The last six months have been life-changing for me in terms access to Asian groceries.

It all started with my company's move to Fan Pier in Boston.

Up until January, my entire adult working life has been in the city of Cambridge. I lived in Cambridge; I worked in Cambridge. Heck before that, I went to school in Cambridge.

For those of you who know Cambridge, you'll know how frustrating it is to get Asian groceries. As far as I know, we don't have a Chinese grocery store (though there is a wholesale tofu maker, but we'll leave that for another post). We had a few decent Japanese grocery stores in the past (Kotobukiya, Miso Mart), but they've all left now. There's a small Korean market (Lotte) near MIT, and then there's Reliable, another Korean market in Somerville not that close to where I live.

So I would go into Chinatown or Hong Kong Market in Allston on occasional weekends. Sometimes I would resort to the paltry Asian offerings at my neighborhood supermarkets.

My life changed when my company moved to Fan Pier. All of a sudden, I virtually passed by Chinatown on my way home everyday. Better yet, there was a C-Mart right at South Station. It was all-too-convenient to pick up hard-to-get items like Chinese BBQ "Sacha" sauce, my favorite "Old Lady" chili sauce, Chinese vegetables galore, and unusual cuts of meat.

My life changed AGAIN when H-Mart opened in Central Square in May. Now I could make a super quick stop at Central Square and pick up my favorite Japanese snacks, many Chinese items, and (naturally) tons of Korean specialties.

I was thrilled to find that both C-Mart and H-Mart carry beef shank cut lengthwise (not through the bone), which is the exact cut used for many favorite Taiwanese dishes, such as my mom's soy braised beef shank and Taiwan's national dish: Beef Noodle Soup.

I've been making this dish a lot more, especially this past winter because it was so cold. More recently, I tried using the pressure cooker to make it, which worked out great and saved tons of time.

Now, instead of spending 3-4 hours on a weekend slowly simmering this time-intensive dish, I can "crank out" a delicious beef noodle soup with fall-apart soft meat in just about an hour. Perfect for a weeknight meal.

Beef shank is the traditional meat used to make this dish, although I've seen recipes that substitute it with beef stew meat. I've personally never done that before, and my guess is that it won't be nearly as good. What makes shank so delicious in beef noodle soup is the presence of a lot of tendon / connective tissue, which contributes to rich, collagen-filled broth that results. The bone-in version that you get in normal western-style grocery stores works fine too. In fact, that's the version I used in my hand-pulled noodle video tutorial.

Begin by prepping all your ingredients. Chop your ginger and scallions. Mince the garlic. Cut up the shank into 1-2 inch pieces.

Bring a pot of water to boil and briefly boil the beef chunks for about 5 minutes. The main purpose for doing this is to "clean" the meat of its blood bits, etc. It will result in a clearer, cleaner-looking, and prettier broth, though if you're in a bind and you don't care about the look, it's a step that can be skipped.

Within a minute or two you'll start to see this ugly pinkish foam float to the top.

After about 5-7 minutes it'll get pretty thick and stop getting thicker (which means you're pretty much done).

Dump out the dirty water in the sink and rinse the beef pieces. Set them aside.

In a pressure cooker, stir-fry ginger, garlic, scallions, and star anise with vegetable oil over medium heat until fragrant.

Add beef shank pieces and chili bean sauce (or "broad bean paste with chili) "豆瓣酱" and saute for a few minutes until the beef is slightly browned.

This is the brand of chili bean sauce I like to use. I actually buy the spicy version, and they call it "broad bean paste with chili" in English. Most importantly you want to see the Chinese characters豆瓣酱, or "dobanjiang." I like the above brand because it's from Taiwan.

Add tomatoes, rice wine, and rock sugar (can substitute with brown sugar if necessary).

If you don't have fresh tomatoes, you can totally used canned whole tomatoes. In the above photo, I cut up several canned whole San Marzano tomatoes (they are tiny so I used 2-3), which worked out great.

