Mama O Makes Pa Jun

Trees offset barbecue carbon emissions.

Over the weekend, I braved sweltering temperatures to check out meat, beer and all-things-local impressario Jimmy Carbone's second annual "Kimchipalooza and Cook Out NYC," kind of a backyard barbecue for thrill seekers. Jimmy is the gregarious owner of Jimmy's No. 43 in the East Village, a locavore haven he uses as the launching pad for any number of ideas, projects, and festivals.

At this particular Jimmy creation, there was barbecue galore from restaurants around the city, mucho Six Point,  plus numerous hawkers of fiery hot sauces and small-batch condiments. Visitors voted  for their favorite hot dog (winner, best topping: personal caterer and chef Josetth Gordon, for her piquant celery slaw with currants) and there were judged competitions, too.

Looming large at the event was that Korean addition to the haute fast food cannon, kimchi, the beloved national pickle made of fermented napa cabbage and lots of chili pepper. The lure of kimchi drew me to the both of Mama O's Premium Kimchi, right in the center of the action, where Mama herself was hard at work, frying up one of my favorite dishes, pa jun, savory pancakes that are often filled with seafood or meat. 

Who knew that like Americans, Koreans use pancake mix, too? Mama uses a cup of pa jun mix (available at Korean grocers), into which she stirs a cup to a cup-and-a-half of water, a cup of chopped kimchi (excess liquid squeezed out), 2 ounces of ground pork and chopped fresh scallions.  A little vegetable oil and a non-stick pan (the latter is a must, says Mama), and you've got pa jun. 

The adorable Mama and Papa Oh, Myong Ja and Max.

Not only is Mama Oh, or Myong Ja, the inspiration for a whole line of artisanal kimchi, now sold in Whole Foods and several other stores in Brooklyn and Manhattan, she's also a retired operations analyst at the World Bank. Her assistant that day was Papa Oh, a.k.a. Max, former president of the Korean Dry Cleaner's Association.

It was their son Kheedim (meaning "reverence," and "respect") in ancient Korean, who decided to start a line of kimchis based on Mama's recipes. He now makes six different varieties, including an unusual baby bok choy kimchi (great idea!), as well one made with hunks of daikon radish, and another line without fish or shellfish (the standard variety usually contains shrimp paste and fish sauce), which Kheedim calls "kosha kimchi, because I can't afford a rabbi." Kheedim has in fact stopped using shrimp paste in all his kimchi because shellfish allergies are so prevalent and potentially lethal.

His newest product, just unveiled at Kimchipalooza, is a kimchi paste, which allows even neophytes to make perfect kimchi by slicing up a whole cabbage, putting it through an overnight salt water brine, a drain and press, then adding scallions, cilantro, the kimchi paste and water--my next home experiment!

Mama's was also featured in the day's winner for "Food High": Bar Bruno's taco of grilled marinated hanger steak in a corn tortilla topped with Mama O's spicy kimchi, pico de gallo and grated radish. 

As the web address of Mama O's proclaims, "kimchi rules"!

Remembering Nora Ephron

Amid the well-deserved encomiums for writer-director Nora Epron, who died yesterday at age 71, that fill today's press, many only touch briefly, if at all, on Ephron's passionate love affair with food. Even though her novel Heartburn is about a food editor (the author, thinly disguised) and larded with recipes, it's easy to forget that aspect of her life because she was such a talented, prolific writer on everything from politics to feminist issues, and accomplished so much as a journalist, novelist, essayist, humorist, screenwriter and director. 

Yet Ephron's love of food was as central to her life as her identity as a New Yorker. In her Valentine to Krispy Kreme, which appeared in The New Yorker in 1997, Ephron wrote, "The modest, clean Krispy Kreme doughnut store on West Twenty-Third Street, with its retro green Formica tables and red-and-green neon "Hot Dougnuts Now" sign, has become a shrine--the sort of religious experience New Yorkers like me are far more receptive to than ones that actually involve God."

