The fresh yuzu edition 🍋

Can you imagine if this were scratch n’ sniff?

Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, we harvest the yuzu from Whole Foods. Plus, make yourself a personal pumpkin pie. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate. 

Hot yuzu tea at home

Recipe from Maangchi — the video is a delight.

Do you remember Clinique Happy, the perfume sample that was everywhere at department stores in the nineties? I feel like yuzu is the natural perfume that Clinique Happy wishes it could be. To me it smells like liquid sunshine, like spring right before summer.  I had a whole other newsletter planned for this week — but I was so excited to find fresh yuzu (at a very decent price!) at Whole Foods that I am writing about it instead. If you’ve ever been to an hmart you have probably seen the tubs and tubs of yuzu honey tea lining the shelves.  At first, I set about making honey Yuzu marmalade (based on this Just One Cookbook recipe) but it was both too fussy and too bitter. The absolute best version of yuzu tea (or marmalade, as it’s so sweet you can use it as such, or in soda!) is also the simplest: a 1:1 ratio of fresh thinly sliced yuzu (remove seeds, of which there are seemingly a billion) and white sugar. Yes, I said white sugar: it pains me too, but even a version I made with a very nice farmers market honey isn’t as nice as using plain old sugar. Maangchi is right— honey makes the color of the tea (marmalade) less pretty, and I found it really covered up the brightness of the yuzu flavor.

Yuzu marmalade at home

From Just One Cookbook.

I love Just One Cookbook so dearly, I refuse to believe that this yuzu marmalade recipe is actually a flop. Instead, I’ll blame it on the fact that, like your least favorite commenter on a food blog post, I substituted nearly all of the white sugar with honey, and did not boil and drain the membranes (which I just accidentally wrote as… meme brains), and thus ended up with a product that was dark rather than sunny in color, and intensely bitter. Maybe you could try obtaining your own yuzu and following the instructions, and letting me know how that turns out?

Pumpkin mascarpone pie with mascarpone whipped cream at home

Recipe from my favorite cookbook, the Book on Pie.

The morning after I got home from Thanksgiving weekend, I woke up and made a pumpkin pie. I love pumpkin pie, but I am very particular about it (the custard needs to be deeply spiced, dense, and not flan-like). And in my opinion if you love pumpkin pie there is nothing wrong with making yourself a whole one, from scratch, after Thanksgiving. This recipe from my favorite baker Erin Jeanne McDowell did not disappoint (here’s a bootleg version). It is absolutely essential that in order to enjoy this pie 1) you must make your own flaky all-butter pie crust and 2) even more important, you must top the pumpkin pie with a heavy layer of whipped cream as if it were a cream pie. Please do not eat pumpkin pie without whipped cream. I cut this pie into 8 individual slices topped with whipped cream and stored them in tupperwares, so every night I could enjoy a piece of pie for a week and pretend I bought it at a bakery. (I guess I meal prepped pie?) I also highly recommend doing that for yourself.

James Hoffman’s A Better 1 Cup V60 Technique at home

Recipe and nerdery here.

I stg there is no better hobby for ADHD brains than coffee making. Not only does coffee help me function better, it is delicious to drink, and best of all, you can innovate on making a better cup of coffee endlessly. For the past week I’ve been having a James Hoffman YouTube video hyperfixation. (James Hoffman is this British guy who makes coffee and explains it very thoroughly, and he also posts a lot of reviews, which are my absolute favorite form of media.) Every night before bed I turn on my iPad and watch 2-3 hours of coffee review videos and it is delightful, I highly recommend it. I find it really soothing. It even inspired me to finally order a coffee grinder (which will definitely be reviewed here soon) and also improve my pour over technique! Sophie, you might ask, does it really make a difference how you pour hot water over coffee grounds? I was curious as well, and the answer is: Yes! Don’t believe me? Try it yourself. (As a bonus, plastic pour over cones are super cheap!) I made this recipe using pre-ground (yes, I know) Intelligentsia House Blend because Whole Foods was out of my absolute favorite grocery store bean, the Intelligentsia El Gallo Breakfast Blend.

Try this One Weird Ramen Hack at home

Here it is, written out.

It’s instant ramen season again! Unfortunately, it seems like we’re still battling the Srirarcha shortage (I saw a bottle selling for over $8 in Chinatown) and I ran out of Kewpie mayo. So, this hack for creamy broth, which went viral a few years ago, didn’t turn out the best for me. Regular mayo definitely imparts a more chalky taste. However, if you manage to have Kewpie lying around, the hack of beating together a raw egg, grated garlic, a spoonful of Kewpie and the packet seasoning to form a rich creamy broth is quite good in a pinch. Give it a try for the cold weather.

Stay warm,
Soph

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