The amount of rock sugar is really personal taste. Bryan hates sweet foods (e.g., he's not a fan of most Americanized Thai food), and thus I only add a tiny bit (we're talking like "dime sized rock") of rock sugar. Other people will add up to ¼ cup, which will make the soup definitely a bit sweet. You can always adjust the flavor at the end.

Finally, add just enough water so that everything is covered.

Cook under high pressure for about 30 minutes. Then slowly release the pressure. Because I was not in a hurry, I just turned off the heat and let it naturally release pressure. You can also release pressure more quickly using the method recommended by the manufacturer. In the case of my Kuhn Rikon I just press down on the little lever on top and it released steam until the pressure is back down.

Once the lid is off, you can use this opportunity to quickly cook some vegetables. I usually just cook some baby bok choy, though recently I saw a version made my blogger friend Joy Huang from The Cooking of Joy where she used napa cabbage. That was delicious as well.

The choice is totally yours. Every region, every family, and everyone's mom makes beef noodle soup just a bit differently, so go ahead and start your own tradition.

If you're really ambitious, you could even try hand-pulling your own noodles. Here's a fun video I made back in 2010 showing how to make both the hand-pulled noodles and this beef noodle soup! Warning - hand pulling noodles is really tricky and noodle dough is super finicky. Consider yourself warned!

These days it's much too easy just to pick up a package of fresh homemade noodles from either C-Mart or H-Mart. Ah, I am so spoiled now.

Enjoy!


Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup

Serves 4
2 lbs beef shank (cut up into chunks)
1 T vegetable oil
5 cloves of garlic, minced
1 inch chunk of ginger, chopped
2 star anise
2 scallion stalks, chopped
2 T chili bean sauce (or broad bean paste with chili / 辣豆瓣酱)
½ cup soy sauce
1 tomato, sliced
¼ cup rice wine
1 teaspoon to ¼ cup rock sugar (optional)
chili sauce (optional)
5 cups water (or enough to cover the beef)

Optional vegetables
blanched bok choy
napa cabbage
fresh cilantro as garnish

Preboiling
Bring a pot of water to boil and briefly boil the beef chunks for about 5 minutes, or until a white foam forms at the top of the water. Drain dirty water, rinse beef shanks, and set aside.

Stir-frying
1. In the pressure cooker over medium high heat, saute garlic, ginger, scallions, and star anise in vegetable oil until fragrant.

2. Add beef shank pieces and chili bean sauce and saute for a few minutes, until the beef is slightly browned.

3. Add soy sauce and cook for 2 minutes.

4. Add tomatoes, rice wine, and rock sugar.

5. Add water until everything is just covered.

6. Bring up to high pressure and cook under pressure for 30 minutes. Slowly release pressure and serve.
ALTERNATE: If you don't have a pressure cooker
Bring pot to medium high heat until boiling and then reduce to a simmer for 2-4 hours, or until the beef is fall-apart tender.

7. Adjust taste to preference (e.g., add chili sauce to make it spicier; add more soy sauce, salt, or rock sugar)

8. Serve with blanched bok choy and noodles

9. Optionally garnish with cilantro (Bryan's favorite!)

Yum!

And they are just as good if not better as leftovers the next day!

The post Quick & Easy Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup (in a pressure cooker!) appeared first on Tiny Urban Kitchen.

This post is part of a larger post titled Foodbuzz 24x24: Culinary Tour Around the World - Sous Vide Style. In that post, I created a 3-course dinner showcasing the sous vide technique on a variety of cuisines. This duck confit salad was the "French" portion of that meal.

The problem with only having professional cookbooks at your disposal when you are exploring a new, relatively unused home cooking technique is that the recipes you encounter will inevitably be geared towards a restaurant kitchen.

I'm not sure WHAT I was thinking when I decided to propose making a complete meal using sous vide. Not only that, but a complete meal using recipes from the likes of Michelin starred chefs, like Thomas Keller and  David Chang.

I should have known it would be challenging.

