The Cod Saga Continues

I finally cooked Nobu's Black Miso Cod earlier this week. [See the first part of the saga here]

The result was not a success.

First, I pulled out the cod from the fridge, where it had been marinating/resting for the last three days. I sort of wiped off the cod and placed it onto a broiling pan and broiled it in the oven for 10 minutes. Well, I actually broiled it for longer, since I kept checking it and while it looked slightly brown around the edges, it still wasn't really "brown" as specified in Nobu's recipe book. I mean, given that it was drenched in miso that was already brown to begin with, it was pretty hard to tell when the cod was sufficiently more brown

Then I turned up the heat on the cod, poor thing, taking it up to 400 degrees. This I left in the oven for another 15 minutes. At this point, the cod sort of got really fried dried out.

The cod was dry, overpoweringly sweet, chewy and really gross. Trying to eat it was like eating the rubber plastic food you see in the window of Japanese restaurants. Unfortunately, the cod was a dried-out squeege covered in yellow miso tar.

I served this to Homer's visiting friend Kelly, who was kind of enough to say, "Its good." She politely declined an offer for second helpings.

Nobu, how could you let me down? The dish in your restaurant was amazing, delectable, incredible! Maybe he published an awful recipe so that patrons of his restaurant would be forced to go back to get the real deal. It looks like that's what this delectable duck's gotta do, anyway.

I made potato leek soup yesterday. Its easy, its cheap, its delicious and I love it!

I bought the leeks at Wholesome Foods, renamed from Healthy Pleasures. [Here you can read a discussion on chowhound and vegsource blasting Healthy Pleasures and its organic produce and meat fraud.] Well, controversy or not, the store was the only affordable place around my apartment that carried leeks-- at the bargain price of $1.49/lb (supposedly organic leeks). When I went across the street to D'Agostino's, their tired-looking leeks were double the price-- $2.99/lb!

Unbelievable.

I followed a recipe from the book Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. The author was the chef/founder of the Greens restaurant in California, a highly esteemed vegetarian restaurant.

First, I chopped off the green part of the leek and stuffed it in the fridge (to save later for making vegetable stock and because I can't bear to throw anything away). Then, I finely sliced up the white part of the leeks. Again I contemplated whether or not I needed a food processor.

The leeks spilled over the edges of the cutting board, splashing over my grey-speckled countertop. Too much leek for too little cutting board I guess. Then I dunked the leeks in some water to get all the dirt and grime off.

While that was happening, I peeled 6 Idaho potatoes (straight into my shiny, new expensive trash can). I cut the potatoes into quarters and sliced them thinly.

Then I heated up my soup pot and dropped in butter (from E. Village Cheese, great store). Immediately, the butter started to sizzle and my apartment filled with smoke. The smell of burned butter floated through the apartment just as Homer's high school friend, Kelly, came in the front door.

"Whoa, your apartment is full of smoke! Do you need help?" she asked.

I sheepishly said, "No, no everything is fine!" as I frantically dumped the butter into another pot. "Just sit down and relax!"

I then pulled the chopped leeks out of their water bath and put them into the pot along with the sliced potatoes. This I let sit for about 10 minutes on low heat with a cover.

At this point, I used some magic baking soda to scrub off the burn marks from the pot (I had to reuse it immediately, since I only have one pot big enough for soup.)

After 10 minutes, I put the mixture from the pot on the stove into my now gleaming steel pot and poured in enough water to reach the rim. I added some salt, let the soup come to a boil, then I simmered it for about 30 minutes.

That's pretty much it. After half an hour, I squished the potatoes up with a fork, added more salt and some pepper, and inhaled the soup. Delicious.

Curry Chick'n!

I checked out Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table, by Mai Pham, from the library a couple of weeks ago. I love Vietnamese food, but its always been too intimidating for me to cook-- I guess I'm not really used to using fish sauce and lime juice and so on. Finding this book really made me happy; its given me a chance to recreate some of my favorite dishes. I grew up in a town with a very large Vietnamese populations, so a lot of my childhood (and best) friends are Vietnamese. Eating this food reminds me a little bit of home I guess.

The dish I made last night was Curry Chicken Noodle Soup. Its actually a very simple dish.

First of course, was the prep. I washed bean sprouts, I chopped up green onion, cilantro and two cloves of garlic. I also defrosted some chicken; this I keep in the freezer in glass mason jars. (Due to the unpredictability of my schedule, I am forever looking for ways to preserve food and prevent it from going bad before I get a chance to cook it!)

