Recipes By Elyse Inamine
6 recipes found
Mochiko Chicken
“Mochiko chicken is Hawaii’s fried chicken,” said Relle Lum, a nurse practitioner and the founder of the Keeping It Relle cooking blog. Growing up on the island of Maui, she enjoyed the craggy chunks at home. Mrs. Lum watched her mother and grandmother throw mochiko chicken together without a recipe, but she’s written one down that ensures the right juicy-on-the-inside, crispy-on-the-outside balance and sweet-savory flavor. The key is to let the chicken sit in the punchy marinade of soy sauce, sugar and scallions for a good amount of time, ideally overnight, then to fry it in batches, in oil heated to 325 degrees.
Saimin
This beloved noodle soup — unique to Hawaii and its local food tradition and thought to be a mashup of ramen, pancit and chow mein — is all about simplicity, according to Mark Noguchi, a chef and educator at Punahou School in Honolulu. “That is how we are preserving a part of our culture,” Mr. Noguchi said. His saimin recipe is made of a dashi-based broth enhanced with dried shrimp and black peppercorns, saimin noodles, wontons stuffed with pork and scallions and all the fixings: barely set eggs, char siu, kamaboko (Japanese fish cake) and scallions. Cook the hot components of the dish — broth, noodles, eggs, wontons — so they finish at the same time and can be assembled together quickly for hot, happy slurping.
Pinakbet
Ricardo Garza, a firefighter and emergency medical technician at Station 8 in Honokaʻa, Hawaii, learned to make this Filipino stew, brimming with fatty pork, fishy patis and lots of vegetables (Japanese eggplant, baby okra, bitter melon) from his grandmother. He has now passed it on to his colleagues at Station 8, who are cooking and riffing on it. If you find winged beans, a favorite of Mr. Garza’s, go for it and use eight ounces each of winged beans and long beans (instead of one full pound of long beans). Just trim the winged beans, separate the pods and add them to the pinakbet with the bitter melon.
Hobak Jeon (Pan-Fried Zucchini)
The chef Peter Serpico learned how to make hobak jeon, battered and fried slices of zucchini, by watching his mother-in-law cook. After her granddaughter was born, she would often trek from Queens, N.Y., armed with groceries and Korean recipes, to Mr. Serpico’s Philadelphia apartment. This recipe is inspired by her simple yet satisfying jeon and appears in “Learning Korean,” a cookbook chronicling Mr. Serpico’s journey with Korean food as an adoptee. There is one twist in his recipe: He adds a fish sauce to the batter, which gives the zucchini a salty depth.
Gochujang BBQ Sauce
The chef Tory Miller dreamed up this spicy, sweet barbecue sauce during the pandemic when he was running his Miller Family Meat & Three pop-up in Madison, Wis. It’s an ode to his family’s love of grilling and his Korean heritage, which, as an adoptee, he has been exploring more in recent years. Mr. Miller uses this as he would any other barbecue sauce: for basting meats as they finish grilling and for dipping nuggets. He loves the smokiness the bacon adds to the sauce, but here it’s optional. (Though if using, you can add the drained bacon to a sandwich with white bread, coleslaw and pickles, or simply keep in the sauce).
Kimchi Carbonara
The chef Melanie Hye Jin Meyer is constantly researching Korean foodways to create dishes for her Korean-inspired pop-up restaurant Tiny Chef in St. Louis. Kimchi carbonara, which she was seeing all over Korean TikTok, spoke to her. “I love how Korea somewhat recently started introducing cheese on everything,” Ms. Meyer said. “I’m all for it, especially being from the Midwest.” This is her take on the cultural mashup as a Korean adoptee. She cooks down napa cabbage kimchi until soft, and cuts through the buttery base with white wine. The dish comes together quickly, so have everything prepped and ready to go before starting the sauce.