Yuzu Kosho, Mentaiko and Yanagi Matsutake Spaghetti

I made this for lunch yesterday. A very quick lunch I might add. It took me about 10 minutes. There are many versions of Mentaiko Spagehetti. (One of my absolute favorite is made with fried whole chili and garlic flakes.) This one is made out of necessity — the only fresh things left in my fridge were the mushrooms and a few sprigs of scallions. It’s also one of those rare instances in which I mess around in the kitchen and the food comes out right. Although if I make it again I wouldn’t use the scallions as in the picture. My first choice was parsley but didn’t have any at hand. So scallions it was. I should have just left it out altogether. It didn’t do much for the taste — a little too sharp. Still, I loved it.

No measurements are given simply because I didn’t measure anything. It’s really one of those dishes in which you add as much of everything as you like. I added curly parsley instead of scallions in the recipe below.

Ingredients

Pasta of your choice

Yuzu kosho

Mentaiko (I used the spicy kind)

Yanagi Matsutake or mushroom of your choice

Olive oil or butter

Crème fraîche

Chopped curly parsley

Salt and pepper to taste

1. Set a pot of water to boil. Drizzle the mushrooms with olive oil or butter and grill it in the toaster oven for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, scoop a dollop of crème fraîche into a mixing bowl. Add in the yuzu kosho. I started with half a teaspoon and added in more until I am happy with how it tastes. Mix well and taste. Season with salt and pepper as needed. Set aside.

2. When the water is boiling add in the pasta. Cook till al dente or the way you like it. When done drain and put it into the crème fraîche and yuzu kosho mixture. Mix well. Put on plate.

3. Cut open the mentaiko’s sac and scoop out the eggs with a spoon. Top it on the pasta. By this time, the mushrooms should be done. Add the mushrooms to the pasta. Sprinkle with chopped parsley. Mix everything together before eating.

Baked Tomato Pasta

I love tomatoes despite the fact that it’s almost impossible to get decent ones in Thailand. But when I saw the Yaki Tomato no Pasta — grilled tomato pasta — recipe in the Japanese magazine Dankyu (August issue), I just couldn’t resist giving it a try. The tomatoes are grilled on the stove only long enough for the skin to curl. The skin is then removed and the tomatoes are mashed with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Cooked pasta is then mixed in. This would have been great had I have any access to ripe juicy sweet tomatoes.  Unfortunately we’re talking Thailand. Slightly decent tomatoes are all we get. Even those with promising (but misleading) monikers like Red Honey are major disappointments. There is not a hint of sweetness as the name suggests. Of course there are succulent imported varieties from Japan but you do pay through the nose for it. Momotaro, one of the two varieties (the other one is Mini Fruit) that I like cost about 1 euro for a tomato the size of an infant’s fist. When I do splurge like that I much prefer snacking on it my Ahma’s (Chinese for grandma) way. She would slice juicy plump tomatoes and sprinkle with them dried plum powder for me to snack on. Even while writing this I can still remember the perfect mix of the tomatoes’ sweetness with the slightly salty and sour plum powder!

Back to the pasta……. Incidentally the preceding page shows a recipe for grilled/baked tomatoes with Balsamic Vinegar (I omitted it in the recipe) and, yea, put the two together and we’ve got Baked Tomato Pasta! I actually like this recipe and will be making it more often. You get the fresh taste of the tomatoes but also slightly cooked flavor. For extra crunch, I added toasted pine nuts, and lardon. Baked garlic is also thrown in. For this recipe, I find that it works fine with Thai-grown tomatoes. The one that I got for this recipe is called Dutch Meat (guess where the variety is from) in Thai……for once they got the right name. It was juicy and meaty!

Ingredient

60 grams pasta of your choice

Tomato(es) of your choice (Mine came to about 200 grams)

1 clove garlic

1/2 or more tablespoon of julienned basil

1 tablespoon toasted pine nuts

1 tablespoon pan-fried lardon

Olive oil

Salt and pepper to season

1. Preheat oven at 160C. Wash and cut the tomato in half. You don’t even have to peel it. After being baked the skin will slip off easily. Place on a baking pan and drizzle with olive oil. Drizzle the garlic with olive oil and wrapped in foil. Put both garlic and tomato in oven and bake for at least 30 minutes. The tomato will be a little runny after 30 minutes. Continue baking longer if you prefer it to be a little “saucier” (check after another 20 minutes).

2. Remove the tomato and garlic. Mash the garlic with the back of the a spoon in a large mixing bowl. If you do not like tomato seeds, scope them out with a spoon. It’ll come off easily. I love the seed and pulpy part so I mash everything with the garlic, salt, pepper, and more olive oil. Set aside.

3. Cook pasta until al dente or longer depending on how you like it. Drain and mix with the above. Throw in the pine nuts, lardon, basil, and it’s done!

Fried Stuffed Olives

Inspired by one of the dishes I had in Italy, I decided to make my own version of stuffed Olive Ascolana. The dish is originally from Le Marche in central Italy and traditionally uses large fleshy Ascoli olives. The recipe for the stuffing varies, some call for a mixture of various meats/sausages. I used ground pork and prosciutto ham because these are what I have in the fridge and they need to be used up ASAP. I also added basil to the stuffing just to experiment. The only tricky part in the recipe is cutting the fleshy olives in a spiral, much like peeling an apple, to pit the olives. (As can be seen in the picture, my spiral olives are not perfect….yet.) The ground meat is then shaped into small ovals and the spiral olives are then slowly wrapped and manipulated around them to form a stuffed olive. I hope my description is making sense. Alternatively, use pitted olives. Make a long length-wise slit on each olive and stuff them with the meat filling. They are then breaded and fried into these succulent olive balls. I find they are great when served with a light sprinkling of chili powder and a wedge of fresh lemon.

Fried Stuffed Olives

Ingredients:

For the stuffing:

30 Olives (Ascoli if possible, if not, any large fleshy kind will do)

1 cup ground pork (or any other kind of meat you like)

¼ cup of chopped prosciutto ham

3 tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese

2 tablespoons of chopped basil

1 egg

Chili powder, ground nutmeg, salt and pepper to season.

For the batter:

1 cup of bread crumbs

1-2 eggs beaten

Olive oil for frying

The Method

1. Pit the olives by cutting from the top in a spiral like peeling an apple.
2. Light fry the ground pork and ham. Do not cook them totally. Remove from pan and mix in the rest of the other ingredients. Let cool.
3. Form ovals with the mixture in step 2, and slowly wrap the olive spirals around them.
4. When done, dip each one in the beaten egg then coat it with the bread crumbs. Set aside.
5. Set up pan with olive oil on medium-high heat. Fry the olives until light golden, remove and let drain on a paper towel. Then deep fry them, again. I personally prefer to double-fry any fried dishes as it makes them crispier.
6. Sprinkle with ground chili pepper and serve with a wedge of lemon.