It’s mochi mochi time 🍡
Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week,╰(*´︶`*)╯♡. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.
Chicken, apple, and cucumber salad with miso dressing at my place
My kitchen, but why not yours?
In the process of trying to Google the name of the miso I used in this recipe, I stumbled upon this gem of the collective human psyche:
No, Internet hive brain. Miso is not a poop! It is a glorious substance that you should be adding to all your recipes. I like to buy sweet white miso (here’s a guide to the different varieties), and mix it with one part butter to two parts miso and slather it on everything that can be eaten. It also makes a great base for my favorite chicken salad. Here’s how: In a small bowl, combine a spoonful of white miso, a spoonful of vegetable oil, and grated ginger. Stir in rice wine vinegar to taste (maybe two spoonfuls), and a squeeze of honey. Thinly slice half a sweet red onion and toss in dressing, let it marinate for a minute or two. Assemble salad: In a large bowl, add baby spinach, half a tart crisp apple (thinly sliced), flat leaf parsley (chopped), baby cucumber (sliced), and shredded rotisserie chicken. Toss, and serve with fresh black pepper.
Matcha & coconut mochi butter cake at my friend’s place
Please make this at your home!
It is a universal truth that anything made with wheat flour can be made better with rice flour. The public will disagree, but this is my truth, I stand by it. Dumplings? Already fantastic. Dim sum dumplings? Even better. Noodles? Lovely. Rice noodles? Reader, I married them. When my coworker Caroline told me she made mochi muffins over the weekend, I wondered why I hadn’t baked with rice flour before, and quickly moved to correct that mistake. My intuition serves me correct. This cake is absolutely heavenly — easy to assemble, a beautiful shade of pale green, fragrant with tea and coconut, and buttery beyond compare. You can find the recipe for Matcha & Coconut Mochi Cake at Food52, but although the cake was perfect, the directions were not, so make sure to make these edits: Just melt the damn butter and toss it in with the eggs, and sprinkle coconut on 10 minutes before the cake is done so it adheres and toasts. Oh, and for maximum cuteness and crispy edges, bake the batter in well-greased muffin tins for 30 minutes. Heat leftovers for a few seconds in the microwave before eating, so it’s nice and soft. Thank me later.
Pumpkin cilantro chickpea curry at my place
My kitchen, but why not yours?
Yes, there may be a handful of 90 degree weather days sprinkled into the week just for fun, but for the most part it’s finally soup season again. I tossed together pumpkin and chickpeas and some spices into the Instant Pot and was very pleased with how it turned out. Here’s how you can do the same: Scrub and de-stem one small kabocha squash (Japanese pumpkin). Place it on a trivet with an inch of water in the Instant Pot and pressure cook for 12-13 minutes on high (I overdid it and the whole thing kind of disintegrated. You want it soft but not melting.) Meanwhile, chop one red onion, a few cloves of garlic, a knob of ginger. When the pumpkin is done, take it out of the pot and let cool and dump out the excess water. Set pot to “saute” setting and add a spoonful of coconut oil, and the onion, garlic, and ginger. Sautée with salt and pepper until wilted. Meanwhile, chop and scoop the seeds out of pumpkin, and add to pot. Stir in a can of chickpeas, drained, a can of coconut milk (I used “light”), and a spoonful of curry powder. Let it come to a simmer. Meanwhile, carefully wash a bunch of cilantro (it’s always sandy), and chop. Stir in cilantro and add fish sauce to taste.
Zucchine alla Scapece trapizzino at Trapizzino
144 Orchard St, New York, NY 10002
Trapizzino, essentially a pizza pocket, bills itself as “the most loved Roman street food in the world,” but I happened to miss it while I was actually there. Thankfully, I came home to New York, where there’s a location in the Lower East Side. I expected a casual take-out shop, but Trapizzino surprised me by being a lovely place for a quiet date with a friend or a lover. They have a nice little drink menu, with lots of spritzes on the menu. My friend and I started I ordered the “zucchine alla scapece,” which was filled with roasted zucchini and milky burrata, topped with a thick minty paste. It was phenomenal, and for a brief moment, put me back in vacation mode.
Mango pudding at Junzi Kitchen
170 Bleecker St, New York, NY 10012
Junzi won my heart over when I learned that it gives out free White Rabbit candy at all of its shops. A fast-casual Chinese food mini-chain, all the dishes have a Northern Chinese flair, featuring things like sauteed eggs-and-tomatoes, cold sliced beef, cold hawthorn tea, and knife-sliced noodles. My family is from Beijing, and my parents grew up eating White Rabbit candies, so there’s definitely a lot of comfort and nostalgia in it for me. When my co-workers stopped by for lunch, I was having a particularly bad day, so I decided to pick up a little treat: a plastic cup of mango pudding topped off with a layer of lightly whipped coconut cream. It was a lovely choice. There are only six ingredients listed on the lid (mango nectar, coconut milk, sugar, gelatin, and salt), and the pudding is soft and not too sweet.
À bientôt,
Soph