Three Hot Pots

Another home cooking post? Really? I know, it's weird. But not to worry, this isn't anything I cooked recently (though I did make some pretty awesome short ribs a couple days ago). Several months ago I volunteered to be a recipe tester for a cookbook-in-progress; the book, Japanese Hot Pots: Comforting One-Pot Meals, is now out, and I am released from my oath of silence.

The book is exactly what it says: a compendium of recipes for Japanese hot pots, or "nabe." It was written by Chef Tadashi Ono of Matsuri restaurant in New York City, and Harris Salat, author of the Japanese Food Report blog. I tested three recipes: beef shabu shabu, lamb shabu shabu, and a pork and greens hot pot. While I am not a complete stranger to the kitchen, I don't do much in the Japanese idiom, and I'm also not big on strictly following recipes, so this was an interesting experience for me.

The recipes I tested each followed the same basic formula: a broth base, several varieties of vegetables and/or tofu simmered within it, and a last minute addition of thinly sliced protein cooked in the broth, sometimes with a dipping sauce alongside. Simple stuff, really, but that's not to say I didn't learn some valuable things along the way.

First and foremost, dashi. Three ingredients: water, kombu (dried kelp), and katsuobushi (dried, smoked, shaved bonito flakes). A fantastic complexity of flavor: oceanic, vegetal, smoky, even meaty, yet still with a great purity and lightness. And remarkably easy to prepare a serviceable version, though probably something you can spend a lifetime perfecting in order to maximize the umami extraction and balance. Second, "shime." The Japanese custom of adding noodles or rice to the hot pot toward the end of the meal, a great way to soak up the flavors and complete the meal.

These hot pots were easy to prepare, had great depth of flavor, and were simultaneously hearty and healthy.


This is the initial prep for the beef shabu shabu: tofu, napa cabbage, scallions, enoki mushrooms, and portabello mushrooms (couldn't find shiitakes anywhere that day). Underneath are a couple pieces of kombu and a handful of cellophane noodles.


After the vegetables simmer in the water for a few minutes, spinach and thinly sliced beef are added on top; it's "done" as soon as the beef is cooked to your liking. That's a sesame seed dipping sauce on the side. My kids loved this one. I'm sure they would have liked it even more if they had gotten to cook their own beef in the bubbling pot.


Lamb shabu shabu. Similar recipe, with thinly sliced lamb, shiitake and oyster mushrooms, bean sprouts, scallions, and an intriguing green called "shungiku" in Japanese. I turned this up at the Lucky Oriental Mart in South Miami, where they were calling it "tong ho." I've now figured out it's also known as chrysanthemum leaf. You can often find tempura-fried chrysanthemum leaf at Hiro's Yakko-San and it's quite nice.


The dipping sauce for the lamb shabu shabu, primarily flavored with tobanjan (spicy fermented bean paste) and sesame paste, was outrageously good. It was great with the lamb but it was equally great on my finger. Addictive stuff.


This pork and greens hot pot was a little different from the other two recipes I tried, primarily because it started with a dashi broth which was fortified with mirin and usukuchi soy sauce (lighter colored than regular shoyu but possibly saltier). It used napa cabbage, scallions, spinach, shungiku and watercress, thin sliced pork belly (I got some great kurobata pork from Japanese Market), and a dash of white pepper. With the richer broth, no dipping sauce was called for. The real highlight was adding some soft ramen noodles (also in the freezer case at Japanese Market) at the end of the meal, with the starch in the noodles thickening the broth to almost a stew consistency for a hearty, filling finish. This may have been my favorite of the three recipes I tried, because of the more richly flavored broth and, well, pork belly.

The hardest part of these recipes was hunting down some of the ingredients. Japanese Market gets in Japanese vegetables but only once every week or two, though they had all the other dry and prepared ingredients I needed (kombu, katsuobushi, tobanjan, noodles, etc.). Lucky Oriental Mart had a pretty staggering selection of Asian produce, which only required some educated guesswork to make the jump from the Japanese to the Chinese names of things. Otherwise, these dishes were easy to prepare, had good flavors, and with the one-pot cooking, cleanup was easy, which is always nice. For more info on the book, including some videos from the authors, and some pictures that are much nicer than mine, visit the authors' website. Serious Eats is also running a giveaway of 5 cookbooks and featuring several of the recipes this week. I can't find any easy way to steer to all of them at once, so here are the links for dashi and chicken stock, salmon hot pot, sumo wrestler hot pot, and kabocha pumpkin hot pot.

Holier than Thou? Going Local at Whole Foods

It's now been more than two weeks since New Times critic Lee Klein called out local chefs for being part of an "unholy alliance" due to their participation in a series of promotional events at Whole Foods, on account of the chain's supposed lack of support for local farmers. I detected a faint whiff of hypocrisy, in light of said critic's touting of New Times' "Iron Fork" event just hours later, an event sponsored by none other than Whole Foods and attended by some of those very same chefs. Then Professor Klein felt obligated to give me an education on hypocrisy. I'm not a very good student, but we each made our feelings known and hugged it out.

In the meantime, what seems to have been forgotten along the way was the promise to deliver on those accusations about Whole Foods in the first place. Back on September 14 we were assured "more specifics on this in upcoming posts" and as part of my lesson plan on September 16, there was more reassurance that the subject would be picked up "soon enough." Two weeks, and 15+ posts from Mr. Klein later, and still no more info.