One of the few women to make it in the ranks of top Hollywood film directors, I can imagine exactly the kind  she was, because she once directed me--micro-managing me with bossy confidence--in the writing of a 1998 Wine Spectator article, "Sleepless at Citarella," about her New York food passions. 

This was no typical interview, where reporter asks questions and subject's thoughts tumble out, haphazardly, stream-of-consciousness fashion, to be whipped into shape later by reporter. Asked for her ten favorite New York food places, Ephron practically dictated her list to me, one one-liner at a time, meticulously and imperiously. I imagined that she must be the kind of director producers loved, who turned her films in on time and under budget. There were no second thoughts, no revisions. It was like Moses handing down the Ten Commandments, only they were about those New York religious experiences that were more her style, borscht and frozen custard. 

Sleepless at Citarella

From Wine Spectator, April 30, 1998

By Nancy Matsumoto

When Nora Ephron’s screenwriter parents picked up and moved the family from New York to Beverly Hills, Ephron immediately knew they had made a horrible mistake. Never mind that she was only four-and-a-half.

Then, as now, 50 years later, Ephron was someone who knew her own mind. “It’s one of my earliest clear memories,” she says. “I looked around in the beautiful golden sunshine of Southern California at all the happy, laughing children, and said to myself, “What am I doing here?”

Ephron fled east as soon as she could, graduating from Wellesley and then immediately striking out for New York. Her first apartment was on Sullivan Street, near Little Italy. “I moved in the week of the Festival of Saint Anthony,” Ephron recalls. “I thought, ‘Oh my God! This is some sort of miracle that I’m living on a street where there are cannoli 24 hours a day!’”

Ephron felt that she was home at last, and proceeded to prove to everyone else what she already knew: This town belonged to her. She leapfrogged from writing for the New York Post to crafting humor columns for Esquire and essays for New York magazine. Then, in the ’70s, while she was raising a family, she began writing screenplays.

When her second marriage, to Washington Post star reporter Carl Bernstein, blew up, she turned heartbreak into venomous, hilarious payback in the form of a roman à clef, and then a movie, Heartburn. Her screenplays for Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle(which she also directed) were nominated for Oscars.

Her next film, You Have Mail, a remake of the 1939 Ernst Lubitsch comedy The Shop Around the Corner, will be set in her longtime neighborhood, the Upper West Side.

An accomplished cook, Ephron belongs to that passionate breed of New Yorker that takes its food seriously. Herewith, in no particular order, is her top 10 list of food-related places that no one should come to New York without seeing. (Four of them will even appear in You Have Mail.) “If they were in Paris,” she says, “you would make a pilgrimage to them, you would change subways four times to get to them.”

           Zabar’s:“It embodies the quintessential New York emotion, which is unrequited love,” says Ephron. “All of Zabar’s customers love Zabar’s more than Zabar’s loves them. Every time you think you’ve got the place nailed down, they move the bread department somewhere else.”

           The Sullivan Street Bakery:“It seems as if a 6-foot-long pizza comes out of the oven every six minutes, and is sliced up and taken away on the spot. Truly one of the great eating experiences in New York.”

           Barney Greengrass:“The greatest delicatessen, bar none, and not cheap, either. Everything they make is the best there is. You can practically serve the borscht for dessert—it’s so delicious.”

           The Vinegar Factory:“New York’s version of Fauchon, only better. You’d be crazy not to buy your steaks here, because they sell the T-bone that is identical to the one served at Peter Luger’s.”

           Krispy Kreme Donuts:“Of course, the only donut to have is the original glazed, although the jelly donut is good, too.”

           Soup Kitchen International:“Which I’m proud to say we put into Sleepless in Seattle long before Jerry Seinfeld ever mentioned it.”

           Citarella’s fish decoration window displays: “In which they do things like the Stars and Stripes in squid and shrimp.”

           Dean & DeLuca:“Where my favorite thing is the ginger cookie made with cayenne pepper.”

           Custard Beach(on East 8thStreet):“The only place in New York that I know of that makes old-fashioned frozen custard.”

