asian jewish deli

It has been quite a while since I have updated the blog, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been cooking! I have been enjoying a number of weeks off of work, spending time with friends, going to Sounders FC matches, and generally trying to keep cool in this sweltering heat.

This week we drove up to Biringer Farm to pick raspberries. The variety was Tulameen, and it made the most delicious jam. Stay tuned for a post highlighting the raspberry jam, along with pictures of the pulled pork butt I am planning to make this weekend.

In the meantime, a rundown of some of the more delicious items from the kitchen.

Short-rib sliders

Strawberry-rhubarb pie

The most marbled and delicious ribeye I've ever cooked

Fried chicken

A preview of Tulameen raspberry jam

This is the new best sandwich in Seattle. (And you still can’t have one.) It is my standard favorite grilled pastrami Reuben with chopped liver, swiss, homemade Russian dressing, and sauerkraut on buttered Jewish rye, but this time I used pastrami made out of shortrib.

I have written many times before about how much I love short rib, so when I found large boneless slabs of the super marbled cut, I bought about 12 pounds and started the curing process.

What came out after smoking was amazing! The short rib has much finer marbling than any other cut I have used before, leading to a very tender, moist, and lucious pastrami without the large hunks of fat that are usually trimmed off of my other batches.

Another benefit—it is cheaper than the beef plate and brisket I have used in the past. Win!

The weather today was amazing! I made burgers tonight to celebrate the upcoming spring/summer season. I always grind my own beef, using shortrib. The beef ends up being around 30-40% fat, resulting in a delicious, moist, and fatty burger. I season before grinding the meat, and always add a secret ingredient—anchovies.  The anchovy helps with seasoning and adds a noticeable hit of umami to the patties.

Tonight’s burgers were 3 oz and on Oroweat potato dinner rolls, small enough that I consider them sliders. From top to bottom: toasted potato roll, my own bacon onion jam (amazing, to toot my own horn), raw paper thin onion, Tillamook cheddar cheese, ground shortrib cooked medium-rare, black pepper, Kewpie mayo, potato roll. Sometimes I add romaine, tomato, or bacon but these burgers were really spectacular as is.

Accompanying was Belgian-style (twice fried) truffle fries cooked golden well-done. I made a tartar sauce for the fries, using mayo, sweet pickle relish, preserved lemon, shallot, and vinegar.

I wrote about the amazingness of short ribs in a previous post, and am back praising them again. This time I braised them using a recipe based off of one of Daniel Boulud’s, which you can find here.

I started off flaming two bottles of wine, which is slightly frightening yet very cool looking. I’m not joking when I say flames three feet high. For real.

I tossed in some aromatics along with a bunch of short ribs which were floured and browned previously. After a few hours in the oven, I strained the braising liquid and reduced it into a nice velvety sauce.

Daniel Boulud serves his short ribs with a celeriac puree, but since I live with a bunch of celery-root-hating weirdos, I served them with pommes puree prepared Robuchon-style. Robuchon potatoes take more time than layman mashed potatoes but are worth it! I won’t go into the nitty gritty science details behind the technique (maybe in anther post), but the preparation involves gently cooking sliced potatoes for 30 minutes in 160° water, completely cooling them off, and then cooking for another 30 minutes at 190°. Once that is done, I pass them through a ricer, then gently dry them out a bit over low heat. Joël Robuchon is famous for using a one-to-one ratio by weight of butter to potato, but I usually stick with between 25 and 50% by weight.Even with less butter, these are the best mashed potatoes ever!

Most of the prep for this dish was completed on Thursday night and only required gentle reheating for dinner on Friday, allowing me to make a quick salsa verde that my friend Lorna developed. Check out her cookbook website!

Short ribs are probably my favorite cut of beef aside from the ribeye. The superb marbling, beefy-ness, and relatively low price (at Asian markets) makes for a very useful piece of beef. I grind it up at home and make hamburgers and meatloaf, or braise it for hours in wine. When cut flanken style (across the bone, as opposed to the chunkier English cut), they are most used for kalbi, or Korean marinated and grilled short ribs.

I call mine Korean-style because most will say that authentic kalbi marinade does not contain brown sugar or rice vinegar. Many will also tell you that ground pear is required for tenderizing. While the pear does add a nice sweetness and helps with tenderizing the meat, I find that the meat becomes mushy if left in the marinade too long. (I like to marinate my short ribs for 24+ hours.) The market that I buy my short ribs from carries the most marbled meat I have ever seen (outside of Wagyu beef) and the fat helps to keep a tender mouth-feel without the pear.

I cook them in my trusty cast iron skillet, leaving them long enough to nicely caramelize. One complaint I have about most kalbi I’ve had in Korean restaurants—the meat is never caramelized enough!