World-renowned chef David Chang has plenty of experience cooking on camera — and that’s why he knows that 99% of what you see at home is a lie. Now he’s ready to show the world how a glorious, professionally prepared meal actually gets pulled off, without the assistance of swap-outs, food stylists, clean-up crews, and well-timed camera cuts to make it all look seamless.
Dinner Time Live with David Chang airs weekly every Tuesday at 4 p.m. PST, offering audiences the chance to observe a VIP cooking experience as it unfolds in real time — and all the mishaps, problem-solving, and cocktail-fueled conversations that go along with it. Below, Chang shares the recipes and ideas from the live show in his own words with Tudum — feel free to put your own spin on things as you cook. (But definitely don’t forget about dessert.)
People always ask who my favorite guests are, or what makes a good guest for Dinner Time Live, and the truth is, the best guests are the ones who really like to eat. Doesn’t matter what their specific tastes are, so long as they’re here to eat and have a good time. I think Saweetie and Blake Anderson fit the bill perfectly. Saweetie is a flavor maverick, who says she dreams of different combinations, like ramen seasoning packets with oysters or hot Cheetos on pizza. She loves to mix high and low, just like I do, so this menu was fun to come up with. There’s instant ramen, frozen pizza, and toaster pastries, a spicy-tingly seafood boil, oysters, and a sandwich I’m calling The Mindflayer in honor of Stranger Things.
Note that this menu contains no pork to accommodate our guests’ dietary preferences. If you prefer pork bacon to turkey, of course you should use it.
“Saweetie loves Boiling Crab, so I decided to make a version of a seafood boil crossed with the flavors of Sichuan hot pot. Start by getting the biggest pot or Dutch oven you have. Set it over high heat and coat with neutral oil. Toss in a big handful of roughly chopped garlic, and a sliced onion. Sweat the aromatics, then add a handful of dried or fresh chilies, according to your spice preference. I like habanero for its nice round heat, and Thai bird chilies for their sharp spice. Chiles de arbol have really nice warm heat too. Along with the chilies, you need a big fistful of Sichuan peppercorns to balance the spice with numbing. Add a single star anise, along with 3 big spoonfuls of chicken bouillon paste or powder, ¼ cup doubanjiang, a few big oily spoonfuls of Momofuku Chili Crunch, and a dozen turns of white pepper. If you happen to have access to pickled mustard greens, toss some in as well. Add a couple smoked turkey necks and 2 or 3 links of chicken andouille that you’ve cut into big chunks, cover with a couple quarts of water, and bring to a simmer. Add a squeeze of agave to round things out, then adjust for salt, spice, sweetness, and umami (MSG). Simmer for a few minutes. This is the beginning of your very potent seafood boil, as well as your hot pot broth.
Add a handful of whole red potatoes and hunks of corn on the cob, along with 4 or 5 chicken legs, and simmer until everything is tender.
Now, in a separate pot, melt a stick and a half of butter, and add a few clusters of snow crab legs and a big handful of shell-on shrimp (or whatever nice shellfish you have access to.) Strain a few cups of the broth and add to the pot. Stir, cover, and steam until the shellfish is cooked through. Transfer everything to a large turkey-roasting bag, along with the potatoes, sausages, and corn from the big pot. Tie the bag closed and let sit for 10 minutes, or until you’re ready to serve.
Reserve the rest of the broth, along with the aromatics for hot pot.”
“When I heard that Saweetie likes to put ramen seasoning on her oysters, for some reason my mind went to Oysters Rockefeller. Classically, Oysters Rockefeller involve topping oysters with spinach, Parmesan, butter, and breadcrumbs before baking them. Instead of breadcrumbs and Parmesan, I chose to pulverize a packet of instant ramen (along with the seasoning packet). It might sound weird, but if you think about it, it makes perfect sense. The noodles are going to provide the same starchy crunch, and the seasoning packets are full of MSG, which stands in for the Parmesan.
Render some thinly sliced turkey (or pork) bacon, then add half a diced onion and a stick of butter. Sweat, then turn off the heat. Add a half cup of chopped, frozen spinach. Separately, add a packet of instant ramen, along with any dried seasoning packets, to a blender and pulverize. (Dump any little packets of dehydrated vegetables in with the bacon and onions.) Add the pulverized ramen mix, and stir to combine into a chunky-sandy mixture.
Shuck fresh oysters, and top generously with the ramen mixture. Carefully set the oysters on a bed of rock salt or rice in a pan, and pop into a hot (400 degrees Fahrenheit) oven for 5 to 7 minutes or until the tops have browned. Serve.”
“It would be such a waste to toss all that delicious broth from the seafood boil, so I figured we’d turn it into a hot pot. I love hot pot. It’s the kind of communal, experiential dining that’s worth going out for. Making it at home isn’t difficult, but there’s a lot of shopping involved. You need to gather together thin-sliced meat (whatever you like), fish cakes and fish balls, various forms of tofu, mushrooms, napa cabbage, and noodles from the Asian market. Slice everything into manageable bites, then lay out on big, communal platters. Next, you’ll need a portable (butane or induction) burner and a shallow pot. I like the kind of pot that has two separate wells, so you can offer people two kinds of broth. One one side, I poured in the the leftover seafood boil soup. In the other, I added a milder chicken broth seasoned with mushroom powder, garlic, and Shaoxing wine.
Set the pot over the burner, then let your friends cook whatever they like in the hot broth.”
“So, we’ve had these Stranger Things–inspired Surfer Boy Pizzas in our freezer for a couple weeks, and I figured having Saweetie and Blake Anderson was exactly the right special occasion to bust them out. I wanted to make a sandwich inspired by the wedgie sandwich — a specialty of certain East Coast pizzerias. It’s basically an Italian sub, but with pizza crust as the bread. Since I used Stranger Things pizza, I’m calling our version The Mind Flayer.
But first, I needed to make some chicken tenders. Take two chicken breasts, and slice each into 4 or 5 strips. Marinate for an hour or so in buttermilk, seasoned with garlic powder, onion powder, dried thyme, cayenne, salt, and MSG. Next, make a dredge of AP flour mixed with a small scoop of baking powder, Momofuku Savory Salt, Momofuku Spicy Salt, MSG, cayenne, onion powder, and garlic powder.
Spoon enough of the chicken marinade into the dredge to form a thick batter, then coat the chicken. Fry at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 5 to 7 minutes, or until golden brown and fully cooked.
OK, now, here’s where things get kooky. Par-bake the pizzas so they’re nice and crisp. (I used Surfer Boy BBQ Chicken Pizza, because Blake and Saweetie both love barbecue sauce.) Top one pizza with chicken fingers, thin sliced shallots, pickled jalapeños, and provolone. House it all with ranch dressing. Crush a bag of hot cheese puffs on top, then close the sandwich with the other pizza. Pop it back in the oven to melt the cheese and heat things through. Retrieve, slice into thick wedges, and serve.”
