DC Culinarian

Oyakodon

There is a certain smell to Japanese cooking. Anyone who's been in a Japanese restaurant knows it -- a sort of briny, savory, almost woody odor that is inescapable. It is the smell of dashi, a stock made from dried fish flakes and kombu seaweed, and its scent is so predominant because it forms the base for a great deal of Japanese cookery. Indeed, the whole concept of umami, the so-called fifth taste (after bitter, salty, sour, and sweet), derived from dashi and the particular flavor lent to it by the kombu seaweed.

There are two ways to go about getting your hands on some dashi. The first is to make it yourself, which involves finding and purchasing flakes of dried bonito and kombu, and simmering it at just the right temperature (you can't let it boil) for a precise amount of time (the seaweed goes irredeemably bitter if cooked too long). Or you can buy a giant box of dried pre-made dashi powder at an Asian market. I heartily recommend option number two. Hana Japanese Market at 17th and U St. NW is my preferred destination for dashi and other Japanese essentials.

Oyakodon is one of those many Japanese dishes that incorporates dashi. It belongs to the donburi family of rice bowl dishes -- the "don" in the name is short for donburi, and oyako means "parent-and-child," a pleasantly macabre joke about the fact that oyakodon is made with both chicken and eggs. This is street food, and comfort food, simply prepared using ingredients you probably already have on hand (assuming you bought that box of dashi powder).

The trick to a good oyakodon is to simmer everything together and add the eggs at the very end, allowing them to cook only until just set, and then pour it all over a steaming pile of hot rice. The heat from the rice finishes cooking the eggs. It's rich, filling, easy, and different.

Recipe after the jump.

A Challenge To Egg Orthodoxy

Regular readers (hah!) of this blog know that for me, eggs are serious business. As I've articulated in the past, there's no "right" way to cook an egg, but there are more wrong ways than can be counted. My general rule of thumb, though, is if you're frying an egg over high heat, you're doing it wrong.

That's actually more than a rule of thumb. That's an article of faith. But what good is faith if it isn't tested every now and again?

In this case, the challenge to my egg orthodoxy comes from José Andrés, the excitable Iberian man-child who presides over DC's culinary fiefdom. The New York Times busted out the slideshow treatment for what Sr. Andrés calls the perfectly fried egg. The trick, it turns out, is shallow frying the egg in a bath of very hot oil, which flash-cooks the egg and forms a uniform crust around the yolk.

High heat? An egg with crust? Strike one and strike two.

But on what grounds can I question Andrés' culinary skills? He's a much admired and successful chef. I have this stupid blog and a passing familiarity with DSLRs. So I gave it a go. And the verdict? Mixed.

The concept is a good one -- immersing the egg in oil creates a protective sheath around the yolk, allowing it to come to temperature uniformly and more slowly than the exterior. And this technique is appealingly fast; 30 seconds and you're done. The problem, at least for me, is the crust. Normally I'm all for caramelization, but I just don't find it appealing for egg protein, which gets hard and sort of plasticky. And there's the mess factor. Dropping an egg into a shallow pool of oil creates a lot of sputtering a spurting, which makes for an oil-covered cooktop.

The finished product is enjoyable enough, though, particularly when nestled in a pile of nice spring risotto. Eggs and rice are actually an underutilized combo.

But my egg faith remains unshaken. Low and slow. It's the way to go.

Balsamic Peach Raspberry Zabaglione

The occasion of peach week gives me the opportunity to share one of the more valuable cooking lessons I ever learned, imparted to me by my younger brother. He's far and away a better cook than I am, and succeeds at pretty much everything, which is thoroughly irritating. The flip side to this irksome trait is that his rare moments of failure stand out and become the stuff of legend. Such is the case with his infamous kitchen experiment: peach-raspberry cornbread.

Cornbread. With peaches in raspberries in it. In theory an excellent idea: cornbread is good, peaches are good, raspberries are good. Put them together and NEXT STOP FLAVORTOWN WOO WOOOOOO! Right?

Heh... no.

This happened a long time ago. We're something like 15-18 years out from the incident, and my brother was just a kid at the time. But it was such a transcendent disaster that comes up at family gatherings to this day. The lesson learned is that when it comes to cookery, the whole is not necessarily greater than the sum of its parts. Peach and raspberry go together wonderfully. They just don't play well with cornbread. The same could be said of chocolate, orange, and tuna.

So here we've kept the peach-raspberry combo and, in place of cornbread, added a little zabaglione, a whipped Italian custard made with egg yolks, sugar, and alcohol (in this case, white wine and Chambord). To cut it a bit we throw in a little bit of balsamic vinegar, which adds tang and brings down the sweetness a touch.

A few tips: the custard is light, but rich. Super rich. A little goes a long way so be judicious. That lightness is achieved by vigorous, sustained whisking. Like 10-12 minutes of straight whisk action. Be ready, or use a handheld electric mixer.

Whatever you do just be sure to keep things moving. You want custard, not scrambled egg, which, like cornbread, does not go well with peaches and raspberries.

Recipe after the jump.

Agitate Your Omelette

There is no "right" way to make eggs, but the wrong ways stack high. If your fried eggs are plasticky, you're doing it wrong. Scrambled eggs rubbery? Something's gone awry. Poached egg cooked through? You blew it.

Most people are wedded to the notion that eggs should be cooked over high heat. That when you crack an egg into a frying pan it should frenetically pop and sizzle and be cooked in mere moments.

No. No. No. No. No.

High heat gets you plasticine eggs that adhere to cooking surfaces. Of course, there's no accounting for taste. Some people like the browned ring of near-indestructible crustiness that encircles an egg fried over high heat. They're weird.

The proper way to do it is lower and slower. This allows you more control over the texture of the egg, which is key when making an omelette in this classic French style.

You cook the eggs over lower heat while constantly whisking and agitating the eggs. The effect is threefold: the low heat gives the protein more time to develop, the constant agitation prevents the formation of large curds (that unfortunate word again), and the whisking incorporates air as it cooks. (Here is Jacques Pepin demonstrating a variation of the technique.)

The end result is an omelette that is fluffy and almost impossibly light, with just the slightest hint of browning.

Recipe (the ingredients of which are malleable to your taste) and technique below the jump.