Writing With My Mouth Full

Where to eat in Fort Lee, New Jersey: So Kong Dong

Soondooboo is Korean for the tofu that doesn’t go through the process of compression. It’s soft, silky and slushy, and dear lord, it’s the perfect spicy stew after a long day under the hot, beating sun. Soondooboo chigae, or soft tofu stew, is usually made with minced pork or clams and then flavored with garlic, scallions, sesame oil and the ubiquitous red pepper powder. Everything is boiled over intense heat using a ceramic pot that doubles as a serving a bowl. Raw eggs are served with it so that you may plop one in to add to the broth’s consistency.

If you ask Koreans where to get the best soondooboo in Los Angeles, I would be surprised if they didn’t say So Kong Dong on West Olympic. I’m still not sure if the two restaurants are related; I’m just glad we have one in the east coast.

So Kong Dong is at 130 Main Street in Fort Lee, New Jersey. You can’t reserve a table and there’s a bit of a wait on weekends, but you can call 201/242.0026 and order ahead for pick-up.

Tomato Preserve

I couldn’t ignore the beautiful photograph that accompanied Amanda Hesser’s recreation of a 1948 tomato preserve recipe in The New York Times Magazine last month. I cut the recipe short and marinated the tomatoes in sugar for only a few hours instead of overnight. I didn’t seed the tomatoes either, nor did I remove the lemon slices when I stored the finished product in a glass jar. My version still came out nice enough to spread in toasted baguettes and crackers.

Ingredients:
8 plum tomatoes
3/4 cup sugar
3 cloves
1 stick cinnamon
a small knob of ginger, peeled, sliced
1/4 of a lemon, thinly sliced, seeded

1. Boil some water in a small pot. Skin tomatoes by cutting a shallow X in their rounded end. Add tomatoes in the boiling water for 30 seconds. Remove the tomatoes using a slotted spoon and let cool. When cool enough to handle, peel off tomato skins.
2. Layer the tomatoes and sugar in a small Dutch oven. Cover and refrigerate for a couple of hours.
3. When ready to cook, put all the spices in a cheesecloth and add to the tomatoes along with the sliced lemon. Place over medium heat and bring to a simmer. Cook, stirring and gently crushing often, until the tomatoes have become slightly translucent and the syrup is thick and begins to gel. Don’t boil the syrup, or the tomatoes will fall apart.
4. Remove the spice bag. Remove Dutch oven from heat and let tomato preserve cool before transferring to a resealable glass jar.

Related post/s:
Tomatillos are related to tomatoes

Momofuku Ko

163 First Avenue off 10th Street
https://reservations.momofuku.com/
about $300 for two, with beverage pairings, without tip
♥ ♥ ♥

I was so busy at work last week that I didn’t even have time to be excited about our upcoming reservations at Ko. When Cameron told me she wanted to take me out to thank me for showing her the Philippines last month, I thought, You’re welcome; don’t be silly. But when I received an email from her a couple of weeks later with our Ko confirmation attached, I squealed, Noooooo.

I gave up trying to get a reservation the first time I actually saw a green check mark on their Web site. As soon as I clicked it, I waited nervously for the page to refresh, and then, Sorry, that spot was just taken. It’s like waiting for your lottery numbers to show up on TV: the ball rolls out and you think it’s one of your picks; only it’s a 6 and not a 9 when it finally stops spinning. Momofuku Ko is the first restaurant I know of that uses only a Web site to take reservations and I suppose it’s a good way to keep the die-hard David Chang fans excited. All of us need someone who is willing to click their mouse off once in a while.

At 6:15 sharp, we were seated in the middle of the bar with a couple to our left and a group of four at the other end. The other seats were waiting for the 6:30pm guests–stacking them up this way is their version of turning tables over efficiently. By the time we were eating our fourth course, a newly arrived couple to our right was pouring over the wine list. The night’s pace was swift; our matching wines, beer and sake kept coming until the first of two desserts. I felt like I had to keep drinking to have no more than two glasses on my table. Although I played catch up with my drinks, I kept up with all eleven courses, including the bouches. The portions weren’t French Laundry nor Blue Hill sizes. I wasn’t comatose at the end of our two-hour meal. Perhaps a little tipsy, but quite happy and content. Here’s a rundown:

1. A delicately small toasted English muffin with pork fat and chives
2. A Ssam tribute of pig’s head torchon with mustard

One of the first two came with a light and crunchy chicharron and Japanese salt.

3. Fluke sashimi in buttermilk (!) with Sriracha hot sauce and yuzu paste covered in poppy seeds
4. Matsutake mushrooms in hot broth of bacon and dashi, a dish that reminded me of Tojo’s sable fish soup in Vancouver.
5. A beautifully smoked soft-boiled egg with onion sous-vide and caviar served with potato chips
6. An out of place corn-filled ravioli with Cotija Mexican cheese; I liked it more than I expected.
7. Maine halibut in pepperoncini purée and burnt onions with finely-chopped kohlrabi and radish in basil oil
8. Lychee with Riesling gelée and pine nuts and then covered in grated foie gras. Grated. Foie. Gras. This dish blew me away and I couldn’t stop talking about it. Everything melded in my mouth like Dippin’ Dots, only more luxurious and decadent than anything I’ve had this year. “Son of a peach” indeed.
9. Perfectly, perfectly cooked duck–the surly Asian man behind the counter (who wasn’t David Chang) had skills–with Chinese long beans, chestnuts and bean sprouts in cherry sauce.
10. Lychee sorbet in sesame “sand”; my quotes but perhaps a Thomas Keller-influenced naming convention
11. Strawberry and peanut butter halva with a sickeningly sweet yellow cake ice cream. I told you, I don’t like sweets.

