Category Archives: Cooking

Roasting “whole” chickens, bones, and stock

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After 2.5 years of never buying any whole chicken, I finally got a whole, organic, air-chilled chicken from Whole Foods this past week since it was on sale. Nowadays, I always chuckle a little to myself thinking about “whole chickens” in the U.S. because when you buy a “whole chicken,” it is never really whole unless you are getting it alive or directly from a farm and asking for it to be presented to you in a certain way. What I mean is: if you pick up a whole chicken at Albertson’s, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, or a related grocery store chain, your “whole chicken” will have no head, neck, or feet attached. All the organs will be removed. And of course, it will be completely de-feathered. If you buy a non-kosher bird, you’ll likely have a little wax packet on the inside cavity of the bird that contains its heart and neck. Our experience of buying a “whole chicken” in the U.S. is so far removed from, say, how people buy “whole chickens” in Asia. I remember going through different markets in countries from Vietnam to Thailand to Cambodia and actually seeing the legs, claws, necks, and heads still attached. People would freak out here if they saw those things. While I don’t necessarily have any desire to gut or defeather a chicken I am cooking, I would appreciate having things like the feet still in tact or at least included; all those chicken feet could be gathered for some collagen rich chicken stock, which I always like to make after I roast at least two chickens, save all the bones, and have enough vegetable scraps gathered in my freezer. 

I spatchcocked my chicken, removing the back bone and flattening the body, and roasted it for 45 minutes undisturbed. While it roasted, I made an au jus with the chicken neck I cut up, along with some mirepoix, water, and my remaining dry sherry I use for cooking. I reduced it and strained it. And we had the chicken. I forgot after all this time how satisfying it was to roast a whole bird (“whole” in the American sense). I realized how much I missed doing this more semi-regularly and accumulating all my roasted bones for stock. Most of the stock I’ve made this year have been vegetable or bean based, plus a couple dashi batches I made from seaweed and bonito I got from a Japanese market. I made a mental note to make chicken stock more regularly next year. 

Bo kho and lemongrass

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I had two pounds of beef chuck leftover in the freezer from a Costco run back in the spring from an original bulk purchase of four pounds of beef chuck cubes. I used the original two pounds for beef rendang using the Sambal Lady’s rendang spice blend. The second two pounds were TBD what I wanted to use it for, but after being reminded of bo kho, or Vietnamese beef stew with lemongrass and five spiced powder, I decided that this would be my next stewed beef dish. 

I’ve had bo kho a few times in restaurants, but I’d never actually made it before despite it being fairly straightforward to make. It’s made with beef chuck cubes, five spice powder, whole spices like star anise, clove, and bay leaf, aromatics like garlic, ginger, and freshly pounded lemongrass, and fish sauce as seasoning. You add carrots and pureed tomatoes for additional flavor and body. It’s braised for several hours until the beef is fork tender and the liquid is reduced down into a thicker liquid, great on top of noodles and rice. Oftentimes, if you order this dish in a restaurant, it will be served with a fresh baguette to dip into the stew juices. 

While I was preparing this dish, I realized that I actually hadn’t purchased any fresh lemongrass since we lived on the Upper East Side. I had forgotten how aromatic and delicious it was. The reason I haven’t bought it is that lemongrass is pretty annoying to prepare. It’s hard, woody, and annoying to chop properly so that you can actually eat it. In this stew, you don’t eat the lemongrass pieces; they need to be plucked out because they’re used just to flavor the stew. I ended up having to spend all this time manually picking out all the pieces after braising so that I wouldn’t have to annoy myself or Chris later with picking it out while eating. 

After several hours of braising and reducing the stew liquid down, I tasted the stew and decided it was done. As I started ladling it into my storage containers last night, I realized that in a time when I feel like I have little control over the world and life events, the few things I do have control over include what I cook and eat. And cooking is something I enjoy all the time, and it especially provides comfort during a time when I feel like the world is loveless. So I will savor this stew tomorrow and try to hope for a brighter tomorrow. 

