David Chang's Momofuku Cookbook
We recently visited New York City for nine fabulous, fun filled gastronomic days. We visited this wonderful city last year for a quick weekend and since our time was so short we did not make it a food trip. We visited museums mostly and ate nowhere of importance. The best dinner we had in NYC last year, on the quickest weekend ever, was at Balthazar. After spending such a short time in this glorious city, we immediately decided to visit it again, but the visit would be longer and totally food centered.
We did just that this summer and we ATE OUR WAY through the city. In between restaurants we visited all of the major museums, explored Central Park and walked a different neighborhood each morning before breakfast.
I would love to fill you all in on our excursions but that would be a book in itself and you would be way to worn out after reading about all of our walks. I will tell you this though: We walked over 100 miles in 9 days. Most likely close to 125 miles.
When I began writing this post I was hell bent on telling you every restaurant we visited and every meal we ate. When I finished writing the post I realized how boring it was: Who really wants to know everything we did and ate? No one I am sure. So I changed the scope of the post to writing about one of the best meals we ate while in New York.
Every meal was beyond exceptional but the most “beyond exceptional” were two places: Mario Batali’s BABBO and David Chang’s MOMOFUKU NOODLE BAR. They were both innovative, creative, different and perfectly perfect. But of the two perfectly perfect dinners, for me, the best was Momofuku Noodle Bar. Why, you may ask? Because it was different from anything I have ever cooked or eaten. There is no restaurant in Fort Lauderdale that offers food like David Chang’s.
While we were eating this unbelievably wonderful food I decided right then and there that I wanted to recreate our meal when we got back to Fort Lauderdale. I did just that: I bought the Momofuku cookbook, invited 12 friends, and spent one whole week preparing a delicious dinner. I decided to make this dinner for my husband’s birthday since his wish was to go back to the Noodle Bar for his birthday dinner. Because that wasn’t going to happen, I decided to bring Momofuku to him. His words “I was Momofuku-ized”.
First of all, I have to say that the Momofuku cookbook is most likely one of the best written cookbooks I have read. Before I use a cookbook I read it cover to cover as if it were a novel. Once I started reading David Chang’s cookbook, I couldn’t put it down. The book is not for the faint of heart or the easily scared out of the kitchen cook. For me, the recipes were easy to prepare but very involved. Lots of hunting for ingredients and a lot of steps in each of the recipes. I took my time: I had to since there was not one recipe I was familiar with.
Let me give you a little back ground about the author. David Chang is a Korean-American who is, and has always been, fixated on noodles. Oh, wait!!! I am an Italian-American fixated on pasta. Hmm!! I’m starting to get the connection. To not give away the plot of this great reading book, I will give you a summary of Chang’s noodle experience. He grew up eating noodles, went to Japan to study with the noodle king of that country and brought back his knowledge to the states. He opened Momofuku Noodle Bar and several other Momofuku restaurants. It wasn’t as easy as that: There was education, hard work and family dedication before he opened his first restaurant.
Now, many restaurants later, he seems to have found success and a loyal following. I am one of the followers. All of the Momofuku restaurants are on my list of places to dine. And there are quite a few spots. The menu at Noodle Bar is mostly Japanese with a lot of twists and turns.
This is the menu I prepared for us and our friends last Saturday Night:
Jim’s Momofuku Birthday Dinner Menu
Appetizers Chicken Wings in Japanese “BBQ Sauce” and Roasted Cauliflower Tossed with Fish Sauce Vinaigrette
First Course Pork Steamed Buns (Chang is very well known for these delicacies) Served with Roasted Mushroom Salad
Second Coarse Momofuku Noodle Bowl with Smoked Chicken, Slow Poached Egg, Collard Greens, Bamboo Shoots, Fish Cake, Noodles and The World’s Best Broth
Dessert Cereal Milk with Lightly Sweetened Avocado Puree and Chocolate- Hazel Nut Thing
What? What? What’s so great about this menu. Well, let me tell you, I had the time of my life preparing each of these dishes. With the exception of the dessert (I will explain soon) I followed each and every recipe exactly as David Chang wrote them. No changes because I know so little, actually nothing, about Japanese, Korean or Vietnamese cooking. These are areas of cooking I have never explored and diving in head first on these complex recipes was a true learning experience. This learning experience is what I have been longing for for oh so many years. I can’t explain to you how I felt cooking this food. As I said, the book is so well written I felt as if I was cooking along side this genius of a chef.
Within each recipe there is an ingredient that needs to be made before you can go on to completion. For example the salad has an ingredient of poached pistachio nuts and the nuts are poached in a liquid called Dashi. And that Dashi needs to be made, as well as the BBQ sauce for the wings (Tare’ which means sauce in Japanese). I made the steamed buns from scratch, brined the pork belly for the buns, made all of the special ingredients called for in the recipes (Chang tells you often that you can buy the ingredient instead of making it from scratch, but my theory is to take the challenge and make it.)
Chicken Wings in Japanese Tare'
The wings were probably the best I’ve had in a long time. Everyone who was here for dinner will tell you the same as well. What makes them so good is that after cold smoking the wings you confit them much like confitting (is that even a word) duck legs. Tender, juicy and delicious.
