February 2006 Archives

I made thit ko to (recipe) from Dana Bowen's New York Times article, Traditional Flavors of the Lunar New Year. The pork is topped with scallions and onions. Also shown is Korean kong bap (rice with beans, not to be confused with "rice and beans"), and a vegetable medley consisting of steamed carrots and brussel sprouts sprinkled with balsamic vinegar.

The dish was delicious and easy to make, and coincidentally looks and smells a lot like chajang myun. I prepared the dish in the cast iron skillet. A perfect choice - the molten sugar easily pulled away easily from the skillet's surface. The recipe called for melting the sugar over medium-low heat, but that took far too long. Next time I will crank up the heat and then lower it after the pork goes in. I will also try a thinner cut of the pork belly. The skin was tough and had to be cut away before eating. I could try cutting the skin off before cooking.

I thought this broke cleanly. The best way to eat this is by putting a small piece in your mouth and just letting it melt. It has a most wonderful texture - chewing just ruins the fun. I thought there were some fruity notes in this, but others disagreed.

Skillet roasted garlic with salt and pepper. The bread is a sourdough baguette from Levain Bakery, lightly toasted.

Butternut squash, crushed walnuts, parmesan reggiano, salt and pepper.

Ricotta fresca with dill...

... on bread. Note to self: best not to leave ricotta fresca around for a week, but the dill helped freshen it up. But using leftovers is really the whole spirit of bruschetta, right?

I made Mark Bittman's version of Scott Carsberg's Butternut Squash Soup With Chestnut Dumplings.

The soup is made from cubed butternut squash, boiled with a vanilla bean.

Remove vanilla bean, attack with stick blender to finish.

The dumplings are made from a bit of the soup, grated parmesan, fresh ricotta, ground chestnuts, flour, an egg, and salt to taste.

Fresh ricotta, from Murray's. Man, this is tasty. I could eat it all day.

Scott's original recipe calls for home-candied chestnuts. These are chestnuts soaked in cognac, which I found at Fairway. The dumplings are cooked in salted boiling water and are drained and held separately from the soup until serving.

A few dumplings go into the bowl, followed by the soup. It's topped with more grated parmesan and fresh cracked pepper.