Hey, welcome back to the show.
You know if you've ever cooked with a walk,
you know it can seriously add some
delicious flavor to your food.
But we know a lot of people are a
little unfamiliar and maybe a little
intimidated by cooking with a wok.
So that is why we're so excited to
introduce this new cookbook called
The Walk which hits bookshelves today.
It's by Seattle Cookbook author and chef J.
Kenji Lopez, Alt, who made me one of
his favorite recipes from the book.
So we're gonna be making my
mom's version of mapo tofu.
So I grew up in a Japanese
American household so mapo tofu
is traditionally a Sichuan dish,
but it's very popular in Japan
and the style that they make
in Japan is a little different
because it's got more Japanese
flavors to it. So instead of the
traditional version which is made,
which is a really what's called a mala
profile, which is a hot and
numbing flavor profile,
the Japanese version is a
little more savory and sweet,
so I'm starting right now,
just by stir frying a little bit of ground.
A lot of versions of MAPO Tofu will
have ground pork and you can use
ground pork if you want as well,
but the actual traditional version
from Sichuan is made with beef
and this is how I always had a
growing up because we lived in New
York in a sort of meatpacking area
and Morningside Heights as well.
No longer a meatpacking area,
but when I was growing up it
was a meatpacking area and
my mom would buy ground beef
from a guy who would sell it to her.
Out the side of her car window
when she was stopped at a red
light there she come by with a
cooler with steak and ground beef.
I'm just mashing up some ginger
right now so the beef is cooking.
Oh, go ahead, sorry,
I was just gonna ask is there
like a secret to cutting ginger?
'cause I find that a trying task.
Oh yeah So what I just did and some
people peel ginger I sometimes do.
I don't always do it.
You don't really tattoos but what I do
is I cut off little coin sized slices.
I place them flat on my cutting board
and then a big heavy knife like this.
You can do a Chinese cleaver
or you can do a Western
style. That's nice but you just
give it up. A big whack and it
kind of so that I don't know if you can see,
but that's already pretty much breaks apart.
OK, breaks breaks apart and then
you just give it a rough drop.
And that's it. You could also,
you know you can also do
something like microplane adore.
Sometimes if my daughter is
helping me in the kitchen,
she's 5 and she'll help me by
smashing garlic and ginger
in the mortar and pestle.
Alright, so our beef is cooked
through that's about 4 ounces
of ground beef there.
And now I'm adding a couple
cloves of garlic that I smashed
and chop a couple teaspoons
of minced ginger and two
scallions. Just the white parts
and pale green parts. No green.
Parkside saving saving.
The dark green parts were at the very
end of the garnish and you basically
just want to stir fry that very lightly
until the fragrance comes out but
you don't want to let it go too long
'cause it'll it'll start to burn.
So it's about 15 seconds and we're done.
And now I'm going to start
hitting it with my seasoning
so couple tablespoons of Saki,
some mirin which is a Japanese
sweet wine. If you don't have mirin,
you can also just add a little extra socket
in a teaspoon or two of sugar tablespoon.
Sure, you you know Japanese soy sauce,
but you can use Chinese light soy sauce if
you want you can use to marry if you have,
you know a gluten sensitivity.
I mean I'm gonna have about
1/4 cup of chicken stock.
This is one of those dishes.
It was my favorite thing growing up and now
it's one of my daughter's favorite dishes,
so it's like it's one of those issues
where if if I come home and there's
not much in the fridge and I don't,
you know, and I can't think of something
that my daughter will immediately like,
I can always make this because, you know,
we always have tofu at home and usually
have all these aromatics at home so
I can make this for her and be 100%
positive that she will eat it happily
and it's healthy. I noticed you
added was that like a slurry,
a cornstarch slurry.
So that was just a tablespoon
of cornstarch mixed with a
couple tablespoons of water.
Finally, we're gonna add tofu.
You can use a soft block style tofu,
or you can use firm silken tofu.
Do you drain
your tofu? By the way
I don't press it or anything you know I
don't do it in paper towels and press it,
but I definitely drain the water
off a bit if you have very low
spice tolerance level which a
lot of Japanese people do have,
you can leave it just like that.
If you want a little bit of heat,
there's a couple things you can do so
you can add doubanjiang which is the.
Fermented chili bean paste from Sichuan.
Or you can add a chili oil.
There's a really good local
Seattle spicy chili crisp called
katikati that I really like.
Thank you for that tip I have to say,
like everything about this has seemed
very accessible, not intimidating,
and I think a lot of us might be
intimidated to cook in a wok.
Do you hear that often? Yes,
and you know there's.
I think there's a stigma
misconception people have.
That's basically it. By the way,
I just added in Galion Greens the dark
green parts as a garnish and that is it.
But yes, I hear from a lot of
people that you know they they.
They think they can't cook in the
walk because they don't have a gas
burner or because or they've heard
that you need like a restaurant style.
Really high output gas burner
or unable to be in order to be
able to cook properly in a walk.
And that is not the case.
You know the vast majority of people
in the world who cook in a wok,
like literally hundreds of millions
of people a day are cooking
in regular home kitchens.
So a lot of dishes like this,
which is sort of a homestyle dish you saw,
I did it on an induction burner plugged in.
You don't really need.
That big high heat and you definitely
don't need to stress out about
working with a giant flame or getting
or burning yourself or whatever.
It's all actually a pretty
relaxed and quick process,
so that's yeah, there's the dish.
