noodsletter #.0047
Seattle, darphin
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Book Bit
Salmon is in itself very delicious eating, but too much of it is bad for the health, inasmuch as it is a heavy food. For this reason, once when there was a great catch of salmon, the police in Hamburg ordered each master of a household to give his servants salmon not more than once a week. Would that there might be a similar police notice with regard to sentimentality.
-From Either/Or by Soren Kierkegaard, tr. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong.
Work Stuff
Most of you will have seen, but for those who have not: The Control Freak Home is on a sale, exclusively through ChefSteps!
We sold a ton of them, far more than I expected we would, which is heartening because our entire team worked very hard to make those sales. (Thank you to any noodsletter readers who decided to make the plunge!) And it’s also heartening because the machine is incredible, a passion project for its engineers, and it’s nice to know that many, many people will enjoy the fruits of their labors for years and years to come.
In part to celebrate the release, I was flown out to Seattle by the power that be last week. I don’t know what the deal was with my previous visits, but the food I ate this time was very good; I was a little disappointed previously. Here’s some of the stuff I ate.
First night there I headed to Taylor Shellfish Oyster Bar in Pioneer Square. I wanted to eat geoduck, and Taylor Shellfish is the number 1 producer of geoduck in the US. The clam itself was seemingly high quality, but I was a little perplexed by how they’d decided to cut it—ragged strips for both the siphon and the belly. More perplexing still was what the clam was served with: a turd emoji of wasabi out of a tube, an enormous dipper of (I think) Kikkoman soy sauce, and a lemon slice that was 50% seeds. Fresh wasabi is, of course, asking for too much, but the trough of Kikkoman for what must have been a 1/2 ounce of very high-quality, very pricey clam seemed deranged to me, the kind of thing that makes you shake your head at “Americans.” A splash of good (not great!) soy sauce would’ve been more appropriate and way better! The lemon slice ended up being all the explanation you need, however.
On the other hand, the oysters were great, and the “steamers”—not big bellied soft shells that we Northeasterners would think of as steamers, but manila clams instead—were tasty, albeit something I can easily make at home. The best part of the steamers was the fact that you can get a quarter baguette served alongside, and while the bread is cold (??), the butter pat is crowned with an appropriately generous amount of flake salt.
The first day in office we had a mini pizza party, and this being ChefSteps, that meant we made the pizzas using Breville’s countertop pizza oven (with one of our pizza dough recipes). The day of, Grant (the big boss) asked people to try to come up with some whacky pizza idea if they felt like it, and no one really bit… except me, of course.
I did an aloo chaat pizza. Boiled some fingerlings until just tender in very salty water, then dressed them with more olive oil than you’d think would taste good, sherry vinegar, and salt. Plopped them on the dough round with just a little mozz and parm underneath (to help them stick, to make it more “pizza”) and scattered thinly sliced red onion all around. A brief spell in the pizza oven cooked the dough and charred the top a bit, and then I (generously) layered on red onions quick pickled with sugar, salt, chaat masala, and lime juice, raw red onions, as many sliced serranoes as I thought I could get away with, and then doused everything with pani puri water. Final touch was some salt and vinegar chips I crushed up and seasoned with chaat masala, which provided the necessary chaat crunch.
It was pretty good, but I get nervous when making food for other people, since my taste buds do not work; I get shy about salt and acid, because I think other people’s taste buds do work. Grant ate a bite and said, immediately, “More salt and lime juice,” which was correct and made me feel deeply ashamed. Next time I cook at the ChefSteps offices, my goal is to have everyone say, “Maybe there’s too much salt? And acid?”
The big highlight of the trip was going to Kamonegi, a soba and tempura shop that gets crazy good reviews. I’m always skeptical of hyped places (as is right!), but this place really lives up to the hype.
The noodles themselves were pretty good; they use wheat flour in the dough, which gives them an elasticity that is more on the packaged soba side of textures than fresh soba made just from buckwheat. The dashi there, however, was excellent, and the appetizers were crazy good. Their famous foie gras/tofu app was perfect; we spent a fair amount of time wondering if we could replicate it. It has the consistency of very light whipped tofu but with an unmistakable foie flavor, and it’s a little square sunk in some very, very tasty dashi.
I got the hot duck soba, and the execution of each element was fantastic. I think the duck meatball was a little rubbery, but that seemed to be a preference rather than a deficiency in execution.
