It’s been a while since I’ve posted some recent cooking endeavors, so let’s do that. My brother and I cooked some of this post together, as we tend to do, with these first dishes being from the cookbook. I bought it for him for Christmas so I could read it and we could cook from it, so mission accomplished under the veil of generosity.
I like the cookbook, it’s informative and covers some Japanese dishes which don’t get a lot of play, like curries and other homestyle meals. Up top we have an amped up dashi with soba and seared duck. Quite good.
We made a gaggle of gyozo, a traditional pork as well as a tofu version. Plenty were left over to be frozen, and the batch I made came out pretty decent. Getting the perfect level of even crispness can be a challenge, and cooking dumplings is one of those things where if I did it three times in a row, getting a feel for cook time and level of heat, I’d probably nail it, but only cooking one batch as we did, you sort of get what you get.
We took it easy for Valentine’s day and purchased Storico Fresco. They made lovely flower shaped ravioli, and also offered the “Grand Ouvo”, where are large ravioli stuffed with a raw egg yolk. Highly recommended when Michael does those again. If you do not already, subscribe to their weekly email menu. It is definitely enticing.
This is the best Instagram picture I could take in my kitchen late at night, but twice this winter I made the Kerala Beef Stew by Asha Gomez which Bon Appetit printed. I really enjoy it. It’s basically a beef Bourguignon, but with fragrant oft-used Indian ingredients like turmeric, ginger, and cilantro.
Finally, I cooked a bunch of lobster with my brother, who handled the mighty bill one receives when they accept 31 pounds of lobster, in the name of pleasing his crustacean loving spouse on her birthday.
We broke them down alive, plunging a knife through their brain and twisting, fifteen times, then separated the parts as they continued to squirm. It’s weird.
It was a lot of lobster, and a good deal of fun. Easy too. I brought back seven bodies back to my place and made a richly intense quart of stock in my pressure cooker, and I vacuum sealed and froze all the legs, for use in a lobster spaghetti or bisque or something. I’m not a whole lobster nut, but I do enjoy a good lobster contributing dish, with its heady fragrance, like the lobster risotto my mother made last night.