Brothy beans and the magic that is Malaysian sambal

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A friend I made late last year and I have been bonding about all things fancy food related. She gets most of her meat and beef bones from a local farm that is a short driving distance from her apartment in New Jersey. She also has been purchasing Rancho Gordo heirloom beans, and at around the same time I made my first (and so far, only) order from them. She told me she has been so ruined by these beans that she doesn’t think she can buy regular beans anymore. Given that I still want value, I’m definitely still buying regular beans, but I plan to reserve the Rancho Gordo beans for recipes and dishes where the main flavor I want is the bean (instead of any strong spices). So sorry to Indian dals, but I won’t be using Rancho Gordo for you — at least, not yet! When I last saw her during the AFSP walk, she had told me she’d just made a big pot of Rancho Gordo beans. I asked her how she prepared them. And she said that all she did was boil them with some basic vegetables (onions, carrots, bay leaf, etc.), seasoned, and ate them just like that, with the delicious bean broth and all. So I thought…. Hmmmmm. Maybe I should do that, too. I should stop overthinking the preparation and just take advantage of the fact that the Rancho Gordo beans yield a delicious bean broth and eat them as is!

So I took out a bag of heirloom Jacob’s cattle beans this week, soaked them for four hours, then threw them in a pot with water and a parmigianno reggiano rind and simmered for another three. Once they were done, I stored them in glass jars with the bean broth and all. When serving, I added some grated parm, salt, pepper, and that was it. It was delicious on its own, but I wanted to add some heat to it, so I took out the Sambal Lady’s hot chili sambal and dolloped a small amount on top of our bowls. And that really made it special! I have honestly been neglecting the hot chili sambal, and seeing how much it enhanced my brothy beans here, I knew it was a reminder to me to use it more!

Since I always love tinkering, sometimes it’s hard for me to appreciate that less can be more. In this case, these simple brothy beans made our week. Pookster was obsessed with these brothy beans; she’s already had second helpings two days this week at dinner time!

Porcini mushrooms are too expensive

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I get a few emails a week from Food & Wine magazine, along with a number of other food bloggers/writers/cookbook authors, as an inspiration for what to cook and what to add to my “to cook” list. This can get a bit overwhelming, especially when you add all the recipes I’ve already been wanting to make because I just want to, and all the dishes I get inspired by on Instagram. But I suppose we all have something to live for and look forward to! The latest recipe I decided to make this week was pork and porcini mushroom meatballs. We went up to Arthur Avenue in the Bronx this past weekend and restocked on tinned San Marzano tomatoes and some high quality dried pasta. I also picked up a gorgeous bunch of fresh basil and onions. We stopped by Casa Della Mozzarella and got a pound of their fresh mozzarella bocaccini balls. And luckily, Borgatti’s was open, so we got a pound of fresh egg noodles (pappardelle, of course!), a large pack of porcini and ricotta ravioli, along with some jam and tinned clams. Given this, I figured we’d have some pappardelle with a side of the pork and porcini meatballs. But when I looked at multiple shops for the required dried porcini mushrooms for the meatball recipe, I was shocked: a pound of dried porcini mushrooms would cost at least $60! I couldn’t stomach paying this much for any mushroom, so I decided to take the more frugal road out and instead used chopped fresh cremini mushrooms.

The meatballs still came out delicious and satisfying, especially when paired with my pappardelle tossed in a creamy San Marzano tomato sauce I had simmering for over an hour. I don’t know when the price of porcini mushrooms will go down. The price just made no sense. Even with fresh chanterelles, which require you to go foraging since they cannot be domesticated, at their peak price, they are $30/pound when fresh. I just couldn’t wrap my head around how anyone could justify paying so much for dried mushrooms. And I suppose many others agreed with me: every time I picked up a bag of the insanely priced dried porcini mushrooms, they all had a thin layer of dust on them, as if to indicate no one had touched them or even considered buying them for a long time. Given this, I wonder if dried mushrooms can actually… stale?