I tried picking the easiest recipe out of Thomas Keller's book, Under Pressure: Cooking Sous Vide, and still this recipe was by far the most complicated, step-intensive, and messy recipe.

Thomas Keller mentions how the sous vide method is invaluable in a commercial kitchen where a million things are going on at the same time and everything has to be cooked to perfection at a moment's notice. Not surprisingly, multiple elements of this salad are made using sous vide.

I will provide brief descriptions for each element below. For detailed instructionals, click through to the appropriate links.

Sous Vide Duck Confit (instructional)
Sous vide Duck Fat Fried Potatoes (instructional)
Deep Fried Hen Egg (instructional)
Frisee Salad with Red Wine Vinaigrette (instructional)

First, you want to cure the duck legs with salt with a bunch of herbs for at least 6 hours.

Second, seal the rinsed and dried duck legs with duck fat and herbs. Cook sous vide for 8 hours at 180° F. Cool, dry, and pan sear the duck legs until the skin is browned and crisp. Serve skin side up.

Similarly, cook the potatoes sous vide in duck fat with an herb sachet filled with herbs.

Finally, to make the egg "tempura," bring a pot of water to boiling and cook a very fresh egg for 5 minutes. After carefully peeling the egg, cover it in flour, beaten eggs, and potato starch, and then deep fry for about 3 minutes.

Make salad dressing by reducing down a mixture of red wine vinegar with sugar and then mixing this concentrated syrup with duck fat. Pour over frisee.

Finally, bring ALL the components together. I veered a bit from the Thomas Keller recipe, which actually involves deboning the duck leg, pressing it down, and cutting out a nice 2x2 inch square for service. You can cut the fried egg open to allow the runny yolks to ooze all over the plate. Delicious dish that really worked well together. This was probably the guests' favorite dish.

Epilogue
As I mentioned before, this was the guests' favorite dish. I would happily make this dish again, although I must confess the fried hen egg, though delicious, was a PAIN to make. It was difficult to execute well. Furthermore, it made my tiny kitchen horribly messy. Need more counter space!


For regular meals, I'm happy to make this humbler version (just shred the duck meat withour searing and add the 5-minute egg without deep frying) which still tastes almost as good (and healthier!).

The post Duck leg confit, Pomme Sarladaise, Fried Hen Egg, and Frisee Salad appeared first on Tiny Urban Kitchen.

This special blog post today is sponsored by both Foodbuzz and Electrolux. Electrolux has committed $750,000 to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, and Foodbuzz is getting involved not only by sponsoring all the 24x24 posts, but also by donating a matching amount to the OCRF. 

Having spent my career working at companies that research cancer-fighting drugs, I find this cause  particularly close to my heart. I'm sure all of you know someone who has struggled with cancer and can agree that current treatments are far from satisfactory. Thanks so much to Foodbuzz and Electrolux for investing in this important cause.

Although cooking in a water bath has been a technique that’s been around since medieval times, it wasn’t until the 1970’s that sous vide, a method of cooking food under vacuum in precisely temperature-controlled water baths, was invented in France. It would not be adopted in the US until 2000, when Daniel Boulud learned this fascinating technique from French chef Gerard Bertholon.

With the recent popularity of food shows and celebrity chefs, this method has taken the cooking world by a storm. In fact, many fine dining establishments across America now use this technique.

Despite its popularity in restaurants, it has not really caught on at home. A quick search of Amazon.com only yielded a handful of books about sous vide cooking at home, three of which published within the last six months.

"Sous vide" literally means "under vacuum" in French. Sort of a misnomer, this method of cooking actually involves two parts. Food is first sealed under vacuum in a plastic bag and then cooked in a water bath set at a very precise temperature.

Sous vide cooking has a lot of interesting benefits. First, because you can precisely control the temperature of your water bath, you won't overcook your food. This is great for restaurant cooks who can't always predict exactly when something needs to be served. You can keep a steak at 130�° F (medium rare) for hours in that water bath and take it out to sear just moments before the guests arrive.