“Blake says he has a crazy sweet tooth, so for the last epic combo of this meal, I toasted some breakfast toaster pastries. (You know, the kind that’s loosely inspired by Austrian strudel and comes with packets of frosting … .) Then I sliced a pint of ice cream into thick rounds, peeled off the packaging, and placed pucks of ice cream between the hot pastries. That’s it. Thank me later.”
“I used to make this Tuscan bread soup all the time while I was working for Marco Canora,” Chang says. “Marco’s one of the best chefs America has ever produced and someone I’ve looked up to since I first started cooking. ‘Ribollita’ means reboiled, and refers to how cooks used to make a big batch of this soup one day then boil it again the next day, and it’d be just as good — if not better.
“It’s a dish of simple, affordable ingredients: Aromatics, cabbage, cavolo nero (black kale), cannellini beans, and a few herbs. You can definitely make this soup vegetarian, but I used chicken stock in the show, because I wanted to demonstrate how one chicken can give you three or four different meals. If you really want to know how to make this soup properly, you should ask Marco or buy his cookbook. All I’ll say is that the sofrito is super important. Cooking the aromatics and tomato paste slowly in lots of oil is key. Oh, and make sure you smash some of the beans into the soup to thicken it. Beyond that, it’s hard to really mess this up. Cook the cabbages until they’re tender. Pour it over toasted croutons. Finish with Parmesan cheese.”
“Here’s what I know about making a great salad: Meat helps. I learned this trick early on when I wondered why the salads were so good while I was working for Daniel Boulud. The secret, as revealed to me, was a healthy dose of veal or chicken jus in the vinaigrette. If you’re already roasting a chicken, you can use the pan drippings. Otherwise, reduce a cup of stock until it’s almost syrupy, then whisk it together with a little Dijon mustard, minced shallots, sherry vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper for a simple, delicious dressing. My other favorite move with salads is to add even more richness in the form of a poached or slow-cooked egg. I like to poach eggs in a microwave. Use this egg poaching method to figure out how to calculate the perfect recipe for your home microwave.”
“My Parisian gnocchi recipe is actually Wylie Dufresne’s recipe, which he shared on our podcast, Recipe Club.”
“Cooking chicken under a brick is an excellent way of achieving crisp skin and juicy meat. The only trick is that you need to debone the chicken first. I’m not even going to try to describe the process of deboning a chicken. (We’ll post a video of me doing it on the Majordomo Media YouTube.) Suffice to say, use a sharp knife and take your time. Once you’ve deboned the chicken, season the meat and skin liberally with salt, and place it skin-side down on a well-greased sheet pan. Place a baking rack flat on top of the chicken, then top with something heavy, like a Dutch oven. Carefully slide the whole thing into the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes, or until the skin is crunchy and golden, and the meat is cooked through. I served mine inside the Dutch baby, on top of the charred cabbage, with a piccata sauce.”
“Something about the sweetness in cabbage stands up to really deep browning. There’s nothing too complicated to it. First, slice some bacon into 1/2-inch pieces and render in an oven-safe pan. Use a slotted spoon to remove and reserve the bacon, leaving the fat in the pan. Slice a head of savoy cabbage into 4 or 6 wedges. Place the wedges in the pan, season with salt, and slide the pan into a hot oven. Let them get deep brown, almost black, then flip onto the other cut side, and continue cooking until tender.”
“I wish I could take credit for this, but a friend invented this dessert and it changed my life. I think if you remove the cultural biases around cooking with Krispy Kreme doughnuts and store-bought ice cream, this dessert could go toe to toe with anything in a Michelin-starred restaurant. It works with any glazed yeasted doughnut, but I do prefer Krispy Kreme. I keep a box of them in the freezer, so I can pull this out any time.”
“I saw the original version of this technique at a Buddhist monastery in the mountains of Korea, where the nuns do nothing but pray, meditate, forage, and cook beautiful food,” Chang says. “They have a lot of tricks up their sleeves, and one of the coolest was a crispy gim (Korean seaweed) chip. To make them, they would carefully paint a thin layer of rice-flour solution onto sheets of seaweed, then let them dry on the roof. It’s incredibly delicate, precise work. The hacky version I made on the show tonight, I learned from social media.
First, take sheets of rice paper — available at most Asian markets — soak them briefly in water, then press them onto sheets of nori (Japanese seaweed) or gim. Let them dry on a cooling rack for a few days (or overnight in a super-low oven). Once they’re completely dry, you can fry them in neutral oil into crisp, puffy chips. Use a pair of tongs or extra-long chopsticks to keep the chips submerged in oil, as they have a tendency to curl up and float. Season with salt and you’re ready to go.”
“When I’m in Tokyo, I’m probably good for two or three convenience-store (konbini) egg-salad sandwiches per day. The difference between an American egg sandwich and a Japanese one really comes down to two things: Kewpie mayo (Japanese mayonnaise with MSG) and shokupan. Shokupan is milk bread, and it’s basically the Platonic ideal of white bread. Squishy-soft, bright white, sweet, and perfect for sandwiches. If you can’t get ahold of shokupan, substitute the fluffiest white bread you can find.”
“This is a classic Japanese confection, usually filled with red bean paste. I hate red bean paste. Instead I’m filling my dorayaki with matcha cream, which is way better.”
“Fried chicken arrived in Japan via Portugal, and like they so often do, Japanese cooks acted like the Borg in Star Trek,” Chang says. “They assimilated it, improved it, and gave us karaage.”
“For the tuna rolls, I marinated dry-aged akami (the lean part of the tuna, which I like better than toro) in soy sauce and pickled Thai-bird chilies. Not much else to tell you, except that you can get great dry-aged fish from The Joint Seafood in Sherman Oaks, if you live in LA.”
“I worked at a restaurant in Tokyo that served kakuni (braised pork), where my only job was to skewer cubes of pork, char them, plunge them into ice water, and then peel off most of the char. The idea is to get just the hint of charred pork in the final braise, which is matched with the smokiness of dashi and balanced with lots of sweetness from sugar.”
“I once had a job in Japan where my only job was to spritz raw vegetables to make them glisten and shine on the plate,” Chang says. “Fast-forward about 15 years to opening Majordomo in LA, where we really wanted to feature the insanely beautiful produce we get in California. I loved how beautiful the spritzed vegetables looked on the plate in Japan, but I didn’t want to just spray ours with water. Enter MSG spray. It seasons the vegetables with salty savoriness, while retaining their raw qualities. Try it out next time you’re making a crudités plate, or your side of carrots and celery with Buffalo wings.