That's my mom's Japanese
style mapo tofu in the book.
Actually.
There's also a recipe for the for the
more traditional Sichuan version as well.
And we've got Kenji's mapo
tofu recipe on our website.
Give it a shot. Let us know what you
think and in our next half hour,
Kenji is sharing another recipe from
his book, so stick around for that.
Hey, welcome back to new day.
So we are back in the kitchen now
with more from Seattle chef and
cookbook author Kenji Lopez Alt.
His brand new cookbook,
The Walk is out today and now
he's sharing another tasty recipe
so we are making one of the very simple no
cook side dishes that I have in the book.
There's a number of different
chili oil recipes in the book.
This one is a lot chili oil, so it's got a.
It's made with some peppercorns and
roasted chilies and it's got this kind
of tingly numbing and hot flavor to it.
You know, this is one of those
things where it's like you have
this condiment so you wanna use
it in all these different dishes.
But of course you can also just buy chili
oil if you want and that'll work great
for this. You make that one,
but you said there's one that's
really great that we can buy.
What was the name of that again,
yeah, Cudi Cudi, Krik Krik it's a
local Seattle brand and it's really
good so that's what I would use
if I didn't have my own right now.
And so this one, yeah?
Find chili oil and yogurt and it's
a real simple cucumber salad,
so we're going to start.
I have an English cucumber here.
Part of an English cucumber you can use.
Honestly, whatever cucumber you want,
but I tend to prefer English or
Persian cucumbers for these types
of dishes because you don't have to.
They have sort of a thinner skin
so you don't have to worry about
peeling them or anything,
so I'm just going to dice this up.
Get it in the bowl.
And then I have some red onions.
That is impressive right there.
So watch that for hours just dropping
when I slice onion I always
slice it for a salad especially.
I slice it, pull the pole so the top of
the onions here bottom of the onion is
there and you hold your knife parallel
to that and it ruptures fewer of the
onion cells so you actually get you.
Don't get as much of these sort of pungent,
you know, tear inducing onion
aroma when you cut your onion.
That way people exactly less crying,
less crying. Let's let's think you onion
and then I just got some chops laundry.
Actually the recipe in the book calls for.
Chopped dill that works fine,
but I didn't have any at home.
I just had some chopped cilantro,
so I'm kind of implementing.
Yeah, yeah.
Basil woodwork cilantro works
if you don't have any herbs,
that's also fine.
That was a little bit of rice
vinegar and then a little bit
of extra virgin olive oil.
K.
Little pinch of salt.
And then I'm just going to talk this all up.
And this part you can actually
do this part ahead and leave the
onions and cucumbers marinating
in this oil and vinegar mixture in
the fridge for even up to a day.
Although you know it's real
quick and easy anyway.
But if you wanna make it
even quick and easier,
you can do this part all ahead
and and it comes out just fine
and so now I've got a plate.
This one.
Actually I got the front because
Island Potter, yeah?
This is just some Greek yogurt.
I'm spooning it kind of onto
the bottom of the plate,
just spreading
it out a little.
I'm gonna get my salad
right in the middle of that yogurt.
You don't need to be fancy or anything.
Even if you're not fancy,
it's still looks fancy. Yeah,
you want to add one more element to
this dish. You can also add crushed
peanuts in here and I think it has a
really nice sort of nutty crunch to it,
but I'm not doing that today and then
finally, just some of the chili oil.
And that is it. And so when you eat it,
you kind of mix it all up together.
I really like the way the yogurt and
the chili oil like the the cooling
yogurt mixes with the cucumbers.
But you get that nice chili oil heat.
So I think it all really balances really
nicely together. But there you go.
It's like a 5 minute side dish.
It goes really well with a lot of the
other sort of cooked recipes in the book.
So this plus, say a stir fried
recipe or braised recipe some rice.
Then you have a complete meal ready to go.
So delicious. What are some
of the other recipes in this
book that you absolutely love?
Well, we did the mapo tofu.
I mean that that is my favorite
dish of all time, mapo tofu.
That's the one I kind of grew up on.
There's a recipe in this book
also for my mom's dumplings.
Goes out when we were little we
used to actually use the same meat
mixture that we use for the MAPO tofu.
She would make a big batch of it.
Me and my sisters would sit there
and fold dumplings once a month
that we put in the freezer and
then she would use the rest of that
meat mixture to make her mapo tofu.
So there's a recipe for the
dumplings in there as well.
You know my Japanese side on my mom's
side of the family so there's a lot
of Japanese dishes in there and then.
As far as like sort of the
the other Asian Asian.
Asian cuisines in there that aren't Japanese.
There's obviously a whole lot
of Chinese stuff in there,
and in particular sort of Chinese,
American and Asian American dishes.
Because you know that that's my experience.
Growing up isn't is an Asian American.
One of my favorite recipes in there is
Vietnamese American SF style garlic noodles,
which is this dish that sounds really weird.
So you use spaghetti to make it.
That combines spaghetti garlic oil,
but then also some fish sauce,
some oyster sauce, and some parmesan cheese.
And so it's this mix of all these.
East and West Eastern and Western
ingredients super savory.
It's almost like it's almost like
you know pasta alioli.
Oh,
but it has these really rich savory
Asian ingredients in it as well that
we love. Intersectionality of that dish.
Well, we've got Kenji's cucumber
salad recipe on our website
as well, so go check it out.