Mitsuwa Marketplace

Forgive me if this post makes no sense: the coffee machine spat out water speckled with grinds this morning instead of the usual normal coffee, so I'm flying without the assistance of caffeine. Unfortunately, we didn't do too much cooking over the weekend. We spent the majority of the day on Saturday in the suburbs, running various errands and having dinner with D's family. I was somehow able to convince D to take me to this wonderful Asian marketplace we'd heard about on Check, Please! which is one of the best local shows on PBS. Each week, the guests on the show visit three Chicago-area restaurants -- each guest picks one restaurant -- and they sit down to discuss the places and their experiences with host Alpana Singh. Alpana is fun to watch on television -- she's quite a personality -- and you know she knows her food, and her wine: she's the youngest person to ever pass the Master Sommelier exam, which is quite a feat.
A few weeks ago, Check, Please! featured Mitsuwa Marketplace, the largest Japanese grocery store in the Midwest. It's actually a chain, with most locations in California (and one, mysteriously, in Jersey) but it was far from a big-box experience. Although it is quite large, and the majority of the building is occupied by the grocery store, there is a sizable food court (which is what our visit was mostly for, aside from picking up some sesame oil and scallions) as well as a travel agency and a bookstore. Aside from the oil and onions, we had a third mission: a bentō box. D picked me up the cutest, greenest bentō in the store, complete with strange slogan: It Is So Wonderful To Be Able to Maintain Your Dreams is scrawled across the top of the box, as well as on the accompanying bag. I was kind of nonplussed by the selection of bentō boxes, but I was able to find the perfect one anyhow. In case you don't know, a bentō box is a Japanese-style take-out container or lunch-box, complete with small compartments for different types of food. It's all about pleasing presentation and compactness, which are two things that I am quite fond of.
The marketplace is overwhelming: since I don't speak Japanese, it was kind of a confusing venture, but we made out perfectly. We had a bit of luck: at the food court, everything is written in Japanese (with English titles that mean very little to me) but all the vendors have display cases with each meal inside, numbered and titled to make it easy to order. I wanted something noodle-based, and although many places had lots of soups that looked heavy on the noodles, I wasn't looking for liquid. I wanted a solid, stir-fried mass of wiggling noodles in sauce. Enter yakisoba!
Yakisoba is a fried-noodle dish made with cabbage, onions, bean sprouts, carrots, ginger, seaweed, and fish flakes. It's not too spicy, but it has a bit of a kick -- at least the version that we ate did. It's also quite healthy, aside from the sodium in the sauce, which is typically made from sosu, a Japanese worcestershire sauce. We split a gigantic plate between us for $3.40, which is a steal, especially since you get to stand there and watch it being prepared, which is extremely fun. They make it on a giant grill, and while we waited, three more people ordered yakisoba, which meant that they just kept adding more noodles and sauce and veggies to the pile. By the end, the entire grill was nearly covered in noodles.
It was fantastic, and we ate the entire plate in no time. I was full, but D wasn't. Good, because we hadn't tried the sushi, which was, according to D, downright fabulous. I personally don't eat raw fish, so I wasn't even able to try a bite of the tuna maki, but for $3.00 D got a large tray-full (twelve pieces total) which he says was delicious. The look on his face while he ate it confirms this fact: that's got to be some great sushi. They also sell sushi-quality fish in the grocery component of the marketplace, which is obviously very good. I considered buying a slab or two, but we weren't done with our errands, and it would have gone wrong by the time we were able to refrigerate it. I'm cool with that, though: just means we'll have to take another trip back!

Yakisoba (Adapted from Mitsuwa Marketplace recipe)
Peel and julienne one large carrot and one half an onion. Remove the core from one half cabbage and cut into long, bite-sized strips. Rinse a cup of bean sprouts and drain well.
Rinse a package of yakisoba noodles and place on a plate. Cover with saran wrap and microwave for one minute -- this keeps the noodles from sticking together when you stir-fry them.
Heat one tablespoon oil in a frying pan -- or, you can cook one slice of bacon, diced, in the pan, which is what they did at the marketplace -- and add the vegetables. Stir-fry the veggies until they begin to wilt. Add the bean sprouts last, however -- you want them to retain some crunchiness. Add the noodles and mix well. Once everything is incorporated, add the sauce. Most noodle packages come with a sauce packet; if not, you can use about 1/4 cup Japanese worcestershire sauce. Coat the noodles and vegetables with the sauce and heat through.
Serve with some grated ginger, seaweed flakes, and fish flakes on top.
Oishii! (Delicious!)

