Cookbook Adventures: Momofuku Ramen

A little over a year and a half after buying the book, I finally got around to making the dish I knew I had to make: Last night, I finally made Momofuku Ramen for dinner (fresh alkaline noodles and all).

Still My Favorite Way to Cook Corn...

Corn was on sale $1.50 per 6-pack last time I ordered groceries, so I had no choice but to order lots of corn. I was originally thinking of doing a "creamed" corn with basil (which I mentioned, among other things, in this post), but then the first issue of Lucky Peach arrived at my door, and as David Chang wrote about ramen I remembered how awesome it was making his ramen broth, and then I remembered how I had ramen broth in the freezer... and remembered the dish for which I had made it... and I instantly knew (well, instantly once all that remembering was done) what I had to make with my giant pile of corn: Roasted Sweet Summer Corn with Miso Butter, Bacon, and Roasted Onions.

Sunday Cookbook Adventures: Momofuku 48-hour Short Ribs

This recipe wasn't at the top of my queue initially, but shot to the top of my queue immediately when I bought myself a new toy: the Sous Vide Supreme. I'll rave about that as it comes up in the post, but let's start with the food...

Sunday Cookbook Adventures: Scallop Fest

I did something a little different with my cookbook adventure this weekend. I could pretend it was inspired by something clever (like this great article), but in reality it was sort of random. I needed to drive out to Sherborn to pick up 70 pounds of hay for the rabbits at (the totally awesome) Sweet Meadow Farms, and it just so happens that the place where I buy kick-ass diver scallops is directly on the way home from there. This was clearly a sign from above that I should be cooking scallops this weekend. I couldn't decide which scallop dish to make, torn between a simple-yet-elegant recipe from the Gourmet cookbook and a somewhat-fussier recipe from the Momofuku cookbook. Not in the mood for tough decisions, the easiest solution seemed to be to make both. This sets up a bit of a competition: Who will win? Mainstream cooking magazine (with a few modifications from me) or fancy-pants restaurant cookbook?

Sunday Cookbook Adventures: Momofuku Bánh Mì

As I've rambled about before, Bánh Mì is one of my very favorite foods on the planet. I first fell in love in Melbourne when I discovered a AU$3 sandwich called the Vietnamese Pork Roll at the Vietnamese Hot Bread Bakery a block from my apartment. I ordered this sandwich pretty much at random one day, as I realized while walking home from the tram that I was starving to death, and proceeded to have it blow my mind. From that day forward I stopped for one almost every week, and since I left Melbourne I often find myself craving a nice, crusty, pork-y Bánh Mì.

Sunday Cookbook Adventures: Momofuku English Muffins with Bay Leaf Butter

Flipping through Momofuku the other day, I saw that David Chang gives a recipe for English muffins... which are one of my favorite vessels for delivering poached egg and Hollandaise from a plate to my mouth. He also includes a recipe for Bay Leaf Butter, to be used on the English muffins, which rumors had indicated to be completely fantastic. Turns out the rumors about the butter were true, and also that these were the best English muffins I've ever had.

Sunday Cookbook Adventures: Momofuku Pork Steak Update

Back in April, I made the brilliant-yet-easy Momofuku Pork Shoulder Steak with Ranch Dressing recipe. I was in love with the pork shoulder steak as a cut of meat, but the meal didn't feel complete... I came back to that recipe this week to show my parents how delicious pork shoulder steak can be...

Sunday Cookbook Adventures: My New Favorite Way to Eat Corn

Fiddling around with the search function over at the fantastic Eat Your Books site, I stumbled upon what sounded like a great recipe for one of my very favorite ingredients in what is one of my very favorite cookbooks: Roasted Sweet Summer Corn with Miso Butter, Bacon & Roasted Onions from the Momofuku Cookbook...

Sunday Cookbook Adventures: Momofuku Ramen Broth

I decided that I would go for a fun change of pace this weekend, so instead of spending 12 hours making a single component to be used in a Thomas Keller recipe, I decided to spend 12 hours making a single component to be used in a David Chang recipe...

