noodsletter #.0016
Farewell to a friend; baroque prose; mushrooms and sprouts.
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Shimeji and mung bean sprouts*
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(Proto-) Book Bit
Before there is a war of weapons there is often a war of words, and the preachers were like the guns placed in defiles and in batteries. Still, when they fired off, as if into a creatureless sky, their invectives and their warnings sometimes cast doubts down upon their own positions. Heresies were encouraged by the simple act of describing them, by the passion with which they were denied, because they sounded, sometimes, more appealing than the anger that opposed them. Worse. The miseries of men were written, as it were, on the walls of their jakes and sties, but these victims of the whims of tyrants—and/or the pox, the plague, the drought, a city's smoky chimneys, wars and other risky ventures, the unpleasantness of prisons, dinners scrounged from previously scraped plates—these dupes weren't aware of the signals sent by their surroundings or any other writings that might have protested their conditions. From both suffering and its depictions, the well-to-do averted their eyes, even when the poets were blunt as a sledge.
My bowells are growne muddy, and mine eyes
Are faint with weeping: and my liver lies
Pour'd out upon the ground, for miserie
That sucking children in the streets doe die.
From “Excerpt from Baroque Prose” by William H. Gass, in Socrates on the Beach, Issue 4
This excerpt is apparently from the opening of what would have been (will be?) Gass’s final work of criticism. Gass is my favorite author. I say that despite being deeply embarrassed by using the word “favorite,” as if I were a child describing colors or ice cream flavors. However, I say it because it’s true, and because I feel like all the writing I’ve ever done is the equivalent of a child’s best efforts to describe colors and ice cream flavors whenever I read anything by Gass. I’ve included this quotation here mostly for that “dinners scrounged from previously scraped plates.” If any of you are curious about Gass, or you’d inexplicably like to read something I’ve written about his work, I wrote something for The Baffler years ago.
Farewell to a Friend
My colleague Sasha Marx has just been hired away; he’s going to be the editorial director of ChefSteps. In lieu of writing something mawkish or maudlin, I’m going to highlight some of his work at Serious Eats. Needless to say, I will miss him, both because of the excellence of his work and because it’s fun to work with friends.
Since we’re knee-deep in this year’s Starch Madness (have you voted? No? Go vote!), I wanted to first note that Sasha is the one who came up with the idea of doing a March Madness-inspired, starch-themed bracket. He is also the one who insisted, despite the fact that it meant all of us having to do a lot of work in a relatively short period of time THREE YEARS IN A ROW, that the bracket each year consist of 64 contestants, because anything less would be ridiculous. He was right, of course.
Highlights:
I’ve linked this previously in noodsletter, but I thought Sasha’s big duck project was incredible.
I make his broccoli rabe and sausage pasta at least once every two weeks.
His focaccia di recco is dangerously good.
These trapizzini (focaccia with pockets, basically) are very easy to make and so, so delicious. Mortadella and broccoli rabe and parm in one of those things? Amazing.
When he was testing this buldak recipe, he did a version where he grilled the chicken over binchotan charcoal, and it was one of the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten. It’s still more-ish and amazing when made with a broiler, but, really, nowhere near as good.
Click into this recipe and look at the satsuma mandarins, and how he peeled them. Still not over it. The salad is quite nice, too.
But when it comes to salads, this tomato tonnato salad is hands-down the best salad in existence. Come summer you should make it every week; every day, even.
The final highlight is not a link, but an anecdote: When I was developing twin butter chicken recipes (stovetop and pressure cooker), I ended up with a lot of leftover sauce, so I tried using it up in a lot of different, tasty ways. One of those tasty ways was in a butter chicken soufflé. I will never forget Sasha’s face as he took a bite of my butter chicken soufflé. He did not like it.
(Me)x3
Couple of my recipes were published recently: Aloo tikki and aloo gobi.
“News”
I don’t watch or really pay attention to Top Chef, so this is anecdata, but it seems to me I only ever seem to read stuff about it when Tom Colicchio is doing something stupid. Also, Leah Finnegan opened the previous piece she wrote about Top Chef with this very funny line: “Season 19 of Top Chef premieres tomorrow, which is great news because I love to see those little James Beard award nominees whip up their veloutés and espumas.”
I like the theme of this Instagram page! My experience is baking does not make me happy at all, it’s like staring into Narcissus’ pool, if the pool was a bottomless abyss of failure.
You can’t tell me they didn’t consider the hed: “The Time is Lao”
So one of the selling points of this article about an octopus precursor’s fossil was that it was named after Biden. But did you know the octopus belongs to the order Vampyropods(!)? The picture on that wiki illustrates the possible origin of the name.