First butternut squash of this autumn season, and first butternut squash soup (!)

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In my mind, there are three things that personally ring in fall / autumn for me: making my first pumpkin dessert (usually pumpkin bread since it’s easy and delicious), my first apple dessert (as first started during the pandemic year of 2020, when I made a German style apple cake (apfelkuchen) that was inspired by the amazing apple cake we had during our first trip to Germany, and 3) my first butternut squash purchase, followed by peeling and cutting up my first butternut for cooking, and SOUP!

I made a quick pumpkin cake with maple cream cheese frosting for our New Jersey play date in late September. Then, when my friend just came to visit, I made an apple fritter cake, which tasted just like an apple-laden apple cider donut, just without all the oil from frying. Yesterday, I peeled, cut, and roasted my first butternut squash of this autumn. Today, I used it to make a quick butternut squash and white bean soup. I had leftover white beans from cooking last week, and so I decided to puree it into my soup, which worked extremely well! I’m looking for more ways to incorporate beans into our diet for added protein (and just because they’re SO good for you), and this was a perfect way to get them in. The white beans added a velvety texture to the soup, and it gave the soup even more body, thickness, and creaminess. I definitely did not make the same mistake I made last year by using a crappy cartoned vegetable stock from Trader Joe’s; this time, I used some dashi I had made from last week, and the umami flavor really complimented the squash and beans well. With my three items checked off, it’s definitely and officially fall in our kitchen!

I’m looking forward to cooking with even more butternut squash and other autumn squash favorites, like buttercup and kabocha, very soon. Autumn/winter squash is truly the best squash. Take THAT, zucchini and yellow summer squash!

Fall spiced cooking and baking – apple fritter cake

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While I love spring and summer and all the delicious produce that comes with it, I will be honest and say that my favorite time to bake is most definitely in the fall. Autumn spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and ginger are some of my favorites to use in baking, and they always go well with autumn produce, like apples, endless squash, pumpkin, and pears. While I love summer fruit desserts, summer is not my favorite time to have my oven on, which would make my house even hotter than it already is. Having the oven on for baking in autumn and winter make the house smell and feel more cozy, plus they also help to heat up the place when the temperature drops. For me, from a cooking perspective, I ring in the fall by baking something with apple or pumpkin in it. Last weekend, I made a light pumpkin cake to bring over for Kaia’s play date. This week, since my friend is visiting from out of town, I decided to use it as an excuse to bake another autumn treat that has been on my list, which was Scientifically Sweet’s latest cinnamon apple fritter cake.

A few years ago, I made apple cider donuts from scratch at home in the fall. While they were absolutely delicious and fun to make, it was time consuming since they were yeast donuts. Plus, they took an ungodly amount of coconut oil to shallow fry, which was both messy and expensive since coconut oil is not cheap. I’ve previously made a German style apple cake a couple autumns, which I enjoyed; Chris had even said it was likely the best dessert I’d ever made at that point in time. This autumn, I wanted something that was more of a mashup, and so this apple fritter cake was the perfect marriage of these desires. Scientifically Sweet describes it as tasting like “a cinnamon apple donut without all the oiliness from deep frying.” Granted, I think the best donuts do not feel oily, nor do they taste heavy at all; in fact, the very, very best donuts are so deceptively light that they feel like you can eat half a dozen of them and not even realize you ate that many. But regardless, this description sounded perfect to me.

I also just purchased a new bag of all-purpose flour so that I can start baking some breads. Chris requested breads that he could enjoy with jam, so I’m likely going to make no-knead brioche soon. And then I also want to make some yeast-based rolls, so I also have sweet potato yeast rolls on my list to make. Baking yeast bread in summer never seems fun, but baking it in the fall and winter seem like the perfect indoor activity. Who knows – maybe Kaia will want to get involved, too. Or… maybe she’ll just eat it all.

