The Ramen of Baltimore (Mi & Yu)

For four years, I called Baltimore my temporary home as a college student, and yet I missed out on the vast majority of food opportunities waiting to be explore in Charm City (a case study of poor college student syndrome).  Lucky for me, I currently live and work in what is considered the same metropolitan region.  Since I was up in Baltimore for the day, here was an opportunity to try out Mi & Yu Noodle Bar, a hip little noodle joint in downtown.

The concept at Mi & Yu is versatility in Asian noodle soups.  They offer several different broths, several different protein toppings, and three different types of noodles (ramen, udon, pho) ready for the customer to mix and match.  It was easy to tell that they want to create a sense of endless experimentation and several return trips for the customer, and I knew going in what I was getting into.  Presented with all the options they offer, I ordered the miso ramen with roast duck and barbecue pork belly, pictured below.

Here is what they did really well:

1. The duck was prepared correctly.  Duck is a gamy meat, and I think too many restaurants view that as an undesirable trait to be feared.  These restaurants where I tried the duck went to such excruciating lengths to mask or remove the natural flavors that the final product tasted more like over-salted protein out of a 3D printer than like duck.  Then, asking you to turn the other cheek after they slapped you once, these restaurants proceed to charge you an exorbitant amount for their excruciating efforts to make your duck not taste like duck.  Mi & Yu treated the gaminess of duck as a flavor advantage as they should, and the duck rewarded them for it.
2. The barbecue pork belly stole the show.  Spiced, braised, and then grilled with a sweet glaze, the pork belly was easily the highlight of the bowl.  If not for each bite causing the sweet, long-cooked fat to melt on the tongue, the bowl of ramen would have been severely underwhelming.

And here were the unimpressive parts:

1. The soft-boiled egg was overcooked and not marinated.  While they may have been trying to differentiate their art from the typical Japanese seasoned egg (味付け玉子) offered with ramen, I was not sold on the idea.
2. The noodles came out of a ramen packet.  Watching Shokugeki no Soma has made me amenable to the idea that, with enough finesse and tender love and care, low-grade or cheap ingredients can be turned into a refined, delicious meal.  But if your cheapest bowl of ramen is over $10 (their cheapest is $12.75 before tax), the noodles cannot come out of a packet that I could buy from the store.

My overall verdict: Worth a try because of its novelty in Baltimore, Mi & Yu is great if you are confined to Baltimore City for your ramen needs.  If you are not confined to Baltimore City, then their ramen leaves too much to be desired.  Their meat toppings are top notch, but unless they step up their Asian noodle soup game, I don't think their identity as a "noodle bar" really makes sense.

Mango Chicken - Using Unwanted Ingredients

These mangoes I purchased in a whole box recently turned out to be extremely sour, so much so that eating each of them was a struggle.  Hating food waste and lacking patience to let them ripen after several days, I decided to return to an idea from a while back (about which I never wrote because it turned out to be more than just a small failure).  That idea was combining mango with chicken.

The previous iteration found me trying to make a mango chicken curry, only the second time I had attempted curry.  And boy did it turn out badly (I burned it).  So this time, I went with a different approach and stuck with the methods with which I was raised and semi-trained: stir fry.

I prepared the marinade for the chicken by mincing the whites of three green onion stalks, four garlic cloves, and about one cubic inch of fresh ginger.  I also diced two mangoes and about 1.5 pounds of chicken thigh, de-boned, de-skinned.  But I did not throw out the bones or the skins (to be used later...the subtitle of this piece indicates the use of typically unwanted ingredients after all).  Dicing the chicken as well, I combined all these ingredients in a marinating bowl and got my hands dirty mixing things up.

The stir fry needed only a little bit of oil, which was further heated up by the addition of some turmeric, cayenne, and white pepper.  As soon as the spiced oil started to effervesce (and that happens very soon; you will be able to tell because you will start to smell the spices), the chicken-mango mixture should have been added.  Do not make the mistake of letting the spices cook too long, or the organic compounds that give them flavor will start to escape the wok and you might find yourself sneezing/coughing/choking on airborne spice.  Hindsight is 20-20.

Neil deGrasse Tyson has said before that humans create art for the very simple, primordial reason of pleasing each of our senses.  There are paintings and sculptures to please our eyes, music to please our ears, perfumes to please our noses, soft fluffy things to please our fingers, and the culinary arts to please our tongues.  As with any art, plating and presentation is probably half the battle, if not more.  So how did I do for an amateur?

I mentioned at the beginning of this piece that I did not let the chicken skins or the chicken thigh bones go to waste.  The leftover thighs I used for soup, to which I added the remaining Chinese green vegetables I had bought earlier in the week (not pictured).  I used the chicken skins to revitalize some rice that had been sitting in the fridge for 2-3 days.  This was done by adding the diced skins to a tiny bit of oil in the wok to release the oils from the skin, and then adding the rice to the wok as if fried rice was the goal.  Of course, nothing else was added to the rice.  It is not exactly healthy, but as they say: waste not want not.  Right?

