Miso Sauce

When I lived in Japan my favorite food was Katsu. Katsu likely is Japanese shorthand for cutlet (Katsu-retto). What makes the dish extraordinary is the sauce. It is a mixture of Japanese and European -- the Japanese word for this cuisine is YoShoku (Yoo means Western and Shoku means food).

The sauce is like molasses or barbecue sauce but it also has Japanese flavors

Recently I came across a recipe for miso katsu sauce that I have been simplifying and adapting. First, no alcohol, so I substitute simple syrup. Then no gluten, so I use gluten-free red miso paste. We have this simple recipe:

1.  Boil 1/4 cup of water -- it boils quickly.
2. Start adding white sugar, 1/2 tbsp or 1 tbsp at a time, until the water is syrupy.
3. Turn off the heat, and start adding red miso paste 1 tbsp at a time until it is thick.

This simple recipe was excellent, but I have experimented by:

• Adding ginger to the water before it boils. This is excellent.

Planned experiments include:

1. Adding flaky dried shiitake mushrooms
2. Doing a traditional katsu sauce and adding tomato paste, vinegar, fruit (I like pears), tamari soy sauce (which is gluten-free) and possibly seaweed of some sort and possibly chili peppers of some sort as well as black pepper. I will update this once I have a better recipe.

Melissa's Crispy Salmon Skn

Simple, reliable twist to make crispy salmon skin, with the skin served separately:

1. Heat olive oil in the skillet
2. Sprinkle salt in the heated oil (where the fillet will sit)
3. Sprinkle a pinch of sugar on top of the salt (optional)
4. Lay salmon skin side down on top of salt and sugar
5. After appropriate time, flip salmon
6. Sprinkle a pinch of salt on the skin
7. Sprinkle a pinch of sugar and/or drizzle a bit of maple syrup on the skin
8. After 15-30 seconds, gently lift skin off the fillet. If it doesn't easily peel off, wait a lttle longer, then remove.
9. Place skin in the same skillet with the salmon. Continue to cook. (In the last seconds of cooking, I flip the fillet again, so the side that had skin removed is down, on the pan. That's so that side soaks up any remaining seasonings.)
10. The skin crisps up. It'll curl, looking like a ribbon. Remove it from the skillet when it crisps. It won't take long. Make sure it doesn't burn. Before transferring to a plate, I let the skin's oil drip into the pan. It'll still be greasy.

Supposedly skin won't curl if it's scored before placing in a skillet. I haven't tried that.

Alex loves it when I use maple syrup on both sides the fillet. Crispy skin recipes don't call for sugar or maple syrup.

I've cooked salmon in both stainless and cast iron skillets and made crispy skin in both.

If you make it, I hope you enjoy it.

Recipe recommendation: Easy Dairy-Free Banana Bread

I've made this banana bread recipe several times during Covid and I strongly recommend it. It is easy and dairy free. You can make it vegan with egg replacer and I have not tried it gluten free.

Best Turkey Meat in the World!

A quick shout out to our favorite farmer's market turkey meat supplier, Di Paola's. Simply the best you've ever had. Get the ground dark meat. Eating a burger as I write this. Cook with salt and pepper -- as you would with any high end meat.

Virgin Pear Colada

Virgin Pear Colada

2 Tbsp of Looza Pear Juice
1 Tbsp of Vanilla Rice Dream
1 Tbsp of Water
1/2 Tbp of Coconut

Mix! Enjoy.

Free of citrus and dairy. Contains lots of sugar.

Defrosting Meat

We missed a cooking demo by the Grill-A-Chef in Union Square at the market, but I got to ask him one question.

I asked him what I needed to do to get meat crispy, and after some insightful talk, I asked him what I should do to defrost meat. He said that might be the key to improving the way I cook meat.

So I asked another cooking authority, my mother, and she said that she never freezes meat. So that's one way to do it.

The way I'm going to do it is different -- I'm going to make sure I defrost the meat even if it has to be in the refrigerator for 24 hours after it's been in the freezer for some time.

The freezer exists to enable us to go shopping less frequently. Use it!

Maine Root Potato Mustard Chicken, Marinated

Marinade

A lot of Vinegar-free mustard

a lot of Ancho chile powder

a lot of Maine Root Ginger Brew

1 tsp Salt

a lot of Pepper

a lot of Basil

a lot of Oregano

Water

Small amounts of cardomum, coriander, and tumeric, and a reasonable amount of cumin.

a tsp of Smoked Paprika

Combine. It should taste sweet and tangy. You can add stronger chile to get a spicier marinade.

We marinated the chicken for an hour in about half the marinade.


Cooking the chicken

We put some olive oil, rice, and some of the retained marinade on the bottom of the Creuset. The rice was partially cooked.

We added some dairy-free and garlic-free instant potato powder. We added the chicken and placed some more potato powder, several tbsp of Earth Balance vegan butter, salt, and pepper. We used almost 1.5 lbs of chicken breasts.

It took about 80 minutes to cook in the oven at 400 degrees F. We took the chicken out of the oven after 40 minutes and added some more of the marinade and some more potato powder, and turned down the oven to 350. Melissa removed the top shortly before the end to get a crust on top.

We obtained a surprisingly mellow barbecue-flavored chicken. Delicious! Served it with rice.