           Gray’s Papaya:Ephron says her neighborhood branch of this citywide hot dog stand “has arguably the most hilariously untouched décor—stacks of papaya boxes on top of one another. Of any place in New York, in its own way, I think it’s one of the most romantic restaurants in the city.”

I Learn How to Make Tofu and Yuba

Narita sensei lifting a sheet of yuba.

I have never had a burning desire to make my own tofu before, but a tutorial with Mitsuhiro Narita, a professor at the Tsuji Culinary Institute in Osaka, and chef at David Bouley's Tribeca kaiseki restaurant Brushstroke, actually has me contemplating it.

The event, held earlier this week, was the second-to-last Japanese cooking class in a series at the Bouley Test Kitchen just down the street from Brushstroke and Bouley.  The cheerful title of the class was "Egg, Tofu, Yuba and Some More!"

There was a lot more, but the tofu and yuba making was a highlight. Maybe you won't think it's worth the bother, but here's how you do it: Wash and soak soy beans overnight in water in a 1:1 ratio. The larger the beans the better, and if you can get some from Hokkaido you've really got it made. They are the best, according to Narita sensei.

The next day, you turn the whole thing into a paste in a food processor or blender, doing this in batches if necessary. Key warning: Don't taste this paste! Apparently very bad things will happen to your stomach if you do.

Next, put 6 cups of water in a large pot (or if you are changing amounts, 3:1 ratio of water to soybean paste). Bring the water to a boil, or really the first suggestion of a boil, then add the paste and mix it over high heat. There will be a lot of foam or awa, which you will have to keep skimming off. Also make sure you scrape the bottom of the pot as you mix. As soon as the soybean paste water mixture comes to a boil, turn the heat down low and cook for 7 minutes while continuing to skim foam off the top.

Turn the mixture into a cheesecloth lined sieve and squeeze out as much of the liquid as possible.Return the strained liquid to the pot. At this point you can make yuba, the delicious skin of the tofu, by pouring a small amount of the soy milk in a flat pan and heating it at 80 degrees celsius (170 degrees fahrenheit) until a top layer starts to form, just like the skin on heated milk. Lift the layer off with a chopstick and you've got yuba! Narita sensei made a delicious dish of battered, fried soft shell crab with yuba-ankake sauce, the latter made with dashi, mirin, light soy sauce and kudzu powder to thicken it.

Tempura soft-shell crabs with yuba-ankake sauce.

(The soybean mash that's leftover, okara, can be fried up with vegetables and simmered with dashi and mirin for a delicious side dish.)

Gomoku (five-color) okara on the left
 with dashi-maki tamago rolled omelette.

To make tofu, you'll need, nigari, a natural coagulant derived from sea water that consists mostly of magnesium chloride, available in Japanese food markets. For 2 cups of soy beans, use 4 tablespoons, stirred in while the liquid is kept at a steady temperature of 70 celsius (158 degrees fahrenheit.). It works like magic. As soon as you stir in the nigari, the tofu begins to thicken, at which point you turn it out into a strainer lined with cheesecloth and gently squeeze out the excess liquid. The taste is very fresh and unadulterated.

Since there are no preservatives at all in this tofu, it only lasts about a day. To best appreciate your fresh tofu's pure flavors, serve it with a little grated fresh ginger, some chopped scallions, and a little soy sauce.

Not many Japanese people make their own tofu, Narita sensei told us, but recently a machine has come on the market in Japan that makes the process super-easy, with temperature controlled settings similar to a rice cooker. Perhaps this will be the next fad, just like yogurt makers in the '70s, and the current cocktail and paleta-making fads. How about tofu cocktails and yuba pops?

   

National History Day Competition Entry Spotlights WWII U.S. Government Prison Camps

A while back, I was interviewed by two fifth graders and one sixth grader from Acaciawood School in Anaheim, California. They were preparing their entry for something called the National History Day competition, and their topic was the illegal forced roundup and imprisonment of West Coast people of Japanese descent during World War II.

I answered a series of questions from the team of girl researchers, Emma Chen, Rachel Kuai and Emily Rangel, and referred them to a Nisei friend and former Military Intelligence Service buddy of my father's in Michigan, Nob Shimokochi. 

