Writing With My Mouth Full

Kona Kampachi With Coconut Cream Sauce

Out of all the recipes I tried to make use of the kampachi batch that Kona Blue Water Farms generously sent me, this was the simplest, but also the most complicated in taste. The coconut cream was wee thick, but the kaffir leaves and the lime juice squirted in the end made the fish lighter. I remembered a cauliflower pilaf to serve with this and a 10-minute prep made an impressionable dish.

Ingredients:
2 fillets of kampachi
1/4 cup of coconut cream
1/4 cup dry white wine
a knob of ginger, peeled, julienned
1 shallot, thinly sliced
1 clove of garlic, minced
a handful of basil leaves, chiffonade
a handful of kaffir lime leaves, chiffonade
juice from half a lime
butter
salt, pepper, oil

1. Using a small pan, heat butter and cook shallots and garlic without browning. Add white wine and deglaze. Add the coconut cream and the rest of the ingredients and simmer for a few minutes. Season with salt and pepper.
2. Sprinkle a little bit of salt and pepper on the fillets. In a separate skillet, heat some oil and sear fillets, about 4 minutes per side. Remove to a serving plate and top with coconut cream sauce. Squirt with some lime juice for some kick.

Kona Kampachi Paksiw, Filipino Vinegar Stew

Paksiw, or what I would translate as Filipino vinegar stew, has got to be my father’s favorite dish. Filipinos, especially those from the northern part of the country, love anything with vinegar. We can cook and stew almost anything in sour goodness and make an honest meal out of it.

My father loves fresh seafood paksiw the best because he grew up in a farm where the family didn’t own a refrigerator. He’s told me about heading into the nearest town very early in the morning to buy the morning’s catch and consuming all of them before they went bad, usually before the day ended. Meat was expensive and hard to come by.

The traditional paksiw recipe uses milkfish, or bangus, but Kona Blue Water Farms sent me a whole kampachi and I wanted to use every part of it. It would have been a waste to throw away a perfectly good head. My father happily cleaned and gutted out the fish. I used the entire head for this dish with a small steak from the body. My favorite part is crushing the pepper after the entire thing has reduced: the sourness has a touch of spiciness to it that will make the skin behind your ears crawl.

Ingredients:
kampachi head with some fillets
1/2 cup white vinegar
a small knob of ginger, peeled, crushed
1 green Serrano pepper
salt

1. In a nonreactive pot, bring all ingredients to a boil with 1/4 cup of water, uncovered.
2. When boiling, lower the heat and simmer for 10 minutes, covered, turning fish head once to evenly cook. The liquid should have reduced, making the vinegar and water combination more concentrated. If you like, crush the pepper a tad to release some spice into the stew.

Kona Kampachi With Soy-Ginger Sauce

I felt bad searing the Kona Kampachi fillets from Kona Blue Water Farms. It was enough that I baked it with butter the first time. I felt blasphemous to be ruining such a good fish with heat. But when seared, Kona Kampachi turns into the Cinderella of fish: an oomph was added to what would have been a very simple flavor. It became richer and meatier, as if the oil plumped it up. The soy-ginger sauce actually took the fish a notch down. A tarty watercress and pear salad with crumbled blue cheese and a glass of dry white wine made our dinner complete. We made it way past midnight.

Ingredients:
2 fillets of kampachi
a knob of ginger, peeled, julienned
1 shallot, thinly sliced
a jigger of soy sauce
a splash of sherry
oil

1. Make the soy-ginger sauce. Combine all the ingredients, except the fish and oil, in a small bowl and let sit until ready to serve.
2. Using a skillet, heat some oil and then sear one side of the fish for about 3 minutes. Gingerly turn it using a heat-resistant spatula. Sear the other side for another 3 minutes. Transfer to serving plates and spoon soy-ginger sauce on top of the seared fillets.

Kona Kampachi With Coconut, Apples, Ginger and Basil

One of my father’s specialties during the holidays is pichi-pichi, a grated cassava dessert cooked in milk and sugar and eaten with fresh coconut. I was delighted to find leftover shredded coconut in the fridge when I was exploring different ways to cook the Kona Kampachi sent to me by Kona Blue Water Farms.

Kona Kampachi is known as Almaco Jack in the wild and Hawaiian yellowtail in most kitchens and sushi restaurants. Kona Blue nurtures its Kona Kampachi from hatch to harvest, making it a sustainably-raised fish that has no detectable levels of mercury and is completely free of internal parasites. Kona Kampachi is also good for you–it is rich with healthy Omega-3 fish oils–and the fat content makes it one of the most flavorful fish available in the market today.

One of the most interesting recipes from Jean-Georges’ cookbook, Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges, involved halibut, but I can’t imagine how it could be any better than when I used the kampachi. The fish itself is mildly sweet–you can taste its natural flavor without any of the dressings. To dress it even seemed a waste to me because it’s good on its own, sashimi-style. But Kona Blue was extremely generous and I had a lot of fish. I wanted to try different ways of cooking it.

Ingredients:
kampachi fillets
a knob of butter

For the salad topping:
1 cup shredded coconut
half an apple, thinly sliced
a small knob of ginger, peeled, julienned
1 shallot, thinly sliced
fresh basil leaves, thoroughly washed, patted dry, chiffonade
juice from 1 lemon
Thai chili, seeded, chopped
a knob of butter
salt, pepper, oil

1. Prepare the salad that will go on top of the fish while you preheat the oven 275Âº. Combine all the salad topping ingredients together in a small bowl. Drizzle with lemon juice and season with salt and pepper.
2. Butter a baking sheet. Lay fillets and bake for 15 minutes.
3. When serving, top the fish with the coconut salad. Drizzle with some leftover lemon juice.

Momofuku Noodle Bar

171 1st Avenue between 10th and 11th Streets
212/777-7773
about $58 for two, with one beer, with tip
â™¥ â™¥

Updated: My bad. Momofuku Ko is still under construction in what used to be the original space of Momofuku Noodle Bar. Thanks, Zach.

Is there a stronger English word than savory that can describe the taste that is Momofuku? What I’m looking for is the translation for malinamnam, the Tagalog word for something really flavorful and delicious at the same time. What was Momofuku Noodle Bar is now a much larger and brighter space with more items in the menu that do not involve noodles. They needed it too, with all the accolades chef David Chang and his restaurants have been receiving the last couple of years. But that more-than-savory taste is still there.

A bowl of grilled baby octopus was tender. Julienned carrots and some seaweed were mixed in and made the dish more interesting. I thought the sesame seeds were a nice touch. They were out of the Brussels sprouts when I visited, so we ordered the Manila clams instead made pretty with slivers of celery.

I could have stopped there but every time I’m visiting one of the Momofukus, I can’t help but stuff myself. Even at more than $10, the big bowl of pork neck ramen with a beautifully-poached egg is a must-have. And it was as malinamnam as I remembered it from two stores down.