“If, for some reason, you’re apprehensive about MSG, know this: Ranch dressing is really just a vehicle for MSG. If you don’t believe me, have a look at your bottle of ranch. It’s definitely in there. If not, it’s got nutritional yeast, which is hippie MSG. My only other tip for crudités is to steam/microwave heartier vegetables like cauliflower or romanesco for 90 seconds before serving.”
“Usually I add Worcestershire sauce to my ranch dressing,” Chang says. “But since Nick has a shellfish allergy, I’m omitting it today.”
“While they might be distant cousins to Mexican chiles rellenos, jalapeño poppers are as Americana as it gets.”
“We just don’t get these often enough in the states, but I love hot, freshly fried potato chips. I think they’re even better than fries as a side to burgers. Plus, I know Nick Kroll really loves salt and vinegar potato chips, so this was a no-brainer for the menu.”
“What’s next for burgers? They’ve been done low-brow and high-brow. They’ve been topped with everything. They’ve been griddled, grilled, steamed, and fried. So where else can the burger go? I’ve thought about this for a long time, and I think the future of burgers is the side dip. That’s the only way to integrate some customizability and novelty into the world of burgers. Tonight, we served our burgers with two dips: cheese sauce and peppercorn sauce.
Now, whether you’re talking burgers or charcuterie, the golden rule of deliciousness is 70% meat, 30% fat. Grinding my own beef allows me to choose which cuts I like, and stick to that ratio. For tonight’s show, I ground a mixture of dry-aged brisket, chuck, short rib, and beef fat. I prefer Hawaiian rolls for the bread, and the only vegetable I need is onion. Smashing the burgers is all the rage, and I hate to admit it, but it’s the right move. It helps the Maillard reaction, yielding crispier, browner, more savory burgers. Once you’ve flipped the burgers, top with a big handful of sliced onions so they can sizzle and steam in the beef fat. Serve on toasty Hawaiian rolls, with sides of dipping sauce.”
“Sodium citrate is a salt that helps cheese from splitting. It’s what makes American cheese possible, and is also the key to a good cheese sauce.”
“You don’t want to learn au poivre sauce from me. I did it in the least correct way possible. You’re supposed to use the pan drippings from a freshly cooked steak. I used beef bouillon, bacon scraps, and ground beef instead. You’re supposed to use brandy or cognac — I used nonalcoholic beer. Basically, I rendered the bacon and beef in butter, then sweated some garlic and shallots in the fat, then added the beer, mustard, cream, and lots of fresh ground, high quality pepper. If you want to learn au poivre sauce the correct way, look elsewhere.”
“We first started serving bing at Majordomo, our restaurant in LA. The name is Chinese, but the bread is also inspired by Korean breads like bbang and hotteok. Tonight, I served bing with nice butter, country ham from Lady Edison in North Carolina (in honor of Fortune), and a queso fundido inspired by my friend, the great chef Akhtar Nawab.”
“Tataki is a Japanese preparation where thin slices of meat or fish are quickly seared. Tonight I made a hay-seared tuna tataki I first saw done by the chef Masamichi Amamoto in Tokyo. I don’t recommend doing this at home, but it’s a really delicious way of cooking — and, to be honest, it makes you look super cool. The hay comes from a wheat farm. The tuna is dry-aged chutoro (medium-fatty tuna) from The Joint Seafood in Sherman Oaks. Before cooking it in hay, I paint on some tare — a Japanese sauce made with sugar, dashi, mirin, sake, and soy sauce. To serve, I made some pickled spring onions and a charred-scallion sauce with fresh wasabi, soy, garlic, and olive oil, inspired by my old colleague Peter Serpico.”
Add everything to a pan, and bring to a simmer. Keep simmering until the liquid is reduced by about half and it looks slightly syrupy. Paint it onto meat or fish before grilling or broiling. Tare will hold in the fridge for about a week.
“Ian at Regalis Foods hooked us up with a beautiful piece of A5 Wagyu from Miyazaki Prefecture, but if I may be so bold, I think the sauce is the real star of this dish. I think it’s the best sauce I’ve ever made. The nice thing is that you can make it using super common ingredients. The recipe is based on the true story of Alain Passard’s vin jaune sauce he serves at L’Arpège in Paris, but instead of oxidized white wine from the Jura, I made it with cheap chardonnay. Everything else you can find at most grocery stores. Even katsuobushi is pretty readily available these days.”
Add the sugar, butter, and salt to a saucepan over medium-low heat. Cook, whisking often, until the sugar has fully melted. Add the cream little by little, whisking constantly, until the sauce has reached your desired consistency. Keep warm before serving.
“Korean Fried Chicken (aka chikin) comes in different varieties — sometimes with a sweet-and-spicy glaze, sometimes naked — but it’s always super crisp and crunchy. Before we went live, we served Seth and Ike spicy glazed wings. The chicken crown (both breasts, still attached to the ribcage) received the same batter as the wings but no glaze, because I wanted to slice it like Peking duck and then top it with caviar like some kind of perverse chicken-skin taco.
“To be totally honest, I don’t remember what I put in the dredge or the batter, and I wish I did because it was awesome. It was so intensely crunchy — I think you can really hear when Ike bites into his chicken-skin taco. I know the dredge was a mixture of all purpose flour, Wondra flour, rice flour, tapioca starch, corn starch, a little chicken bouillon powder, salt, and MSG. The batter is also a mixture of flours and starches, but the key is vodka and beer. Vodka batter is a technique pioneered by the great chef Heston Blumenthal. The logic is that moisture is the enemy of crunchiness, and since alcohol evaporates much faster than water, you get this extra-crispy shell of deliciousness around the chicken.
“I experimented with a bunch of different times and temperatures, but found that a single fry at lower temp (325 degrees Fahrenheit) is better than a double-fry at a higher temperature. As for the glaze, I made a mixture of Momofuku Sweet & Savory Korean BBQ Sauce (coming soon!), Tabasco sauce, and agave syrup.
“Lastly, I made a couple pickles on the side. First, some Persian cucumbers marinated in the brine from the spring-onion pickles I made for Terry and Fortune on last week’s show. The other pickle is thin-sliced daikon marinated in lots of salt, sugar, MSG, and rice-wine vinegar.”
“This dish might seem totally insane, but it’s actually inspired by some truly classic fine-dining dishes as well as the Mexican classic chilaquiles. It’s also a riff on one of the first dishes I ever made for Momofuku Ko, where we did a slow-cooked egg over potato chips and onion soubise, with purple sweet-potato vinegar, caviar, and fines herbes.
