Hiyashi Tan-Tan ((冷やしたんたん)

One of the wondrous things about ramen is that it gives Japanese chefs full freedom to explore creativity outside the traditional norms of washoku. It allows them to escape the "wa" (和) of the washoku (和食) — the "Japanese-ness" of meal formats, rules, etc.

Every culture has some escape pod by which they can break the rules and are no longer subject to the dictates of "traditional culture". You need a release mechanism for creativity and rebellion.

Ramen is unambiguously Chinese and hence "foreign" however the Japanese have adapted it, refined it, and taken it to great heights. In the spirit of experimentation, it's not unusual to find "Thai Ramen" and "Indian Ramen" and "Italian Seafood Ramen", etc. in Tokyo. Any number of tricks from other cuisines are amenable as long as they ultimately get integrated into the ramen format.

The CC first ate the dish at a restaurant near his former workplace. It's a riff on a riff on a riff.

The owner of the restaurant is Burmese who ran away to Japan, lived there for a decade, and in spite of marrying Japanese, was unable to get a permanent visa. The couple opted for "life, liberty and happiness" and Japan's loss is New York's gain.

Tan-tan men is a variation on the classic Sichuanese dan-dan mian (担担面) — the spicy-tingly noodles with ground pork, pickled vegetables, and chili oil.

The Japanese version sticks to the idea broadly. It somehow got caught up with the very Sichuanese doubanjiang (辣豆瓣酱) possibly because its umami is very similar to miso.

So the ground pork is stir-fried with ginger, garlic, scallions and toban jan (as it's called in Japanese) until you have a loose dry mixture.

The ramen noodles are topped with an intense pork broth, the spicy ground pork mixture, slivered scallions, etc. This is a broad idea. The specifics depend on the creativity of each chef. You'd probably find slivered cucumbers or bean sprouts. It may be topped with rayu (chili oil.) It all depends.

Ramen, being served piping hot is cold weather food. Japan has blistering summers and a history of a lack of air-conditioning. The very hot weather dish, hiyashi chūka, featured here often is a response to that.

Hiyashi tan-tan is the bastard love child of hiyashi chūka and tan-tan men as conceived by a Burmese entrepreneur trained in Japan to satiate the ramen-crazy Yankees in a blistering New York summer.

What could be cooler than that?

There are some elegant subtle melodies inside it that make it sing.

Traditional ramen is frequently made with stock made from pork bones. It has a milky-white color.

The stock here is much lighter as befits a summer dish. Seafood-based or chicken-based which has been hit with a solid amount of sesame paste. Traditional Japanese sesame powder (gomashio) is made with roasted sesame seeds and has a brownish color. This one is clearly made with unroasted ones which gives the broth the same intense milky-white color. The CC strongly suspects that the restauranteur is just using tahini thus introducing a Middle-Eastern ingredient. It's New York, after all. Why not?

The advantage of cold-ingredients pre-prepared to a restaurant should be obvious but one of the complete non-negotiables is that the ramen has to be made fresh. You can dunk it in ice-water to cool it down but it must be freshly made.

Since the recipe clearly has diverged so far from its roots, such as they are, the CC feels absolutely no shame in diverging further. It would almost be regretful to stick to the format. The pork has been subbed by ground seafood (non-traditional) and bamboo shoots (absolutely traditional.) The cucumbers and scallions are retained in the summer heat.

It's the beauty of ramen. Within the broad tradition, as Cole Porter might have put it, "Anything goes".


Ingredients

(serves 2)

Dashi

2 pieces kombu
4 cups water
1/2 cup dried shrimp (or bonito flakes or both)

1/3 cup sesame seeds

Ground Pork

1/2" ginger
2 cloves garlic
1 tbsp toban jan
1 tbsp soy sauce
sugar (to balance)
peanut oil

1/2 cup ground pork (or ground seafood or ground chicken)
1/2 cup bamboo shoots

2 packages ramen

cucumber
carrots
scallions

sesame oil

Recipe

Note 1: Once the sesame paste is stirred into the cool broth, you cannot reheat it again. The broth and paste will separate which will destroy the texture. It must have its ice-cold white texture.

Note 2: Mound the pile of the ground pork mixture in the center. The toppings should be to the side. Yes, this is "only" aesthetics but it really goes a long way to emphasizing the cold-hot nature of the dish. The spicy pork with the ice-cold ingredients. It will all turn red-gold once you start slurping.

Note 3: If you have time, soak the sesame seeds in water. Don't worry too much about this step. You can always loosen the sesame paste with the dashi you make.

Note 4: The whole recipe is eminently scalable and can be made ahead of time. Except the ramen. They must be made fresh. You'll probably learn the hard way the science behind this step.

Note 5: It takes a while to chill all the ingredients especially the broth. Maybe the CC's fridge is crappy but it took more than 6 hours to get it down to the right temperature.

First, make the dashi. Heat up the kombu with the water. Just before the water boils, fish the kombu out and discard. If you don't do it, the broth will turn bitter. Add the dried shrimp/dried anchovies/bonito flakes and bring to a loose boil. Let it steep for at least 15 minutes. Pass the broth through a double layer of paper towels. You should be left with a clear golden broth.

Meanwhile, take the soaked sesame seeds and grind them to a fine paste in a mortar and pestle. Add some of the above dashi if you need to loosen the paste. Add the paste to the dashi and add salt. Set aside and let it chill.

Cut up the cucumber, carrots, scallions into long very thin batons of the same size and set aside to chill.

Make the ground pork mixture. Smash up the ginger and garlic in a mortar and pestle to a paste. Heat up some peanut oil in a skillet. When shimmering, add the ginger-garlic paste. Fry for a bit. Add the toban jan and fry for a little bit. Add the ground pork, soy sauce and sugar and let it cook until it is dry. You will probably need to add 2-3 tbsp of water to make sure it doesn't burn. Add the bamboo shoots towards the end. Take off the heat and cool. You can store this for a few days. Chill it.

When ready to serve, make the ramen. The ones the CC has require 2.5 minutes. Immediately dunk in an ice bath.

Top the ramen with the chilled dashi. Put the ground pork mixture in the center. The cut up scallions, carrots and cucumbers to the side.

(You can add sesame oil but that's gilding the lily.)

Slurp the intense icy awesomeness.

Stir-Fried Squid with Long Beans, Thai Eggplants, Shrimp Paste & Green Peppercorns

There's this wonderful Thai restaurant near the CC's old workplace which has a dish that the CC is obsessed with.