Sunday Cookbook Adventures: Momofuku Shrimp and Grits

This should be the last post from Momofuku for a while, and is one of the two dishes (along with the pork buns) that I knew I had to make as soon as possible when I first read through this book.
For my money, this is the most seductive recipe photo in the book, as well... Mmmm... Oozing egg yolk...
This recipe is pretty much just a matter of getting components ready and then assembling. I took the easy route and made bacon dashi with which to cook my grits, but I imagine this is even more awesome if you make raman broth. I'll definitely make sure to have a couple extra cups of ramen broth when the time comes for me to make something starring said broth, and I'll try this dish again then. In the meantime, I don't have the freezer space (or, frankly, the inclination) right now to make a whole batch of ramen broth just to use 2 cups of it to cook grits... Anyway, the bacon dashi just requires konbu, bacon, and water...
After some steeping and some simmering, you have your dashi. This goes into the fridge so the fat can solidify and be easily removed. I prepped this on Saturday while putzing around in the kitchen doing other things.
The next component I prepared were the slow-poached eggs. I broke out the SousVide Maestro and set this up in the den so I could babysit the temperature (which remained admirably stable, but I wanted to keep an eye on it since this was my first time with the Maestro). Here's the control box (sitting on my desk chair):
and the water bath (sitting on a bin full of hay):
The silicone steamer that my mom sent me was perfect for this. It holds the food and temperature probes in the middle of the water bath and seemed to keep temperatures more even than when I was fiddling with this pre-steamer. The eggs came out perfectly:
and went into the fridge to wait for dinner. It's good to know I can trust the SousVide Maestro unattended when I make these eggs in the future. (Thanks, T!) One product I had to order just for this dish was a package of Anson Mills grits.
These are not the cheapest grits around, but I've read several cookbooks saying that there's no point making polenta or grits with products from anyone else, so I decided to give it a try. The raw grits were gorgeous, so I felt like this was a good call as soon as I opened the package.
The grits soak for at least 8 hours in water, then are brought to a simmer with the bacon dashi and whisked constantly for a few minutes before being seasoned and moved to lower heat where they are whisked only occasionally until fully cooked. Just before service, (Amish) butter is whisked in to finish the grits.
I went off-recipe a little with the shrimp, since I couldn't resist these lovely U-6 tiger prawns...
...which I also couldn't resist throwing on the grill instead of pan-frying... I promise to do it Chang's way next time, but I have no regrets about the end result from doing this part my way... I cooked off a little Blood Farm bacon while grilling the prawns, and things were pretty much ready to assemble.
Once the eggs are re-warmed and the scallions are sliced, this is the bowl of yumminess in front of you:
I tasted the grits before adding the butter, and was a little worried about how this would turn out... They just didn't seem that impressive for being the base of the dish. I don't know if it was the magic of Amish butter or some alchemy in bringing these ingredients together, but this dish seriously rocked. Every component perfectly complimented every other component in each bite. Plus, it's super-pretty. I can't wait to try making the grits with ramen broth, but it's good to know this turns out so well with quick-and-cheap bacon dashi. This was actually my first time eating any version of shrimp and grits, and I think it was a pretty spectacular version to start with... It was a pretty good run with this cookbook. Lots of success and no disappointments... Up next is a Rick Bayless posole that I've been looking forward to since I put it on my calendar last month...