Here is the original recipe inspiration, with thanks to Barbara Triplett: http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/mango-chicken-over-rice.

Hearty Wild Turkey Soup

Some of the best things about Autumn are the soothing hot beverages that make their annual comeback as the weather gets chilly.  Warm soups and warm wine (e.g. sake) are two items at the top of the list for me.  And for a while now, soups have been a big hobby of mine.  I love thinking about and making different stocks because:

1. The process is so simple,
2. The sky is the limit when deciding what goes into the stock, and
3. Depending on how you approach things, you can really stretch your dollar on several nutritious, filling meals.

I only make my own stock from scratch because, although it is more labor intensive, it is much more rewarding.  When the soup touches your lips, complex, awesome flavors begin seeping in and warming you up, and it only intensifies as it flows past the sensors on the tongue and beyond.  Being able to control nearly every ingredient that goes into the stock, and therefore the flavor profile of the stock, cannot be overstated.

For the last few years, I have been making my stock by starting in a sauce pot because I did not have a large stock pot.  After that, I would either make an overall smaller portion in the same pot or transfer it to a slow cooker for no hassle stewing.  This weekend, however, I finally stepped up my game by purchasing a legitimate stock pot.  (Did I mention this Winter is going to be an awesome soup bonanza?)

For this round, I wanted to create a stock that evoked a sensation of North American Autumn wilderness blended with the serene mountainous Chinese countryside near my home province.  Usually, I would be the first to claim that these two concepts are not only opposites in geography; they also clash in flavor.  But I think it can be done well by starting simple and harnessing the basic, wild aspects of both locations.  For reference, consider a seemingly untamed Shenandoah Valley in Autumn on the left, and the almost mystical Tianzi Mountains in Southern Hunan province on the right.

I began with two smoked turkey drumsticks and some ginger, washed, peeled, and chunked.  These two items were brought to a boil and allowed to cook on low heat for four hours, replenishing water and bringing back to a boil when necessary.  Since I could not finish making the soup in one day, I refrigerated it overnight.  During this first leg of cooking, the broth was extremely enticing because such a long process brought out not only the flavor of the meat, the bones, and the fat--it also elicited the smokey character of the drumsticks, which went perfectly with the desired imagery above (more so the one on the left).

On the second day, I brought the broth to a boil again, and this time, added four green onion whites and several fresh shiitake mushrooms to begin molding the flavor.  Two hours into cooking, I prepared and added diced carrot, chunks of lotus root, and a single star anise.  At this point, I was worried that the carrots and star anise would give the soup too much of a sweet profile, so I added some salt, which outside of the carrot and anise, would not have been necessary given the natural saltiness of smoked meat.  After another two hours of cooking, the broth was ready to sample.

It was delicious.  I spoke above of two opposites in flavor profile, but the only juxtaposition was how filling a small bowl turned out to be even as the gamy flavor of smoked turkey danced around ever so lightly with the flavor of the earthy vegetables.

The selection in vegetables was on par with my expectations.  I did not break new ground by choosing earthy, root-like vegetables, but the use of shiitake and lotus as opposed to more commonly chosen tubers like potatoes and other greens brought in a bit of the Chinese countryside.  Next time, however, I would add the carrots later so they are not so beat up and soft.

I wanted the soup to be deeper and richer, but at the end of the day I suppose you can only get so much out of two medium sized turkey drumsticks and eight hours of cooking.  By the way, what did the drumsticks look like after all was said and done?

Okay, so skin and bones do not look so appealing.  But what happened to the meat!?  I took that and stir fried it with leek and some sesame seeds to make lunch for the week.  Here, I did not bother to arrange the food in an aesthetic way, because it was just going to end up stuffed into a lunch container anyway.

Labor Day 2015 ('Murrca!)

My cousin, who recently came to the United States for school, visited me for Labor Day this year.  We romped around the DC Metropolitan area for 3.5 days, eating amazing food, enjoying DC yuppie life, and even getting a little nature time outside of the city.

This being my cousin's first American Labor Day, I thought it would be fun to show her a simple American way to celebrate every summer holiday: slapping some meat on a grill.  Only, I tried to make it anything but simple.  Having two days to prepare, I capitalized on time as my primary resource and did some research into good marinades for steak.  I pulled ideas from various websites to come up with a savory garlic two-day marinade (based largely on this recipe).  And in order to ensure that the quality of the steak matched that of the marinade, I bought two three quarter pound rib eyes from Whole Foods.