Squash Lasagna

Making a whole new dinner with leftovers can be challenging, especially when your goal is to transform the food into something entirely new and different than the original dish. This lasagna uses butternut squash soup in lieu of the more traditional tomato sauce. You're left with a dainty, lighter version of vegetable lasagna that's as spectacular cold as it is hot. We like to make a whole 9x13 pan and bring the leftovers for lunch. You could also make two smaller casserole dishes full and freeze one, then pop it in the oven to bake it whenever you desire.

Squash Lasagna
Start by boiling a large pot of lightly salted water. Add a package of lasagna noodles and cook according to the directions on the package -- about eight to ten minutes should do it. You could use no-boil noodles in this recipe (which we do sometimes) but the boiled noodles aren't terribly hard to work with and they taste slightly better. No-boil noodles tend to be a bit tougher to chew, in my experience.
As your noodles boil, prepare the cheese filling by mixing together: 2 cups of ricotta cheese (1 16-oz. container), 1 cup of grated mozzarella cheese, 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese, 1 egg, 1/4 teaspoon of oregano or basil, and 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg.
Drain the noodles and rinse with cold water, which will prevent them from sticking to one another. Allow them to cool slightly.
Put about 1 cup of the butternut squash soup in the bottom of a 9x13 inch pan. Lay noodles, side by side (slightly overlapping, if you're using no-boil) on top of the saucy soup.
Layer with about 2/3 a cup of the cheese mixture. Pour another 1 cup of the soup on top of the cheese, then layer with more noodles.
Repeat the layering process until the dish is complete. It should be about three layers, total. The top layer will be the soup, then sprinkle some extra mozzarella and parmesan cheese for the topping.
Cover the dish with foil and place in a 375º oven for 25 minutes.
Remove the foil and bake for another 20 minutes, until it is bubbling and lightly browned on top.
Another way to transform this dish (and make more manageable portions) would be to make stuffed shells or lasagna rolls. Simply boil the shells or lasagna noodles and spoon the cheese into each shell (or put about a tablespoon of cheese onto each lasagna noodle, then roll into a cannoli shape). Put 1 cup of the butternut squash soup in the bottom of a 9x13 pan, then arrange the shells or rolled up noodles. Cover with 1 1/2 cups of soup and bake at 350º for about 45 minutes (cover with foil and remove halfway through, as with the recipe above) until it bubbles and becomes golden.
Time to eat! I love this recipe, mostly because it allows you to create a brand new dish made from easy to store leftovers. The soup becomes more solidified and easier to manage as a sauce after it's been refrigerated for about a day, which makes this an ideal planned-leftover situation.
As I mentioned, this is also really great cold. It becomes more solid, and unlike a red-sauce lasagna, it isn't too gooey, which means you can eat it with your hands like a sandwich. Perfect for lunch or a quick snack. And it's relatively healthy, especially if you take a piece that has a little less cheese!

Layered Macaroni and Cheese (Macaroni Pudding)

