Black Sesame Sauce with Chicken Breast - Nobo

It’s my great privilege to share a recipe from Nobu. The black sesame sauce that I was so amazed and then emailed to the Nobu restaurant to ask for the recipe. Gratefully, I got a kindly response from Nobu revealing the mysterious ingredients of the black sesame sauce.

What makes the black sesame sauce unique is Nobu’s own version Teriyaki sauce.  Since each restaurant has its special method and the restaurant manager could not divulge it, Nobu manager gave me the ratio to make our own black sesame sauce.

Ingredients:

All you need is a basic yeriyaki sauce recipe and to that adding the black sesame paste (Kuro atari goma) which is available in most of the Japanese groceries.

Method:

In a heavy duty blender combine everything and puree until smooth. Before serving the chicken reheat the sauce till thick(3oz) per serving. Spoon the sauce over the grilled chicken and garnish with white sesame seeds.

Nobu New York, the flagship restaurant of Chef Nobu Matsuhisa, received three stars from the New York Times and a Michelin star. With such a fame and reputation,  Nobu was undoubtedly to be one of my Top 3 restaurants during the restaurant week.

The interior design of the restaurant evokes the beauty of Japanese countryside with natural textures such as birch trees and wood floors, making the diners feel peaceful. However, the wall made of river stones brings the energy and excitement through the space, creating a surreal effect.

We began our meal with the tuna sashimi salad with Matsuhisa dressing and squid pasta with light garlic sauce. The squid was very fresh and chewy. Its pasta shape made the squid captured more of the light garlic sauce and became more palatable.

The highlights of this dining experience were the chicken with black sesame sauce and its Tiramisu with white miso. At first I was in doubt with black sesame sauce and wondered that it would be a good match for the chicken. However, I was really admired the chef’s creativity for this dish. The nutty black sesame carrying a little bit salty created a sparkle on the plain chicken breast.

My friend Tony said that he sensed a hint of seaweed from the sesame sauce. Since seaweed is an ingredient largely used in Japanese cuisine, I emailed the restaurant to ask for information about the sauce.  Surprisingly,  Nobu not only emailed me back the desired answer but also generously share a similar version of the sauce.

As for the dessert, it was quite surprised to have Tiramisu to end up the meal in the Japanese restaurant. I expected to get something like green tea ice cream or sweet red bean soup with mochi. However, this Tiramisu was not like others. The chef  added one of the classic Japanese ingredients, the white miso, into the dessert to re-translate this traditional italian dessert. The crunchy chocolate chips on top created a fun texture. And I thought the hint of salty flavor of the Tiramisu came from the white miso. It was the dessert to die for.

Generally speaking, Restaurant week offered a good chance for me to visit Nobu restaurant. Even though the lunch menu was not fancy, it was still a good shot to enjoy the innovative modern Japanese cuisine.

NY restaurant week, the most celebrated food festival, is coming.
This summer from July 11th to July 24th, lots of NY popular restaurants offer a 3 courses lunch at $24.7 or $35 for dinner promotion.

New York City has been considered the Mecca of gourmet food by gourmand. From street vendors, food trunks to Michelin star restaurants, it embraces the most dynamic and energetic food cultures. Therefore, as a foodie, I undoubtedly have to make good use of the restaurant week to explore the taste of this big apple. 

Few weeks ago, I already start to do the research. First of all, I went to Open Table to find out which restaurants are participating this event. And then I checked the restaurant’s review on both Yelp and Open Table website so that I could truly get a good deal. This is my list: Perry St, Nougatine, Nobu, David Bluke Townhouse and En Japanese Brasserie. But I would continue to update it whenever I see a better option.

My Portuguese Friend Cinthia picked En Japanese Brasserie. Cinthia is a big fan of Japanese food. She knows which restaurant has the best Japanese style BBQ and where you could get a grilled wagyu steak for only $23. Since En Japanese has a certain level of popularity, we decided to have En to be our first stop on this journey.

En Japanese Brasserie Restaurant Week Menu

We started on its famous handmade Tofu with wari joyu. The tofu tasted good but not surprising. However, I adored its wooden bowl and spoon, making this dish more appetizing. Second course was O-BanZa, chef’s selection of two Kyoto-style appetizers. the asparagus with sesame sauce was really flavorful and creamy but the other dish was pretty refreshing. From this detail, we could see how chef carefully design its menu to try to find the precise balance between each dish.