It ticks off all the right notes - funky, umami, complex with enough heat to set your mouth alight and yet, in that precise Thai way, it works!

The CC has had plenty of opportunities to "reverse engineer" this particular dish. It looks like a variation on the equally famous pad prik khing.

The CC is totally a sucker for the green peppercorns that come in the dish. They are not easy to find but you must get the ones pickled in brine not in vinegar.

There seemed to be a complex metallic note behind it, and the CC figured it the old fashioned way when he spilled some on his shirt. It was fresh turmeric. The CC was out a shirt but had gained a recipe. Cosmic balance and all that.

Ingredients

Paste

4 kaffir lime leaves (sliced very fine)
4 cloves garlic
1 large shallot
2 tbsp shrimp paste
1 tbsp fish sauce
1" galangal
1 lemongrass stalk
1 small turmeric
2-3 Thai bird chilies
sugar (to balance the taste)

Stir-Fry

peanut oil

2 squid (read notes below)
6 Thai eggplants (quartered)
8-12 long beans (cut into 1" pieces)
1/2 cup bamboo shoots
3 tbsp green peppercorns

Thai basil

Recipe

Note 1: You will need a mortar and pestle to pound it to a paste. A food processor is simply not the same.

Note 2: Traditionally, the paste may require more or less ingredients depending on the quality thereof. For example, the CC only used 1 chili pepper since it was super hot. You need to taste and adjust based on the ingredients you have.

Note 3: The squid are cut into 1.5" x 1" pieces and cross-hatched with a knife. They will curl up and quickly cook in the stir-fry.

Note 4: The stir-fry goes at a rapid pace. You will need to have everything ready.

First prepare the paste. In a mortar and pestle, pound all the ingredients together to a fine paste. You may need to add more fish paste to loosen the sauce, or a little more sugar if it feels too salty. The paste should be thick, pungent and definitely have a bite from the chilies.

Heat the peanut oil until it is shimmering. Add the paste and fry for a bit. Add the eggplants and continue frying for 2 mins. Add the bamboo shoots and the long beans and fry for 2-3 mins. You may need to add 2-3 tbsp of water to loosen the sauce at this point. Add the squid and the peppercorns. Take off the heat as soon as the squid curl.

Top with the basil leaves.

Serve at once with jasmine rice.

Steamed Fish with Fermented Black Beans, Ginger & Scallions

Many moons ago, when the CC was in school, the CC learnt this simple dish from his friend. We'd get together to make this because we needed to pool our money to afford the fish and this is not a dish that reheats at all. Make it, eat it, be done with it.

When described it has the barest of ingredients but it is simply bursting with flavor.

The salted preserved black beans (豆豉) are actually fermented and salted soy beans. They are intensely flavored with a salty umami taste (much more intense than soy sauce, say.)

Traditionally, this would be made with a whole fish which is stuffed with the ingredients and steamed. Additional slivered ginger, black beans and scallions would be scattered over the top while serving. A few drops of intense sesame oil completes the dish.

When the CC saw black sea bass at the farmer's market, he knew right away that he needed to make this dish again.

You need to use fish with the skin on. The skin has all the flavor. The CC never understood the idea behind removing the most flavorful part. As the much older Japanese mother of a friend once said, "Why do they remove the best part?"

Why indeed?

Ingredients

fillet of white fish (with skin)
1 tbsp preserved black beans
slivered ginger
slivered scallions

sesame oil

Recipe

Note 1: The recipe below has been adapted to fillets but you can always make it the traditional way. Stuff half the stuff inside the cavity and sprinkle half on top.

Note 2: Don't add salt. There's plenty already in the preserved black beans.

Note 3: You will need a skillet which has a cover.

Heat up some oil in a pan. When hot but not shimmering, place the fillet skin side down on it, Toss the ginger, scallions and black beans over it. Add four tbsp of water and cover the pan. Let the fish steam at medium-low heat until done.

Serve over rice with the other ingredients from the pan. Add a few drops of sesame oil to the fish, and more ginger and scallions if desired.

Sopa de Almejas (Clam Soup)

There is this wonderful Peruvian restaurant in Connecticut that the CC has been visiting for more than a decade. It makes a killer sopa de almejas.

Since the restaurant is a bit of a hike for the CC, he always ends up ordering the soup — rather than the other possibly amazing dishes — and he's never disappointed. It's served with some bread (at best, average) and some amazing homemade aji criollo.

However, it's the soup that really sings and the CC has been trying to reproduce it ever since.

At long last — it only took a decade — he's untangled the various strands and made it for himself, and it's exactly as killer.

There were several hidden problems that needed to be solved. One was that the soup came with this emulsified broth with a very deep taste. Inside it were placed four or five rather large clams. Finely chopped cilantro was sprinkled on the top. The broth had no solids but it had an intense flavor. There was a reasonable amount of oil in the broth like all restaurants. However, this turned out to be a red herring. There were more important things at play.

Some things were really obvious. There was a lot of tomato purée in the broth. There were the deep notes of black pepper. It was clear it was some kind of fish broth. It also had a very deep cilantro flavor that could not be coming from the tiny amount of stuff sprinkled on top.

The other clue was the price point on the menu. It was one of the cheapest items, and the serving was large enough for a very good lunch. Now, clams are rather cheap on the Eastern seaboard but they're not that cheap so that means the ingredients inside the broth had to be cheaper. (The CC considered the possibility that they were using commercial clam juice but the taste of the broth had a subtle fresh flavor so it didn't seem very likely.)

Other clues. The clams were served on the half-shell and were very juicy. They could not have been cooked with the broth, and they were too plump to have been sitting in there for too long.

Two other important clues.

The dish always took a little longer to serve than other dishes (when the CC went with friends) and the surprising one —  the broth was served piping hot. It was served almost at boiling point (close to 90-95°C.) When the broth cooled down, the soup didn't taste as good. Clearly, the temperature mattered greatly.

Peruvian cuisine is the ultimate mashup — besides the indigenous Incan origin, it's had Spanish, Italian, Chinese, West African and particularly Japanese influences.

It was clear that the broth had tons of umami but once again the price-point was critical. They may have been using MSG but it was being done with a light hand.

The critical insight is that this was a cheap restaurant surviving on very low margins. Nothing could be wasted. There were shrimp on the menu and they were clearly buying them whole. The broth was being made with the shrimp heads and the shells. They are the source of the resonant thumping flavor. Also, the broth clearly had onions and garlic and tons of black pepper and cilantro. However, after the broth being made, it was being filtered and solids pressed and tossed out. Then the clams were being shucked, and cooked in the broth, and whole thing brought to the table piping hot. They were also generous with salt.

