Spicy Soba Noodles with Smoked Tofu, Shiitakes and Cabbage

I'm not sure when I first stumbled across this recipe (or why), but it has been sitting in my draft post folder for some time.  My best guess is that I was looking for recipes using soba noodles and decided to bookmark this one for future use.  Who knows?  But I'm a sucker for shiitake mushrooms, edamame and soba noodles, so it totally makes sense that this recipe sounded good to me.  I decided to use more edamame than the recipe called for (it originally wanted a cup of edamame, but I figured why not use the entire 12 oz bag of frozen edamame) and to add some smoked tofu.  I figured that the tofu would add some smoky flavor, and both ingredients would up the amount of protein in the dish to make the dish more filling.  I also cut back on the amount of noodles in the original recipe after reading through some of the reviews posted on Epicurious.  I love soba noodles, but why not make the healthy choice and go a little heavier on the veggies and a little lighter on the carbs?

When I was explaining the recipe to Alex, he called it "Korean vegetable spaghetti."  And he kept referring to it as "Korean spaghetti" all evening.  Spaghetti wasn't the first thing that came to mind for me when I saw or tasted the dish, but to each their own.  I see what he was saying.  It's a noodle dish with lots of veggies - in theory it's like a pasta primavera, only not so much.  First of all, I have never had a spicy pasta primavera before.  Second, none of these ingredients (except for the garlic) would go anywhere near a pasta primavera recipe.  Some of the reviews complained that the sauce here was bland, but I totally disagree.  I know we went light on the noodles (and noodles typically soak up and therefore require a lot more sauce than veggies) and added smoked tofu (which is pretty flavorful on its own), but I actually liked how the addition of the soba noodles mellowed the sauce a little and offset the spicyness of the gochujang.  I was worried that the recipe didn't call for the addition of any salt prior to the addition of the sauce (with the exception of the salt in the boiling water for the noodles and edamame), but after adding the sauce I'm glad we didn't salt it initially.  If we had salted the vegetables I think the dish would have been too salty overall.  If I were to make the dish again I would probably keep the ratio of sauce to noodles the same, but I could vary the vegetables according to what I happened to have on hand.  I think you could play with those proportions to your heart's content without detracting from the dish at all.

Recipe after the jump!

Soy Sauce Roast Chicken Breasts and Edamame with Meyer Lemon and Chilis

After a few nights of vegetarian meals, Alex and I are slowly working our way back to eating meat.  Not that I didn't enjoy my vegetarian meals earlier this week - I truly did, but there are only so many dishes I can cook before I want to add meat (or seafood) back into the mix.  All things in moderation, right?  So tonight we made chicken and maybe this weekend we will make some pork.  Actually, I really want to make some dumplings in honor of Chinese New Year so pork is a must.  Yes, I know that I am a bit behind the ball on Chinese New Year this but I can't help it.  I have been busy.  I'm still going to make seven meals worth of Chinese food, but our first Chinese meal (and maybe our second meal too) is going to come this weekend.  

Anyway, back to tonight's meal.  Alex gets the credit for coming up with this chicken recipe.  We were trying to decide what to do with the chicken breasts I had defrosted and I knew that I wanted to serve a knockoff of an edamame dish we had this past weekend with dinner.  So he decided to come up with some sort of Asian-marinade.  He proposed a soy sauce and mirin marinade and I warned him to be very careful that the chicken didn't burn because of all the sugar in the mirin.  You have to be careful when you marinate chicken (or any other meat) in a marinade with honey, sugar, barbeque sauce, or any other sauce with a decent amount of sugar in it because the sugar burns very easily.  One second you have a nicely browned skin and the next you have cinders.  Alex wanted to stick with the soy and mirin marinade so he modified our usual roast chicken breast recipe to sear it for a less time on the stove top.  And in the end, the chicken was quite tasty and very juicy.  The skin on his chicken breast got a little charred, but mine was perfect (although it would have charred in a matter seconds).  The mirin and sake gave the chicken a nice balanced sweetness and the soy sauce made it savory.  The edamame we tossed with sliced Fresno chilis, Meyer lemon zest and juice.  We had the "house edamame" at a restaurant called Imperia this past weekend where they tossed whole edamame with Fresno chilis, a ton of coarse salt, and what they called "lemon essence."  When the waitress put it down at the table I was totally skeptical, but it was really tasty.  Our version was slightly different than the restaurant version in that it was a lot spicier (the restaurant must have removed the seeds from the chilis) and a little less oily.  In the future I will remove the seeds of the chilis because the heat overpowered the more delicate flavors of the lemon.  One other difference was that we used frozen shelled edamame instead of whole edamame.  All things considered I thought our dinner was a pretty successful experiment. 