The best dish on En’s restaurant week menu was the grilled lobster with uni miso. It was even better than the Stone grilled Kobe style ribeye, which costed $12 more. The grilled lobster kept making my mouth-watering. The uni miso was a super star in this dish. It not only perked up the lobster’s texture to a higher level but also brought up the freshness and flavors of the lobster. So heavenly yummy.

The kobe steak was not as surprising as we expected compare with the astonishment that Uni lobster gave us. The beef was succulent and juicy when it first served on the hot stone, but the steak was getting dry if you left it too long on the grill stone. Another disappointment about the beef was that we could hardly taste its KOBE level value. Cinthia also said that she knew another restaurant having the same steak but tasted better and at a lower price. There was no reason to have $12 supplement on this dish.

Even though some dishes were not satisfying, I highly recommend En’s wine/sake list. I got a glass of Nigori “unfiltered sake.” The one I had was called Daku, $12. I thought it was the best Nigori I’ve ever had: a little bit strong, lightly milky, dry and yet subtle. Overall, En is still a good place to enjoy modern Japanese food. I believe they have a lot of great dishes which are not on the restaurant week menu. When you visit En, don’t forget to try its sake list.

Yuan’s Comments:

EN is my first stop of NY’s Restaurant Week. It is a Japanese restaurant with simple but modern Japanese style. The capacious dining room surrounded by the light grey concrete walls makes the diners feel both visually and mentally easy and peaceful.

Two dishes I ordered: En Garlic Shiso Fried Rice & Dassai Daiginjo Sake-Kasu Pork Shoulder.

The simplest food is usually the most difficult dish to cook. Many might consider garlic fried rice a boring dish. However,  it’s the simpleness that needs chef’s years of experience to deliver its authentic taste of each ingredient. I like the idea of adding shiso to the fried rice. The aroma of fresh shiso pleased my palate, making me unconsciously eating slower and in more detail to taste the meal. I thought maybe it’s because of the Zen spirit in that dish made me had that reaction. 

The taste of the pork shoulder I ordered was fantastic: crisp golden skin with super tender and juicy meat. The pork had been marinated with sake; I believe it’s the trick that the chef did to create sparkle on the meat texture. I was so surprised that the pork shoulder could be so delicious.  It was beyond my imagination.

In conclusion, En restaurant is a good place for a drink. I would give this restaurant 4 stars ＊＊＊＊including the its sake/wine list (total is 5.)

This weekend I was invited to go to Avalon’s sweet apartment and enjoyed the great fireworks on July 4th. Avalon and I have known for each other for about 15 years since we went to the same elementary school in Taiwan. The world is quite small; I’ve never imaged that we would met up again in New York City and live here.

Afonso, Avalon’s boyfriend, is a freestyle great cook. He doesn’t need to read the recipe; or say, he remembered all the measurement and ingredients already in his head. The Brazilian Salty Cake was one of the desserts he made during my stay at their apartment. This recipe is really simple and could be as creative as you desire. Once you know how to build up the frame of the cake, you could free style the ingredients and make your own salty cake.

The ingredients: (Because it’s a FREE STYLE recipe, let’s ignore the precise measurement and simply follow your intuition.)

For the cake’s cover :

Several pieces of white bread, mashed potatoes, mayo, chicken jus

For the cake’s inner part :

Chicken breast

A bag of frozen veggie, such as California Blend.

Olives, Red Peppers, Pearl Onions, Sweet Corns,

Bamboo can, a lots of garlic

For the decoration :

Prosciutto, Parsley (for decoration)

The Steps:

1. Cut the boards of toasts, use only the white part of breads

2. You could use two pans to speed up the cooking process. One for the chicken and the other one for the veggies. First of all, add olive oil to the pan and a lots of garlic. Saute the garlic until golden. Pan fried the chicken breast to golden brown. Season with salt, chicken broth or chicken broth powder.

3. When the chicken is done, tear it into thin pieces with two forks.

4.  Saute the California blend (frozen veggie bag: broccoli, carrot…) sweet corns, then add the shredded chicken into the pan.

5. Make the mashed potatoes and blend it with mayo

6. Soak the breads in the Chicken jus, and spread them on a big square plate.

7. Top with shredded chicken and vegetable mix. And then put the second layer of breads, and top with the mixture again

8. Put the final layer of breads. Spread the mashed potatoes all over the cake

9. Decorate the cake with thin sliced prosciutto and parsley

Hearty suggestion: pair with Pina Colada

The presentation of this dish is various. It could be served for breakfast, afternoon, or even as the dessert after dinner. Once you made the cake, it tastes better after you put it to the refrigerator overnight. I had it for my breakfast with a cup of cappuccino. I like the idea of using mashed potatoes as the whipped cream to spread all over the cake. The cake was pretty savory and appetizing; it made you have one slice after another one. At first, I only wanted a small portion. But after you tasted it, you couldn’t help getting more. I believe there was a magical power in the salty cake. If you get tired of sweet these days, try this one and stimulate your imagination to create your own version. I was thinking about making a tuna/seafood salty cake. What about you?