For the show, I dumped a mix of regular and salt-and-vinegar potato chips in a bowl. I fried eight eggs in olive oil (using a lid to steam the tops a bit), then slid those over the chips. After that, a few big spoonfuls of slow-cooked onions cooked in butter (soubise). Finally, a spritz of vinegar, a mountain of caviar, and some fines herbes. You can absolutely enjoy this without the caviar, or with a more affordable roe like salmon roe. I’ve always felt that a runny egg is its own kind of luxury, and combined with the crunch of potato chips, it’s really spectacular.”
“At the end of the day, I think one of the nicest ways to enjoy caviar is simply with some perfect Japanese short-grain rice and seaweed. I happened to have some A5 wagyu beef leftover from last week’s episode, so I couldn’t help but pan-fry some and add it to the rolls. But honestly, if you’re lucky enough to have access to caviar, you could do much worse than to serve it with rice and seaweed.”
“The day before the show, during rehearsal, I tried to freestyle a batch of biscuits that turned out much closer to scones than biscuits. Don’t get me wrong, they were still pretty delicious, just not the fluffy, buttery pillows I was hoping for. So I asked Chris Ying to put a call out on the internet for a biscuit recipe I could use. A lot of people sent in recipes they’d found online, but only one person gave us an original recipe and it happened to be Joshua Skenes, one of the best chefs America’s ever produced. You’ll have to ask him for the recipe, if you want it, but it’s seriously so good it makes me mad.”
“Cometeer is an incredible advancement in coffee. It’s turned me from a non-coffee-drinker, to a full-on addict. But the thing I might like most is this trick. Open a Cometeer pod (preferably Seth’s brand, Houseplant!). Pour it over some ice cream. Boom: affogato.”
“This dish is based on the true story of a dish my friend Claude Bosi makes (and another one we used to serve at Café Boulud while I was working there). Nine times out of 10, I opt for frozen peas. Perfect fresh peas are superior, but frozen is just a more consistently good product.”
“I learned this salad from Marco Canora, who got it from the restaurant Cibrèo in Florence. Ideally, you’re taking the time to get fresh fava beans from the market, peeling them, blanching them, and shucking them. But if you don’t feel up for it, or you can’t find fresh fava beans, sugar snaps are a great substitute. This episode took place in late February, which is a little early for favas, so I used a combination of favas, sugar snaps, and frozen peas.”
“The collar and the secreto come from two nearby parts of the pig. The collar’s part of the shoulder, and the secreto is a large, flat strip of meat between the shoulder and the loin. Or something like that. It’s a secret. With a really nice piece of pork like we had on the show, I just season with Momofuku Savory Salt, some ground fennel, and a decent amount of sugar. Let it cure for a few hours or overnight, and then roast at 325 degrees Fahrenheit for 2–3 hours. Finish it at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for the last half hour if it needs more color. Rest for at least 30 minutes before serving.”
“During rehearsals, I made three of these completely from scratch: rolled pasta dough; braised meatballs and sausage in homemade sauce; fried cutlets of chicken, veal, and eggplant; cooked rigatoni; boiled eggs. All in, each one was six to eight hours of work. I just felt like I needed to feel the experience of making them from scratch. Here’s what I’ve found: If you want to make this, you should not make it from scratch. Buy at least some of the components premade.
“For the show, we got meatballs from Marc Vetri in Philadelphia, mozzarella from Nancy Silverton in LA, eggplant parm from Jon & Vinny’s in LA, spicy rigatoni alla vodka from Carbone, veal cutlets from Dan Tana’s in LA, chicken cutlets from Pizzeria Bianco, and pasta from Evan Funke. To assemble, I grease a big Dutch oven, then line with a big sheet of pasta (or multiple sheets — just make sure it won’t leak). Next, the rigatoni. Top that with a single layer of pasta. Follow with a ladle of red sauce, then a layer of meatballs, split in half. Top with shredded or fresh mozzarella. A few leaves of basil. Repeat with each ingredient, taking care to make even layers. Finally, wrap the pasta over the top to form a sealed drum. Use extra pasta if you need to make it airtight. Bake for 60 minutes at 325 degrees Fahrenheit, covered with the pot lid. Remove the lid and continue to cook until the top is browned. Let rest for at least 2 hours before inverting and slicing. Alternatively, don’t try this at home.”
“This is a mash-up between the thin onion soup you get at the beginning of the meal at a chain teppanyaki restaurant and a classic French onion soup.
Start by seasoning and slowly browning 2 or 3 thinly sliced onions in a big glug of olive oil or a few tablespoons of butter. Take the time to really brown the onions.
Add a dozen stemmed and thinly sliced shiitake mushrooms, 4 cloves of minced garlic, and a big pinch of Momofuku Savory Salt.
Once the garlic and mushrooms have broken a sweat, add 6 cups of dashi. We use a lot of dashi on the show. It’s a Japanese broth made from kombu and katsuobushi, but you can also buy instant dashi that will work perfectly well. Bring to a simmer, and season with fish sauce and black pepper.
Simmer, covered, for 30–45 minutes, then add sake (2/3 cup) and a package of trimmed enoki mushrooms. Bring to a boil and let the alcohol cook off. Adjust the seasoning and serve. If you like, you can toast a piece of mochi and float it on top to recreate the effect of a crunchy, cheesy crouton.”
“Yoshoku refers to Western dishes that have been reinterpreted — and usually improved— by Japanese cooks. Classic Japanese cooking, on the other hand is known as washoku. If you’ve ever had Japanese curry or tonkatsu, you’ve had yoshoku. If you’ve ever been to a teriyaki restaurant or an izakaya that serves one of those delicious, crunchy savory-sweet salads, you’ve had yoshoku. I really like yoshoku salad dressing. Maybe the most classic is carrot-ginger dressing, but I also love the sesame-soy version. For the show, I blended together ginger, half an onion, a squeeze of Momofuku Sweet and Savory Korean BBQ Sauce, a squeeze of soy sauce, a couple tablespoons each of sesame seeds, sesame oil, rice vinegar, black pepper, and agave syrup.”
“My gyoza filling was a mix of ground chicken (pork is traditional), minced cabbage, scallions, Shaoxing wine, fish sauce, a little minced ginger, and soy sauce. A lot of recipes will tell you to salt the cabbage first to remove moisture, but I didn’t bother. The key is to cook off a little bit of the filling to check for seasoning before filling your dumplings. As for wrappers, our local Japanese market had these extra-large wrappers that I really liked, but you can use whatever you like. Cooking gyoza on a teppan is about alternately browning them so they’re nice and crunchy, while also making sure they steam so they cook through. I used a squeeze bottle to wet the dumplings, then covered them with an upside-down pot to trap the steam. Of course, this works just as well with a nonstick pan and a lid.”
