Pan-Roasted Asparagus and Slow Poached Egg and Miso Butter

There are two things I've been obsessed with lately. One is eggs. The other is the new spring fruits and veggies. I'm mad about them, and desperate for them. I spend half an hour circling the farmers market this week before I came to terms with the fact that the East Coast just didn't have strawberries yet, but I didn't leave empty handed. My bag was bulging, it is officially Asparagus season.

Since my experiments with Ginger Scallion noodles, I've been scouring my Momofuku cookbook for recipes I could make without spending hundreds of dollars on obscure ingredients and a cold smoker. With my obsession for cooking embryonic food and the piles of asparagus popping up all around me, it was time for my next David Chang challenge. There it was, on page 90, Pan-Roasted Asparagus and Slow Poached Egg in Miso Butter. The set up for the recipe seemed fairly simple, and astoundingly all things I keep in my cabinet, with one exception. The damned miso butter. I had purchased Chang's miso butter at Milk Bar a few weeks back, played with it exactly once, then left it out overnight and had to toss it all out because of damned "food safety" concerns.

Miso butter is not hard to make, literally mix together miso and butter. Ta da! This method, however, assumes you are the kind of person who just has packages of miso on hand. Well, now I am one of those people. At the Assi Asian grocery near my mother's house last weekend I picked up my very own package of miso. I have no idea if it's the shiro (white) miso that Chang recommends, it just said "Miso" and then a lot of characters I can't read. When I mixed it together it looked like the one I bought at Milk Bar so I'm counting it as a win for me.

The whole recipe comes together rather quickly, as long as you have that poached egg. That slow poached egg. Poached eggs are generally broken, put in a dish, and then slid into water. If your lucky the whole thing does spread apart and go to shit. Momofuku avoids this problem by slow poaching the eggs in their own shells, bringing the water to between 140 and 145 degrees (a nifty test for my new digital thermometer) and then plunking in the eggs for 40 to 45 minutes. When you crack the shell, out comes poached egg, nice and pretty. Since they keep (in their shells) for up to 24 hours in the fridge, they can be made ahead of time. I was curious though, if I did not have the nearly an hour to make the egg the Momofuku way, could I pull off the traditional?  Blog commenter Deanna pointed me toward Smitten Kitchen's tutorial. But that didn't satisfy my desperate need to cheat. (And according to my pasta making teacher this week, I'm a big cheater, with my Kitchen Aid and all.)

I decided to use a brand new Poach Pods in a side by side test. These silicon little toys float on top of your simmering water, keeping your eggs in tact and pretty. I did a side by side comparison, poaching one egg the normal way and one in the pod. The pod has to be lightly oiled before use, so it's not technically the completely "oilless cooking" that pure poaching is. The color of lose egg was a purer white then the Poach Pod one, and had a more natural shape to the finished product. The Poach Pod egg was very obviously the shape of a Poach Pod, so if you were doing this for company, slow poaching or normal poaching would probably be best. If you were just trying to knock together something like this recipe or an Eggs Benedict for yourself though, the Poach Pod has it on ease and piece of mind. There is absolutely no need to worry that your egg will break apart or will be undercooked when you use a pod.

Will, as previously mentioned, is not an egg fan. Can't stand even the smell of them actually. Therefore I waited until a night he was working and prepared a dinner for 1. It was a tiny meal, if you are looking for a filling main course maybe throw a piece of chicken next to it.  I still made plenty of miso butter, because I love having a new condiment around to play with, and it's tasty stuff.

Pan Roasted Asparagus and Poached Egg & Miso Butter
Adapted from Momofuku

Ingredients:
-1/4 cup of Miso (and pray it's the right one)
-3 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature
-6 stalks of Asparagus, ends snapped, peeled if they are thick
-Kosher Salt
-1/2 teaspoon sherry vinegar
-1 poached egg (slow if you're doing this the Momofuku way, pictured right)
-Freshly ground black pepper

Directions:
First make miso butter: In a small bowl combine 2 1/2 tablespoons of butter with miso until well mixed. Stir until it's one color, not full of chunkiness. Reserve half of the mixture at room temperature for the dish, the other half can be stored, wrapped in the fridge for a few weeks. Trust me, it's a fun ingredient, you'll want to play with it.

Heat the remaining tablespoon of butter in a medium skillet over medium high heat. When the bubbles have cleared, put in asparagus. If making more don't overcrowd, do in batches with fresh butter if need be. When asparagus begins to brown (about 2 or 3 minutes) season them with salt and pepper, turn the heat down to medium, and flip with tongs. Brown on reverse side, another few minutes. When you have some satisfying color and tenderness, remove from pan and lay on paper towel lined plates to drain.