Made the macaroni and cheese last night, which was quite a success. I especially enjoyed making the bechamel sauce, which is known as a "mother sauce" of French cuisine. Now that's a great phrase: Mother Sauce. This macaroni and cheese, then, was the mother of all mac n cheese dishes. And boy did it taste like it.
This recipe is from 1802 (I added a year when mentioning it yesterday, making it one year younger than it actually is) and comes from the American Heritage Cookbook And Illustrated History Of American Eating & Drinking (left). We purchased this for two dollars at a local book fair along with about ten other cookbooks. One of these cookbooks, The Congressional Club Cookbook, seemed like it would be a perfect source for classic macaroni and cheese. The recipes in this book are all gleaned from the kitchens of congressional wives and makes an interesting history of dining as a senator, congressman, or president. My favorite section in the book is the "Men's Only" chapter, designed specifically for that rare senator that can cook. Lots of game, liquor-based substances, and generally gross stuff in that chapter. Strangely enough, the only recipe that slightly resembled what we were hoping to eat had ground beef in it. No. Thanks. Next! American Heritage Cookbook to the rescue.
The book, as many cookbooks do, tried to delight the reader with an anecdote regarding macaroni and cheese, but the story falls flat, at least for the modern reader, mostly because it's just plain weird. It concerns a dinner with Thomas Jefferson in which the lead character confuses the macaroni for onions and the cheese for liquor. It could be amusing, I guess, were it 1802.
I used skim milk; which, coupled with the butter, made a slightly less-fatty sauce than originally intended by the recipe. I didn't find the dish too healthy, though, as it was laden with more than three cups (by all estimates) of two types of cheddar cheese, some parmesan cheese layers, and the slightly-less-sinful-than-usual bechamel. Health concerns aside, it was delicious, which is all you can really ask for in a macaroni and cheese. The top was perfectly crusty and crisp, the bottom of the casserole dish had just enough macaroni stuck to it, forcing the eater to work a little harder for a slice, and the layers melted into one another perfectly.
Again, we ate our fill for dinner (with his sister, which was a nice treat) and had more than half left over. We had so much, in fact, that two separate dishes were made. We're saving one for later in the week -- I'm debating whether or not to freeze it, since I'm not sure if it will do well in the freezer. Will that make it taste all strange when it's finally re-baked? Nobody knows.

Macaroni Pudding (aka Delightfully Plain and Simple Mac N-Cheese)
Begin by boiling a large pot of lightly salted water. While it is working itself into a boil, begin grating your cheese. The recipe calls for two cups, but that's just not enough. Try for three; four, if you're the adventurous type.
We used 1 1/2 cups of light sharp cheddar and 1 1/2 cups of dark, milder cheddar. We also purchased some pre-ground parmesan cheese -- again, not in the recipe, but an essential cheese in my opinion.
When the water is boiling, throw in two and a half to three cups of dried macaroni. It should only take about seven minutes to cook. Stir often to prevent stickiness and be sure to test well before the seven minute mark. You'll want pasta that's just firm to the bite, cooked al dente.
When the macaroni is finished cooking, drain quickly and begin rinsing in cold water. Be sure to move the noodles around as you rinse to prevent them from sticking to one another. I did this by setting them in our salad spinner and immersing the whole thing with cold water, stirring as I filled the spinner. This was a nice way to do it because the bowl underneath the grates held the cold water, allowing it to really get around the noodles as I stirred. I drained the spinner and left the noodles to dry.
Meanwhile, I got started on the bechamel. This is the fun part. Melt, over medium heat, a quarter cup of butter (half a stick). Don't melt it too fast -- the butter must not burn. After it is melted, add 1/4 cup of flour and begin whisking. Whisk together until the butter and flour are completely combined. I actually sifted the flour right into the butter in order to make it as smooth as possible, but that's probably an unnecessary step. I just wanted to try out our new flour mill.
Next, begin adding the milk. Like I said, we used skim milk, mostly because that's what we keep around the house. It worked very well, but I imagine that Careme is spinning in his grave. You need to add it quite slowly and whisk constantly, using 2 1/4 cups of milk in all. Add slowly; whisk constantly: this is the mantra of the mother sauce.
Your sauce will begin to thicken up as you continue to whisk. Watch carefully for small bubbles to appear on the top of the sauce, which indicates that it is beginning to thicken, and be sure that the sauce does not stick to the bottom of the pan. You'll need the heat at a relatively low medium temperature throughout the process. If the sauce appears too watery, just keep whisking and turn the heat up slightly. Too high, though, and it will burn. I wish, now, that we had added some red pepper flakes to the sauce itself, just because how tasty would that be? Very.
After the sauce is done, turn the heat very low and begin assembling the dish in layers. One layer of macaroni, one of cheese, one of macaroni, one of cheese, and so on, until your casserole dish is full. You may need to take breaks in order to stir the sauce as you layer, because it will begin to get hard if it is not in motion.
Next, pour the sauce over the layered macaroni and cheese. Pour slowly so that the dish does not overflow. Top with more cheese (more cheese? how is that possible?!) and pop in a 400º oven for 35 minutes, until the top is golden brown and bubbly.
Then, we eat. Yum.
We served this dish with lightly buttered green beans which were blanched in boiling water for about nine minutes, then dried in a hot frying pan. We added about a tablespoon of butter to the pan after the beans were dry, stirred it around with the beans, and added some pepper.

