Triple onion power here, with caramelized onions, spring onions and onion powder for maximum flavour. Get your favourite crunchy crisps out and enjoy.
Growing up, I awoke to the smell of this omelet cooking on most weekends, and my mom (whom our kids call “Nanima”) still makes it for the kids whenever they stay over. First, the potatoes are diced and sautéed until they’re perfectly tender, and then you add the spiced egg mixture. My mom would also pack it with onions, and we’d enjoy it with fresh paratha (a flatbread), yogurt, and green chutney; you can also serve it with Pickled Carrots. It’s kinda like a frittata but with all the Indian spices to warm your soul (and your taste buds). I love that the kids gobble it up and that they’re just as excited when they smell it cooking on a weekend morning as I was!
Since beef was expensive in Japan when I was growing up, it was a real treat when my grandmother, Hatsuko Ishikawa, invited us over for a meatloaf with amakara (salty and sweet) sauce, made with soy sauce, honey, and vinegar. She made hers in a round cast-iron skillet and always served it with potatoes, which were tossed in the pan (with the lid closed) to make them fluffy. This recipe is enhanced with a miso-infused shiitake mushroom sauce, my own wafu version of meatloaf.
We’ve put this recipe here because, unlike the pot pies in the first chapter, this is a traditional pot pie with a bottom crust and a top crust, making it a double-crusted pie. This pot pie uses the carcass of the holiday bird to make a rich turkey stock. Making stock is a very flexible process, so use common sense rather than precise measurements. Of course it’s fine to use store-bought turkey stock, but homemade is so much better and takes less than 10 minutes of active time. It’s well worth the small effort, since the turkey is abundance itself and shouldn’t be wasted.
To make britches, thread a needle with about 2 feet of darning thread or fishing line and tie a knot at one end to secure it.
I give you the perfect kofte. I was given the recipe by a friend who lives in Tunis and it’s a cracker. The minced lamb must be left well alone after the pine nuts and other flavourings are added to allow the spices to infuse and develop. Cook over a barbecue on skewers or under a kitchen grill. Serve with warmed pitta breads, Greek yoghurt and the dazzling pickled red onions perfected by my wife, Nykeeta. A tomato salad is a good accompaniment, too.
I started making this rye focaccia while leading the Pastry and Bread program at Rossoblu in Los Angeles. I wanted the bread program to reflect the whole--grain heritage of Italy, and I loved making seasonal variations with fruit. Focaccia is also known as a salt cake, and I love cake with fruit. Here, we are celebrating a classic autumn variation of apples and onions, with some lemons to brighten the whole affair. Feel free to change out the toppings as the seasons change! This dough is extremely forgiving and a great place to build shaping confidence. Focaccia is great served warm alongside dinner or enjoyed cold as the ultimate sandwich bread stuffed with your choice of fillings. I also love it sliced thick and grilled with olive oil. Keeps for a week at room temperature, wrapped in a tea towel. Replace the honey with molasses to make the recipe vegan.
Kimchi is deeply ingrained in Korean cooking and usually appears in a few different guises. I love the deep red colour that this pancake takes on from the kimchi and its liquid.
The combination of textures from the crispy outside and soft, gooey inside adds dimension and interest to any meal. You can make a few smaller, individual pancakes or two or three larger ones as you wish, depending on how much batter you add to the pan at a time.
My mom, Karen, tells me that this recipe was inspired by watching the ladies in her hometown cook at the Pierz Fun House, a social club used for weddings and other public functions. They would make these potatoes by the hundreds: halved russet potatoes, sandwiched with butter and onions and bay leaves, smashed back together, and baked in foil. When you unwrapped your potato, the onion would lie pallid in the middle, and the butter would pool in the foil.
Smartly, my mom pivoted to baking each potato half open-face, so that the onions crisped into dark toupees on top. She also scored the potato flesh deeply before baking, so that the butter knew where it was supposed to go: down the cracks to the bottom skin. After an hour or so in the oven, the skin bakes to a dark brown callus. When I was a kid, I’d capsize my potato boat so that the soft cubes of potato fell out and I could fold the shatteringly crisp bottom around a piece of meat, like a taco.
This recipe is made in about a 10-inch cast iron or carbon steel pan on the stove. It can easily be scaled up to six eggs, or to eight, just by increasing the ingredients and cooking it in a 12-inch pan instead. If you do increase it, make sure to use two cans of tomatoes so that there’s enough liquid in the sauce that it doesn’t burn while you’re cooking the eggs.