Why did the temperature matter?

The CC is not completely sure but it seems plausible that the bitter notes of the cilantro and the pepper were dominating at lower temperatures. When hot, you just got the heady hit of the salt and umami from the broth and the tomatoes.

Sopa de Almejas

Note 1: The clams that the CC gets are the standard East Coast clams. The giant ones are easier to find up in Connecticut, Massachusetts & Maine. This doesn't matter as much. They were definitely using local stuff not Manila clams, etc.

Note 2: The salt in this recipe is really crucial. You need to add a teeny bit more than you think completely rational. The CC added salt to the boiling broth until it tasted "correct". It was a lot more than he expected. It will not be the same without.

Note 3: Unless you have shrimp heads and shells in your freezer, the clear substitute would be dried shrimp. You will also need some kombu unless you plan to add MSG. Not going to work otherwise.

Note 4: As ridiculous as this sounds, it's better with crusty bread that has been wrapped for about 6-8 hours in foil so that it goes just slightly limp from the exhalation of the moisture from the starch. The CC is perfectly aware that this is anal retentiveness^† of the highest order.

Note 5: The broth really needs to be at a boil. The CC is not kidding.

Ingredients

(serves 2)

1 dozen clams

2 tbsp oil
1 small onion (diced fine)
6-8 cloves of garlic (chopped)
4-6 tbsp tomato purée
1 piece kombu
1/4 cup dried shrimp
1/4 cup dried anchovies (if you have them)
1/3 cup diced cilantro (stems and all)
3 tbsp coarsely ground black pepper
4 cups water
salt

finely chopped cilantro leaves (to serve)

Recipe

First make the dashi.

Bring the water to the boil with the kombu. Right before the water boils, remove it and discard. If you don't do this, the broth will turn bitter. Toss in the shrimp and anchovies and let it boil for about 7-8 minutes. Skim the nasty froth that comes on top. Strain and keep the liquid. Discard the solids.

Heat up the oil. Fry the onions and the garlic until golden. Add the tomato purée and fry for a bit. Add the dashi, cilantro, salt and black pepper and bring to a rolling boil. Cook for about 6-7 minutes. Turn off the heat and let it steep for 10 minutes or so. Strain the broth pressing down on the solids to extract as much of the broth as necessary. Discard the solids.

(If you have two pots, the dashi can directly be strained into the second step. It will save you tons of time.)

Steam the clams with either the broth or some water. As they open, remove them and shuck off the half-shell. You can also just shuck them and store if you don't want to serve them with the half-shells.

Filter the clam broth with some paper towels. Clams are generally very gritty. Add this clam broth to the other broth.

Bring the broth to a rolling boil. Check for salt. You may need more.

Pour the broth over the clams. Add the cilantro on top. Serve at once with the crusty bread.

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^† This can't be entirely surprising for a recipe that was a decade in the making.

Dog Days of Summer

When it's crazy hot, you just need some "chilled Chinese". (Recipe in the link.)

Hiyashi Chūka (冷やし中華)

Watercress Soup

The CC has been obsessed by this soup both because of the taste and the color. It tastes like early summer and it's both delicate and hearty at the same time. It's very French in that you are making magic out of crap that grows by the side of a ditch.

Making it well, however, requires a certain level of skill.

Watercress is an aquatic weed that has an aggressive peppery flavor. It's been commercially cultivated forever so it's not hard to find.

The problem with greens is that overcooking turns them from a bright green color to a drab olive-green. The reason has to do with the science of chlorophyll which is tied up in cells. When the cellular structures are broken typically in an acidic environment, the magnesium in the chlorophyll gets displaced by hydrogen ions which changes the color.

The choices to preserve the color are pretty much all poor.

You could quickly blanch the vegetables and dunk them in an ice-bath which preserves the cells. You could cook the vegetables in a slightly alkaline environment but that has a tendency to turn them into mush and taste soapy. You could cook them for the barest amount of time while watching the clock and reheat them to the barest minimum.

You can easily see how the word "skill" would attach itself to these three choices.

Ingredients

2 bunches watercress
1 tbsp butter
1 large onion

1 potato

1/4 cup peas (frozen is fine)

3 cups water (read the notes below)

chives

salt

pepper

Recipe

Note 1: The CC prefers that the taste of the watercress be dominant. Broth is too aggressive. A dashi made with just kombu is ideal but water is preferred over most broths.

Note 2: The watercress leaves must be plucked. This is a tremendous pain in the ass because the plant is basically a weed and grows copiously in all directions so you will have to work hard to strip the leaves.

Note 3: If the CC may use the oxymoron that is "conventionally unorthodox", the peas would be it. They help with the nutrition and the color.

Heat the butter in a vessel. Toss in the chopped onions and sautée for a while. Add the potatoes and let them cook for a bit. Add the broth and let it come to a boil. Add the peas and let cook until the potatoes and peas are tender.

This is the critical step.

Bring the mixture to a boil. Toss in the watercress and turn off the heat.

Purée with an immersion blender or with a regular blender if you don't have one. You can pass the mixture through a sieve if you want a refined presentation or just leave as is.

If you need to reheat, make sure you do at the barest of temperatures just up to the serving point.

Garnish with chives. Serve at once.

Weekend Menu

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Japanese meal 

Nori sumashijiru (Clear nori soup)
Tuna sashimi (marinated in soy and mirin)
Mugi gohan (Barley rice)
Asparagus & shiitake ohitashi
Radishes "massaged" with sea salt

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Thai Oyster Omelette (Hoi Tod - หอยทอด)

People who head to Bangkok would probably be surprised that pad thai is not the most popular street food. It's something called hoi tod.

This is a crispy oyster omelette that is irresistible because it tickles all the different parts of your food longings. There is the super crispy, slightly soft, slithery continuum between the crisp edges, the eggs and the oysters. The oysters, eggs and fish sauce add an absurd umami. The scallions, garlic and cilantro are just classical tastes and the crispy bean sprouts add textural contrast once for added measure.

The recipe is clearly not Thai. It seems to be a Chinese idea ("scallion pancakes") adapted to Thai tastes. However, it's vastly more seductive than pad thai.

Hoi (หอย) refers to any shellfish really. You could use mussels but the one thing that is absolutely necessary is that you shuck them and keep them raw. This is a bigger pain for mussels than oysters (provided you know how to shuck them safely and cleanly.)

The hardest part about this recipe is that you don't have a flat iron surface with a roaring fire underneath. An iron skillet or a non-stick pan are going to come closest provided you pre-heat them and really get them going.