Sunday Cookbook Adventures: Momofuku Pork with Ranch

Have I mentioned that I'm in love with the Momofuku cookbook? Because I am in love with the Momofuku Cookbook. I've already found about 10 more things I want to make, but I'm going to tear myself away next weekend so I don't turn this into a Cooking Momofuku blog.I wasn't planning to do much cooking this weekend since I had to take the bunnies out to the vet for check-ups yesterday, but as you can maybe tell by the fact that this is my fourth cooking-related post of the weekend and I haven't even gotten to the main event (which will happen tonight), that isn't the way things worked out... Most of the cooking occurred somewhat randomly, and this was no exception. I mentioned last week that the pork belly I got from the very awesome folks at Blood Farm didn't turn out to be what I wanted... Well, the pork butt steaks I ordered on that same trip weren't what I wanted either. I'm supposed to use bone-in hunks of pork shoulder in next week's posole, but instead I had apparently ordered (absolutely beautiful) boneless pork butt steaks. I wasn't about to boil these, so I decided I would get bone-in shoulder hunks at H-Mart for the posole and use these beautiful steaks for something else.
Conveniently, I remembered recently reading about the Pork Shoulder Steak with (Ramp) Ranch Dressing recipe over at MomofukuFor2. This recipe wasn't in my mental recipe queue at all, but it sounded pretty tasty and it made use of pork shoulder steaks, so I decided to give it a go. I couldn't find ramps to pickle, but I didn't try overly hard since I'd read that the dressing tastes great with the recommended substitution of pickled onions and scallion greens.
The pickled onions and scallion greens are minced up to make the half cup that should have been home-pickled ramps.Kewpie mayo, buttermilk, and lemon juice are whisked together, and the pickled onions and scallion greens are whisked in. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and damned if this doesn't taste just like (a really good version of) ranch dressing...
Are you getting the sense that this is the easiest recipe ever? Because it totally is. All that's left to do is to season the pork steak and fire up the grill.
Throw the steak on a plate with some of the dressing, and you're good to go.
This was sort of a revelation. It never would have occurred to me to grill a hunk of pork shoulder. I've only ever used pork butt and pork shoulder to make pulled pork, in which case I cook it with low heat for about 13 hours. This, though, was brilliant. When I called ahead to Blood Farm to make sure they would have everything I needed in stock, I spoke to Mr. Blood himself and he was really pleased that I was ordering pork butt steaks. He laughed that nobody ever orders them and he used to love taking them home to eat himself. After trying this, I can totally see why.This is pretty much like the rib-eye steak of pork. The meat was tender, moist, and delicious. The fat charred up and started to melt down. The ranch dressing was really an afterthought for me with this dish. It was tasty and paired nicely with the pork, and I could see this being a perfect match if you were eating at a picnic table in the sunshine... but I almost think this steak deserves better. I'll definitely be adding grilled pork butt steaks to the repertoire, and will play with ideas for sides that can take this dish to another level.

UPDATE: OK, so I had this again for lunch (since there was obviously more than one serving of pork on that plate above...) and I retract the disparaging tone of my comments about the ranch dressing. It's actually fantastic with the pork. I think the fact that I was drinking a nice Pinot last night (whereas this is clearly more beer food) may have colored my feelings... The pork steak on its own was perfect with the wine, but the ranch clashed horribly with it... and since this Adelaida Pinot Noir is way better than the ranch dressing, it won the battle and left me pondering what side dish would go well with pork steak and Pinot rather than just appreciating the dish on its own terms. Lesson learned...

UPDATED UPDATE: I made this again, cooking the pork sous vide and adding a grilled zucchini side dish, and it was even more awesome. Highly recommended...