"Spicy" "Orecchiette" aka Not-So-Spicy-But-Still-Awesome Farfalle

I've gotten into cooking a bit more lately, mostly because I have this divine new recipe source: the Bon Appetit Cookbook. It was a gift and came with a free year long subscription to the magazine, but we already have a subscription -- mysteriously, since no one will own up to purchasing it for us. It could easily be a "free offer" of some kind, but it's been delivered every month now like clockwork -- seems like a paid gift to me. Shouldn't they include a little note with that type of thing?

Yesterday, I made a "spicy" "orecchiette" with tomatoes, cannellini beans, and broccoli. It didn't turn out very spicy, and I couldn't find any orecchiette at either grocery store I went to, so I used farfalle instead. It was wonderful, and there was enough left over for lunch today for the both of us. I'm pleased to admit that he drank the small bit of remaining sauce straight from the container after the pasta itself had been consumed -- a good sign that it was a hit.

Not-So-Spicy-But-Still-Awesome Farfalle
Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy saucepan.
Add 1 cup diced onion
Saute until onion is clear and soft over medium heat, about five minutes.
Add 2 cloves minced garlic and 1 teaspoon of dried red pepper flakes.
Saute for another minute or so, until the pepper has infused the olive oil a bit.
Now, add 28 oz. of diced tomatoes -- the recipe says canned, but I did half and half (out of necessity, I admit, but it did taste great) and 1/4 cup of water.
Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium. Cook until sauce thickens, about ten minutes.
Meanwhile, boil a large pot of water for your pasta. When the water is boiling, throw in about two cups of dried pasta, preferably orecchiette. I used farfalle (also known as "little bow ties," at least when I was young) as I mentioned above. You should begin cooking the pasta when there are about seven minutes remaining on your sauce.
Cook pasta until it is almost al dente, but not quite, stirring occasionally so it doesn't stick. It should be quite firm to the bite. When you think there are about four minutes left for your pasta, add a few cups of uncooked broccoli florets. Tip: chop them up so that they are relatively bite sized; otherwise, they won't mesh well in the dish.
There should be about three minutes left on your clock now, so start corralling the diners while you add one 14 oz. can of rinsed cannellini beans and about 1/2 a cup of chopped fresh basil. Bring the heat on the sauce down to low.
Your pasta should be ready. Take about 1/2 a cup of the cooking liquid (which should be a nice green color) and stir it into the sauce. Drain the pasta and broccoli.
Add the pasta/broccoli combination to the saucepan and stir to coat.
Top with Parmesan cheese. I also recommend putting the dried pepper flakes on the table for extra topping, in case anyone dares to go spicier (which you should, in my opinion, but I like my spice).
Yell at everyone again to get to the table; dinner's ready.
You have yourself a meal. Serves two extremely hungry individuals for both dinner and lunch the next day (cold, which was just as delicious as it was hot). It would also serve four normal, non-ravenous individuals, with some left over.

I loved both making and eating this dish, mostly for it's high vegetable content. Coupled with the barely-there amount of fat, I feel really great about this pasta. I'm also slightly insane about my pasta sauce -- jarred just won't cut it, ever, and this sauce was so quick and easy that it wasn't a gigantic burden to make. Someday I'll share my recipe for authentic tomato sauce (but, like all good chefs, I promise to leave out a key ingredient so that the exact sauce cannot be properly reproduced anywhere but in my own kitchen) but I won't be making it for awhile, since tomatoes aren't in season right now and they're ridiculously expensive at the supermarket. I like to buy heirloom tomatoes during the summer straight from the farmer's market -- you can't beat the price, and they look and taste radically different than the ordinary supermarket tomato. Sorry, supermarket tomatoes, you're nice and all, but I find you... dull.

On that note, I'm off to fantasize about dinner tonight: homestyle macaroni and cheese from the American Heritage cookbook. This recipe dates back to 1803, so it must be good.