One honorable mention, of which I failed to take a photo because … it was so good, it didn’t even occur to me to take a pic until later that day when I was thinking about it again: There’s a little Norwegian bakery tucked away in Pike Place Market called Freya, and they do some very nice croissant sandwiches, each of which is anchored by an impressively laminated croissant. I’m not much of a sweet person, but I had to order this ginormous laminated thing they call a “cruffin,” basically a muffin made with laminated pastry, filled with pastry cream and dusted with cinnamon sugar. The thing was the size of my face; eating a whole one seems impossible, until you take a bite.
You will feel like shit after eating it, 100%. But it is one of the best pastries I’ve ever eaten.
Book Update
It pains me to write this, but I figured I’d give an “official” update on the ramen book’s progress.
The pub date has been shifted to Fall 2025. Yes, that’s faaaar in the future. No, there’s nothing I can do about it. No, it isn’t anyone’s fault. No, nothing has gone wrong.
The only thing I can really do about it is… start working on another book. Or maybe just focus on my day job? Or, idk, write a YA novel about witches. Or an adult novel about witches. A novel about witches? An epic about witches! Or a YA cookbook about witches. There’s an idea in there somewhere, about witches.
Darphin trials and tribulations
I’ve been threatening for years to write up a recipe for potatoes darphin and I’m not really sure why. It’s a tricky bit of potato prep; my darphin are not the best; and I think the technique I use is sort of silly.
It all started with a video on Munchies (RIP), Chef Jeremiah Stone of Contra and Wildair making it seem easy. I’ve tried the dish at Wildair—they top the potato pancake with uni and a pickled jalapeno slaw—and it’s better than it sounds, if that’s possible. (For some reason, it didn’t sound very good to me; I was wrong!)
Now, there are a lot of recipes out there. Here’s one from Serious Eats, here’s another from the master, Jacques Pepin. What distinguishes the Wildair version from the others is that it’s taller, with more defined edges, and there’s more of an emphasis on the specific dimensions/geometry of the potato “julienne”; 3 mm x 3 mm matchsticks, which are closer to shoestring fries (at the very least, my shoestring fries) than anything else. Also, Stone makes the technique look very cool: all that tucking in with the spatula is very cheffy.
I spent far too much time trying to replicate the Stone version, with limited success. I ended up cribbing most everything about the recipe, but, crucially, I cribbed the amount of oil/fat used to cook the pancakes, which is, frankly, a lot, but then ditched some of the fussier stuff, like all that tucking in business.
There’s three (okay, maybe 3.5) keys to the preparation: The cut of the potatoes, the amount of fat, and the pan (and lid) you need to use. The cut is straightforward: Cut the potatoes into 3x3mm matchsticks. Thinner is not better; you’ll end up with a shredded hashbrown. Thicker is okay, the cook time will just be extended, and the cake might be less cohesive (more on that in a second). The pan is basically non-negotiable if you want a compact puck of potato—you want an 8-inch nonstick skillet, and if you want to do the silly thing I do, you’ll need a lid that fits inside the pan easily; I use the lid from a 2-quart pot.
The amount of fat is sort of crazy. Those other recipes call for enough fat just to brown and evenly cook the surfaces of the cake; Stone’s recipe calls for a 1/2 cup of fat for each side. I use 5 to 6 tablespoons of fat right from the beginning. It’s not a full cup of fat, but is that still a lot of fat for a pound of potatoes? Yes.
However, it’s not like you’re eating all that fat, and while the potatoes absorb a fair amount, they don’t eat as “greasy”; they eat rich, which is the idea after all. These are French potatoes.
The fat is less a browning medium than it is a full-on cooking medium. You need enough fat that it rises up through the interstices of all those potato shreds and cooks the interior directly, which cuts down on the total cook time while also giving you a huge hedge against browning/burning and excessive crisping. Once the potato cake sets and is cooked through, you can drain off most of the excess fat and brown and crisp the cake in a couple of minutes.
Here’s my process.
Add all the fat to the nonstick skillet and put it over medium heat, until the fat starts to shimmer. I use clarified butter, but vegetable oil works just fine. (A fat that is solid at room temperature will taste less greasy.)
While the fat heats, dump all the potatoes in a bowl, season with ~1.1% salt and 2% tapioca or potato starch, and give it all a good mix. (You can add pepper/white pepper/sansho, other spices in there at this point, too. Chaat masala darphin anyone??) (The starch helps make the cake more cohesive.)