Little did I expect that their final product would be this polished, impressive website.* Over half a million kids a year participate in the competition, according to NHD's site, so it was a big deal for Emma, Rachel and Emily to advance first through the county level competition for their category, and then win the state competition to gain the right to compete for the national award in Washington, D.C.

The finals were held earlier this week and I was pleased to hear from the girls that they got 7th place in the junior group division. Congratulations, Emma, Rachel and Emily!

They worked on the project over the course of the school year, first visiting the Nixon Library to learn about primary resources. They visited the Manzanar National Historic Site, and they interviewed former Secretary of Commerce and Transportation Norman Mineta and numerous other people. It's an impressive body of work that they can be proud of forever.

To give you a sense of how good the entries were, go to the NHD home page and click on the "student web sites" box in the left-hand column. Another entry I particularly liked was the winner of the senior individual web site category on the Meiji Restoration.

* [One thing I should note is that for their web site, the Acaciawood girls use term "internment camp," which is widely used and understood, though it is one that many others dislike, and point out is a euphemism. For more on that, see Densho's note on terminology.]

How I Learned to Cook Fish with Hiroki Murashima

Professor Murashima and Mr. Muto

Last week I attended a most informative class on cooking fish Japanese style from Hiroki Murashima, an assistant professor of Japanese cooking at the Tsuji Culinary Institute in Osaka, Japan. The evening was part of a series put on at the Bouley Test Kitchen, Chef David Bouley's Tribeca laboratory for culinary brainstorming and experimentation.

Before the learning started: Sesame tofu with uni, and some plum wine.

It's a smart idea: Bouley is capitalizing on the presence of a highly-trained team of Japanese chefs, in town now to staff his kaiseki restaurant Brushstroke. Murashima-sensei was humble, relying on his impressive cooking skills to do the talking. Translator and Bouley Japan liaison, Japanese journalist Yoshiharu Muto, supplied patter, jokes and additional tips, hints and arcana.They managed to pack a lot of information into a two-hour class, and turned out more delicious food than any of us were anticipating. 

Before you even get started on cooking the fish we learned there are a few must-do steps: 

• Never use fish as is from the fish monger. First wash it, then treat it to a fine shower of sea salt--not for flavoring, but to remove its fishy smell and seal its juices in. 
• Leave it for about 30-40 minutes, or an hour for more oily fish. 
• Wipe or wash off the salt with either water or sake, then blot it dry with paper towels
• Score the skin side of the fish to let the marinade or seasonings penetrate its surface.

Yuzu-marinated Spanish mackerel.

Murashima sensei guided us through various preparations, for a yuzu-marinated Spanish mackerel, sake lees-marinated grilled salmon, miso-marinated black cod, simmered black cod, steamed tilefish with scallions, and a lightly vinegared fish salad.

The Spanish mackerel was done Yuan-yaki style, teriyaki-like flavoring that dates back to its inventor, an 18th-century monk and tea master. First, Murashima-sensei marinated the fish in a mix of sake, mirin, and koikuchi (dark) soy sauce spiked with yuzu and lime. Mr. Muto, who threw in interesting nuggets of information of his own, informed us that the darker soy sauce is actually is actually less salty than usukuchi (light) soy sauce. Since it tends to darken the fish, Kyoto cooks prefer the lighter-colored style.

I loved how Murashima-sensei improvised with his accompaniments on this dish. Since the traditional seasonal fresh bamboo shoots and kinome (pepper leaf) were not availalabe here, he substituted hearts of palm, fresh basil and a light mustard sauce. To drink, there was Hakkaisan Junmai Ginjo from Niigata.

Steamed tilefish with egg white and black truffle

One of my favorite dishes was the simmered black cod dredged in cake flour, fried, then simmered in a hot pot with burdock root, green asparagus and grated daikon in a soy, sugar and mirin sauce. But perhaps the most refined was this bowl of tilefish, scallops and wakame, which Murashima-sensei capped with whipped egg white and bits of black truffle before oven steaming and then topping with julienned shin shoga, the prized fresh young ginger shoot.  