Roasted Cauliflower with Fish Sauce Vinaigrette
The roasted cauliflower was really good with the fish sauce vinaigrette. I have never been a fan of Vietnamese fish sauce but this vinaigrette changed my mind forever.
Pork Steamed Buns
The steamed buns are Chang’s specialty. I made the buns from scratch instead of buying them (if I had chosen to buy I would have had to order them from New York since I live in a food wasteland) Pork Belly is what the buns are tucked around along with pickled cucumbers, hoisin and scallions. We all decided these were hands down the best we’ve ever had. We’ve only had them one other time from a Food Truck Round Up in Miami and they were pretty awesome but not nearly as awesome as Chang’s.
Steamed Buns with Roasted Mushroom Salad
The salad was Roasted Mushrooms (Oyster and Enoki) on a shmear of pistachio paste (homemade), with pickled sunchokes, quick pickled radishes and microgreens. It was dressed with a warm sherry vinaigrette made in the pan with the mushrooms. Delicious!
Ramen Noodle Bowl
Then came the noodle bowl. When we ate it in New York Jim had it with pork and I with smoked chicken. I decided to go with the smoked chicken, so I smoked three and served them exactly as David does with all of the fixings topped off with a slow poached egg. I have never seen anything like this crazy egg. You slow poach the eggs in a water bath for 40 minutes at a constant 140-145 degrees F. When they are ready, you crack the egg and out comes a perfectly poached yolk. Unbelievable. You put the egg on top of the noodle bowl and when you are served you break the egg into the broth. The egg is poached so perfectly that it thickens up the broth and makes it even richer than it is already. The broth is by far the best broth for this dish. It is a combo of whole chicken, bacon and pork bones along with kombu (seaweed) scallion and carrots. It cooks for around 7 hours which is not really that long. I cook my stock for at least 12 hours so I can get the most flavor but with all of the meaty bones and chicken that go into Chang’s stock the seven hours is plenty of time to get flavor intensity.
My Version of Cereal Milk
Now for dessert. The cereal milk dessert is from a menu at one of his other restaurants. It looked interesting except for the addition of gelatin. Sorry, David Chang, but I have been a chef for a long time and I have never used gelatin, ever. I hate it. Even when I coat a chilled poached salmon with gelatin, that gelatin is a reduced and clarified natural gelatin from the fish bones. Anyway, I spent countless sleepless nights on what to do. I wanted to make this interesting dessert but didn’t want to use the gelatin. Let me step back for a moment. What makes this dessert so interesting is his use of corn flakes as an enhancement. Yes, that’s right, good old fashioned corn flakes. He makes a crunchy topping with corn flakes, powdered milk, sugar and butter, then soaks the corn flakes in the milk and cream used for the custard. There is a sweetened avocado puree and a chocolate-hazelnut bark to accompany the custard. I decided to make my creme caramel instead of the gelatin dessert. I soaked the corn flakes in my cream mixture first to stay a little on track with the recipe. Great idea!!! The creme caramel was perfect. The addition of the caramelized sugar raised the level of the dessert.
So there you have it. My learning experience and good eating all rolled into one. I am not giving away his secrets or printing the recipes. I can’t do that since they are not mine but I suggest you pick up the cookbook if you are daring enough to try something really different. Better yet, go to New York and eat at Momofuku Noodle Bar and you will taste exactly what I am talking about.
For more information on David Chang, his restaurants and his cookbook go to http://www.momofuku.com
As always, if you would like to comment on this posting please do so right here or go to my email camille@camillecooksforyou.com
A comment about the pictures: Most of them were taken by our friends. The only picture I took was of the Wings. So thank you Jodie, Mary, Samantha and Randy for doing a great job. I was much too busy to even think about taking pictures!!
Randy also did some heavy research on wines that are served at Momofuku Noodle Bar. He came up with a great Pinot Noir. This is what he had to say about the wine:
Wine With Dinner
Personal wine tasting in preparation for Chef Camille’s private dinner recreation of David Chang’s Momofuku menu tomorrow night. Thought the Loire Peneau D’Aunis Rose from Touraine (from Momofuku’s wine menu) would be a perfect match however. none to be found in Miami. So selected these three close relatives. The closest being Eric Chevalier’s elegant and luscious Pinot Noir imported by Kermit Lynch would probably suffice. Chevalier is a rising star in the Nantais of the Loire Valley. French wines in particular are all about terroir – where they are grown is what they taste like. Or at least have a hint of it. For ten years, Eric sourced fruit in the Touraine (where the wine I was looking for was from), until In 2005, when he returned to his hometown of Saint-Philbert de Grandlieu, just southwest of Nantes, to his family’s 4th generation domaine, Domaine de l’Aujardière, which is where this wine is from. The Nantais has a maritime climate and the vineyards are not far from the Atlantic Ocean. Consequently, there is an interesting variety of sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic rocks, as this area once was ocean floor.
Thank you Randy and Manita for bringing this fabulous wine.