What the $*&# is Chawan Mushi?

A couple of months ago, I found myself trapped in a hotel room with very little to do, so I flipped through a couple of cookbooks.  (Yes, I know this is rather pathetic, but such is my life.)  On one page, I saw a very interesting looking savory Japanese egg custard, dismissed it as being weird, and moved on to things more familiar.  But I never forgot about it.

Fast forward to last night.  Sitting on the couch, I thought about what to make for dinner tonight.  Nothing really seemed to make sense, or get me all that excited.  Suddenly, my brain returned to a weird savory Japanese egg custard, and I thought to myself, what the heck?  So today I attempted the weird looking, weird sounding, and weirdly named chawan mushi.

I topped mine with an ahi poke made with cilantro, jalapeno, srirocha and lime for some needed texture and substance, but this is basically what a chawan mushi is: a savory egg custard made with dashi (a cooking stock made from dried bonito flakes), egg, mirin (rice wine) and soy.  The texture is creamy, a la flan, but it has a flavor almost miso-soup-esque, if you like that sort of thing, which I do.

Chawan Mushi
3 eggs
2 cups dashi
2 tbsp mirin
2 tbsp soy sauce
Start by preparing your dashi.  Strain out the bonito and chill the dashi until it gets to room temperature so as not to scramble your eggs.  In a bowl, lightly beat the eggs, making sure not to get too much air whipped in, as whipped air becomes bubbles in a custard.  Stir in mirin and soy sauce, then the dashi.  Divide the mixture into four ramekins, then cover the ramekins with foil.  Place the ramekins in a bain marie or other large oven-safe dish and add water to the dish, making sure nothing splashes into the ramekins, until the water reaches about 1/3 to 1/2 way up the side of the ramekins.  Put in a 425 degree oven for about 30-35 minutes, or until the custards set, then remove from bain marie and chill until serving. 

Top this with your favorite raw seafood preparation, and you have yourself a nice light meal or a nice heavy appetizer.

Crispy Skin Isn't Just For Chicken

I have come a long way as a cook since I began only a few years ago.  Back then, I used to think only of flavor.  After all, food has to have good taste.  But I thought nothing of balance.

A good dish needs balance.  There needs to be balance in color; after all, nobody really wants to eat a plate of brown.  There needs to be balance in tastes, utilizing heat and acid to balance richness.  Just as importantly, a good dish needs balance in textures.  There needs to be an element of crunch in an otherwise soft dish.

There is really something magical about cutting into a piece of protein that is crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside.  Most people look to fried chicken as a good example of this.  For a pescatarian, the same effect can be had with a great piece of fish, like salmon.  Take tonight's dinner, for instance.

Tonight, I made a crispy salmon with a potato hash over a fennel puree.  While everything was good, the crispy salmon skin made the dish.  It added a crunch where something was needed to break up the texture.

There are a couple things to keep in mind when cooking skin-on fish and trying to get the skin crispy.  First, score the skin (meaning cut thin stripes into it with your knife).  This will better allow it to render, more easily crisping up.  Secondly, and most importantly, cook the fish in a hot skillet SKIN SIDE DOWN for about 98% of the time, turning once for only a few seconds to color the flesh side.  Resist all urges to flip the fish.  Salmon, like most fish, will cook just fine through the skin, but if you cook it on the flesh side and then try to crisp the skin, you will end up with dry salmon, as it will have long overcooked.  Finally, don't put a sauce on top of your fish.  There is no sense in having wonderfully crispy salmon skin if you are going to moisten it with a sauce and cause it to lose that texture.  Sauce your plate before adding your fish.

A little sea salt and lemon over the top and you have a perfect dish!

(For those of you who like crispy salmon skin, you can also cut the skin off before baking, grilling, or poaching salmon.  Just remove any additional flesh on the salmon skin with a spoon, and bake it on parchment paper between two baking sheets to keep in flat.  When it comes out, add a bit of salt and you have a great salmon skin cracker!)

Crack Rolls

Generally, I find bread at restaurants to be more of an afterthought, both for me - I don't typically indulge - and for the establishment - they don't typically have good bread or put effort into something creative.  Garlic bread at Italian restaurants is especially pedestrian for the most part.  It has too little garlic, too little oil, too little salt, too little flavor.  And then there are the garlic rolls (I call them crack rolls) at C & O Cucina in Marina Del Rey, CA.

These things are amazing!!  Ruth and I try to get to C & O once every few months.  The food is great (tonight she had penne with tomatoes and mushrooms in a smoked mozzarella sauce while I had fettuccine in a lemon vodka sauce), but what really makes the trip are the crack rolls.  Servers will bring replacements as often as you can stuff these little rolls, covered with oil, basil and minced garlic, into your mouth, which is very often.  In fact, we typically eat so many of the rolls that most of our pasta returns home with us.

So for those of you in LA, please do yourself and your tummy the favor of checking out C & O Cucina (http://cocucina.com/).  And for those other Italian places out there, please learn a lesson.  The bread DOES matter.