Juicy Scallops with Garlic Cheese Sauce

Few days ago, whole foods had a special deal for the fresh sea scallops and they offered tasting for food shoppers. I was in line with high excitement to taste the fresh and subtle texture of sea scallops. The way they cooked scallops was marinading sea scallops with greek herbs/Mediterranean herbs, which tasted good but not really impressive though. I felt bad to be so honest and I knew that whole foods’ recipes always offer good and simple alternatives to cook a meal. Coupled with the food of highest quality, it’s hard to make something you don’t want to taste.

Anyway, I got one box of sea scallops and thought about a few ways to cook them. Unfortunately, I was so in a box that thought of merely using different herbs to marinade and bring up the taste. When I discussed the cooking way with my roommate Yuan Yuan, she came out with an innovative thought, which is combining eastern and western elements to make this creative sauce for Sea Scallop. We called it “Magical Garlic Cheese Sauce.” Ha.

Three key ingredients in this magical garlic cheese sauce: a large amount of minced garlic, a slice of cheese, and seasoned soy sauce with seafood, which can be found in any Chinese grocery store. Once you’ve all those ingredients, you are just few steps away from this rock dish.

Method:

1. Clean sea scallops carefully. Make sure there is no tiny sands in it even though scallops looked very clean already.

2. Pearce some holes into scallops with a thin chopstick. Marinade sea scallops with seasoned soy sauce with seafood.

3. Heat the pan with olive oil. Pick up the scallops one by one. (Don’t pour the sauce to the pan at this time.) And don’t try to flip over it frequently. Let them stay on the pan. Be patient.

4. After 5 mins. (high-medium heat) Flip over those sea scallops and add minced garlic, a slice of any cheese you like. (We used  Velveeta.) Pour your marinade, turn to medium-lower heat to melt the cheese. Be patient again.

5. When cheese melts well with garlic and the scallops seem almost done. Drizzle some red wine/white wine around the pan. Turn to medium heat and let the alcohol evaporates.

6. Decorate your plate with whatever colorful food. We used lettuce. THIS MAGICALLY DELICIOUS DISH IS READY FOR YOU.

Bon Appetit.

The main course was black truffle risotto. Risotto was Lilian’s favorite dish. She had tried various risotto recipes such as lemon risotto and mushroom risotto. When she heard me saying that I’m gonna cook black truffle risotto for my mom when I go back to Taiwan, she was so excited and was like why didn’t we plan a dinner for that. So we started to design the menu from appetizer to dessert.

Menu

Light Onion Soup

Cherry Tomato Summer Salad

Black Truffle Risotto

Chocolate Mousse with Fresh Berries

Spanish Sparkling Wine

Since the flavor of  black truffle was very delicate and elegant, we don’t want creamy french style onion soup to cover truffle’s taste. The natural sweetness from sweet onion lifted up the appetite, warming the stomach and making us ready for the highlight of dinner.

Lilian found a salad recipe on a food magazine. The ingredients are following.

Purple onion*1

Avocado*1 (dice)

Cherry tomatoes 1 pint, or mixed small heirloom tomatoes (halve)

Dressing:

white vinegar

extra olive oil

salt and pepper

This salad was undoubtedly fresh and yum. The avocado and the juice from tomatoes made the overall texture more buttery, creamy and harmonious. We cooked the truffle with chicken broth and small amount of heavy cream. When the risotto was almost ready, we turn off the stove and stirred in the truffle paste. The dish was ready to go.  My heart was soaring when smelling the pungent truffle fragrance and my mouth kept watering.

As for the dessert chocolate mousse, you would never guess it because the mousse was made by tofu instead of cream and eggs. It’s undoubtedly a fantastic dessert for vegetarian. The instructions of making it was pretty simple and time-saving, very suitable for beginners. I just melted the dark chocolate and mixed it into Japanese silken tofu. I believed that different kind of tofus brought different textures and flavors, and I thought the texture of silken tofu was closest to the mousse. You can immediately tasted the dark rich chocolate at the first bite, and then the silky and smooth texture of mousse kept moving in your mouth and dancing with your tongue. Another bite with fresh sliced strawberry added up a fruity smell and layered up the flavors.