The marinade was made with the following:

• 1/2 cup vinegar
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1 entire head of garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons black pepper
• 2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
• salt to taste

After one day, I flipped the steaks over in the marinade to ensure even soaking time.  Here is what the steaks looked like right after I put them on the grill (So. Much. Garlic.):

Here are the steaks after the flip.  I am still working on mastering the art of grill marks:

Here are the finished steaks:

They look a little darker because I let them cook a little longer to get to a medium-well finish.  Unfortunately, I did not do a good job with heat control, and I did not have a good grasp on the cut of meat itself.  The steaks turned out slightly overdone as a result, although the tenderness due to marination may have saved the day.

Overall, the flavor was slightly on the acidic side due to all the vinegar and lemon juice.  Next time, I would cut back drastically on the vinegar and add more lemon juice.  I would also use some Worcestershire sauce as the recipe linked above suggests (I did not have any on hand this time).

The only thing missing from this meal?  Some good ol' home baked American butter rolls, which I did not have any time to prepare.  So we went with a healthier carb option.

Kabocha Shrimp Salad (The Vancouver Files 267)

While I was visiting Vancouver this summer, I purchased a book of 365 recipes for traditional Chinese health food.  If you are wondering, Chinese "health food" is steeped in millennia of cooking traditions and Eastern medicinal practice.  While the medicinal aspect of these recipes is most likely unproven in controlled laboratories or questionable at best, a lot of these foods taste phenomenal.

With 365 recipes to taste, this book will last a very long time; but I can hope to one day get through every recipe.  This weekend, I made number 267:

Kabocha Shrimp Salad (杂粮南瓜沙拉球)

The recipe looked simple and the photo looked fancy.  It mixes mashed kabocha, rice, egg, and shrimp into appetizing morsels that sit on a bed of alfalfa.  So, I thought: why not give it a try?

As you can see, the recipe is given in traditional Chinese, so the first task for me--one who reads simplified Chinese at a three-year-old level--was to translate it with my handy dandy Pokédex--I mean pocket Google machine.  Below, I saved the reader any repeat translation work, in addition to including my practical modifications.

Ingredients

1 cup steamed rice
1.25 cup seeded, steamed, mashed kabocha
6 tiger shrimp
1 soft-boiled egg
Alfalfa sprouts
Mayonnaise to taste
Salt to taste

Instructions

1. De-seed and slice pumpkin.  Steam until soft and peel.  Using a spoon, press pumpkin until mashed.  Set aside.
2. De-vein the shrimp and rinse clean.  Bring water to a boil and cook shrimp for 1 minute.  Move shrimp from hot to cold water to help it cool down.  Dice the shrimp, soak it in slightly salted cold water to taste.  Drain the shrimp and set aside.
3. Dice the soft-boiled egg.  Lightly rinse the alfalfa sprouts and place it in a serving bowl/dish.  Set aside.
4. Combine the steamed rice, mashed pumpkin (Step 1), diced shrimp (Step 2), diced egg (Step 3), and mix well until even incorporated.  Form with the mixture and place on the bed of alfalfa.  Garnish as you see fit.

While the recipe calls for 南瓜 (nAHn-gwah), which can ambiguously refer to any pumpkin-esque gourd in Chinese, I chose kabocha because of flavor, texture, and context for the recipe.  Kabocha is a pleasantly mellow-sweet Asian pumpkin first popularized in Japan, and you may wonder what kind of mellow-sweet pleasantness could be found in this relative of the squash.  Imagine for a moment, receiving an innocent peck on the lips from your grade school crush, and that might be similar to the effect of kabocha's flavor profile on the senses.  How about that for pleasantness?

The recipe also calls for something called "five grain," which is a deeply complicated and mythologized food item supposedly from an ancient agrarian time before Chinese civilization was a coherent thing.  A good reference point for the imagination would be 2000 B.C.  Today, only historians really know, care, or debate about historical five grain; normal people combine any five grains they have on hand.  I just used Japanese white rice for the sake of practicality.

Along the way, I also decided to soft-boil the egg since the original recipe does not specify how well-cooked the egg should be.  I thought this made more sense for two reasons:

1. Soft-boiling an egg enables me to achieve a personally preferable result with the yolk: not dried out and not runny, a firm yet gelatinous state.
2. I also thought this would produce a better texture to go along with the mashed kabocha, and I would say it worked out well in this regard.

Incidentally, this was my first time soft-boiling an egg!  I think it turned out 80% correct.  The missing twenty percent, as you can see, comes from the edges of the yolk starting to turn into its familiar dry, chalky hard-boiled state.  Achieving the perfect soft-boiled egg will be a science for future trials.

Finally, I upgraded from just any old shrimp to tiger shrimp.  This species of shrimp is a more expensive, less sustainable, better textured shrimp.  It is called tiger shrimp because of the more pronounced, sometimes striking striations that conjure up images of a tiger's stripes.