· James Torr · Personal · 1 min read
Kimchi gyoza 🥟 yum. Hand ground pork shoulder, home made kimchi, soy, sesame sauce, I think that was about it. Mix well till pasty, fill wrappers. Freeze. Cooked in the usual way: pan fry for a few mins, add water then cover for 4 mins or so, when the water is evaporated enough that it’s quite thick, take the lid off and wait till it’s dry. Remove and eat with a soy/vinegar dipping sauce.
I've been eating a lot of rice bowls lately and I thought I'd share some basics that I've learned since eating them. I started with some of the donburi style Japanese rice bowls. Oyakodon is lovely, simple chicken vs egg with dashi, sugar and soy, likely ginger and garlic. Gyudon is thin sliced beef with something similar. Korean rice bowls (Bibimbap) are a bit more relaxed and have more variety of toppings.
Here we have a butterflied, salted and dried Indian mackerel, known as aji no himano in Japan. Traditionally eaten for breakfast, however, I ate it for a late lunch today. It was accompanied by smoked salmon skin, crisped up in an air fryer, and some fried rice. The mackerel process is relatively simple once butterflied, and would work just as well on filleted mackerel or sardines. I soaked 4 in 100ml of 10% alcohol (sake or 1 part gin/vodka diluted with 3 water) for about 15 minutes.
Another round of kimchi this morning. Sweetheart, Savoy and Napa cabbages in the mix with some pepper, onions, carrots and garlic. Fish sauce, rice porridge, gochugaru pepper flakes to season, add creaminess and spice respectively. Just scaled up Maangchi's ratios for the porridge and chilli flakes and went with 2% by weight of the total for the salt. This will likely be pushed up to around 2.3% due to the fish sauce, which is an acceptable amount for a ferment.
Dumpling weekend. Pork shoulder chasu filled yeast/baking powder leavened dumplings on Saturday night. Lazy Sunday and gyoza with pork and veg fillings: minced shoulder, ginger, soy, garlic, chives, chard. Wrappers were all done from scratch through an Imperia Restaurant pasta machine with the help of my lovely assistant. I don't have all-purpose flour (my usual caputo rosso), so I'm blending low protein Italian 00 and some strong bread to get the same effect.