“I actually don’t really like the creamy white sauce — they call it Yum Yum Sauce — at teppanyaki restaurants, but this is what the people love, so here’s my version. Blend together a big glug of heavy cream with whole grain mustard, black pepper, sesame oil, garlic, a squeeze of lemon, a little piece of onion, soy sauce, Momofuku Savory Salt, MSG, and a little sugar.”
“Here’s another quick dipping sauce that works just as well as a salad dressing. Blend together a chunk of onion with sesame oil, a handful of sesame seeds, soy sauce, agave, Momofuku Sweet and Savory Korean BBQ sauce (or substitute gochujang if you want something a little spicy), and a splash of water.”
“I’m no expert, but having done it a few times (and watched a lot of teppanyaki cooking), the keys are 1) lots of butter, 2) proper seasoning for your meat and veg, and 3) a hot, well-seasoned teppan. Otherwise, cooking on a teppan uses the same principles as a pan or griddle. Since there’s so much surface area (and moisture evaporates so quickly on the teppan), you can generate a lot of Maillard reaction (browning). Like a French-top stove, you can also create/find hot zones that help you manage your cooking. If something’s getting too dark too quickly, move it to a cooler zone. Seafood does really well on a teppan. Steak, too, of course. And fried rice or noodles are great on a teppan, because you’re basically cooking on a gigantic, flattened wok.”
Blend everything together, then transfer to a saucepan. Simmer for a few minutes to thicken, then season to taste.
“This dish is a blend of Sebastian’s Chicago upbringing, Bach’s love for teppanyaki, Italian-beef sandwiches, Asian flatbreads, and LA taco culture. Basically, it’s an Italian beef on yeasted flatbread (bing) with a griddled-cheese costra, topped with giardiniera and Momofuku Chili Crunch. You dip the whole thing in beef jus, and then we roll you out of the kitchen.
For the beef, I trim and aggressively season a strip of tenderloin or chuck shoulder, then sear it hard on all sides. It won’t be cooked all the way through, but that’s OK. I let that rest, while I make a jus of browned beef scraps and drippings, Brandy, mirepoix (onion, carrot, and celery), oregano, thyme, dried basil, garlic, and water. I fortify the beef flavor with some beef bouillon paste, then season with soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, and Maggi (or whatever umami-rich liquids I have nearby).
When you’re ready to serve, slice the beef very thin and then heat through in the jus.
To assemble, I make a bing dough using the same recipe from the ‘Surf and Turf’ episode. I stretch out the dough, then put it on a well-oiled griddle. Once the bread is nicely browned on both sides, I move it to a cooler area to rest. Onto the griddle go two big piles of shredded mozzarella and provolone. Lay the flatbreads onto the cheese piles, and allow the cheese to melt and brown. Use a spatula to flip the cheesy flatbreads over. (A well-seasoned or nonstick pan/griddle are crucial to prevent the cheese from sticking.) If you’ve done this right, the flatbread should have a nice, crunchy, brown costra. Top one flatbread with chopped giardiniera, beef, Momofuku Chil Crunch, and the other piece of bread. Slice into wedges and serve with bowls of jus for dipping.”
“I knew I’d like Nicole when I heard that she’s a fan of ranch dressing. Specifically, the holy trinity of chicken, bacon, and ranch. In honor of her very good taste, I’m making this riff on larb. I say “riff” because larb is the national dish of Laos — as well as a very popular dish in northern Thailand — and this is by no means an authentic larb. But… is it delicious? Yeah, it is.”
“In our pre-interviews with Joe and Nicole, the word meat kept coming up. And when I think of meat, my mind goes to Istanbul, where they take meat-eating to a whole new level. I just love the way you can get a whole assortment of meats and vegetables, served on flatbread that soaks up all the delicious juices. For tonight’s show, I wanted to pay homage to the Turkish style of meat eating, while also infusing a little bit of personality from our guests.
Joe Manganiello is a son of Pittsburgh, and has the distinction of having his picture on the wall of Pittsburgh’s most famous sandwich shop, Primanti Bros. So in honor of Joe, I added a little Primanti–style flare to this mixed grill.”
The bread is a riff on the Majordomo bing bread I’ve made on previous episodes. It’s a 50-50 blend of AP flour and bread flour, leavened with yeast and a little sugar. Other than that, it’s just water, olive oil, and salt. This time I rolled it out extra thin and cooked it in big sheets on the griddle.
Just like in our first episode with Steven Yeun and Rashida Jones, I deboned a whole bird in order to minimize cooking time and maximize what I got out of the chicken. I browned the chicken bones in a pan, then added a few aromatics, covered with water, and cooked it over high heat to extract as much flavor as possible. I let the liquid reduce until nothing was left but an almost-syrupy chicken jus — that’s liquid gold and the secret ingredient to the Chicken Bacon Ranch Larb.
As for the chicken itself, I employed the easiest/best method I know. Sheet-pan cooking has been all the rage for the past couple years, but we’ve been doing it for family meal in restaurants for years. Simply season the chicken (I used Momofuku Savory Salt), and let it dry out in the fridge for a couple hours. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. Lay a few sprigs of thyme or rosemary along with a few cloves of garlic on a wire rack, and then top with the chicken, skin-side-up. Set the rack on a sheet tray, and pop it in the oven on the second rack from the top for 40 minutes. You will not burn the chicken. The skin will be crisp. The meat will be perfect. This is the way.
I’m again invoking the quotation marks, because this is not authentic at all. I truly love the entire genre of ground-meat kebabs. But I also had an extra package of Marc Vetri’s meatball mix from the Timparmo episode in the freezer. I defrosted that, shaped the meat into logs, and griddled them. And you know what? They’re delicious.
The veg component of tonight’s mixed grill was just roma tomatoes, a mix of sweet and spicy peppers, and sliced onions. I coated everything in olive oil, seasoned with kosher salt, and popped it in a hot oven with the chicken until everything was blistered and bursting.
The inspiration for the pork was the capicola you get on a Primanti Bros. sandwich. I took a whole pork secreto (the same cut we served in the Bert Kreischer–Bill Simmons episode, but you can just as easily use pork shoulder), and seasoned it with salt, garlic, oregano, thyme, fennel seed, black pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, olive oil, and a squeeze of lemon. I popped it in a roasting pan, covered it, and cooked it for about an hour at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. At that point, I uncovered the meat, and basted it with its own juices, then put it back in the oven and finished it at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for another hour.
The signature ingredients on a Primanti Bros. sandwich are coleslaw and french fries. Rather than making coleslaw, I opted for charred cabbage dressed in coleslaw vinaigrette. I quartered a head of cabbage and trimmed off the toughest part of the core, then simply let the cabbage char on a hot, dry griddle. Meanwhile, I mixed together olive oil, rice wine vinegar, dried oregano, dried thyme, onion powder, salt, and pepper. Once the cabbage was charred, I tossed it in the vinaigrette while it was still hot, then wrapped it in plastic to let it steam.