Beef rendang, coconut rice, and the rice cooker that decided to stop working

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It seems to be a once-a-year activity now: I decided to defrost the beef chuck I picked up at Costco a few months ago to make a batch of rendang using the Sambal Lady’s rendang spice packet (in partnership with Burlap and Barrel, who I have grown to love and admire). Last year, I made the rendang with a leg of lamb I cut up. In 2022, I made it with beef chuck I purchased on sale at Whole Foods. Just like the previous two years, while the process was simplified greatly given I didn’t have to source all the different spices with Auria’s spice blend packet, it was still a labor of love since it takes low and slow cooking and stirring over the course of four hours. Prior to having a fully remote job, this would have been unthinkable as a weeknight meal unless I did it on the Sunday before Monday dinner. But I was able to adjust the heat and stir the beef mixture between meetings and work tasks yesterday, and the beef rendang came out beautifully.

I planned to serve the rendang with coconut rice (infused with some cardamom pods) made in our rice cooker, but I was sad to see that after 14 years of operation, the rice cooker decided to stop working. I had to salvage the partially boiled rice by dumping it all into a sauce pan and finishing it over the stove. RIP rice cooker, and hello to your updated replacement (the same brand) coming in a couple days!

I wasn’t sure if Kaia would enjoy the rendang given these spice packets were the original hot ones, and she’s recently been complaining about spicy food (that friggin’ Dragons Love Tacos book that demonizes spicy food!). So I was very pleasantly surprised to see her carefully inspecting the beef shreds, tearing them apart, and daintily placing small pieces in her mouth and chewing. She’d hesitate, ask for water or milk, then go back for seconds, thirds, and fourths. She did say the rendang was spicy, but she kept going back for more. This is ALL a good sign! I’m trying to raise a spice/heat loving little eater!

Was the rendang a big effort? Yes. But was it worth it? Darn right it was. And we have plenty of tasty leftovers for the next few days to keep the ROI going.

Eating and cooking after a meat and carb intensive trip

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There’s no way to sugar coat this: we didn’t have very many vegetables during this trip. Overall, we probably had more while we were in Chile, but in Uruguay and Argentina, we had very little other than the vegetables we proactively ate during breakfast at our hotel. Kaia was also seemingly on a vegetable strike: she didn’t eat almost any vegetable offered to her nearly the entire trip, and especially in Argentina. She ate lots of pasta… perhaps too much pasta, and a good amount of meat, but no greens were in sight almost at all. So I wanted to make sure we took care of that when we got back.

Today, I spent most of the day defrosting food and cooking vegetables. It was clear right away that even Kaia missed her vegetables: she ate multiple servings of each type almost right away, and she seemed to reject something she usually loves: sticky rice (Chinese and Vietnamese). Who knows — maybe her body was telling her to reject the sticky rice because she had already had her carb fill in South America. Either way, I was quite satisfied not only to be eating and cooking vegetables again, but also to see that my toddler wanted them, as well.

I’ve also been preparing my defrosted white beans to make white bean pesto soup, and some dal, which is always a comforting, healthy, and nutritious meal after a heavy eating trip. We’re definitely going to get in our legumes and veggies this week!

Oyakodon – “parent child bowl”

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Once I made my dashi this past Sunday, the first two things I could think of to make with this potent umami ingredient were miso soup and oyakodon. Oyakodon, for whatever reason, has always seemed like a deceptively simple dish. All it really is made of is chicken, egg, some kind of seasoning/broth, over a steaming hot bowl of rice. Oyakodon is one of the main comfort foods of Japan – it’s satisfying, comforting, hot, and quick to make (and eat). In Japanese, “oya” means parent and “ko” means “child.” This references the chicken (parent) and the egg (child).