Remember this is street food so you'll have to keep everything ready ("mise-en-place") so that it can go in at high speed. This recipe is really going to test your classical French cooking skills even though it's so easy that it's the most popular street dish in Bangkok.

The recipe is adapted from David Thompson's book but it's so popular that there are tons of recipes all over the web. Clearly, this is a much-loved item.

David Thompson who's probably the leading authority in the world on Thai cooking calls for a mixture of mung bean flour and rice flour but it's hard to find the former. The latter works excellently. However, if you have access to an Indian grocery and bung in some urad flour, it's going to achieve the same result. The goal is crisp and it really resembles more than anything a dosa except it's not fermented and a second layer of eggs is going on top.

Coherence in the French manner of a "perfect" omelette is simply not necessary. Even though you can rather trivially make it into a perfect flipped omelette, such precision for a street dish is rather besides the point. Don't sweat this part. It's far more important that you cook it individually and serve it as quickly as possible.

The dish originated as a fast snack at seaside towns in Thailand before migrating to the rest of the country. So did Sriracha. They are match made in culinary heaven.

The CC's friend noted that while the oysters added a perfect counterpoint, you could easily envision the dish with something that supplied the umami like shiitake mushrooms and the CC would concur. It would also work with something like snails. (This heresy is probably going to make the Thai internet explode with outrage but that's par for the course for a much loved dish.)

There is a savage irony to the fact that notes for a simple street dish are so copious but what can the CC do? It's a choice between an expensive airplane ticket to Thailand or cheap local oysters and making it himself.

That's street food. You need the culture otherwise you are stuck working hard to achieve something that's both dirt-cheap and fast.

Whither, progress?

Ingredients

(per serving)

1/4 cup rice flour
1/2 tsp salt
cold water

3 oysters (shucked)

2 tbsp peanut oil

2 eggs
1 tbsp fish sauce (nahm pla)
1 red chilli sliced fine (prik kee noo)
1 tbsp sugar
1 scallion - both white and green - sliced really fine
white pepper

2 sprigs cilantro (minced)

bean sprouts

1/2 tbsp minced garlic

Notes

[1] The Thai overwhelming prefer "white pepper" over "black pepper" for aesthetic reasons. They don't like the black flecks. Sorry but this is one of those details that the CC is simply not going to sweat. Certainly not at brunch.

[2] The traditional "choice" is between "crispy" and "extra crispy". This is trivial to achieve by increasing the proportion of rice/lentil batter and bunging it in at intervals. (Just read below the understand the process.)

[3] The oysters will have plenty of oyster liquor. Separate it, filter it -- East Coast oysters have plenty of grit -- and add it to the egg batter.

Recipe

First, make the rice flour batter by mixing the rice flour, salt and cold water. The cold water will make it go into suspension faster. It should be slightly thin, slightly salty and when tasted after 10 minutes, not taste like flour. Add some more water otherwise.

Mix the eggs, fish sauce, sugar, chilis, scallions, 1 tbsp of the minced cilantro, and white pepper as a batter in a separate bowl. You won't need salt since the fish sauce is plenty salty.

Pre-heat your skillet. It should be as hot as possible.

Add a tbsp of peanut oil. When hot, ladle the rice batter all around it. It will bubble furiously and start getting crispy right away. Let it cook for a minute or so and gently loosen the edges. Cut into four pieces and push them towards the edges of the skillet.

Add the other tbsp of the oil in the center. Add the minced garlic and let it color a bit. Add the oysters in the center and let them cook for 30 seconds.

Pour the egg batter, gently all over the pan, adding a little bit over the crispier rice batter bits so that it makes it into an omelette. Let it cook. You can flip it if you like but not necessary. The CC prefers that the outside be crisp and the inside soft.

Serve over a bed of bean sprouts with the extra minced cilantro on top. Sriracha on the side.

Japanese Five-Grain Rice (五穀米)

Every country has a healthier version of its staples in the modern world. This is a recipe that you are unlikely to find in a standard Japanese cookbook.

The number "five" (go - 五) has a special significance in Japanese cooking. Traditional Japanese cuisine — washoku (和食) — has long been characterized by the principles of  "five colors, five tastes, five ways, five senses, five outlooks".

It's really a shorthand for how to make meals more nutritious and serves as an organizing principle for daily meals. (It sounds hard but the CC assures you that it's shockingly easy in practice.)

The five grains mentioned obviously feature rice but there are other grains from the wheat family. They add both texture and nutrition.

The recipe below features -- white rice, brown rice, black rice, barley (mugi) and oats but in the modern day, you'll see everything from Job's tears (hato mugi) to farro to quinoa.

The general principles stand though. You want rice and you want a complementary set of grains for nutrition and texture.

The black rice turns everything purple and the dish is visually arresting. It also has a nutritionally complete set of amino acids and with the addition of the sesame provides a complete meal (even though that's not how it would be served.)

Lest this sound some like some "austere" dish from the land of peace, love and granola, the CC will tell you that you will be chowing this dish down faster than you can say "roast pork".

It's herushi (= healthy), it's visually appealing, it's delicious, it's nutritious, and it's addictive!

It's a modern-day classic of Japanese cooking.

Ingredients

1/2 cup white rice
1/4 cup brown rice
1/4 cup black rice
1/4 cup barley
1/4 cup rolled oats

2 1/2 cups dashi

1 tbsp sesame seeds
salt

Notes

[1] The proportions are 2:1:1:1:1 with the white rice being 2. That adds up to 6 units so you want about 10 units of the dashi. You can always add more water later.

[2] The various soaking times are different because the stuff is cooked together. If you don't follow this, the softer stuff will be mush while the harder grains have barely softened.

[3] The sesame seeds act as a white counterpoint to the purple. They are also necessary for nutritional reasons. The fat is needed for the absorption of the amino acids. The CC also sometimes sprinkles gomashio (= sesame and salt roasted and powdered into a fine white powder.)

[4] The purpose of letting the dish to sit for a few minutes afterwards is that the starches bind the dish together. It makes it easier to eat with chopsticks. If you're not a chopsticks person, ignore this point. Also, this dish is made for bento boxes. It's awesome at room temperature.

[5] The dish is a game of texture. It's chewy and each bite is different because of all the various grains. This is one of the reasons it's "addictive".

Recipe

Soak the black rice in a bowl for at least 4 hours.

Soak the brown rice in a bowl for at least 2 hours.

Soak the barley in a bowl for at least 2 hours.