Second, this technique allows you to obtain textures of food you could not obtain with traditional cooking. I'll go into this more later, but a sous vide egg has an beautiful velvety creamy texture that is difficult to obtain with traditional methods. Likewise, you can cook shortribs at a low temperature for hours, softening it until it is melt-in-your-mouth tender yet still medium rare at the same time!

Finally, sous vide cooking, in many instances, allows you to reduce significantly the amount of cooking liquid you use. You can marinate with just a small amount marinade in the bag. Similarly, you can confit a piece of meat with just a small amount of fat, unlike the traditional method where you needed to submerge the entire piece of meat in a pot of melted fat.

You can rig your own sous-vide system with a magic cooker, beer cooler, or a cast iron pot. I've tried the magic cooker method, with great success. Alternatively, if you're not the tinkering type, you can use a professional unit, such as the SousVide Supreme

An Exploration of Sous Vide Cooking Applied to Various Cuisines
Thanks to Foodbuzz, I was able to create a meal exploring sous vide through various cultures for this month's 24, 24. I decided to be ambitious and try using this method on a variety of different cuisines and different "classes" of restaurants.

First, we will look at traditional French cooking done in super high-end fashion as interpreted by Thomas Keller. This fancy take on the traditional French duck confit bistro salad, uses sous vide in several of the components. This is a recipe for a dish actually served at his flagship restaurants per se and The French Laundry.

Second, we will explore homestyle Italian cuisine. I have taken a traditional Italian recipe by Marcella Hazan for spaghetti carbonara but have "deconstructed" it by removing the eggs from the sauce. Instead, we will cook an egg sous vide and break it over the top during service.

Finally, we will look at Korean cuisine via David Chang of Momofuku. His 48-hour short ribs are served at Ko, his Michelin-starred flagship restaurant. He transforms a humble piece of meat into something glorious partly by using the sous vide method.

Course 1: Traditional French Bistro Salad with a High End Twist
from Under Pressure: Cooking Sous Vide by Thomas Keller

Confit of Liberty Pekin Duck Leg, Pommes Sarladaise, Fried Hen Egg, and Frisee Salad

Thomas Keller mentions how the sous vide method is invaluable in a commercial kitchen where a million things are going on at the same time and everything has to be cooked to perfection at a moment's notice. In this dish, you prepare multiple components using sous vide.

First, you cure duck legs in an herbed salt mixture for at least 6 hours.

Second, seal the rinsed and dried duck legs in a vaccum bag with duck fat and herbs. Cook sous vide for 8 hours at 180° F. Cool, dry, and pan sear the duck legs until the skin is browned and crispy. Serve skin side up.

Similarly, cook the potatoes sous vide in duck fat with an herb sachet filled with herbs. Pan fry these for about a minute afterwards to crisp them up.

Finally, bring a pot of water to boiling and cook a very fresh egg for 5 minutes. After carefully peeling the egg, cover it in flour, beaten eggs, and potato starch, and then deep fry for about 3 minutes.

Make salad dressing by reducing down a mixture of red wine vinegar and sugar and then mixing this concentrated syrup with duck fat to make a "broken vinaigrette." Pour over frisee and toss.

Finally, bring ALL the components together. I veered a bit from the Thomas Keller recipe, which actually involves deboning the duck leg, pressing it down, and cutting out a nice 2x2 inch square for service. You can cut the fried egg open to allow the runny yolks to ooze all over the plate. Delicious dish that really worked well together. This was probably the guests' favorite dish.

Course 2: Traditional Homestyle Italian Pasta
from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan

Spaghetti Carbonara with Sous Vide Egg

This recipe was MUCH easier than the other two since it came out of a home cooking cookbook (Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan). The carbonara part is pretty much the same. I pan-fried some pancetta, tossed it with olive oil, grated cheese, parsley, and pasta, and then just put the sous vide egg on top.

