momofuku steamed buns – hoi sin sauce – scallions – peking duck

And when it works it’s just amazing. My all-time favorite butter sauce for meat and basically anything else. Yesterday I had it with some entrecôte steak, that I cooked sous-vide at 120° for 45 Minutes and then seared in a cast iron pan. It was definitely one of the most delicious things I had in the last couple of weeks.

I served it with some oven-baked fries and a simple salad with a sherry vinegar vinaigrette. Nothing fancy.

Ingredients:
serves 3

2 sticks of butter
3 egg yolks
2 tbsp. chopped tarragon
1 shallot, minced
2 tbsp. white wine
2 tbsp. white wine vinegar
2 tbsp. water
juice of half a lemon
kosher salt
coarsely ground white pepper

First, clarify the butter. Clarifying the butter means melting it and carefully pouring all of the clear liquid out while discarding the white stuff at the bottom. Set aside and put tarragon, shallot, wine, vinegar, water and some pepper in a small pot. Heat over medium-high heat and let it boil until reduced to about 2 tablespoons of liquid. Strain out all the solid parts and put into a bain-marie. Add egg yolks, heat carefully and start stirring until the the liquid starts to thicken a little. Slowly, while still stirring, pour in the butter in a small stream. You have to be very patient with this, don’t add too much butter at once. Continue stirring after all the butter is in and until the sauce has considerably thickened. Take off the heat, add lemon juice and season with a little salt. You can add a little chopped tarragon aswell. Serve immediately to steak, french fries, eggs benedict or seriously anything else!

Two days ago I was finally motivated enough to spend a lot of time on some chicken wings. It was all quite spontaneous. I went to the store, got some chicken wings with tips and a lot of lard. In the original recipe he wants you to cold-smoke the chicken wings, but in my tiny kitchen I really don’t have the possibility to do so. So I decided to do it the alternative way with infusing the chicken with smoky bacon flavor while confiting.

The steps are quite simple. You cut of the tips (reserve them for the taré), cut the wings in two pieces and brine the meat for about six hours. Then you confit the wings in pork fat (or duck fat) for about half an hour while adding smoky bacon to the fat. The wings are then cooled down in the fat overnight. The next step is making the taré for the sauce. Brown the wing-tips, add sake, soy sauce and mirin and simmer for about an hour. Strain and refrigerate. The fat surrounding the wings is then heated until liquified and the wings are strained out and browned on both sides in a hot cast-iron pan while being pressed down. Garlic and pickled chiles are added to the tare before tossing the chicken with it and serving it with a lot of scallions.

I’m not gonna post the full recipe here, because I think I already posted enough of the book’s recipes. So people, please buy the book! It’s so damn worth it!

Anyways, while cooking I already noticed the wonderful smell coming out of the pan and when I had the first bite I knew that the time involved in preparing this wonderful dish was well worth it. It was so delicious that I was immediately scared of my flatmates eating it all up before I got a chance of having enough of the wonderful stuff. Fortunately, I made enough and no one was still hungry after dinner.

I just want to encourage everyone to invest the time and patience. It’s so worth it. Promise.

Oh, and if you’re not sure if you want to buy the book you can check out my other blog posts about food from David Chang’s Momofuku:
Chicharrones
Fried Chicken
Steaks – ‘Ghetto Sous Vide’.
Marinated Steak Ssam
Brussels Sprouts, Kimchi Puree & Bacon.
Pan-roasted Asparagus, Poached Egg and Miso Butter.

Also, you can find a recipe to those delicious pancakes I had for breakfast today after the break. Enjoy!

You can also directly follow this list here and by the way, if you don’t do so already please follow my twitter account!

@momofukufor2 The always nice and funny Stephanie cooking her way through Changs magnificent cookbook at momofukufor2.com. The blog is updated daily btw.!

@nytimesdining The New York Times providing you with great food and wine stories, restaurant reviews, recipes and lots of other random food things.

@eatmedaily lots of fun food stories, interesting news including media, books, cookbooks, art, design, celebrity, fashion, robots, and cookery.

@SheSimmers Leela, who is blogging at shesimmers.com and posting delicious recipes, interesting tutorials and howtos and everything with great, mouthwatering photos.

@seriouseats lots of interesting foodie trivia and tutorials including cooking sous vide in a beer cooler, ice cream quizzes and tips on how to make a klondike float.

So, go and follow them, People! It’s definitely worth it!

Ingredients:
makes about 20 pancakes
1 cup all-purpose flour
3 tsp. baking powder
3 tbsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
2 eggs
1 cup of buttermilk
butter for frying

Mix all ingredients until smooth. Set batter aside and let stand for about 10 to 20 minutes. Heat some butter over medium-high heat in a pan until bubbly. Pour in batter for pancakes and fry them for about 2 minutes on the first side. Flip them to the other side and fry for another minute or two. Serve with a piece of butter on top and drizzle with maple sirup.

But it’s true. This dish is such a great and hearty pasta dish, that just makes you want to eat a whole pot and die happily afterwards. The Lemon in the sauce is a nice contrast to the uber-savory taste of the pork sausage. Perfect balance, that just makes you eat more of that stuff.

P.S.: I’m not saying he’s a bad cook or anything. I mean, who am I to say something like that?! I just (still) can’t stand him. Cheers!

Recipe adapted from “Cook with Jamie” by Jamie Oliver

Ingredients:
serves 4

2 tbsp. fennel seeds (I left those out, just because I didn’t have them on hand)
2 dried red chiles, crumbled
olive oil
1 lb 6 oz coarse italian sausage, without casing
1 tbsp. oregano
1 cup of white wine
zest and juice of 1 Lemon
1 lb 2 oz fusilli or tortiglioni
2 tbsp. of Butter
1/4 cup parmesan cheese
A small bunch of fresh flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped

Heat some olive oil in a cast-iron pan and add the sausage when hot, breaking it up with a wooden spoon. Fry for some minutes and add the fennel seeds and chile. Continue frying, until the meat is all browned and your kitchen smells delicious. (Seriously, it does!) Add oregano, white wine and let half of the wine boil away. Turn down the heat and stir in lemon juice and zest.

Now cook your pasta al dente, according to package instructions or personal preference. When done, drain pasta and toss with the sauce in your pan. Add parmesan, butter and parsley and mix until everything’s evenly distributed on the pasta.

Serve with some more parmesan and parsley.

In the South of Germany, where I come from, you eat the cooked or steamed white asparagus with “Kratzete”, a side dish, that is basically shredded fluffy pancakes, some nice ham and sauce hollandaise. Perfect combination – believe me!

“Kratzete”

Ingredients:
serves 2

1 cup of Milk
3 eggs, separated
2 tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
a dash of baking powder

Whisk together Milk, egg yolks, flour, sugar, salt and baking powder to a smooth batter. Beat egg whites until stiff and foamy and fold them in the batter. Set aside for 30 minutes.

Heat butter in a pan over medium-high heat. Pour in Batter and fry for about 4 minutes or until the first side is golden brown. Using a spatula, turn the huge pancake around and fry for another 2-3 minutes. When both sides are nicely browned, begin ripping the pancake in smaller pieces using forks.

Fry the pieces for some more minutes and serve with asparagus, some ham and a lot of sauce hollandaise.