The dinner was pretty soul relaxing and joyfully. Lilian and I were talking about the sharing interest in gourmet. We both thought that food has been playing an important role in our lives and even in the relationships. Lots of my friends and couples considered enjoying food with each other an indispensable part in their lives. I would say food is like spice dressing up life. It makes you experience various flavors of lives. Thank Lilian for preparing such a marvelous meal.

Sarah Henkin

Spring!

Every April the most exciting thing starts to happen at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market.  Farmers stands become a shade of beautiful bright green from freshly picked lettuces replacing the dark green winter greens that, while always delicious, have become a bit boring.  All of a sudden I find delicate soft herbs that add flavor to everything I put them in, tender asparagus, sweet shelling peas, bright red radishes, fava beans, baby artichokes, fresh goat cheese made the day before I bought it, and of course- green garlic, the young stalks of garlic that have yet to develop into cloves.  I use this type of garlic as I would regular garlic, except I add more since it is not as strong as the fully developed garlic.

I know once summer comes, my attention will be diverted to squash, tomatoes, and stone fruit but for now I am captivated by the spring flavors that are familiar and exciting at the same time.

Two Spring Recipes

Oven Charred Fava Beans with Garlic and Mint Aioli

2 stalks green garlic, white and light green parts very thinly sliced

1 lemon, zested and cut into wedges

1 egg yolk

1/2 cup plus a glug extra virgin olive oil

2 sprigs mint, leaves picked and sliced thin

Salt, to taste

½ pound first-of-the-spring fava beans

1. Preheat oven to 500º (or as high as it will go).  Put a baking sheet in the oven so it heats up too.
2. Make aioli:  in a small bowl combine garlic, lemon zest and egg yolk.  Whisk together.  Carefully drizzle in olive oil, whisking the entire time.  Start out drip by drip, making sure the oil is completely incorporated into egg mixture before adding more.  Eventually the mixture will come together and begin to resemble mayonnaise, continue to whisk until the color lightens just a bit. Add mint, taste, add salt as needed and set aside.
3. Toss the fava beans with olive oil and a pinch of salt.  When oven comes to temperature add the beans in a single layer to a baking sheet.  Roast for about 5 minutes.  Open oven and give baking sheet a shake, roast for another couple minutes.  Put on a platter, garnish with lemon wedges and serve with aioli in a small bowl on the side.

Spring Ragout

Salt

½ pound fava beans

½ pound English peas

1 tablespoon butter (or olive oil)

2 leeks, white and light green part only, washed well and sliced into half moons

4 stalks green garlic, white and light green parts very thinly sliced

1 tablespoon fresh rosemary and thyme leaves combined, chopped

½ pound mushrooms

Splash white wine

1 tablespoon cream

Handful pea shoots

Mint leaves, picked and torn

Squeeze of lemon juice

Fresh cracked black pepper

Thinly slice toasted bread, optional

1. Prepare the fava beans: Shuck the beans by opening each pod and removing the bean found within.  Prepare a bowl with ice water.  Bring a pot of water to boil with a nice pinch of salt.  Add the shucked beans to the boiling water, boil for a minute, just enough time to soften the outer pods and remove to the ice water.  Once cooled, slip the outer layer of skin off to get to the inner bean.  Set aside.
2. Prepare the peas:  Shuck the peas.  Prepare a second bowl with ice water.  Bring the fava bean water back to a boil and add the peas. Cook for 5 minutes, until bright green but slightly under done.  Remove to the ice water and set aside.
3. Heat a sauté pan over medium flame.  Add the butter, let it melt and add the leeks and green garlic.  Toss to coat the leeks with the butter and add the rosemary and thyme.  Once leeks are translucent add the mushrooms and sauté until they give up all their water.  Add the favas and peas, toss to combine and add a pinch of salt.  Add the white wine and let simmer until wine has evaporated.  Stir in the cream, let simmer for just another minute.  Take off flame, toss with the pea shoots and mint.  Squeeze in the lemon juice, add salt and pepper as desired.  Serve as a side dish or on toasted bread.

Succulent Rib Eye Steak

The Rib Eye Steak was just for entertaining because I would not write down any step of cooking this succulent rib eye steak. I was not hiding a secret recipe, trust me. I did so simply because I forgot the detailed measurement of the ingredients and the last thing I wanted to see was people following the recipe found out that the steak didn’t taste as delicious as mine. No way!