Sous vide egg is one of the easiest things to make - you don't even need a vacuum sealer! Just drop the egg into the sous vide machine and cook at 146°F for about 45 minutes. Some say that the "perfect" sous vide egg is actually cooked at 148°F. I think it depends on what you want from your egg.

If you want a runny yolk, 148°F is probably too high. I went with 146°F, which creates this wonderfully creamy yet still raw-ish egg yolk. It's not exactly runny, so if that's what you're looking for, you may be a bit disappointed. My guests had wanted to mix the sous vide egg yolk all over the pasta. Since this custardy egg was not as runny, they all unanimously told me they preferred the fried hen egg (5-minute egg) from the first course.

Course 3: A Twist on Traditional Korean Kalbi
from Momofuku by David Chang

48 hour Short Ribs with Dashi Braised Daikon

This dish by far took the most planning. The ribs themselves are cooked for 48 hours before being briefly deep fried and served with dashi-braised daikon, a blanched scallion, and pickled carrots.

Traditional home vacuum sealers typically are not able to vacuum pack liquid. In commercial kitchens, they use chamber vacuum sealers. There are a couple ways around this if you don't have one of those fancy chamber vacuum sealers. One, you can freeze the liquid and then vacuum seal the frozen liquid chunks along with the meat. Or, you can try to seal the liquid-filled bag by hanging the bag down as far as possible (see photo above). This allows most of the air to be removed before the machine starts trying to suck up the liquid, at which point you manually turn the machine off.

After cooking for 48 hours, the meat was still pink (medium rare?) but very soft from having been cooked for so long. Because I was not cooking this right away, I dunked the bag quickly in an ice bath to chill rapidly (for food safey reasons, see below) and stored the marinated meat in the refrigerator for a few days. On the day of service, I removed the blocks, briefly deep fried the pieces, and served with the other components: braised daikon, pickled carrots, blanched scallions, and mustard.

This dish had beautiful flavors which paired with each other very nicely. My short ribs were not "fall-apart melt-in-your-mouth" soft despite being cooked for 48 hours. I think I may have deep fried them for too long. Nevertheless, the flavors were great and the guests enjoyed the meal.

Safety
A few notes on food safety
The US food code recommends that raw or unpasteurized food be held at temperature between 41°F (5°C) and 130°F (54.4°C) for a maximum of four hours. Anything longer than that will give harmful pathogens a chance to multiply to possibly dangerous levels.

On top of that, one particular hazard that relates specifically to sous-vide cooking are bacteria that can proliferate in anaerobic (oxygen-free) environments. Salmonella, Clostridium botulinum, E. coli, and Listeria can multiply to dangerous levels in the anaerobic conditions of a vacuum pack when held at temperatures in the "danger zone" (40°F (4.4°C) and 140°F (60°C).

What's the practical application of this? Be VERY CAREFUL when handling raw foods that will be cooked sous-vide. Basically, treat the food as you would any raw meat product. Make sure you purchase very fresh meat, and keep meat refrigerated until just before cooking. Similarly, if you plan on storing sous-vide cooked food after cooking, cool the cooked meat immediately in an ice bath to bring the temperature down below the danger zone as quickly as possible. Finally, don't cook meats at temperatures in the "danger zone" for more than four hours.



Epilogue
In general, I think the sous vide method is a wonderful additional cooking "tool." There are so many interesting advantages related to this method. I love how you can confit duck in such a smaller amount of fat compared to the traditional method. After all, you need enough to cover the duck leg while it's sitting in the bag.

The textures of food made with this method are really unique too. The sous vide egg is delicious and definitely worth trying. Similarly, it's cool how you can take tough cuts of meat and transform them into really soft and buttery high-end dishes.

There are drawbacks, though. The most difficult part of making sous vide at home is that you have to cook everything serially. Unlike in a restaurant, where there may be various different water baths going at different precise temperatures, I only have one machine. Virtually every sous vide component I was making for this meal needed to be cooked at a different temperature. The result? I had to start the 48-hour short ribs on Wednesday morning in order to finish cooking all the components in time for this meal!