Wash the white rice in copious water until it runs clear. Wash the oats too. Let them drain together in a colander. (This level of "soaking" is sufficient to get the right texture. You don't want them too soft.)

Drain the water from the other three components and mix together.

Combine the five grains, the dashi with some salt and bring it to a boil. Let it cook in an open pot till the liquid has been absorbed, roughly 10-12 minutes. Check that the grains are cooked. If not, add some water and let cook further. They should still have a chewy bite (= al dente).

Turn off the heat and let it sit for 4-5 minutes.

Meanwhile, lightly roast the sesame seeds in a skillet till they are golden. Set aside.

Sprinkle the rice with the sesame seeds and serve.

Controlling Texture

One of the biggest blunders in the CC's life is not realizing that for certain dishes, if you wish to control the texture precisely, you must soak ingredients for variable amounts before you cook them together.

DOH!!!

Make that:

Double-DOH!!!

The CC certainly knew the general principle but failed to apply it in specific cases mostly in the case of rice where the CC is not really in his natural element. This is just sad and this public shaming is his mea culpa.

To put a positive spin on it, we're always learning and will continue to do so - hopefully! - till the day we die.

What's the recipe? Oh there's one but the CC hasn't quite nailed it perfectly yet so you'll just have to wait. Gotta learn a few tricks from the marketing guys. Keep 'em waiting.

In the interim, may all your food have awesome texture!

An Apology to Mexico

Every once in a while the CC needs to get off his high horse. It's never a particularly pleasant process but honesty and scientific accuracy demands that one do so.

The claim has been made that Mexican dried shrimp were the "best" and the CC argued that best is, at best, subjective. Here's the original recipe where he argued that it doesn't matter.

The CC takes it back. It does matter.

The CC walked past a sign at a known store which said "Tenemos camaron seco (+ pescado seco)" and the CC instinctively knew what that meant. Awesome stuff with, at best, a quasi-legal status.

Rocking!!!

So he walked in and asked for it. It was lunch hour and the Mexicans just had a conniption about the
CC asking for it. Some crap was offered and the CC just said, "No."

Common sense prevailed and a bag was produced.  After about two minutes, the salesmanship element kicked in and a second bag was pushed onto the CC at a "discount."

The CC recognizes that the price was more than a touch speculative but that's the way the commercial markets work. It's not the end of the world.

The excellence comes from a singular point. It's just shrimp and salt dried in the sun. Nothing else.

Well, these babies kick ass and the Chinese stuff is crap. This is the real deal and CC will bow down to true excellence when he sees it.

Now the CC is one with the sign.

Tenemos camaron seco -- We have dried shrimp!

Getting Medieval on the World's Tastes

The format of medieval cuisine has waned over the centuries but if you squint hard enough, you can still see its antecedents reflected in modern food.

Medieval cuisine — at least in the European sense — was characterized by its use of exotic spices and ingredients. Meat was expensive with game being even more so. There's heavy use of black pepper, saffron, cardamom and ginger and a reliance on a sweet-sour taste. Nuts make their way into most dishes either in the native form or as a thickener – almond milk is practically a cliché.

Most cooking was hard not just from the point of the expense of ingredients and firewood but labor as well. There were no modern conveniences. Everything was done by hand. When we talk about "medieval cuisine", we end up inevitably talking about the nobility because that's what's documented and they're the only ones who could afford to do so.

The modern conception finds some of these dishes to be strange. Meat cooked in sugar syrup or honey is relatively alien to the modern palate – even though it tastes terrific. Our tongues are still the same but our trained response seems to be a little off-center. (You can still see it in dishes like pork chops with apple sauce except the sauce is now served separately.)

Even the format of the meal is a little strange. The stomach needed to be "opened" with an apéritif (literally from Latin: aperire - "to open"), then followed by vegetables, then "heavy meats", then "closed" with aged cheese and a digestif.

If you recognize the above as the slightly modified format of a classic French meal then you will understand the medieval roots of modern eating. (The placement of the salad has been moved around a few times by the French and Italians – and the Americans – but that's fodder for another post.)

Medieval cuisine in its traditional sense but with New World enhancements is most clearly seen today in Persian and Indian cooking. Indian is not that surprising because most spices originally came from India and classical Indian cooking borrows heavily from the Persian format so they are joined at the hip. In fact, most cooking styles borrow heavily from the Persian format given that they were the original Empire spread over vast swathes of modern-day Asia, Africa and Europe. You can see the same formats spread with the medieval Arabic Empire over Northern Africa into Spain and all the way to Sicily.

The point is that these cooking styles have still maintained their "medieval nature" — there's heavy use of spices, saffron, black pepper, ginger, nuts, and a marked preference for sweet-sour tastes.

A slight detour must be made at this point about why spices lost their use in Europe as opposed to modern-day Iran and India where they are still as popular as they were a millenia ago.

Most spices were imported from India to imperial Europe. The spices were a province of the nobility and both Constantinople and Venice were founded on the basis of taxation of the spice trade. In modern economic terms, the middlemen made the spices expensive. This was the whole basis of trying to find a new sea route to India – disintermediation – a way to bypass the taxation. Once these routes were found, and the New World accidentally discovered, the price of spices went down precipitously because of the lack of taxation and the fact that alternatives were found to grow spices in the newly discovered Hispaniola (modern-day Haiti and Dominican Republic), various islands in Indonesia, etc.

After that we come to a cliché of human nature. Anything that the hoi-polloi discovers is anathema to the upper-classes just like the old money on Fifth Ave. would disdain the Brooklyn hipsters. And so, spices fell out of favor with the upper-classes in Europe in favor of a "purer cleaner taste" — reverse snobbery at its very finest.

The critical point is that these ideas never did fall out of favor in the places where the spices were grown where the distinction between "expensive" v/s "cheap" simply didn't exist. Spices were always cheap across the growing areas and the swathe populated by traders traversing routes that were not subject to taxation. Places like Sicily are more like the lands that "time forgot" — they had no strategic value and they kept the formats even though their neighbors did not.

This is what explains meats cooked in cashewnut milk with heavy spices in classical Awadhi cuisine even though the cashews are New World – they would've been almonds originally — or the love of almond granita in Sicily. Sicilian dishes like sardines cooked in a sweet-sour sauce or the very Persian "Jeweled Rice" (javaher polow) are all modern-day embodiments of medieval cooking.

The past bleeds into the present — and in a very aggressive format. It's just hard to see until you squint just right.

Petrified Bacon

The title is a reference to an absolutely brilliant piece by the sculptor Isamu Noguchi and part of a series of "petrified" works which also feature petrified rye bread, cheese, sugar and ice cream!