“J.B. mentioned before the show that he loves chicken-fried oyster mushrooms. To tell the truth, I’ve never fried mushrooms, but I have fried a lot of chicken. These mushrooms get a karaage-style marinade, then a quick dredge, and a slow fry until they’re crispy-chewy. If you close your eyes, you can almost imagine you’re eating the real deal. Almost.”
“I’m sorry but the first thing I think of when I think of vegan food is salad. I’m sure there are vegans who don’t like salads, but it’s hard for me to think of anything else. And my personal preference is for salads with the least amount of lettuce and most amount of croutons. Preferably, fried croutons. This salad is a combination of two of my favorites: Lebanese fattoush and Italian panzanella. They share a lot of the same ingredients, in fact, so this hybrid isn’t that much of a stretch. I call it… the Fatzanella.”
“Poor Jeremy Fox will never escape this dish. He’s one of the greatest chefs America has ever produced. He’s got three great restaurants in Los Angeles. But he’ll always be known for the vegetarian cooking he did between 2007 and 2010 at his former restaurant, Ubuntu, in Napa, California. And for good reason. Ubuntu was revolutionary, and the dishes Fox came up with there were incredible. Peas and White Chocolate is the perfect example. It’s unnervingly simple, but so smart. Now, let’s be clear: I did not make the real version of this dish. I love Sarah and J.B., but I’m not double-shucking peas for them. This is the B-movie remake of the original (but it’s still really good).”
Weigh the mushrooms and chickpeas, then add 2% salt by weight. Pulse everything in a food processor until you have a fine chop (not a puree). Wrap in cheesecloth, place in a fine-mesh sieve, and set over a bowl to drain overnight.
Heat the grapeseed oil to about 200 degrees Fahrenheit in a small saucepan over medium heat. You don’t want the oil so hot that it’s going to burn the herbs — just hot enough to awaken some of the aromatics. Toss the herbs into the oil — they should pop lightly but not explode everywhere. Cook for about a minute, stirring, then remove from the heat. Allow to cool, then pulse smooth in a blender. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve, and reserve.
“Aglio e olio is a really delicious, inherently vegan dish. It’s a perfect example of a dish that is greater than the sum of its parts. In addition to pasta, it has only three ingredients: garlic, good olive oil, and chili flakes. I, of course, am terrible at making things the authentic way, so I’ve changed my version up a little bit. For one thing, I don’t like to cook my pasta in a big pot of water. I use just enough water so that by the time the pasta is done, there’s only a little bit of starchy water left in the pan. That starchiness adds a lot of body to the final sauce. More importantly, it means I don’t have to use (or clean) a colander.”
“Chickpeas are an incredibly versatile ingredient, and something I’ve used a lot over the years. But one of my earliest exposures to chickpeas was in a classic panisse —chickpea-flour fritters from southern France that are sliced into thick fries and fried crisp. They’re often flavored with Parmesan cheese, which makes them not vegan, but I think nutritional yeast can give the same cheesy, umami notes without the dairy. For the show, I chose to bread the panisse before frying, so that I could treat it like a chicken or veal cutlet and give it the piccata treatment. (If you’re not vegan, you can just as easily make this dish with a pounded meat cutlet.)”
“Aquafaba is the viscous cooking liquid that’s leftover from cooking chickpeas. Because of its high starch and protein content, it’s often used as an egg white substitute. For the show, I thought we’d try and make a pavlova — the traditional New Zealand dessert of meringue and fruit. But … we had some trouble getting the aquafaba meringues to stay puffy, so we pivoted to a safer option: Eton mess. Eton mess is literally just a big messy bowl of crunchy meringues, whipped cream, and fruit. It’s ideal for hiding poorly baked meringues …”
“The bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich (on a kaiser roll) is a NYC staple — a bodega classic. For tonight’s dinner, I wanted to honor the BEC without necessarily re-creating it exactly. I also wanted to try to integrate a few other breakfast items that didn’t make the menu cut. When I think of breakfast, one of the first things I think of is a crepe. This crepe is a hybrid, however. It’s somewhere between a French crepe, Vietnamese bánh xèo, and a South Indian dosa (assuming it worked properly on the show). Finally, I also wanted to stir the pot a little bit and use Taylor Ham/Pork Roll as a substitute for bacon. If you’re from New Jersey, you have very strong opinions about what this meat product — basically Spam in a sock — should be called. If you’re not, well, you’ll still find it delicious.”
“Chilaquiles are the greatest breakfast food on earth. There, I said it. It has everything you want in a dish: textural contrast, temperature contrast, umami, fat, acidity. In the underrated world of wet-crunchy foods (General Tso’s chicken, agedashi tofu, buffalo wings), chilaquiles reign supreme. Usually you have to choose between the red and the green, but for the show, I served Cord and Aziz both because two is better than one.
Two final notes: When it comes to tortillas, I really trust Javier Cabral (the editor of L.A. Taco). Javier recommended tortillas from Caramelo in Lawrence, Kansas. They use heirloom corn from Mexico, sourced by the company Tamoa. They are really incredible tortillas. Lastly, this was my first time making chilaquiles. They are by no means authentic. If you want a real recipe, Javier’s wife Paola has you covered.”
“These waffles are inspired by a trip I took to northern Sweden with the chef Magnus Nilsson, where Magnus introduced me to his dairy farmer. She was an incredible woman, who worked her ass off, consumed colostrum pudding to keep up her strength, and made the finest waffles I’ve ever tasted. In my memory, she used nothing but whipped cream and flour. My food writer friend Mattias Kroon said they tasted like “eating clouds,” and he’s not wrong. Mine will never live up to hers, which she cooked over a wood fire with fresh cream. But these are pretty damn good.”
“If fresh peas are in season — a very small window in the spring — go with those. If not, frozen peas are more than adequate as a substitute. For the mint, use whatever cool, fancy fresh mint you can find. Except peppermint. Peppermint is too strong. For the show, we used chocolate mint leaves from the farmer’s market.”
“This dish is inspired by the signature dish at ’Inoteca, one of my favorite restaurants in New York. At the restaurant, they used truffle oil, but for the show I used truffle butter from Regalis. It’s not complicated, but takes some doing (and some shopping) to execute.
I start by taking thick slices of white bread (we used milk bread from a local Japanese market), and used a spoon to press a little nest for the eggs into the center of each slice. Lay the bread slices on a sheet tray, then slather with truffle butter and top with grated fontina cheese. Slip an egg yolk into the center of each slice of toast, then slide the sheet tray into the oven. In a separate pan, I sauteed sliced asparagus in olive oil, with a little salt and pepper. Once the cheese is melted (and the egg yolk is warm but not cooked through) pull the toast out of the oven. Transfer the toast to plates and surround with asparagus. Season with salt and pepper and serve.”