A Taste of Hawaii in Torrance

On my recent trip to California, Vicky Murakami-Tsuda of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles suggested meeting for breakfast at The Local Place in Torrance. Little did I know that she was about to trigger a little memory cascade. It turns out that the cafe-bakery with the very humble name is owned by King's Hawaiian, whose fluffy Portuguese sweet bread was a ubiquitous part of growing up in Japanese American Southern California. It comes in single round loaves or pull-apart rolls, is great toasted with butter, and, along with those Portuguese-style egg custard cakes sold in Chinese bakeries, has to rank among Portugal's great culinary contributions to Asia and now America.

I knew that the bread was popular in Hawaii, where the company is based, but until Vicky pointed me to this article on DiscoverNikkei.org, I didn't know that it was started and owned by an Okinawan American living in Hilo named Robert Taira. Here's a picture of the original Honolulu coffee shop and bakery in 1968, which hangs on the wall at The Local Place.

The cafe/bakery is the smaller offshoot of the first Torrance King's Hawaiian, but features the same Portuguese sweet bread French toast, as well as Japanese American classics such as Spam-and-egg musubi (rice balls). Spam is in fact featured in everything from breakfast sandwiches to burritos, and is evidence of the Japanese American culinary version of Stockholm Syndrome: you grow to love the food your budget and upbringing put in front of you. There are also great Hawaiian Japanese combinations such as The Local Scramble, scrambled eggs, char siu pork, kamaboko (bamboo shoots), green onions and cheese. 

The Local Place and King's Hawaiian are also famous among Japanese Americans for their Hawaiian Paradise chiffon cake, layered with guava, passion fruit and lime filling and frosted with whipped cream. I had to take one of these home with me! 

Elizabeth Andoh Pays Culinary Tribute to the People of Tohoku

The esteemed Japanese cookbook author Elizabeth Andoh made an appearance tonight at The International Culinary Center in Soho to talk about her new e-book, Kibo, a culinary tribute to the people and foodways of Tohoku, Japan.

The area is still reeling from the quake-tsunami-nuclear disaster of March 11, 2011, and Andoh will be donating half of the proceeds from the book to relief and recovery efforts. "Food and culture disappear under stress," she told the audience, and so she wanted to capture the food culture of the region "before it morphed into something unrecognizable."

I had never met Andoh before, even though I was a religious reader of her Japan Times column when I lived in Tokyo. I vaguely recall someone telling me that although she is a Caucasian American, forty-plus years in Japan have given her a somewhat Japanese appearance. She did indeed seem Japanese, not just in manner and clothing, but physically as well, perhaps because of the way she pulled her hair back in a bun, or her extreme graciousness.

Some of the truly distinctive Tohoku dishes Andoh introduced were a shiso maki, thin, cylindrical shiso leaf packets stuffed with a walnut-miso paste; a salad made of dried yellow chrysanthemum petals and enoki mushroom; a sweet shira-ae, of fresh apple and dried apricots and cranberries dressed with a pine nut-and-tofu mixture, and what she described as a "funky, funky"  ika ninjin, or squid jerky and julienned carrot strips simmered in vinegar, brown sugar, and hot pepper. All of them were delicious, and completely different from versions of these dishes that I grew up with.

To pair with these tantalizing morsels were three impressive saké samplings that Timothy Sullivan of UrbanSaké.com (he was a great source for my Edible Manhattan saké story) introduced: Nanbu Bijin Tokubetsu Junmai, Daishichi Kimoto Junmai and Urakasumi Zen from the disaster-affected prefectures of Iwate, Fukushima and Miyagi.

Andoh noted that her Japanese cookbook colleagues were puzzled by her desire to talk to the devastated people of Tohoku about their food traditions, and later told me that their incomprehension "made me realize how American I am." It's also in her nature to want to study these things; she was trained as an anthropologist at the University of Michigan before, on a lark, applying for a scholarship to study in Japan, a country she knew nothing about.


Thanks to Yukari Sakamoto, author of the wonderful Food, Sake Tokyo for alerting me to tonight's event!