David Chang is so lucky to be the name on almost every foodie’s tongue today: five years in the east Village and he’s still making waves. Ko is obviously his and his staff’s playground and you can feel that they’re cooking for themselves and serving what they want because they know people will follow. I can’t help but feel proud that this Asian American is at the top of his career right now. How I wish all talented and deserving chefs out there get the same chance to cook and perform the Momofuku way.

Crispy Vegetable Rolls

It felt great to be cooking in the kitchen again. After a summer hiatus, I signed the usual group up again for my omakase bento lunches. A day out in New Jersey playing $40 buy-in volleyball with some friends got me a slightly twisted ankle, so I couldn’t really stand too long to cook something elaborate. I did most of the work here sitting down. My legs also hurt from too much exercise in one day, so I ended up using my entire CSA share from last Thursday instead of going out to shop for more ingredients.

Ask any non-Filipino out there about Filipino food and they’ll most likely tell you about lumpiang Shanghai, or the fried egg rolls we adapted from the Chinese. Like any traditional recipe, this not only involves a lot of preparation, but also an almost precise way of frying to get them crispy. Wrapping them is a whole other business I’ve learned from my mother and from rolling other things–it takes practice.

To cut down on chopping and cooking time, I used a peeler to get the vegetable meat as thin as possible. When ready to serve, all I had to do was fry them in medium-low heat to brown the wrapper since everything inside is already cooked. You can make these ahead of time and they keep in the freezer, stored in a Tupperware, for up to two weeks.

You can find spring roll wrappers or “shells” in the frozen section of any Asian grocery store. I like the Wei-Chuan brand because they’re springy enough to make the rolling easy, but also thin enough to brown quicker.

Ingredients:
spring roll wrappers, thawed and kept moist by covering with a wet paper towel while wrapping
1 pound of green beans, stringed, finely chopped
2 medium carrots, peeled, and then shaved using a peeler
2 kohlrabis, peeled, and then shaved using a peeler
2 potatoes, half-boiled, peeled, and then shaved using a peeler
1 red bell pepper, seeded, finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
red pepper flakes
oil, salt, pepper

1. Heat some oil in a large skillet. Sauté the garlic until light brown. Sauté all the vegetables, adding the ones that take longer to cook. In this case, green beans first, then kohlrabi, followed by the carrots and the red bell pepper. Add in the cooked potatoes 2 minutes before turning the heat off. Season with chili flakes, salt and pepper. Set aside.
2. Wrap and roll. On a chopping block, lay out one of the wrappers flat. Spoon a little bit of the vegetable mix onto the bottom end of the wrapper. Fold that end over to cover the stuffing and then fold half an inch from the left and the right over to seal the sides. Continue to fold over the bottom until you make a roll. Set aside with the opening side down to keep it closed until ready to fry. Do this until you’re out of vegetable mixture or wrappers.
3. When ready to fry, heat some oil in a shallow skillet. When oil is almost smoking, slowly add each roll to fry with the opening side down to keep them closed. Using tongs, gently turn each roll over to cook the other side. Both sides should only be a lightly toasted color.
4. Remove each roll to a stainless steel colander. They will sweat and lose crispiness if you put them on paper towel right away.

Tomato- and Ricotta-Stuffed Squash Blossoms

I’ve stuffed goat cheese in squash blossoms before but we want to be more creative and adventurous with our Supper with Strangers. When Cameron and I sit down (and drink) to plan our monthly menu, we immediately think of the more well known dishes and try to cross them off our list. When we came up with August’s tomato theme, I begged that please, please, no caprese salad.

We could have saved squash blossoms for autumn but a light, almost foamy texture with a thin crisp of a vegetable flower, was just perfect to start off a summer meal. I tried this recipe the only way I know how: coating the blossoms with flour before frying. But the flour only weighed down the delicate blossoms so I ended up skipping the batter. One of those Asian strainer ladles is useful to fry them quickly and remove them from the hot oil.

Ingredients:
12 fresh squash blossoms, stamens removed
5 tbsps ricotta
1 heirloom yellow or orange tomato, pulped removed and set aside, diced
juice from a small lemon
oil, salt, pepper

1. In a small bowl, combine ricotta and tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper.
2. Gently stuff the squash blossoms by spooning half a dollop of the ricotta-tomato mixture inside. Do not overstuff. Lightly twist the blossom ends to shut close.
3. When ready to fry, heat some oil in a deep skillet. Before the oil starts to smoke, Fry up to 3 blossoms at a time using a strainer ladle. Try to swish the pot so that the entire blossom gets some of the hot oil. When they start to brown, remove to a stainless steel colander. They will sweat and lose crispiness if you put them on paper towel right away. When cool enough to handle, then you can transfer them to a plate lined with paper towel until ready to serve.
4. Serve with some of the tomato pulp and season with salt, pepper and a squirt of lemon juice.