There will be no miso puns for me
Because, let’s be honest, most of them are a little racist ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, I share a few fermented foods with you. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.
Chickpea hozon blondie from Momofuku Ko
8 Extra Pl, New York, NY 10003
First, an update from our protagonist, who we last saw crying in the alley behind Momofuku Ko on a rainy Tuesday. This week, she made her triumphant return, sans stomach ache and with a friend who has less dramatic circumstances of time and space, and finished out the rest of her meal. It was mind-boggling how enjoyable the meal was, once the cage of crippling cramps was lifted off of me. It’s too bad that I couldn’t really taste the first few courses, but if there’s one upside to this whole thing (aside from a second round of people-watching, including being seated directly across from a person straight off a controversial Rolling Stone interview), it’s that I got to take home another Hozon blondie with me. Hozon is Momofuku’s in-house invention, a miso-style paste made out of chickpeas. The resulting blondie, which also has white chocolate listed in the ingredients, is super buttery, chewy, and almost cheesy in taste from the savory tint of miso. Packaged in a chic matte black box, I saved it for a pensive late night snack, perfect with a hot cup of herbal tea.
Thanks again to FOH manager Gabrielle Nurnberger at Momofuku Ko who was extremely professional and kind regarding this whole ordeal.
Miso banana bread at my kitchen
Recipe from Food & Wine
Armed with the knowledge that the tang of fermented paste is a powerful weapon in baked goods, I set out to recreate that magic in my own kitchen. (Or, in other words, I was still craving the funk of Hozon but could not afford to cry through another tasting menu to fulfil it.) I turned around, spotted five sad bananas hangin’ out collecting fruit flies on my kitchen counter, did a quick Google search, and came upon this recipe from Food & Wine for Miso Banana Bread. The result? This may be my favorite banana bread yet. It bakes up beautifully, with a glossy mahogany crust. Unlike the Hozon blondie, which has a strong salty-cheesy flavor, the miso taste is surprisingly subtle. It’s more of an aftertaste, something that makes the butter taste buttery-er, the flavors of the banana more complex. Eat leftovers warmed in the microwave in the toaster oven, topped with a slab of salted butter.
A few recipe notes: I ended up making one small loaf cake and a full dozen muffins; there’s a lot of batter. I baked the muffins for 20 minutes and the cake for 40 minutes and they were both spongy and moist. Also, the batter will look funny and curdled. Don’t mind this. It turns out just fine. Oh, and I basically never use electric mixers because I don’t have a Kitchenaid and I’m too lazy to wash my electric mixer, so I just beat the hell out of the softened butter with a fork.
Impossible burger at Bareburger
170 7th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11215
Despite living in the dogs-and-babies portion of Brooklyn, I rarely see children in my neighborhood. That is because the children only roam in the light of the day, and I return home in the dark of the night, like a vampire. So I was shocked to find the streets flooded with small humans in costume while I was on my way to dinner. It turns out that Halloween is the only day of the year we overlap, since the small ones, fueled by sugar, stay up way past their bedtimes. And that’s how I ended up at Bareburger on a first date, sharing a table with a toddler in a NASA costume and some errant princesses with light-up wings. Anyways, I know that you’re all dying to know how the Impossible burger was and the answer was: I was pleasantly surprised! I am not a vegetarian, and am fond of good burgers so I had really low expectations going in. My overall take is that it’s burger-y enough to satisfy a burger craving, which no other veggie burger has been able to do for me before. It’s also surprisingly filling. I feel like the right amount of Impossible burger is two-thirds a burger, which is the boundary between fooling your cravings and realizing there’s a bit of an aftertaste.
Cranberry orange muffins at my kitchen
Recipe from Food.com
November marks the official start of holiday (!) baked (!) goods (!) for me, and there’s nothing more festive than the zingy taste of fresh oranges and tart cranberries. This recipe from Food.com makes a pretty basic muffin; to enhance the flavor, I added half a cup of walnut bits, which I toasted beforehand in the often, doubled the orange zest, and used freshly squeezed orange juice. The resulting muffin made a great desk breakfast, with a nice biscuit-y texture (these are strictly on the side of muffin, and not naked cupcake), and weren’t too sweet.
Honey bourbon apple crumble at my kitchen
You should make this, and send me a pic!
After the popularity of the apple-and-honey cake, I come to you with another apple-and-honey creation: This time, a bourbon-scented apple crumble. There’s no refined sugar in this recipe, which is more about flavor than it is about health concerns (there is bourbon). For the apples part, I used this base from Cookie and Katie (bourbon-spiked, of course), and for the topping, I used this recipe from Little Broken (an oddly emo blog name). Bonus: It makes your apartment smell heavenly well cooking. Now go forth and bake!
Soph