Although there may not be much active work that needs to be done, you need to be VERY WELL ORGANIZED and plan ahead in order to pull off such a multi-course meal. I barely finished, and in the end had to take certain short cuts in order to get the meal on the table.

I have learned to have an even greater appreciation for some of the really nice meals I have had in high-end restaurants. After seeing the crazy amount of work that goes into just one course, I can understand why a meal at The French Laundry or per se costs so much. There really is an insane amount of work that goes into each course!

Again, thanks so much to Foodbuzz and Electrolux for sponsoring this meal. Stay tuned later on this week as I post specific tutorials (step by step photos) along with the actual recipes for all of these dishes!

Sous Vide Posts
Basics
Sous vide Steak
Sous vide Chicken
Sous vide Scallops
Sous vide Salmon
Sous vide Octopus
Sous vide Lobster

Fancy
Duck leg confit, Pomme Sarladaise, Fried Hen Egg, and Frisee Salad
Confit of Liberty Pekin Duck Leg 
Pommes Sarladaise 
Fried Hen Egg 
Frisee Salad
48 hour Short Ribs with Dashi Braised Daikon
Spaghetti Carbonara with Sous Vide Egg

The post Foodbuzz 24x24: Culinary Tour Around the World - Sous Vide Style appeared first on Tiny Urban Kitchen.

Domo-kun Japanese Hamburger is part of a larger Japanese character based meal titled "Kyaraben on Steroids" featured in August's Foodbuzz's 24-24-24. Click here to see the entire meal.

This Japanese rendition of hamburger has ground beef mixed with panko and sauteed onions. It is usually served with a brown sauce (like Bulldog Sauce) or curry. This Asian-interpretation of a western dish has almost become a separate type of cuisine in the states, and you can find restaurants that serve Japanese style hamburgers in the US.

Ingredients

• 1 pound ground beef
• ½ onion, finely chopped
• 1 egg, beaten
• ¼ cup milk
• 1 cup panko breadcrumb
• pepper to season
• vegetable oil for flying

Saute onion in a small amount of vegetable and set aside. Mix together the egg and the milk. Once mixed, incorporate the panko crumbs. Put the raw ground beef in another bowl and add both the onions and the breadcrumb mixture to the beef. Mix together the entire mixture with your hands.

Shape the meat into squares (if you want to make Domo-kun) or just patties if you are making normal hamburgers.

Pan fry the patties in a skillet over medium heat for a few minutes to brown the outside. Flip the burger and then add ¼ cup water to the pan. Cover and steam the burger for a few minutes. Remove cover and continue letting it cook until the water has evaporated.

Serve with brown sauce (Tonkatsu sauce or Bull Dog Sauce) or make your own version by mixing ketchup and Worcestershire sauce to taste (start with a 1:1 mixture).

In order to make the mouth, cut up red bell peppers into squares. Using a peeler, peel off thin sheets of daikon. Using scissors, cut out the teeth.

The post Japanese Hamburger (Domo-Kun) appeared first on Tiny Urban Kitchen.

½ cup soy sauce
½ cup sugar
1 tablespoon minced ginger
3 tablespoon minced garlic
½ pear, mashed (preferably Asian pear, but any ripe pear will do)
2 medium sized onions, sliced
3 tablespoon sesame oil
12 oz thinly sliced bulgogi beef

Marinade
Mix together the soy sauce, sugar, ginger, garlic, pear, and onions.

Mix the marinade with the sliced beef, making sure all the beef is exposed to the sauce. Let marinade for at least 4 hours, but preferably overnight (in the refrigerator, of course).

The next morning, add sesame oil to the mixture, stir, and let the mixture sit for a little longer - preferably at least 30 minutes. Finally, grill the marinated meat and serve. You can also cook on a stovetop grill or pan as well. Enjoy!

The post Bulgogi appeared first on Tiny Urban Kitchen.