Instant Beef Noodles That Mike Chen Loves
1 Good Meal
A Soup That Tastes Like Being Home for the Holidays
When the builder Michael Chen couldn't travel to be with his family last Christmas, he learned to make one of his mother's recipes himself.
Michael Chen is primarily known for residential projects and one chemical element of them that the architect peculiarly enjoys designing is the kitchen. In a brownstone in Brooklyn'southward Clinton Hill neighborhood that his namesake New York firm, Michael Yard Chen Architecture, revamped in 2019, that meant maroon cabinets; an avocado green island with a sink on i side and a cutout for four stools on the other, so that a melt might prep and chat; and tumbling-cake-patterned concrete floor tiles. He'south too fond of green serpentine stone ("I recollect a white kitchen is and so boring," he says), unobtrusive ability outlets and high-stop induction burners in lieu of gas ranges ("if it's skilful enough for Thomas Keller…"). "There's often a real tension in people's expectations vis-à-vis kitchens between things that are beautiful and things that are functional," says Chen, 46, "only I don't see those qualities as contradictory." His belief that a infinite tin and should be both stems from his architectural training, of form, but also, like his interest in kitchens in general, from the fact that he is something of a melt himself, and thus able to conceptualize a client's needs in this arena.
His own kitchen, with a stone counter, a Flos light fixture by Jasper Morrison and a profusion of walnut cutting boards and Japanese knives, is the heart of the Chinatown, Manhattan, apartment that he shares with his husband, Andy Beck, a lawyer with the A.C.L.U. Until not then long agone, the flat was the site of countless dinner parties that allowed Chen to evidence off his culinary skills and since, as he puts it, "conquering is a scrap of an occupational hazard in my line of work," the many beautiful dishes he's collected over the years, including asymmetrical ceramics by Eric Bonnin from Mociun in Brooklyn, vintage chartreuse Russel Wright lug bowls scored on eBay and marbleized plates from MK Studio purchased on a trip he and Beck took to Copenhagen. The pandemic put a interruption on such gatherings, but, in the early days of it, Chen could nevertheless be constitute in the kitchen, nursing his sourdough starter or rolling out pasta dough for homemade lasagna. So, last Dec, he decided to try his paw at another labor-intensive recipe: his mother'south beef noodle soup.
Known as niu rou mian in Mandarin, the dish is ubiquitous in Taiwan, where many mainlanders, including Chen'due south parents, Robert and Grace Chen, moved during the Communist revolution of the 1940s. Appropriately, many of the regional characteristics of distinct noodle soups merged, creating what Chen describes every bit a scrap of a mishmash. "Information technology's similar Taipei's reply to a hot dog. My parents used to talk about getting this dish from street vendors when they were young — if they had some extra money, they'd club it with meat but, if not, they'd just get the broth," says Chen.
Image
Merely while his parents were sampling the same street food in Taiwan in the '50s, they didn't run across until they were graduate students in Florida in the late '60s. The following decade, they moved to Contra Costa County, which sits just e of San Francisco, and that is where Chen would come to love niu rou mian, or at least the version of it that his mother adjusted in keeping with the health-conscious culinary mores of Northern California. "There'southward this leanness to the way our family cooks," says Chen. "It's less spicy, less fat, more concentrated and clearer than what you lot might find in a restaurant." Though this made it no less of a care for: Chen's mother would ready the dish every year for Christmas Mean solar day tiffin, and extended family would descend on the house for a sense of taste.
When the pandemic derailed Chen and Beck'southward plans to travel to California for Christmas concluding year, Beck insisted that they take the soup in New York. "It had become a tradition for me, too," he says. And so, Chen asked his mother to walk him through each step of her recipe, which involves braising and carefully skimming the contents of multiple pots, each containing a dissimilar cutting of beef — brisket, shin (or shank) and tendons — and a neatly arranged spice packet fragrant with Sichuan peppercorns, star anise, fresh chiles, garlic, ginger and more.
"It'due south not the kind of braise you exercise in an Instant Pot," says Chen. "It'due south meditative. You tend to it over the course of an afternoon, very slowly and over a low temperature, taking care not to disturb the meat, which can brand for a cloudy, greasy broth." The last steps are to boil the Chinese flour noodles and serve everything together in bowls topped with blanched vegetables and pickled mustard greens (which themselves take several days to make). Chen says the finished production has a quality, both "ethereal and lecherous," that he didn't fully appreciate every bit a child. It is a gift to taste information technology now.