Put sherry vinegar in a microwave safe dish for about 10 seconds. Using a small saucepan, mix warmed vinegar with reserved miso butter over low heat until butter starts to separate but does not melt, about 2 minutes. Spread miso butter on the center of the plate in a "thickish puddle".  Arrange asparagus on top of the butter and place the egg on top of the asparagus. Finish with a small pinch of salt and a grind of fresh pepper.

Look how much it looks like the picture! I was very proud of myself. The taste was phenomenal, salty, tangy, buttery, the crunch of the asparagus versus the softness of the egg, the smoothness of the egg versus the graininess of the miso, it was a pretty banging and impressive dish.

Ginger Scallion Noodles with Seared Sea Scallops

Readers of this blog know I am a fan of the Momofuku restaurant empire. I could bathe in the ramen and live solely off the cookies. When David Chang's cookbook came out last year though, I was hesitant. First it was just kinda expensive, retailing for $40 in most places in NY, and second, the buzz was that the recipes were uncookable. These were not the pandering recipes of most restauranteurs, dumbed down to what a home cook could accomplish, with most of the especially rare ingredients and labor intensive methods edited out. David Chang had basically written a cookbook where he more or less tells you (employing varying levels of profanity) exactly how he creates the weird and wonderful food he serves. And for a restaurant, the lengths they go to are great, since all they do in their lives is cook and they charge a markup on all ingredients used. For a home cook, however, most of the recipes are a bit out of the question, both in execution and pure cost of ingredients. I am not going to take ten hours to make chicken wings, with instructions like "While the wings are confiting, make taré." I need a lot more patience and a French to English dictionary.

There is someone who has taken on the challenge, however. On her blog "Momofuku for 2" which I referenced last week, a blogger named Steph is working her way through this cookbook. Crazy Canadian. And while I have no intention of risking my sanity doing anything similar (something Will is grateful for) the pictures and descriptions on her site were too much for me. I bought the book.

It was worth it, if only for the great stories about trying to open a restaurant in NYC and the insane photography by Gabriele Stabile. As I flipped through it, among the recipes that referenced other recipes, the kimchi, the daikon, the cold smoking and the pickling (oh my god the pickling) I actually turned up a recipe or two I'd be willing to attempt. You know, without the special soy sauce. Or the sherry vinegar I couldn't find. Or the way too expensive Grapeseed Oil that I found for a better price a week later. I also may have not realized how much water those noodles absorb. Damn. So really, it was Momofuku like. Since he totally cops to ripping off the dish from New York Noodletown, I don't feel too guilty. After I had settled on what noodles to make, I decided to top the dish with scallops. For my searing method, I looked to another recipe he had for Roasted New Jersey Diver Scallop, though I omitted the rest of his recipe and used plain old sea scallops because I'm wary of things originating from New Jersey. Well, that or those simply weren't on sale this week.

Ginger scallion Noodles with Seared Sea Scallops

Adapted (or butchered) from the Momofuku Cookbook

Ingredients:

For the Noodles:

-8oz packaged Chinese or Japanese Ramen Noodles

-1 1/4 Cup thinly sliced scallions (greens and whites) from 1 large bunch

-1/4 Cup finely minced peeled fresh ginger

-2 tbsp Sunflower Oil (or Grapeseed if you have it)

-3/4 tsp Soy Sauce

-1/4 tsp vinegar

-1/8 tsp Cooking Sherry

-little less then 1/2 tsp kosher salt

For the Scallops

-1 pound Sea Scallops

-2 tbsp olive oil

-1 tbsp unsalted butter

-Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Mix the scallions, ginger, oil, soy sauce, vinegar, sherry, and salt in a bowl. Taste, add more salt if needed. Let sit at least 15 minutes. Cook noodles according to package directions, making sure to use at least 8 cups of water. Drain, toss with sauce.

While noodles are cooking heat the olive oil until it's hot but not smoking. Dry the scallops with a paper towel and season them on both sides with salt and pepper. Add scallops to pan one at a time, leaving space between them, and lightly press down on each one with a wooden spoon to ensure the entire face of the scallop browns evenly. After about a minute and a half, when the scallops have begun to turn opaque, add the butter to the pan. Tile the pan back toward you and use a large spoon to scoop up the melting butter and baste the scallops with it. Continue to cook them on the same side for another one and a half minutes, until the side facing the pan is deeply browned but the scallops are not entirely cooked through. Remove the scallops from the pan to a paper towel lined plate to rest, browned side up. (If you are a bit of a coward like me, you may flip each scallop for about 10 seconds just to be sure the other side got some heat. This will result in some browning of the side that is not supposed to be browned.)