The reference, of course, is to the famous meat-shaped stone (肉形石) in the collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei.

While the CC understands the need not to touch art, never before has he seen sculpture which has such an overwhelming tactile quality. You just want to reach out and touch it. It positively screams for it.

What's clear is the artist's unerring eye in identifying natural rock samples and then sculpting them minimally to perfection.

Roasted Marrow Bones with Parsley Salad

The CC has been craving to make this recipe ever since he ate it at a restaurant a few years ago. It took a while to source the marrow bones and a little longer for the weather to get cold enough to make it.

The recipe is based on one that Fergus Henderson re-popularized. It's a complete classic and deserves to be so. It's also completely straightforward and will make your cooking seem fancier than it is if you serve it at a dinner party. (If you scarf it down by yourself, which you very well might, this blog is a judgment-free zone.)

The killer step is the combination of the French way of serving (with fleur de sel) and the English way of serving (with a tart parsley salad) both on toasted crusty bread. The English and the French ways are fairly related since La Manche is not very wide and the Norman Invasion is now more than a millenium old.

Ingredients

(serves 4)

Marrow Bones

8 marrow bones

Parsley Salad

3 cups parsley leaves
1 large shallot (sliced into paper-thin quarter-rings)
2 tbsp salt-preserved capers (de-salted, chopped)

1 tbsp champagne vinegar
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp mustard

black pepper (lots!)

fleur de sel (to serve)
toasted crusty bread (4-6 per serving)

Notes

[1] It's very rich so a little goes a long way. Two bones each per serving works very well although three each with some extra toast would make a nutritious complete meal.

[2] The salad is best assembled at the last minute and it needs to be tarter than the usual salad so go with a 1:2 ratio of vinegar to olive oil rather than the traditional 1:3.

[3] The capers need to be preserved in salt not vinegar.

[4] The tiniest dab of mustard actually gives a faint background taste that is really great.

[5] The CC rebelled against the original recipe which finely dices the shallots. Extremely fine quarter-rings give it a much more refined texture which contrasts the salad against the rich creamy marrow.

[6] The first step in the recipe is entirely optional. It's very chef-y and it is aesthetic in nature not functional. Skip it if necessary.

[7] The timing of this recipe crucially depends on whether you start with thawed bones prepped or frozen bones. The times and the size of the bones matter greatly. Chez CC, we serve as they get ready, the sizzling bones are always coming out on time. Sharing works wonders.

Recipe

If you are going to prep the bones, dump them with ice into a bowl with two tablespoons of salt and cover with cold water. Every three hours, drain the water which will be bloody and repeat the process. Four times and you will have immaculate white bones and there will be no more blood in the water. This step is really aesthetic. You can roast the frozen bones directly. The blood will turn black when roasted. (Chefs are control-freaks about precision so this step really helps because the bones are now thawed and can be controlled precisely.)

Preheat the oven to 450°F.

Make the toast and set aside. Slice a baguette on the bias and let it toast in the oven. Depending on the slice size, it should be 4-5 minutes.

Clean the bones and make sure they are absolutely dry. If they are short you can put them vertically, with the flat sized down. Otherwise lay them horizontally. Don't sweat this.

Roast in the oven for 25 minutes. It will take 45 minutes if they are frozen. The marrow will be quivering like jelly and slightly puffy when it's done.

Meanwhile, assemble the parsley salad. Make the vinaigrette. Toss the salad.

Serve the roasted marrow bones with the parsley salad, toast and fleur de sel on the side. Eating is a matter of topping the toast with whatever combination your heart desires.

Scotch Woodcock

The CC has long maintained that if one wants to have an appreciation for English food, one must look to the period before the Great War (World War I) which destroyed the aristocracy.

Here's a very old recipe with a strange name. However, it's perfectly at ease today in the age of umami even if the 19th century lords wouldn't have heard of the word or the concept.

The recipe is truly spectacular at many many different levels. It's umami-laden which makes it irresistible; it's nutritious and attractive to look it, it has a variety of textures that makes eating it a sheer delight and it's breakfast!

Like all aristocratic recipes, it's a little bit time-consuming (although not as much as you think thanks to modern-day devices and conveniences.)

What is it?

It's excellent bread (or sometimes toast) that's lavishly spread with anchovy butter on which are piled soft scrambled eggs (made with cream) on which are piled more anchovies and assorted herbs.

It's relatively free-form when it comes to the herbs. English cooking was fairly easy-going with the herbs even back in the day. It could be chives or parsley or even salted capers. Seasonality and all that.

What really makes the clock tick, as they say, is the anchovies. The umami is the rock star and for that you must make the anchovy butter but it's straightforward with a mortar and pestle and a refrigerator — spare some pity for the poor sod that had to churn the mixture with ice to get it "to set" before refrigeration.

The CC's favorite part is that the anchovy butter is called "Gentleman's Relish". Now there's a term the CC could get behind.

Ingredients

Anchovy Butter

4 anchovies
8 tbsp butter

Scrambled Eggs (per serving)

2 eggs
2 tbsp cream
salt
pepper

Misc (per serving)

1 slice rye bread
1 anchovy (neatly separated into two fillets)
minced herbs (parsley OR chives OR capers)

Recipe

Note: This recipe is quite salty from the anchovies. Don't add too much salt in the eggs.

Anchovy Butter

First, make the butter. This is best done ahead of time. Pull the butter out of the fridge and let it soften. Fillet the anchovies, wash to get rid of the extra salt and pound to a paste. When the butter is softened, whip it with a fork till soft (called: "creaming the butter") and fold the anchovy paste in to make a compound butter.

You can take this and make a torchon with some plastic wrap if you want to get fancy, or just put it in a ramekin, cover it with some wrap and place it in the fridge.

This is best done ahead of time. This stuff lasts a long time even though the CC will personally assure you that you will plow through it in no time.

Scrambled Eggs

For the scrambled eggs, mix the eggs with the cream, salt and pepper. Scramble them over high heat so that the curds are relatively large and dry. (This is in distinct difference to the French-style of scrambling eggs which is over low heat where the eggs are soft and creamy and have almost no curds.)

Set aside.

Assembly

Spread anchovy butter over the bread. Pile some of the scrambled eggs on top of it. Put two of the half-anchovy fillets in an X over them. Sprinkle with the herbs and serve.

The Innocence of Lamb's Lettuce & Parsley

It used be a well-known fact that herbs have "other" properties than just the ability to enhance and garnish food.