Epitome
Michael Chen's Beef Noodle Soup
Serves eight-10
Meat
-
two pounds Hong Kong-manner beef brisket (if non available or desired, a regular brisket will do)
-
2 pounds boneless beef shin (if not available or desired, a beef shank can be substituted)
-
1.5 pounds beef tendons (well-nigh 3 tendons)
Spice packet (the beneath makes one just you should use as many as yous have pots of meat)
-
1 tablespoon Sichuan peppercorns
-
3 star anises
-
½ teaspoon fennel seeds
-
two stale chile de árbol or fresh chiles
-
three smashed garlic cloves
-
4 slices ginger, nigh ⅛ inch thick and 2 inches long
-
2 scallions cut into 2-inch segments
-
2 bay leaves
Braising liquid (for one pot)
-
two cups chicken stock
-
⅓ cup good dark soy sauce
-
ii-3 tablespoons dry sherry or rice vino
-
one tablespoon honey
-
Kosher common salt, to taste
Soup
-
1 pound baby bok choy, Chinese broccoli, choy sum or other Asian dark-green
-
2 additional quarts craven stock
-
6 slices ginger
-
Chinese flour noodles
Garnish
-
one scallion, thinly sliced
-
Pickled mustard greens (recipe below)
-
i-2 sprigs cilantro
-
Sichuan chile well-baked, to taste
-
Sherry vinegar or Chinese blackness vinegar
ane. Trim equally much of the visible fat off the meat every bit possible, but preserve the connective tissue. Soak each slice of beef in a bowl of cold h2o for xx minutes and rinse well.
two. Blanch each cut individually for 5 minutes in boiling water, and so permit them absurd enough to handle.
3. Split the tendons lengthwise and then into 1-inch to 1½-inch pieces. Cube the brisket and shin into pieces, nigh 1½ to 2 inches.
4. Fix spice packets past combining the Sichuan peppercorns, star anise, fennel seeds, chiles, garlic, ginger, scallions and bay leaves into cheese material bundles or fillable tea numberless. Make one package per pot.
5. Each cut of meat should be braised separately. Place the cubed meat, a spice packet and two cups of chicken stock in individual heavy-bottomed Dutch ovens and add enough water to cover the meat by about an inch.
6. Bring the liquid to a boil and immediately reduce the heat so that you only see the occasional bubble. Add a healthy pinch of salt. Braise, partially covered, taking care that the liquid does not eddy until the meat is very soft just still holds its shape, for about iii hours. One 60 minutes into simmering, add together the soy sauce, sherry and honey. Skim the fat and foam from the liquid as often and as thoroughly every bit possible. The resulting liquid should exist dark simply not cloudy.
7. Tendons melt at a different rate and may take between two-four hours. The same precautions apply. Take care non to eddy the liquid, and melt until the tendons are very soft and the braising liquid has a syrup-similar viscosity.
8. Once everything is cooked and soft, prepare the soup. Heat the remaining chicken stock with some slices of ginger in it. In a split pot, bring four quarts of salted h2o to a boil. Blanch the quartered babe bok choy or choy sum for i minute and remove from water but do not drain. Bring the same water back to a boil and melt the noodles until soft, 1-3 minutes (check parcel instructions). Drain h2o. Portion the noodles into deep soup bowls, meridian with the blanched dark-green vegetables; a few pieces of beefiness and tendon; a ladle of braising liquid, including some of the tendon braising liquid, which adds tremendous body and heft to the goop; and a ladle of hot stock. Top with chopped scallions and chopped pickled mustard greens. A drizzle of chile crisp is nice, as is a splash of sherry vinegar.
Pickled Mustard Greens
-
Suspension apart well-nigh 1 pound of mature mustard greens. Piece the thick ends of the leaves into ¼-inch slices.
-
Lay the mustard greens on a blistering rack on the counter to wilt for a day.
-
Toss the leaves and stems with ½ loving cup of kosher salt, place in a colander to drain overnight. Y'all tin can weigh the greens down with a can.
-
The next day, bleed but don't rinse the greens. Pack them in a clean, sterile jar. Add iii cloves of garlic and a republic of chile and fill the jar with boiling water.
-
Exit the sealed jar out for at least a whole 24-hour interval at room temperature, so let the whole thing ferment in the refrigerator for 3-5 days and enjoy. Utilize within a calendar week after opening.
moreaulithervithed.blogspot.com
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/22/t-magazine/beef-noodle-soup-recipe.html
0 Response to "Instant Beef Noodles That Mike Chen Loves"
Postar um comentário