“I hate when crab cakes are more filler than crab, so I tried to make this one without any breadcrumbs or egg to bind it. That means the probability of total collapse is high, but I’m willing to take the risk.”
Cleaning fresh artichokes is restaurant work. It’s a pain in the ass, and I’m not even going to bother telling you how to do it, because I discovered in the lead-up to the show that frozen artichoke hearts not as good but still passable. (If you really want to use fresh, you can look up how to clean them. That’s what the internet is for.)
Toss a bag of frozen baby artichoke hearts into a hot pan with lots of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper, and cook for 8–10 minutes, or until the artichokes are nicely browned. Add a fistful of ramp tops and toss to wilt. Add the juice of 1 lemon, and shower with grated Parmesan. Season to taste, and serve.
“There are a lot of moving parts with this dish, so I’ll give you the broad strokes. Start by making the spätzle batter. As always, I have a hard time keeping track of proportions, but I always remember my cooking-school classmate telling me that the right ratio to make spätzle is 1:1:1 (flour: egg: milk). That’s a rough guide, but it’s close. For the show, I used 2 cups of milk, 2 cups of flour, and 2 eggs. You’re looking for pancake-batter consistency. Season with salt and MSG, then bring a few inches of salted water to a simmer. Fill a perforated pan or spoon with a scoop of batter, then use a plastic bench scraper to press the batter through the perforations into the water. As the batter drips into the water, you’ll produce small, uneven noodles. Cook for 2–3 minutes, then scoop the spätzle out with a strainer or slotted spoon. Set aside.
Next, heat three frying pans over medium-high heat. Season lamb chops with salt and pepper. Coat all three pans with olive oil, then add the lamb chops to one, a big handful of morels to another, and the spätzle to the third. Add a few cloves of garlic, and a couple sprigs of rosemary and thyme to the lamb. Add a fat knob of butter to the morels, and season with salt and pepper. Toss the spätzle, and add some butter there, too. Season. Keep the heat high on the lamb chops, and flip once they’re browned on one side. Turn the heat down on the other two pans so that everything cooks at the same time. You want a little color on the spätzle, and for the morels to be tender. Add some ramp tops and bulbs to the morels and toss. Ideally, everything comes together at the same time. Plate the morels and ramps on a plate, and top with the lamb chops. Plate the spätzle separately. Now do all this on live television.”
“There are actually two strawberry seasons in California, and we’re at the beginning of the first. The berries aren’t super sweet yet, but a little Balsamic vinegar will heighten their sweetness. Toss the berries in good balsamic and serve with buttermilk cookies.”
“Banchan is the Korean name for side dishes that are served along with cooked rice. If you’ve ever been to a Korean restaurant, maybe you’ve had the experience of being flooded with a bunch of small plates of kimchi, sautéed veggies, salads, and maybe some dried or salted fish. That’s banchan. It’s all made ahead of time, ready to serve, and the assortment you get can be a good indicator of the kind of diner the staff thinks you are. If you’re a VIP, you might get some marinated crab (gyejang), an egg soufflé, maybe a savory pancake, and some extra-aged kimchi. If you’re a normal civilian, you’ll probably get a few bowls of kimchi, maybe some potato salad, and a little acorn jelly. The more you go, the more variety you’ll see.
In any case, a good amount of banchan is based around vegetables, and some of it is vegan, so I thought that would be a good place to start with this episode. For Nikki Glaser and Pete Holmes, I served bean sprouts and flowering bok choy briefly cooked in sesame oil; shishito peppers; spinach leaves sautéed with garlic; quick-pickled kohlrabi and daikon; greens in sesame dressing; spicy cucumbers; tomatoes with shiso and sesame; sugar snap peas tossed with horseradish and lemon; and pan-fried tofu with a pickled Thai-bird chili vinaigrette. Plus, a little bowl of dongchimi (winter water kimchi) that we made this week.”
The kimchi for tonight’s show is different from the kimchi most people are familiar. That’s baechu kimchi: Napa cabbage fermented with gochukaru (Korean chili flakes). Dongchimi is made by soaking radish and other fruits and vegetables in a salty brine. In this case, I thinly sliced daikon radish, apples, Asian pear, Napa cabbage, kohlrabi, cucumbers, carrots, and scallions. Then, I layered it in an onggi (a Korean fermenting vessel) with salt, then topped it all off with salted water. You don’t want it to be so salty that it’s not palatable — half the reason you make dongchimi is for the liquid. Season it so it’s a little less salty than ocean water. I put that in the onggi on Friday. By Tuesday it was perfect.
“Tangsuyuk is a Chinese-Korean dish. Basically it’s sweet-and-sour pork: crunchy fried meat with a cornstarch-thickened sauce. For this episode, I made it with fried oyster mushrooms, which I’ve really come to love. In fact, the first time I ever fried mushrooms was for the J.B. Smoove and Sarah Silverman episode. I don’t even think it’s a step down from meat. If you’re not vegan, you can make this same recipe with slices of pork tenderloin, but you should give this version a try.”
“These are not really bindaetteok. They’re not dosas. They’re not crepes, either. They’re somewhere in the middle of all that. There are probably some people who will be driven crazy by this, but it’s what I love about food. The more you look around, the more you realize that everybody wants to eat the same thing. A thin, savory pancake — crispy or not — wrapped around delicious fillings. That’s universal. What we served on the show tonight started as bindaetteok — a Korean mung bean pancake typically filled with pork, beansprouts, and kimchi — but I wanted to make something crispy, with more structure, like a South Indian dosa. I filled it with Korean flavors and some of the ingredients you’d see in a bindaetteok, but I made it more of a salad for my vegan friends.
I’m really happy with how the cone turned out. It’s savory and crunchy. Wrapping it as a cone is a pain in the ass, though, so if you make it at home, I wouldn’t necessarily bother. Also, if you’re not vegan, you can fill or top these with whatever meaty treats you like.”
“I love eating cold noodles. When I was a kid traveling around to play golf tournaments with my dad, sometimes we’d stop after matches for mul-naengmyeon — cold buckwheat noodles in beef broth. Kongguksu is another chilled noodle soup I love, and it happens to be vegan. Full disclosure: I was a little worried about serving this one. I never want our guests to feel uncomfortable about what I serve them, and few non-Koreans are accustomed to eating cold noodles in soy milk. But I think the deliciousness of kongguksu is undeniable. Hopefully they like it.”