Dump all the seasoned potatoes into the pan; it will look like entirely too much potato, and they should mound up over the lip. Hold onto the empty mixing bowl and place it next to the stove. Press down on them a little (use a spatula), but don’t worry about it too much. Then, just let them cook, rotating the pan if your stove isn’t entirely flat. As the potatoes cook, they will naturally settle into a puck-like shape without any manipulation; you don’t need to do any tucking.
After about 10 minutes, the cake should be cohesive and if you shake the pan, it’ll slide around and feel like a solid mass. Here’s where the mixing bowl and the pot lid come into play. Place the pot lid on the potato cake and, pressing firmly down with one hand, carefully tip out all the fat in the pan into the mixing bowl. Once the fat’s done dripping, keep tipping the pan, firmly anchoring the potato cake in place with the pot lid, until you’re holding the cake up with the pot lid. You should be able to remove the pan entirely and you’ll be holding the cake aloft on the lid above your closed fist.
Slide the cake (carefully) back into the pan. This is the only time when you may need to do some tucking with a spatula; when the cake slides, some of the topmost potato threads will slide out of place. Tuck those things in, then pour the oil—all of it—in the mixing bowl back into the pan around the edges. Cook for another 5 minutes.
At this point, the cake should be cooked through, but it’ll be blonde on the surfaces. To brown, do the pot lid thing again and drain all but about a teaspoon of oil back into the mixing bowl, and set the pan back on the hob. The potatoes are fully cooked, their starches gelatinized, so browning will take place VERY QUICKLY, about 1 to 2 minutes. Flip the cake (you can just flip it like a flapjack; it should be completely solid), add another teaspoon of oil, and brown the other side, about 2 minutes.
Ok, so that’s the basic technique. I’ve been fiddling with greater quantities of potatoes (to produce a taller cake) and other root vegetables (like daikon) with very limited success. Although the technique still works, the results aren’t the best. At this point, I’m fairly certain for most standard-issue 8-inch nonsticks, you don’t want to exceed 550 g of cut potatoes.
Since receiving my Control Freak Home, I’ve had one chance to do a darphin, and I ran into an issue: the one 8-inch nonstick I have that’s induction compatible isn’t heavy enough to depress the pan sensor. To get it to work, I did exactly the same thing as described above, but instead of heating the oil first, I dumped the oil and seasoned potatoes in right from the beginning—a “cold start,” if you will.
It worked out great! Interestingly, the cold start also created a very glassy crust on the first cooked side. I think the liquid from the potatoes mixed with the starch and gelled quite evenly as the temperature came up, then when the oil went past the boiling point of water, turned it into a crispy and glassy material. I’ll be doing it again—with other root vegetables, too. If you’ve got a CFH, the pan temperature was 310 F for the whole process.
Ingredients:
5 tablespoons oil/clarified butter
550 g Russet potatoes, cut into 3x3 mm julienne
12 g tapioca starch
6 g salt
In a 8-inch nonstick skillet, heat fat over medium heat until shimmering.
While fat heats, add potatoes, starch, and salt to a medium bowl and toss to thoroughly combine.
Add potatoes in an even layer to the pan, pressing down firmly with a spatula to even the layer out; set mixing bowl next to the stovetop. Cook until potato cake seems set and it starts to smell like fried toasty potatoes, 10-12 minutes.
Place a pot lid that fits inside the circumference of the lip of the nonstick pan directly on top of the potato cake. Pressing down firmly on the potato cake with the pot lid, carefully pour off all the oil in the pan into the mixing bowl.
Invert the pan so the potato cake is resting on the pot lid; remove the pan and set it back on the burner. Carefully slide the potato cake back into the pan, raw side down. Pour all the oil back into the nonstick pan around the edges of the cake.
Cook until potatoes are cooked through, 5-6 minutes.
Place the pot lid back on top of the potato cake and, pressing firmly down on the cake, pour out all but 1 teaspoon of fat into the mixing bowl.
Cook, monitoring potato cake carefully, until surface is golden brown, 1-2 minutes.
Flip, add 1 teaspoon of fat, and cook until second surface is golden brown, 1-2 minutes.
Transfer potato cake to a cooling rack and let rest 5-10 minutes. Cut and serve.
Darphin looks AMAZING. Reminds me of how much fat is in the tortillas we get in Uruguay. It's always sort of a horrifying amount but worth it.
Can't wait for the book!!! Go Sho go!