Sunday Cookbook Adventures: Momofuku Pork Buns

The grocery gods were not smiling on me this weekend, but I didn't let that stop me from making this kick-ass dish from the Momofuku cookbook.
I had decided that I would be making the dish from this book with the second-most alluring pictures, and damned if that wasn't exactly what I was going to do...
(This is another recipe that's already been done beautifully at MomofukuFor2, so check out the post over there for some gorgeous photos.) Even though I have roasted pork belly in my freezer from last week, there were two reasons that I needed to roast some more yesterday. One reason is that last weekend's pork belly is made with the recipe on page 172, whereas this dish called for the cooking method on page 50 (the difference being an extra 45 minutes of cooking at low heat this week). The main reason, though, is that I sort of failed last time by letting parts of the pork belly burn and, as was the case when the KitchenAid Sausage Stuffer Attachment tried to break my spirit, it was important to me to get back on that metaphorical horse and get a success under my metaphorical belt. I was also excited that I would be using pork belly from Blood Farm... but this was not meant to be. I was super-excited when I got home from my trip to Blood Farm with 6 pounds of pork belly, but when I opened the paper-wrapped package I realized that it had only felt like the right thickness because it was folded in half. (I didn't think to check while I was there because they were swamped and I've never had anything go wrong with a purchase from them before...) This is what I had in front of me:
It was also frozen solid at the time, so I couldn't even unfold it to see if anything could be salvaged. When I removed the skin and cut a couple cross-sections today, I saw that there definitely wasn't any part thick enough for these dishes.
The meat is gorgeous and high quality, but was completely useless for what I was trying to do... (It's all vacuum-sealed in my chest freezer now. Some of it will be great for (narrow) homemade bacon, the rest for sausage, and the pound of skin for a Momofuku amuse bouche... but it was an extremely disappointing discovery on Saturday morning after driving 90 minutes round trip to buy it...) I was thus forced to make an emergency trip to H-Mart to pick up some more pork belly there. I splurged on skinless this time since it looked so pretty.
Again, the pork belly is cured in sugar and kosher salt...
(**Updated to be less incredibly vague**) After 6 hours, the brine is rinsed off and the meat goes into a small dish with my beloved Silpat...
and is thrown into a 450˚F for an hour. I made the executive decision to lightly tent the meat with foil after about 20 minutes to prevent burning. Here's the pork at 30 minutes when I pulled it out to baste:
and after an hour:
After that first hour, the temperature is dropped to 250˚F and the pork is cooked for another 75 minutes. It comes out looking golden and beautiful.
I really love this method of cooking pork belly. Chang talks about it being akin to confit, since so much fat renders off in the beginning, leaving the meat to cook in its own fat for the bulk of the time. Speaking of which, I again came away with a solid yield of pork fat, some of which would go straight into my steamed buns the next afternoon.
I wrapped up the pork belly and threw it in the fridge overnight, to be dealt with again just before dinner. As Sunday afternoon rolled around, I wandered into the kitchen to get to work on the steamed buns. I should probably start by acknowledging that I was a bit cranky at this point. After the pork belly fiasco and dealing with some back pain from lugging around the rabbits' fence on Saturday, I was tuckered out and not really in the mood to spend a few hours prepping 50 buns just so I could use 5 of them. Things didn't get any better when I realized that, in skimming the recipe to make my grocery list, I had failed to see that it calls for bread flour rather than all purpose flour. Sigh. Another emergency grocery run and I was back on track (if somewhat crankier)... Luckily, this is one of those lovely stand mixer doughs that sort of makes itself...
This is a yeast dough with a little extra interest added by dry milk powder and, of course, some tasty, tasty pork fat. After 10 minutes with the dough hook, the ball of dough is thrown in a bowl and allowed to rise for a little over an hour...
The texture of this dough is fantastic, by the way. The next step is to punch the dough down and divide it into 50 equal balls, which I was not about to attempt (since dividing into even 4 equal pieces is hard enough for a kid like me). Luckily, Chang also mentions that each ball should be 25 grams, so I broke out my scale and got the job done that way.
After another half hour, these balls are rolled out into 4-inch-long ovals. A pork-fat-coated chopstick is used to fold the oval in half,
and you're left with 50 very pretty little half moons.
After another half hour of resting/rising time, the buns go into a steamer to cook for about 10 minutes,
during which time they get all puffed up and nifty-looking.
This was my first ever steamed bread, and I got a kick out of the transformation. Already the magical pork buns were starting to make my bad mood dissipate...
The buns freeze well after this point, and can be steamed in 2 to 3 minutes from frozen whenever you get the hankering for pork buns in the future, which is a silver lining to the whole annoying making-50-buns-so-you-can-eat-5 scenario. Just a bit of simple prep from here. Another batch of quick salt-pickled cucumbers is tossed together,
and scallions are sliced...
The roasted pork is sliced (Chang suggests 1/2-inch thick, but I prefer thinner and it's my dinner, so that's what I did...).
The pork was heated through in a skillet this time rather than charring up on a grill.
The buns are re-steamed to warm through (this time using the totally awesome silicone steamer that I received in an Easter care package... Awesome!),and, finally, it's time to assemble. Hoisin and veggies go down first,
followed by the pork belly...
Let's admire these awesome little pork buns a bit more... (That's a dish of Sriracha on the side to spice things up to your desired level...)
These? Were amazing. The flavor combination was absolutely perfect. The Mustard Seed Sauce last week was awesome, but I would choose hoisin and Sriracha over that any day, and would choose these fantastic steamed buns over a lettuce leaf as well. No contest, really. This is definitely my new favorite way to eat pork belly, and I love that it's super-quick and simple once you go through the time of making a big batch of buns. Good stuff. Can I just say, it is really hard for me to cook out of any other book when I have Momofuku sitting on my shelf. I'll draw the line after trying two more dishes from it next weekend, but only because my trip to Blood Farm on Saturday yielded a big ol' bag of pig parts in my freezer waiting to be made into Rick Bayless' Posole in 2 weeks... After that, we'll see how long I can force myself to try recipes from different cookbooks before I come crawling back to my Momofuku cookbook...