Much of this information is narrated in folk songs and folk tales and has made its way down to us in extraordinarily encoded form. Decoding this is, of course, the raison d'être of an academic.

Perhaps you have heard of a classic tale called Rapunzel?

The Brothers Grimm are responsible for its transmission to us. There are two version of their tales — one in 1814 and a revised and annotated version in 1857. As the brothers grew older, they systematically bowdlerized the tales they had collected themselves, stripping them of their sexual content and violence. The earlier versions are unambiguously more interesting.

Let's recap the tale of Rapunzel — a pregnant woman craves "rapunzel" and goes into the neighboring garden to get it. When caught, she agrees to give over the child to the witch. The witch imprisons the female child in a tower. One day, a prince hears her singing and climbs into the tower using her hair. The witch finds out, and she pushes the prince off the tower blinding him. Love prevails and the prince's vision is restored.

Rapunzel is a weed also known as lamb's lettuce. This is a total substitution on the part of the Brothers Grimm and the association with lamb and "innocence" should be noted. Even they weren't above keeping some of the resonance in the story even though it gives it a totally different feel.

The original story is called Persinette and "persil" is French for parsley. Persinette could loosely be translated as "Little Miss Parsley".

The pregnant woman was craving parsley. Most adult readers here would know that pregnant women don't really crave green herbs. Salt, sugar, sour stuff, sure but herbs?

The tale is coded.

She wanted the parsley to concoct a brew because parsley is an abortifacient. The child is not wanted. The "witch" is a woman with a garden who knows the properties of herbs and grows them. Her taking the child away could easily be seen as an act of generosity not of cruelty.

Additionally, the Grimm Brothers change another key component of the tale. In the classic tale, the witch finds out the existence of the prince because she is heavier than the prince. However, the original tale has Persinette ask the witch why her dress doesn't fit any more and feels tighter and tighter.

She's pregnant and Persinette and the Prince have been doing plenty of the ol' in-an'-out rumpy-pumpy.

Now the tale comes full circle. Like mother, like daughter.

Note that the girl is innocent before she is born and still innocent in the sense that she has no clue about sex. This only makes sense in a deeply Christian world of "original sin" as would be typical of an European folk tale.

Also note that the witch's motivations make more sense in the original version. You could easily write a version from her point of view making her the heroine not the villainess.

The tale has so much more resonance when seen in the correct light.

To bring a more modern feeling to the same idea, have you heard of the Simon & Garfunkel's classic "Scarborough Fair"? The song is an old English folk song and the lyrics are coded.

The opening lyrics go as:

Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.
Remember me to one who lives there.
She once was a true love of mine.

What on earth are parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme doing there?

"Going to Scarborough Fair" refers to the act of "making the beast with two backs". Bumping uglies, hooking up, doing the dirty in modern parlance.

A concoction made of parsley, rosemary, sage and thyme was a well-known abortifacient. The parsley, in particular as pointed above, is an important component.

The song was written in 1966 when abortion was illegal in the US. It's not clear whether Simon & Garfunkel knew but it seems extraordinarily hard to believe that two talented intelligent men didn't know what they were singing even if their audience was clueless.

A cursory search on the web suggests these ideas are still well-known and prevalent in countries that ban abortion. Parsley is far more easily available that RU-486. Less effective perhaps but definitely easier to find.

The deeper one penetrates into the art of cooking, the more one is confronted with the more elemental and universal aspects of humanity.

Huevos Rotos

After the insane tapas party, the CC needed to make something basic and elemental. He did some searching and, lo and behold, he had all the ingredients necessary for a nutritious and tasty breakfast.

This is not a "fast" dish. However, you don't need to do much. Set the timer and get away.

Best eggs ever. They combine the magic of "home fries" and poached eggs in one easy dish.

You need to serve them with jamon serrano, of course.

Ingredients

(serves 2)

1 large onion (chopped coarsely)
1 green pepper (chopped into matchsticks)
3 fingerling potatoes (chopped into thin rounds)
4 cloves garlic (minced fine)

4 eggs

1/4 cup parsley
1 tsp paprika (agridolce)

olive oil
salt
pepper

Recipe

You need a frying pan that has a lid.

Heat up some olive oil in a pan. When it shimmers, toss in the onion and the garlic. Fry for a bit. Add the peppers and let them fry for a bit. Add the potatoes, turn the heat down to the lowest possible setting and let them cook. Add the paprika, salt and pepper. Let the potatoes cook for at least 25 minutes. Add the parsley and let cook for an additional 5 minutes. (Total of 30 minutes.)

Keep stirring while the potatoes cook. Every 10 minutes is sufficient. No need to break them up.

You will be able to smell the potatoes being done. It's unmistakable.

Spread the mixture evenly over the pan. Crack the four eggs in the four corners. Cover the pan and let cook for 4 minutes. You may need an extra minute but take the pan off the heat once the whites are set.

Serve the poached eggs - two per person with the potatoes below. The yolk will be barely set but that's perfect when you crack it and it coats the potatoes. Enjoy with the jamon in tow.

The Power of Positive Drinking

After all this time, the CC decided to throw a serious tapas party.

The goal is drinking but the little nibbles do help the drinks go down. There was amontillado (of course!), cava and assorted Spanish wines. The stars are the little tidbits naturally.

The idea was to have a Spanish party but with nods to the Japanese izakaya tradition (same idea, different country!) and some inflections to the CC's heritage.

Since it's summer and the produce is mind-blowingly amazing, the CC kept it local so the ideas are inspired by analogous tapas dishes that the CC has sampled rather than recreating them literally.

Experienced readers (and eaters) should be able to recognize the thematic patterns of the five sections below.

---

Banderillas (assorted)
Salted Almonds
Pickled Cauliflower
Sautéed Shishito Peppers
♦
Zucchini Carpaccio w/ Arbequina olive oil & pine nuts
Ensalada de "Cristianos y Moros"
(White & Black Bean Salad)
Karasumi with chives (Bottarga) ♦ Zebra tomatoes w/ fior di sale
Gazpacho
Pan con tomate (with Jamon Iberico)
♦
Chickpeas & Spinach Clams in Green Sauce Patatas Bravas
♦
Bitter Orange & Olive Oil Cake

---

Israeli White Bean Soup

There's an Israeli hole-in-the-wall restaurant that the CC has patronized for more than a decade now.

The owner is a curmudgeon who knows exactly how amazing his food is.

(For US readers: think Soup Nazi from Seinfeld and yes! the CC is perfectly aware of the idiocy and offensiveness of using the term "Israeli Nazi" but that is the only characterization that fits.)

