the cook stack

I am working my way through my very large cookbook collection to decide what to keep and what to donate. I am all out of space!

Next up on my list, after Stir by Barbara Lynch (a keeper) and The Craft of Baking by Karen DeMasco (needs a tiebreaker round), is Momofuku by David Chang. This is perhaps the most well-known of the cookbooks I have been cooking through lately. It is also the only one that I have previously cooked from (the Momofuku ramen is delicious!). However, I do not regularly use this cookbook. The recipes are too complicated to be practical for weeknight, or even weekend, cooking. I also get frustrated looking for recipes in this book – there is so much story of the restaurant that I have never visited.

To decide whether to keep or donate this book, I selected three of the easiest recipes to make. If my family approves, the book is a keeper. The recipes I flagged to test were:

1. Ginger Scallion Noodles
2. Pan-Roasted Asparagus, Poached Egg, and Miso Butter
3. Rice with Miso Soup

For the Ginger Scallion Noodles, ginger and scallions (of course) are mixed with a few other basic ingredients, then tossed with noodles. I found this recipe oh so, so disappointing. Part of the problem is the recipe introduction really hypes up this recipe. The introduction claims “ginger scallion sauce is one of the greatest condiments ever. Ever.” Oh boy, that statement is bold, and I had high hopes for this Tuesday night meal, as any innocent reader would.

As the rest of the introduction suggests, I prepared the condiment, tossed it with noodles, and topped the bowl with quick salt cucumber pickles and seared cauliflower. This bowl of noodles fell totally flat for me. The ginger scallion sauce was missing something – garlic? more soy sauce? something else?, and the flavor did not work well with the pickles and cauliflower. It was such a random bowl of sub-par noodles. I was disappointed all evening.

Recipe #1 from Momofuku: did not like

For the second recipe, I selected Pan-Roasted Asparagus, Poached Egg, and Miso Butter. This recipe is also relatively quick for a restaurant cookbook, with most of the work being mixing up the miso butter and peeling the asparagus. Miso and butter are mashed together until smooth (arm workout!), then asparagus are peeled and roasted in a pan with more butter. Finally, the whole dish is plated and topped with a poached egg.

I also did not like this recipe. The miso butter was just too much for me – too salty, too rich, too umami if such a thing exists. I am also extremely loyal to the big pot blanching method of cooking asparagus, and I found that only pan-roasting kept the sinewy texture of raw asparagus; I even made a point to pick thin spears! All together, this dish did not come together well for me and was not a win. I will stick to my usual asparagus recipes.

Recipe #2 from Momofuku: did not like

Lastly, I picked Rice with Miso Soup as the final test recipe. Here, miso is added to a mushroom broth to make miso soup. Sushi rice is shaped into balls and coated in fat to grill and serve on the side. The mushroom broth was a good background to the miso soup, but the miso soup was lacking in the complexity I find at a good sushi restaurant. My miso soup-loving daughter, in all the honesty of a small child, said “this tastes kind of yucky”. The grilled rice was a disaster. I used day-old, cold rice when maybe I should have used fresh, but cooled, sushi rice. The rice would not stick into balls and totally fell apart on our grill pan. I could not get good grill marks on the rice. On the bright side, this turned into wonderfully crispy, “bottom of the bot” rice.

While this was edible, I would not go to the trouble of making this recipe again. Instant miso soup it is.

Recipe #3 from Momofuku: did not like

Well, the test is over, and this book did not pass. The verdict is: donate.

I will be copying down the ramen recipe, then taking the book to Half Price Books on my next visit. Hooray, I cleared off an inch of shelf space! I can move one of my books piled on the floor onto the shelf.

On to testing the next book …. stay tuned!