A Box of Kitchen

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Fish head soup

If I am asked what my comfort food is, that will be this fish head soup. Always this soup, regardless the weather. And if you enjoy Thai`s Tom yum soup, then it`s very likely that you`ll enjoy this as well.
My favorite choice of fish for the soup is Japanese amberjack, called buri here. Buri fish is very meaty and the head part is even full of good flavor with lots of collagen filling up the space between the skins and the bones. And the EYES are really good! I usually save them for the last bits. Just try them and you`ll know what I`m talking about. Am I freaking you out?
Well, let`s pretend that I`m using eyeless fish head for the soup then.

Start with making the spice paste. I used garlic, onion, ginger, chillies, and gochugaru (Korean chili powder).

Now heat a bit of oil on a pan and start sauteing the paste while adding bruised lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime leaves, coriander, and cumin.

After stirred the spices for a while, pour in coconut milk and stir again.

Now these are the head and the bony parts of the buri fish. I always, always feel happy when I see these guys at the store.

Put them in the soup.

I added mushrooms and bamboo shoots too (my favorites), but you can use other ingredients or vegetables too.

Tom yum soup recipe calls for tamarind juice, but since I don`t have any tamarind, I used "Umeboshi", Japanese pickled plums instead. I-heart-umeboshi and I always have to have a jar of it in my fridge. Like nattou, umeboshi is pretty much essential in daily meals. It has deep flavors of saltiness and sourness, which probably the most intense among other pickled food I`ve ever tasted. Mothers (and wives) usually place one red umeboshi on center top of rice packed for bentou that gives a good resemblance with Japan`s national flag.
Not everyone can handle the intense flavors from eating this umeboshi straight (including him), but believe me, adding it to the soup will be as good as spritzing in lemon juice or adding a bit of vinegar.
Now I very much regretted not taking pictures before I chopped them off the seeds, but I hope Google will work for you.

Stir in the umeboshi (include the seeds too), adjust the taste with salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar, and it`s ready! And if you have cilantro, chop up, and use it for garnishing. Even better!
The meat is incredibly soft that it practically melts in my mouth. Melts, I tell you. I also remembered telling you before how I dislike the small bones that scatter throughout the fish meat in sardines or mackerels, but this one is different. Most of the time the bones are big enough so pulling off the meat is easy peasy. And even when it`s not, it`s worth the effort!

I actually cooked this last night and while cooking I kept going from kitchen to living room (which is only 6 steps away, lol) only to make sure that I didn`t miss the part where William and Kate kissed. What a beautiful princess she is!!
I told my husband to keep watching and let me know when the kissing part came, but he fell asleep. So I missed The Kiss! How could he fall asleep?!

Ingredients:
Spice paste
Garlic
Onion
Chili
Ginger
Gochugaru (Korean chili powder)

Lemongrass
Kaffir lime leaves
Galangal
Coriander
Cumin
Coconut milk
Umeboshi (Japanese pickled plum)
Salt
Pepper
Sugar (a pinch)
Fish head
Bamboo shoots
Mushrooms

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Petits choux au fromage (cheese puffs)

Confessions: I don`t speak French. And I` ve never been to French restaurants. And it`s one of my biggest dreams to visit France someday!

Clearly, this is the fanciest name ever I used in this blog, thanks to Julia Child`s cookbook. And since I don`t know how to pronounce those words, let me just refer this appetizer as Cheese puffs as how she translated it.

If you are a fan of cream puffs, eclairs, and even gnocchi, then you need to know how easy it is to make the choux or puff shells. I used Julia`s recipe and I think it`s quite a foolproof one since the result is pretty satisfying despite my first time making it.

So let`s start with the choux paste.

Place butter, salt, pepper, and nutmeg in water and slowly bring to boil on low heat.This paste will be used for making cheese puffs, so the paste needs to taste a bit salty.

Note: If you`re making dessert puffs, reduce the salt to a pinch and add a tsp of sugar.

When butter has melted and boiled, remove from heat, immediately pour in flour all at once, and quickly stir.

Then, put back the pan over medium-high heat to evaporate the remaining water content. Keep stirring until the mixture leaves the sides of the pan and the spoon.

Remove from heat again and beat in an egg.

Beat it until smooth and repeat the process with the rest of the eggs, one egg at a time.

The more egg you added, the longer time it takes to be smooth.

This is how it looks after the last egg was beat in and this means, your choux paste is done! If you`re making the puff shells for dessert, you can continue with piping and baking.

However, as the name says Cheese puffs, we need to fold in grated cheese to the paste. I used camembert and parmesan (cheap ones, probably not real, lol).

Now, line a baking tin with parchment paper and place some paste in a pastry bag. I`m a messy person (and everyone knows that), so whenever I have to use a pastry bag, I always clip it with this potato-chip-bag-clipper to avoid dough/batter oozing out during the piping. If the batter easily flows out from the opening (like whipped cream or macaron), you can add another clip right on the upper side of the fitted nozzle when you fill in the bag with the batter.

Pipe out the paste onto the paper making small mounds (mine was about 3-cm in diameter) and space them about 2-cm apart. And by the way, I shouldn`t have bothered to choose the nozzle shape.