Let’s enjoy this delicious picture and have a wonderful meal for dinner.

P.S. How to cook artichokes

By Masha Rumer

Masha

When supply is limited yet the demand is high, the sellers can jack up the price all they want and people pay up. Particularly if there’s no other choice.

But things get tricky when there’s a myriad of choices, as, for instance, with restaurants in San Francisco. In the Mission District, the selection of cuisines, price ranges, and methods of preparation is endless. In one section of Valencia Street, the Mission’s arterial thoroughfare, there are three Indian restaurants within one block from each other. Two Japanese eateries with an oddly identical name, We Be Sushi, bide time just six blocks apart. A swarm of coffee shops and taquerias coexist peaceably side by side.

How do restaurants in this crowded market stay competitive? The logical explanation is they try harder and do more. More choices on the menu. More delicious fare. More bang for the buck. More smiling staff (as much as possible for a hipster). Hire a belly dancer. Put a sitar player in the window to help sell palak paneer, as they do in New York’s Little India. Doing more will attract more customers, right?

Wrong. Acting desperate never really helped anybody, and the Mission eateries are no exception. Many local restaurants are embracing an entirely different model to stay in business: offer less. Become less conspicuous. Cut the hours of operation. Be less available. Cram all the equipment, produce, chefs and customers into a tiny room and watch people go bananas with hunger and relentless enthusiasm.

Shorter Hours

Take Tartine Bakery on Guerrero Street, for instance, an award-winning home of some of the best bread pudding in the world. On a typical day, the customers line up outside for bread, Soviet-style. Part of the reason for Tartine’s popularity is their top-notch ingredients, recipes and reputation. But that’s not all. While the rest of the neighborhood is wide awake and starving, Tartine locks up at 7 p.m. sharp, sometimes 8 p.m. Less means more; less fans the hype.

Tiny Spaces

Another example is Sushi Zone on Pearl Street. Don’t even think about going in and, well, eating. Expect to wait in line for up to two hours. Sushi Zone has just two tables and a tiny sushi bar. Nonetheless, people congregate outside, shivering, smoking, waiting obstinately for their sushi fix. The five hundred plus Yelp reviewers rave about it and dole out four stars on average. Some even go as far as to give it a one star rating, explaining, apologetically, that they did it just to camouflage the superiority of the sushi and make it look bad for others.

Prohibitions

Ritual Coffee Roasters on Valencia Street covered up their electric outlets to drive away the laptop fiends, who’d park at the tables for hours, plug in, and buy one cup of coffee in return. Four Barrel Coffee, also on Valencia, likewise discourage laptop use, despite their ample warehouse-like space. A charged battery won’t help, either. The non-ergonomic tables will remind you that you’re better off taking yourself and your laptop elsewhere, and give you shoulder and neck pains as a parting memento (and sometimes a verbal bashing by the other patrons).

Dark Spaces

Playing dead, or being “a hole in the wall,” also works wonders for business. Little Star Pizza, arguably the purveyor of the tastiest pizzeria in San Francisco, sports black, non-descript windows in its Mission location. There are no lights, curtains or cats visible outside, save for the name and logo. For months, I thought Little Star had gone out of business, until one day I peaked inside and bumped into somebody’s back: dozens of people were crammed into the waiting area, abuzz with their anticipation of cheese.

Something is clearly working with the Mission’s “less is more” approach when it comes to food fetishism. This neighborhood, of course, is not the only one to do this. Bourbon & Branch, a former speakeasy hidden away in the nearby Tenderloin, requires a password to get in. And when the patrons finally get their permission to enter, when they realize that this here is, after all, just a bar, that their companion is painfully boring, that they don’t even drink, for crying outloud, they’ll still leave with that elated “Je ne sais quois” feeling. It was exclusive, one might think. It was prohibitive and special. It’s almost like they didn’t even want me there. But they let me in. Me! Oh, I’m most definitely coming back.

Masha is a freelance writer and teacher. Most importantly she is an insider in the Mission District. She knows the best restaurants in San Francisco especially in the Mission District. I met Masha at the Academy of Art’s writing lab. I went there to revise my final paper, which was about an analysis in food industry. I wrote something about the differences between American beef and Australian beef, and she was curious because living in the United States there was little opportunity to eat Australian beef. Then during the break time, we talked more about food and she even generously gave me a restaurant list! Masha is truly a professional eater. I was so excited that she could be my guest writer! Thanks Masha.