Serve noodles in individual portions, and top with 2 scallops. If it is your taste, drizzle with a small amount of soy sauce.

I was very pleased with how this turned out. I may have minced some of the ginger a little too large, resulting in some rather surprising bites, but overall it was a tasty dish, with the buttery scallops complementing the fresh tastes of the sauce, and the saltiness of the soy balancing it all nicely. I gobbled it down and felt more then a little smug heating up some leftovers at the office the next day. It was basically college food made sophisticated. Maybe there's something to this Momofuku cooking after all. Watch out Pan Roasted Asparagus with Poached Egg and Miso Butter. I'm coming for you.

Silicone is Best

My office thinks I'm trying to make them fat. I'm not really. I'm trying to keep myself from getting fat. It's not malicious, it's just selfish. I like to make savory things and I'm even getting the hang of this baking thing. The problem is, if I leave that stuff hanging out in my apartment, with only Will and myself to eat it, it's going to get eaten. Upside Down Pear Cake for dinner suddenly seams like a GREAT idea. And so I bring the food in, and it is eaten, and amongst the "Thanks for the treats!" emails I always get one or two about how I'm trying to sabotage a diet or two. Funny, that didn't stop my office from giving me a lovely gift certificate to the Broadway Panhandle as a wedding gift. And it certainly didn't stop me from buying equipment, taking it home, and then making the office a little something as a thank you.

I am a cookie bottom burner. The first batch will be okay, just a little dark, but every batch after that, once the oven really gets going, will come out with solid black underside. The cookie will rock, if you can deal with that slightly burnt aftertaste due to that blackened bottom. I was standing in the elevator the other week with a coworker, Jason, who had received a roll of silicone that was to be placed on a baking sheet. He regaled me with the wonders of it, the non stick surface, and the perfectly cooked cookies that came off them. I wanted to bake a perfect cookie. After my shopping trip, my new SilPat lying on my kitchen counter, I knew exactly which cookie I wanted to perfect too.

A fan of the David Chang empire--as evidenced by the great time I had at Momofuku Noodle Bar--I have long been customer of Momofuku Milk Bar. It's a little place tucked behind Momofuku Ssam Bar on East 10th St, there are tables you can lean on but no chairs, and there isn't an alcoholic drink to be had. It's one of my favorite places to take out of town guests (Holly, Mike, Amira, I'm looking at you!) because after a night of drinking in the East Village, there's something so awesome about going to a bakery that is still open at 11pm for cookies and milk. These aren't your run of the mill desserts either. There's a cookie with cornflake and marshmallow. There is PB & J soft serve. The milk is flavored to taste like cereal, so you immediately feel like you're about five years old, in your footie pajamas, sitting in front of Saturday morning cartoons while you drink it. And then there is my very favorite cookie. The Compost Cookie. It is a cookie filled with wondrous things, chips, pretzels, a true monument to the American Junk Food Diet, all in one cookie. It manages to be sweet and salty all at once, finally bringing these two distinct camps of snackers together. This is a wonder cookie. It would be mine.

Now the recipe for the Cereal Milk you can actually find on Martha Stewart's website, apparently she did a whole feature on the place. You can even find their recipe for their famous "Crack" Pie (it is the East Village after all). But the Compost Cookie, that recipe is a guarded secret, it's not even in the Momofuku cookbook I'm coveting. One intrepid blogger, however, took it upon himself to make his own knock off recipe. God bless Greg Johnson at the Oatmeal CookieBlog. When a recipe calls for "Roughly crushed" junk food, that means I get to take a bag of Fritos and beat the hell out of it. That part was fun. Since I basically didn't change this recipe at all, and Greg obviously did a lot of work creating it, I'm not going to repost the recipe here, you'll just have to follow this link to his site and you'll see the exact recipe I used.

They were a huge hit. I got seven "Yum" emails, and zero "Why are you doing this to me?" emails, which I will take as a double complement. One woman who had a meeting and no time to eat grabbed one and said it saved her life. Salty, sweet, a tribute to all processed food, and a life saver. You see? Wonder cookie.

Editors Note: After writing this blog an interview with David Chang was written saying that Milk Bar pastry chef Christina Tosi is working on a cookbook. I am nearly mad with joy and anticipation! Also while I have your attention, a few people have complained about how hard it is to add this blog to their RSS Feed. I have put a tool in the right hand column to make it easier! Have a great weekend all!