Recipe after the jump!

Edamame Succotash

I had a dream (or a menu planning day dream because I have those too) about making seared scallops and succotash the other day.  And then it occurred to me that with my corn bounty, succotash was a great idea.  The scallops on the other hand are going to have to wait until next time.  I have too much produce and other things on hand to go out and buy more ingredients, particularly after I hit the farmers' market again today to pick up some more fresh produce.  Can you tell how obsessed I am with the farmers' market right now?  After eating dinner at my desk and not cooking for almost a month I am on produce overdrive.  I just can't help myself because every time I go anywhere near fresh produce I have to buy it.  I just can't resist.  Today I bought a couple heads of very fresh lettuce, fresh basil, sun gold tomatoes, striped zucchini...  I have a problem.  I just can't help myself!  And let's be honest - produce is one of the most benign problems I could possibly have.  My shoe addiction on the other hand...  Just kidding.  Well, not really.  I have made a few glorious shoe purchases recently.

Anyway, I don't know where succotash originated and I don't care.  It's delicious.  Or at least this version is delicious.  But you really need to use fresh sweet corn when it is in season and not frozen (we all know that I have a ton of corn left over from my unintentional 16 ear CSA haul).  And cherry tomatoes straight from the farmers' market.  Both the corn and the cherry tomatoes were from our CSA and the fresh basil came from my run to the farmers' market today.  In a dish like this it really does make all the difference if you are using fresh, seasonal, local produce.  The only exception to that rule is that you can go ahead and use frozen edamame.  I have never seen fresh.  Or if you have access to fresh of frozen lima beans (which I hear is more traditional in succotash) use those.  We always have edamame in the freezer so I went ahead and used it for the bean component of our succotash.  But the fresh corn was super sweet, the onions are sweet and the tomatoes were a little acidic but still a little sweet too.  Yet it's not at all a sugary sweetness.  Instead the dish has all of the freshness and sweetness of really great summer produce, tempered by the crunch of the edamame, the taste of the basil and the acidity of the tomatoes.  It has really great balance and depth of flavor.  What a fun summertime side dish.  This recipe makes more than enough for a family of four to use as a side.  We served the succotash with BLT sandwiches (another of my favorite summer dishes) and will have plenty leftover for a snack tomorrow.  I can't wait to see how it tastes chilled!

Recipe after the jump!