No meal is worth $1,000. Not a single one!
I collect their remains: piebald, sweet
and sour. A syrup made of loquats
is said to cure cough. Their woolly twigs
splinter in pear blight. I am bereft
when I eat them all.
Media salaries are so abysmal (article is about one guy making $1.2 mil).
An innovative top for Cup Noodles.
Stamped ice, huh.
This tea party on Mt. Everest story—any Mt. Everest story—just makes me think of all the trash that all these expeditions have left on the mountain.
Florence Prime Meat Market is closing. In a newish cookbook by a very famous chef, there’s a little bit ridiculing cookbooks that say, “Get to know your butcher/fishmonger.” Needless to say, I disagree with that very famous chef.
The Hidden Valley Ranch diamond.
“Giant New Zealand potato is not in fact a potato, Guinness World Records rules”
I find the debate about the word “curry” a little mystifying, but this sentence made me scratch my head for a good five minutes: “One of the things that makes a curry a curry to me is that the amount of salt is always just right.”
I keep linking to these pieces only because I find it maddening (standard caveat of “I’m sure this place is good,” even though I haven’t been…l.o.l.). I don’t understand how it happens that every NY-based food publication every once in a while decides to use their king-making status on the same king at the same time. This is like the lemming run off [name a recent or enduring “it” restaurant group], and we’ve all had to deal with the consequences of that. There are like 30,000 restaurants in the city.
Like this one!
Recipe
Shimeji and Sprouts*
Whenever I’m in stores, I wonder what other people do with stuff I’m wondering what to do with. This happens every time I pass this little mushroom area at the nearby Japanese grocery store; I know what I do with these things, but I’ve never heard anyone ever say something about what they do with shimeji, or eringi, or maitake (well, I know people say they love roasted maitake, because of… Craft? something like that). WHAT DO YOU ALL DO WITH THEM?
All the mushrooms at the store are produced by a company called Hokto. I’ve never pitched doing things with these mushrooms at work, since as far as I can tell, in my immediate area, Hokto is the only supplier of bunshimeji, shimeji, and maitake, and despite the fact that the quality is decent, doing a shimeji mushroom recipe seems like it would inevitably be a kind of ad.
Anyway, one of the nice parts about these mushrooms is they’re sold with their mycelium substrate, so you don’t have to use them immediately. When you do want to use them, you can just slice them off the substrate and they’re ready to go.
Recently, I’ve been enjoying this fancy bottle of mushroom soy sauce from Mala Market a lot, and, naturally, it complements mushrooms nicely; I’ll stir fry the mushrooms rather hard, so the wee ones get crispy and the big ones are nicely cooked, and, like a sliced button mushrooms, I’ll toss them in the hot pan with a bit of raw garlic to take the raw edge off, then hit them with seasoning: soy sauce, some acid, salt if needed.
Since I don’t expect any of you to have this pricey soy sauce on hand, here’s a quick stir-fry I did the other night with mung bean sprouts. This same “recipe” also works with daikon sprouts; in fact, it’s better with daikon sprouts, as they’re thinner, less watery, and have a fair amount of radish zip to them. But when made with mung bean sprouts, it’s pretty good, too, so long as you like mung bean sprouts.
As with any mung bean sprout preparation, I tend to hold off on adding salt until after it’s taken off heat, as I want to preserve the crisp texture of the sprouts. As with any mung bean sprout preparation, when I do salt them, I salt the heck out of them. They’re basically just water held in a pixie stick-ish shape by the thinnest of vegetable cell barriers, so they can take a lot of salt; when I say “salt to taste” here, I mean “salt until they’re salty.”
Ingredients
1.5 tablespoons neutral oil (or lard)
100g shimeji
2 cloves garlic, smashed and chopped
1 small shallot, halved and sliced pole to pole
1 chili, sliced
340g bean sprouts
2 teaspoons usukuchi shoyu (fine to use normal soy sauce, too, but it will be darker)
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
Salt
Heat oil in a wok or cast iron pan over high heat. Add mushrooms, season lightly with salt, and cook, tossing and stirring occasionally, until larger mushrooms are fully cooked and tiny mushrooms are crispy, about 4-5 minutes.
Add garlic, shallot, and chili, and toss to combine. Cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds.
Add bean sprouts and toss to combine. Cook until sprouts are just beginning to wilt, about 2 minutes.
Add usukuchi (or soy sauce) and, stirring and tossing constantly, cook for about 20 seconds.
Turn off heat. Add sesame oil and toss to combine. Taste. Season to taste with salt. Serve.
I'll definitely miss Shasha too. Awesome cook, great recipe developer, and just seemed like a great person to be around.