Only two things soften him up — an appreciation for his cooking, and cute chicks, and the latter sometimes doesn't cut any mustard. He once tossed out out two clueless cute giggling girls. Then he turned to the CC and said, "They don't know anything about food."

The CC has always been on the good side but it took time and patience to become an insider. One fine day, the maestro said in a mocking and ironic way, "So you like my soup, eh?"

And that was that. The gates of paradise had been thrown open.

A decade later (yes! it's a slow burn), the CC asked him why his soup was so good and the answer was as blunt as the man, "Everyone knows the recipe. It takes time, and people don't want to spend the time."

The ingredients are humble, the technique is straightforward and there's nothing difficult about it.

People just don't want to take the time.

Ingredients

1 cup white beans

1 large red onion (diced fine)
4 cloves garlic (diced fine)

4 tbsp tomato paste
8 tomatoes (passed through a food mill)

4 tbsp olive oil

salt
pepper (lots!)

Recipe

Note 1: You can't hurry this recipe up. Don't even try. In fact, this is ideal for a slow cooker kind of situation except that since it involves two steps, it doesn't fit the mold of the slow cooker recipes.

Note 2: For most of the recipe, you are doing nothing. It's eminently week-day friendly. Set the timer and forget about it.

Note 3: It is very important to use fresh tomatoes. If you don't have any double down on the tomato paste. Do not use canned tomatoes. The final color of the soup should be a pale orange not a deep red characteristic of tomatoes. The beans are the star not the tomatoes.

Note 4: You may be tempted to add herbs — the dish is very Mediterranean and Israel is part of that Mediterranean culture but be judicious. Less is more here.

Heat up the olive oil in a pot. When it shimmers, add the onions and garlic. Let them cook at a medium heat until they are translucent. Do not let them caramelize. You want the color to be this sublimely clear white.

Add the beans and stir them around. Add 3 cups of water, salt and black pepper. Turn the heat down to the lowest possible setting. Let them cook for an hour. Sample to see if the beans are barely done.

When they still not cooked, add the tomato paste and the tomatoes. Cook for another 20 minutes. The acid in the tomatoes will slow down the cooking of the beans.

Check again that the beans are done. More salt and pepper if necessary. Add more water if necessary. It's a soup after all.

Serve with some pita.

Life's Ceviche, and Then You Die!

The empire of raw fish eating encompasses many realms but the basic idea is very clear. The freshness of the fish is paramount.

Even in older times, people were intuitively aware of the need to "sterilize" the surface of the flesh. They may not have not known about bacteria and clean workspaces but they had empirically figured out that the surfaces of the fish get contaminated quickly in a hot climate.

The solution was a quick bath of the fish in an acidic medium — lime, lemon or calamansi juice, various vinegars, etc.

Different cultures produced variants that lie along a spectrum —  sashimi and sushi (Japanese), kinilaw (Filipino) and ceviche (South America and then transmitted further via the Spanish Empire.)

They range between raw and "cooked" via acid. There's also some form in pickling in the mix.

Sashimi for all its vaunted "heritage" is only possible thanks to modern-day fish processing. It's only modern freezers that allow fish to be consumed safely.

Sushi is an older idea where fish were placed with vinegared rice and allowed to partially ferment to develop intense umami flavors. This older style of sushi is seldom found any more. In fact, even slightly recent forms of sushi (Edo-sushi) are rarely found today. The modern-style involves raw fish placed over mildly vinegared rice. (A full treatment of all the sushi styles would take up a book not a blog post!)

Ceviche is widely known these days. Raw fish is mixed with lime juice, spices, peppers, cilantro and sometimes all kinds of incongruous ingredients (avocado?) — this idea from South America spread across the globe with the Spanish Empire. The idea is that the intense acid "cooks" the muscles of the fish. It's easy to prepare to keeps easy with modern refrigeration. No wonder it's a hit at restaurants since it can be made ahead of time.

Kinilaw (or kilawin sometimes) is an ancient style of  Filipino cooking. Even though it's tempting to assume that the idea came with the Spanish Empire, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests it was an original ancient indigenous idea that the Spaniards encountered and recognized as being analogous to something they already knew.

In fact, for an ancient idea, kinilaw comes closest to the modern-day ideal of sashimi. The fish are bathed in an intensely acidic broth but they are consumed right away within seconds. Kinilaw connoisseurs can feel the toughening of the fish fibers as the minutes tick away.

It's served with rice. Rice is everywhere in the Philippines even for breakfast! The CC's passion for food has limits. More rice? Again?!? SIGH.

There are also added vegetables — radishes are classic but the CC bets that halved summer cherry tomatoes would be killer too from the umami. There is also lato but you can't find that outside the Philippines. SIGH.

As would the dried anchovies known as dilis in the Philippines although the idea of pairing dried and fresh fish would be looked upon as total heresy. The same idea with dried fish is a "separate" dish. SIGH.

A word about calamansi — these intensely flavored citrus limes the size of a small marble are unique. If you can't find them, the next best bet are the yuzu you find in the Japanese markets. If you can't find those, use a mixture of orange and lime juice but you will not reproduce the intensity and uniqueness of calamansi.

Kilawin is also made with cooked pork and goat. It's a pretty general idea and the general etymological difference between kilawin and kinilaw seems to be whether it's cooked meat or fresh fish. (This is a bit unresearched and sorta folksy, and the CC might be wrong.)

Given the sashimi nature of the dish, if you want great kinilaw, you must make it yourself. There is no other choice. At the CC's farmers' market, there is a local fisherman supplying two kinds of sashimi-grade seafood — tuna and scallops. Hence, the CC makes tuna and scallop kinilaw since that is what is possible outside of the absurdly magnificent "wet markets" of the Philippines.

Ingredients

1 shallot (diced fine)
1" ginger (cut into fine slivers)
2 garlic cloves (diced fine)
2 Thai bird-eye chillies (diced into very thin rounds — add more for spice)

1/2 cup coconut vinegar
6-8 calamansi (squeezed fresh)

salt (read below)
fresh black pepper

2 red radishes (cut into thin half-moons)

1/2 lb sashimi-grade tuna (diced)
6 scallops (cut into 4 half-moons each)

Recipe

Mix all the ingredients except the fish together. Taste. It should have an intensely sour taste but it should also be "rounded". This is hard to explain but easy to taste. You typically won't need salt but you might need a pinch. It should sit together for at least 30 minutes for the flavors to "blend".

Store the mixture and the diced fish in the fridge separately. Mix right before serving.

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. The clock is ticking. Eat right away if you want magic.