don’t make it by hand, flatbreads are so easy to bake with almost anything you have in the fridge. Thinner than pizza and thus cook faster, flatbreads are great for quick lunches and make an awesome addition to brunch.

For this version, I finished the two cheeses I had in the fridge by combining them after grating. I had a lot of fresh vegetables available, but was partial to the spicy arugula for the bite. One time, I made this recipe and topped it with slices of kielbasa and Mangalitsa bacon; another, just with shiitake mushrooms and spinach. Feel free to play around with Taleggio cheese and caramelized onions, too. The fun part is coming up with your own combination.

Ingredients:
flatbread
arugula
kielbasa, sliced (optional)
1/2 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano, grated
1/2 cup Manchego, grated
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
red pepper flakes
oil, salt

1. Preheat oven at 350º. In the meantime, lay the flatbread flat on a lined baking sheet. Brush with some olive oil. Spread the arugula on one half of the flatbread. Sprinkle with red pepper and a dash of salt. Top that half with the cheeses. Fold over flatbread.
2. Brush the other side with olive oil. Top with kielbasa, or the toppings of your choice, and then with red onions. If you have leftover arugula, finish off with them.
3. Bake for 3 to 5 minutes, or until you see the edges coloring a bit. Remove from oven and let stand. Transfer to a chopping block and slice to serve.

Gamjatang, Korean Rib Soup

After a harrowing ten-hour trip from Chicago, the Dr. was craving kalbi-tang, or Korean short beef rib soup, the next day. We had stopped by Joong Boo Market on Belmont Avenue before we continued to the airport and among our purchase was a package of fresh perilla leaves. I thought of gamja-tang, pork rib soup, because it’s what I always order when I’m in Hanbat in Koreatown. I ended up buying short beef ribs and beef neck bones and then using a pork-rib recipe. I think combining the two soups in this one recipe was a pretty good compromise even though Maangchi may slap my hand if she ever reads this.

If we knew we were to spend all afternoon and all night trying to fly back to New York City–our flight was cancelled without any notification and all 180 passengers were vying for the next three flights to La Guardia–we would have bought the soups from the market’s deli and enjoyed them at the airport.

Finally home and caught up on sleep the next night, I searched for online recipes for both soups. All of them require boiling the bones and then rinsing them before boiling again. This step removes all the impurities and the fat from the boiled bones, but it’s sacrilege if you’re Filipino because it’s the fat that makes my people’s soups whole. Sometimes though, I do what I’m told even if the order comes from an older Korean lady. To keep my stubborn streak however, I skipped an extra rinsing step so at least some of the fat is preserved in the broth.

Needless to say, I scared the crap out of the Dr. who was impressed with how the soup turned out: he had two full large bowls for dinner while the negative aspect of our Chicago trip dissolved in pieces.

Ingredients:
5 short beef ribs, rinsed
4 beef neck bones, rinsed
5 perilla leaves, chopped in 1-inch pieces
1 napa cabbage, sliced into 4 pieces
2 potatoes, peeled, sliced
1 bunch of scallions, chopped
4 pieces dried shiitake mushrooms
1 large knob of ginger, peeled, chopped
1 yellow onion, quartered
2 tbsps soy bean paste

Sauce:
5 perilla leaves, chiffonade
6 cloves of garlic, minced
a dash of hot pepper flakes
2 tbsps hot pepper paste
4 tbsps cooking wine
3 tbsps fish sauce

1. In a large Dutch oven, boil some water. Add the beef ribs and neck bones. Lower the heat and let impurities rise to the top. Using a strainer, remove the impurities and discard. Simmer beef for a total of an hour before rinsing them out with cold water.
2. In the same washed Dutch oven, return the beef with some more water. Add ginger, onion, soy bean paste and mushrooms. Simmer for another hour.
3. In the meantime, in a separate pot, boil some water and blanch the cabbage for a minute. Remove from the pot, squeeze out the water and set aside.
4. Make the sauce as well while you’re boiling the beef. Combine all sauce ingredients and mix thoroughly. Set aside until needed.
5. When the beef is done, remove the mushrooms and let cool. Slice them and return to the pot with the rest of the vegetables. Cook for another 30 minutes in low-medium fire to make sure most of the meat is falling off the bones and the potatoes are cooked.