I can only wait so long, and so decided to take matters into my own hands. I visited the Aventura Whole Foods this weekend, and paid some attention to what was locally sourced. The local pickings in the produce section were indeed pretty limited, but this should come as no great surprise this time of year as there's not much that's in season yet locally. I was able to score some very nice pea greens from Green Garden Organics, which lists a Miami address. The seafood section was abundantly stocked with local product: Key West pink shrimp, whole yellowtail, snapper, mahi mahi, spiny lobsters ... I'd hazard a guess that roughly 25% of what was in the seafood case had a "local" sign on it. There was also a large selection of locally produced honeys on the shelves, with at least three different producers offering Florida tupelo, saw palmetto, avocado, lychee, orange blossom, wildflower and other honeys.

So, I'm still left wondering what could be the basis for the skewering given to local chefs a couple weeks ago.

Anyway, investigation gave way to hunger as the spiny lobsters at $10/lb. seemed too good to pass up, and I brought home a few. As for what to do with them, I drew inspiration from a dish I'd had at Sra. Martinez earlier in the weekend - a "late summer vegetable salad" with a gazpacho sauce. What follows is not so much a recipe, since I'm not big on measuring and such, but more of a post-hoc reconstruction. It's also perhaps an attempt to debunk the beliefs of those who think I eat out for every meal.


Spiny Lobster & Vegetable Salad with Salmorejo:

First, the salmorejo (an Andalusian dish that is like a gazpacho, but thicker and creamier, and used more as a sauce than a soup). Took the crust off about 1/3 a loaf of peasant bread, chopped in big pieces and soaked in water. Four tomatoes (I used some slightly over-ripe vine-ripened tomatoes that were on sale), cored and quartered. Into the blender they went, then next into the blender a couple cloves of chopped garlic, 1/2 a red pepper chopped, a glug of sherry vinegar (1/4 cup?), a generous amount of salt, and good olive oil until it started to look shiny and creamy (1/2 cup?). Done. You'll probably have extra.

Next, the veg. Four white asparagus cut on the bias into about 3/4" pieces, about a cup of English peas, 1/2 of a small bulb of fennel, cored and thinly sliced, and a radish, sliced thin. The asparagus got big-pot-blanched (big pot of boiling water, good amount of salt) for a few minutes till tender, then into an ice bath to stop cooking. Same treatment for the peas. Drained them and tossed with the fennel and radish. Salt to taste.

Finally, the lobster. Since spiny lobster are not kept alive, you will not be able to duplicate the Annie Hall lobster scene, but as my kids noted, if you hold them and wave them around, their antennae will still move pretty convincingly. Poured off most of the blanching water from the pot, leaving a couple inches, and dropped the pasta insert into the pot to use as a steamer. In went the lobster for 15 minutes. Pulled them out, and as soon as they were cool enough to handle, I pulled the tail from the body, split all the way through the tail lengthwise with a sharp heavy knife, lifted the tail meat out and removed the sand vein. Chop the tails crosswise into medallions.^[*]

To plate: dress the veg with a little olive oil and mound on one side of a shallow bowl (Sra. Martinez used a ring mold for a prettier presentation). Pour salmorejo into the other side of the bowl. Lay the lobster meat over the salmorejo. Drizzle with good olive oil. Present to your awed significant other.

I was pretty happy with how this turned out. The salmorejo had a bright tomato flavor and a creamy texture, with the sherry vinegar providing a smooth subtle tartness. The lobster was outstanding. Often I find that Florida spiny lobster can be tough and bouncy, but this was perfectly tender, briny and flavorful, interestingly needing no additional salt. Nice yield too, with a tail providing plenty of meat for one person (the picture above uses only 1/2 of one tail; the lobsters were about 1 1/2 lbs. each, or $15 a head). And the vegetables, some just barely cooked and others still raw, provided a nice complement to the lobster and the salmorejo.

So while we wait for the dirt to be dished on Whole Foods, I'll happily eat what local products they do have available.

Edited to add: Look, here's the dish I was trying to knock off - not bad, right?

^[*]There's plenty of good meat in the rest of the body if you want to go digging, I decided to make a lobster stock with mine and split the heads lengthwise, rinsed out the tomalley, and tossed them into a pot along with the tail shells, some carrot, onion, garlic, the rest of the fennel bulb, parsley and peppercorns, covered with water, simmered for about a half hour, removed all the solids and then reduced it by about half, skimming off any foam or scum that rises to the surface. Still haven't determined the stock's ultimate destiny.

The Work of the Cursing Class - or something like that

A couple interesting events and promos to pass along:

"Blue Hour" and "Green Hour" at Au Pied de Cochon

Perhaps to compensate for recent news that they will not be staying open 24 hours a day, Au Pied de Cochon on South Beach is now pitching its "Blue Hour" happy hour(s) from 4pm-7pm, featuring bar bites priced from $2.25 - $9.50, $5 cocktails, $6 wine by the glass, and $4 for that quintessentially French staple, Pabst Blue Ribbon; and if you're in the biz, the late night "Green Hour" from midnight to 2am Thursday-Saturday with $3 cocktails, PBR and Kronenbourg, and $5 wine for those in the service and hospitality industry.

"About Last Night" at Pacific Time
For those possibly seeking a more intimate type of companionship, Pacific Time in the Design District is kicking off "About Last Night," a mingle with singles type thing starting 8pm on Tuesday, September 29. There will be an open bar for the first hour, then reduced priced drinks the rest of the evening, plus offerings from their small plates menu.

Here's my earlier thoughts on Au Pied de Cochon and Pacific Time. And here's where to go if you're interested:

Au Pied de Cochon
81 Washington Avenue
Miami Beach, FL 33139
305.674.1844

Pacific Time
35 N.E. 40th Street
Miami, FL 33137
305.722.7369