Miso-Roasted Chicken with Miso Pan Gravy and Edamame with Shichimi Togarashi

I have been trying out new recipes for roast chicken for years.  Some are really successful, others less so.  But almost all of them are variations on the same theme - American flavors, some herbs, some garlic.  You get the picture.  Tonight for dinner I wanted to try something new out and make an Asian-inspired roast chicken recipe.  So we started discussing options and somehow I came up with the idea of making miso-marinated or rubbed chicken.  I love the idea of a marinade, but when you marinate your chicken the skin never quite crisps up as much as I want it to, unless you pat it really dry or allow it to air dry in the fridge.  Plus marinating requires time and time was something we didn't have - by the time we got home from the grocery store it was already after 7 pm.  So we decided to make some miso butter (like in David Chang's Pan-Roasted Asparagus, Poached Egg & Miso Butter), and rub it under the skin of the chicken breasts before roasting them.  I have rubbed various compound butters under the skin of turkeys on Thanksgiving, but I have never tried it with chicken breasts.  So we stuffed our chicken breasts with miso butter and then cooked it up using our go to roast chicken breast recipe, only we bumped up the heat a little because these chicken breasts were massive and with the layer of butter we thought it could cook at a slightly higher temperature.  We took some inspiration from this recipe from Food & Wine for the gravy and just kind of made things up as we went along.  As a random side dish, I took some inspiration from my newest cookbook, Cooking in the Moment by Andrea Reusing, and tossed some cooked edamame with some shichimi togarashi for a really easy (and tasty) side.

The chicken was juicy and tasty (those were the adjectives Alex came up with to describe it).  I was thinking more along the lines of savory, warm and hearty - the type of dish that you would love to eat on a cold evening.  Miso has such an interesting and unique flavor that really permeates the chicken while the butter keeps the chicken very moist.  The flavor profile here was very distinct from all of the other roast chicken recipes we have tried over the years, which was great.  And the skin crisps up very well, which is something that both Alex and I love.  If you aren't a huge fan of the flavor of miso, you can adjust the ratio of butter to miso accordingly, but since I really enjoy the flavor of white miso we kept the ratio about 50-50.  I think this would make a really good recipe for a whole roast chicken.  You could stuff the miso butter under the skin on the breasts and thighs and then roast until done.  I might even stuff the cavity with a little more miso butter, or just some shallots and herbs. 

Recipes after the jump!

Edamame Hummus

I'm not sure why dips appeal to me so much, but they really do.  I love anything that you can serve with pita, or spread over slices of baguette.  Unfortunately, some dips (like most spinach and artichoke dips) are full of fat (not to mention dairy, which is bad when you're lactose-intolerant like I am).  So I generally try not to indulge too much, but I just can't stop myself when it comes to hummus.  I love hummus.  And I am always looking for a new and better hummus recipe.  This time I decided to mix it up and make an edamame hummus.  The addition of edamame gave me some trouble in deciding what herbs and spices to mix in - Alex suggested shichimi togarashi, but that just didn't sound right.  In the end I went with more traditional hummus flavors and just used some tahini, lemon juice, parsley and cayenne pepper.  Texturally, edamame hummus is always a little grainier than white bean hummus or traditional hummus.  I think it has something to do with the fiber content, but I'm not a nutritionist so I don't really know.  Anyway, I really liked this hummus.  I think Alex prefers regular hummus, but there was something nice and fresh about the edamame hummus.  It does rather resemble guacamole or some form of avocado mousse, but I can't hold that against it since avocado is quite delicious.

Recipe after the jump!

Chilled Edamame and Bacon Soup

 

So I know this soup sounds weird.  Edamame soup?  With bacon?  And chilled no less?  But sometimes weird is fun and good, so I figured why not give it a shot.  And the soup even looks weird.  It's all minty and pastel.  And in the picture Alex took it looks like it's floating around like Slimer from Ghostbusters.  Haha.  I was originally looking for a corn-bacon chowder recipe, but when I came across this recipe it intrigued me enough to make me stop and make it instead.  One of the first things that drew me here is that I love edamame and I mean I really love it.  When I go out for sushi I am perfectly happy to gorge myself on an entire bowl of edamame with a side of sushi.  I used to eat it so much that I even got my mom hooked on it after college.  We would go to Cost Co or Sam's Club and buy these individual packs of edamame that you cooked in the microwave and just snack on edamame by the handful.

And I generally love edamame.  I really do.  But this soup?  I don't love it.  Alex referred to it as porridge and the texture was somewhat grainy and gruel-like.  The flavor was nice, but the texture was just not appetizing.  And I guess I can't really blame that on the edamame itself.  The soup just wasn't meant to be.  But you win some, you lose some, right?

Recipe after the jump!