Before I made dashi, I always assumed that oyakodon was complicated. Whenever I’ve had it at Japanese restaurants, it always tasted so complex yet comforting. Steaming hot chicken and egg with Japanese seasonings over rice is hard to get wrong. But with a sweet savory combination of homemade dashi, some soy sauce, a little sugar, and some scallions, chicken slices and onions get simmered and become this umami bomb of flavors. The egg is swirled in during the last minute of cooking to barely be done and look like ribbons on top of the bowl.

Now that I know how easy this is to make (as long as you have dashi, or even dashi powder), this could become a new staple to make. It’s even a one-pot dish! It’s funny how over the years, when I’ve thought things were too complicated to make, they’ve actually become quite simple once you get one or two basic ingredients or steps down.

Taiyo Foods in Sunnyside, Queens – The inspiration for dashi making time

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During our Saturday outing yesterday (which was HOT – it was over 90 degrees F outside here in New York City!), we went to Sunnyside, Queens. We had some Bolivian and Mexican food, along with some interesting pastries and coffee. One new place we went to was Taiyo Foods, which was actually a staple of the Sunnyside area. A few years ago, their original location had to close due to a fire, but luckily enough, with the support of a Kickstarter and a lot of loyal customers, they were able to reopen and renovate at a new spot just a few blocks away. I got reminded while perusing the aisles here that one thing I did want to do this year was to finally make my own dashi with dried kombu seaweed and bonito flakes. For the longest time, I researched quality of kombu and bonito and felt very confused, as I wasn’t sure how to judge quality and why the price points where so high vs. low. But while at Taiyo, I figured I would just buy the basic, seemingly affordable versions of both and see how they turned out.

The process of making dashi is quite simple, assuming you are not growing/harvesting your own kombu seaweed or drying and shaving your own bonito fish. In a nutshell, this how to make dashi, the basis of all Japanese cooking: you take a pot of water (about two liters) with 30 grams of kombu (wiped, not rinsed!), and bring both to a near simmer — you want to see bubbles appear in the water. Then, you immediately shut the heat off and add 30 grams of bonito flakes. Cover the pot and let the bonito flakes steep for five minutes. Then, strain the liquid, and there you have it: your own fresh, homemade dashi! This would be called ichiban dashi because it is “first brew” dashi. You can choose to do another steep with the same process, same amount of new water, and the same kombu piece and bonito flakes; this will yield niban dashi, or second brew dashi. It will be weaker than the first brew, but still tasty in dishes where a strong dashi is not the first flavor you get.

As long as you have kombu and bonito flakes (plus a pot, access to clean water, and a stovetop), you can have homemade dashi in the time it takes to (nearly) boil water, plus five additional minutes (to steep the bonito). After making ichiban dashi and niban dashi, I was really blown away by how quick and easy the entire process was, plus how fresh and sea-like the stock tasted. This afternoon, I used part of it to make homemade miso soup, and will be using the rest to make oyakodon and freezing some cubes for future cooking. It’s funny how doing something so quick and easy can make you feel so accomplished. I got so many comments on these Instagram Stories I did on this about how impressive it was that I did this, but it was really easy, and not that expensive, either!

When I originally thought about making dashi from scratch, and regularly, about a year ago, it was really for Kaia’s sake because she’s definitely a soup baby. Since her very first soup experience when she was about 8-9 months old (it was a Cuban black bean soup!), she’s always loved her liquidy soups and her thicker bean-based soups. Dashi would be an easy base for soups for her. And she definitely gobbled up all this miso soup today, much to my delight. She happily ate all the wakame seaweed I added, which was no surprise since she adores seaweed. Plus, for the very first time since she was a baby, Pookster even devoured all the silken tofu cubes and kept asking for more. As a toddler, she’s been rejecting soft tofu in favor of firm or extra firm tofu. Tonight, she ended up having three generous helpings of tofu and seaweed miso soup. I had to add more silken tofu to the soup just to appease her and her belly!

Well, that does it: dashi is going to be on rotation in our household now. And I’ll also need to find some other creative ways to incorporate dashi into our diet.