I chopped up the chicken into bite-sized pieces and also defrosted four cups of chicken broth. (I also keep this in the freezer; btw, baking soda is one of the most amazing substances I have ever encountered! Using it, I managed to scrub off all of the burn marks from the pot I burned earlier in the afternoon!)

Anyway, so once I had everything cut up, I set out the spices and other ingredients on the counter for easy access: red chili bean paste (Mai actually specifies chili paste, but I already had the chili bean paste which I use to make ma po tofu), curry powder, coconut milk, fish sauce and sugar.

So finally after finishing this, I started to cook. First, I heated up olive oil in my pot. Then I threw in the freshly chopped garlic along with chopped garlic from a jar that I bought from Fairway. (I'd run out of fresh garlic!) For some reason, my pot always seems to turn brown on the bottom when I use non-stick pans. Maybe I don't use enough oil? After 10 seconds, I threw in the chicken, 3 tablespoons of curry powder and 2 teaspoons of chili paste. I let all of this sort of saute in the pan. After a while, I got worried about the bottom of the pan turning totally black (again), so I poured in the chicken broth, sugar, fish sauce and a can of coconut milk. (The coconut milk looked really weird to me. It was all sort of thick and gelatinous. I think I expected it to be more like fresh coconut milk, but I wasn't about to try to locate a coconut and split it open!)

While all this was going on, Homer had heated up another pan of boiling water and dumped in half a package of vermicelli noodles. He (or rather I at this point) let the noodles cook for about 4 minutes, then I dumped out the water.

I microwaved a couple of bowls for four minutes to get the bowls heated up, then I put some noodles and sprouts in the bottom of each bowl.

When the soup started to bowl, I turned it down to a simmer and then filled each bowl with the curry soup.

Top it off with scallions and cilantro, and voila,


there you have it, curry chicken noodle soup!

Surprisingly easy! I saved half to bring to work and eat for lunch, so I'm going to scare all my officemates with stinky curry noodles this afternoon (oh well!)

Burned Broth!

I've been making home-made chicken broth, and I totally burned my pot today!

My version of broth is super simple, I just save the bones that I cut out of chicken thighs (I usually like to by thighs bone-in)-- these bones I put into the freezer. Then at the start of a day or evening, I put the bones into a pot and put the burner on low.

That's it! They just boil for hours and hours. Anyway, this afternoon I filled up the pot, and I was going to just simmer down the water to concentrate the flavor, but I ended up falling asleep for two hours and when I was awake, all the broth had simmered down, so the pot was just getting singed! Boo hoo.

Oh well, no use crying over a couple of burned bones right?

7-Day Old Fish, Miso, Sake and Mirin

Okay, I finally made the marinade tonight and the cod is soaking in it as we speak.

After spending 5 hours longer at the office than I was planning to, I was going to go to the Tribeca Film Festival, but my boyfriend decided to be a saint and said, "Let's go home and relax honey. You look tired." Thank you, honey!

So I sat down to read some great new books I borrowed from the library today, including: How to Eat, by Nigella Lawson; Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, by Deborah Madison; The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook; The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook. Reading through their brilliant descriptions, I became inspired and decided to get over my exhaustion.

I decided to tackle the cod. First, I cut off a tiny piece and tried to steam it in the microwave, just to make sure that the fish wasn't too fishy. Well, I ended up microwaving it too long, so it turned into fish jerky. But.. after that I decided, what the hay, I already bought all the ingredients, I should just do this!

So I put 3/4 cup of sake and 1 cup of mirin into a saucepan; these I boiled for about 20 seconds on high heat. I lowered the heat, then I dumped in 2 cups of white miso. I pulled out the whisk and dissolved the miso into the soup. After it seemed dissolved, I dumped in 1 1/4 cup of sugar and switched the heat to high. The recipe indicated it should yield 3 cups of miso, but for some reason it looks like I've got about 5 cups of mixture.

Did I make a mistake? I let the mixture cool for about twenty minutes, then I "slathered" the fish with miso, or rather buried it since there was so much mixture.

Okay.. so now its time to wait. I'm supposed to marinade it for 3 days in the fridge then-- its time for cookin'!

I'll let you know how it turns out.. Nobu, don't let me down!