“I make this dish at home all the time. It’s incredibly satisfying, and suitable for all ages and diets (except mine, because my doctor says I can’t eat so much white rice anymore). Basically, you cook some really nice short-grain rice. Ours came from The Rice Factory in New York, where they mill the rice to order, and it’s incredible. Then you buy really nice avocados. Ours came from the farmers market and were perfectly ripe. Then you dress it all with a soy-sesame-scallion vinaigrette that’s a bit like yangnyeom sauce — the spicy dressing you get on Korean fried chicken. Finish with some roasted seaweed, and some (really nice) pickled ginger. What’s not to like about that?”
“Shaved ice is a hugely popular dessert in Korea (bingsu), Japan (kakigori), Taiwan (baobing), and Hawaii (shave ice). It can be insanely elaborate, or very simple. (Check out Little Meg’s Instagram feed if you want to see the full range of kakigori in Japan.) For tonight’s dessert I kept it simple with an Asian pear shaved ice. First of all, I think Asian pears are the ultimate pear: huge, crunchy, sweet, floral, juicy. All I had to do was puree some peeled pear with a bit of agave syrup and lemon juice to make a pear syrup. I bought the cheapest ice shaver in the world to shave some ice into a bowl, then topped it with the syrup, slices of pear, and some condensed coconut milk.”
“Nobu Matsuhisa is a force of nature. He’s a huge reason why Japanese food has the foothold it does in America. But the truth is, he’s not really cooking purely Japanese. He spent his formative years cooking in Peru, and a lot of his most popular dishes are a blend of international influences. Tempura itself is a fusion food. The Portuguese introduced battered, fried foods to Japan in the 16th century.
Spicy tempura rock shrimp is one of the most popular Nobu dishes of all time. For Jay Pharoah and Lil Jon, I wanted to produce an ode to Nobu, while merging it with one of my favorite things to serve with fried foods: salsa seca.
If you can’t find rock shrimp, you can cut up larger U15 or U20 shrimp. Dredge in flour, then coat in a batter of AP flour and soda water. For a hacky version of Nobu’s spicy mayo, I just mixed Kewpie mayo with sriracha. Don’t tell Nobu-san.”
“This is salsa seca in name only. It’s the best descriptor for this dry, crunchy, spicy mix, but in actuality, the recipe is a combination of seven or eight overlapping dishes and memories. My whole career has been about swimming in these intersecting currents of deliciousness. I love seeing that Korean anjou (drinking snacks) have the same crunchy, savory appeal of Indian chivda — or that Sichuan cooks have the same fearlessness about cooking with whole dried chilies that Mexican cooks do.
You can’t make this stuff up. Everyone wants to eat delicious things, and no matter how different you think we are, a lot of our tastes overlap. This recipe is a combination of the many crunchy-spicy-savory-sweet combinations of chilies, seeds, nuts, and spices I’ve encountered in my life. There’s a bit of influence from typhoon-shelter crab (fried garlic and jalapeños), la zi ji, and kung pao chicken (two Sichuan chicken dishes with lots of fragrant dried chilies). All the various seeds and nuts makes me think of savory granola. The shredded nori brings furikake to mind. The puffed rice reminds me of Indian chaat. And all the dried seafood recalls Korean anjou. There’s really no wrong way to make this, so you should adjust as you see fit.
Note that these instructions have you make the salsa in different stages so that you can customize your blend at the end. You can also just throw all of this into a pan and stir-fry, if you prefer.”
“This flatbread recipe began in northern China, then traveled to Istanbul, before somehow making its way to New York’s Jewish appetizing stores. It’s essentially the same dough as the bing dough I served in the “Surf and Turf” episode, except I laminate it with butter so it comes out flaky, season it with everything-bagel spice, and bake it in a cast-iron pan. I serve it with my favorite hot-smoked salmon in the world, from Zabar’s in New York City, hand-selected by David Zabar.”
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
On a well-oiled cutting board, roll out the dough to 1/2-inch thickness. Use your hands to smear on the butter in an even layer. Sprinkle with everything-bagel spice and chopped scallions.
Next, roll the dough tightly like a cigarette until you have one long cylinder. Next, coil the dough like a snake. Use your hands to flatten until it’s the same diameter as your cast-iron skillet.
Heat the skillet over medium-high heat, then coat with oil. Slide the flatbread into the cast-iron pan and cook for 2 minutes, then slide the pan into the oven. Bake for 5–7 minutes, then carefully flip the flatbread over and return to the oven. Continue baking until browned on both sides and cooked all the way through.
Cut the flatbread into wedges and serve with the garnishes.
“I love this dish because it’s the opposite of what you’re supposed to do with a chicken. Roast chicken with browned skin is sexy. Boiled chicken is so uncool that I think it’s cool. The meat comes out juicy and tender, even the breast meat, which I ordinarily detest. In this case, I serve it like Hainanese chicken on a bed of seasoned short-grain rice. In this case, instead of a classic chili sauce or ginger-scallion sauce as condiments, I went a North African/Middle Eastern route, because Lil Jon says he likes that. Specifically, I made two riffs on the Yemeni sauce zhug.
The other big benefit of boiling chicken is that you don’t lose any juices like you do with roast chicken. Instead, you get a beautiful broth, which I turn into a riff on chicken and dumplings for the second course. For the dumplings, I used leftover bing dough from the Everything-Spice Flatbread.”
Green and red zhug
“This sauce is a little free-form riff on zhug and really just came from what we had laying around the kitchen. Essentially, it’s a handful of green peppercorns, blended until smooth with a pinch of kaffir lime powder, a few shakes of garam masala, a little chicken bouillon, 8 or 9 cloves of garlic, and a big fistful of fresh herbs: chives, parsley, mint, and cilantro. A little hot oil poured straight on top brings out some of the aromatics. A couple tablespoons of chopped peanuts add body, and the juice of a lime adds acidity. Season to taste and serve within a couple days.”
“This is another totally improvised sauce. I seeded a couple red bell peppers and tossed them in the microwave with two whole, small carrots for 90 seconds. I’d literally never done this before, but it worked out great. The microwave steamed some of the rawness out of the vegetables and made them the perfect base for the sauce. I blended the peppers and carrots with 8 cloves of garlic, a habanero pepper, 1/4 cup rice wine vinegar, sugar, and salt. Additionally, I cooked a spoonful of ground allspice in oil and mixed that in as well. Season to taste with vinegar, sugar, salt, and MSG.”
On our first preproduction call for this special episode with Terry and Chris cooking for me, Terry mentioned that he’d be heading to Brazil the following week. Chris told him he should try out one of my favorite sandwiches in the world while he was there: the mortadella sandwich in São Paulo’s Mercado Municipal. It’s a huge pile of thin-sliced mortadella — like half a pound — covered in gooey cheese, stuffed into a crusty roll with hot mustard. Terry, of course, took the recommendation. Here’s the thing: Terry is enormously popular in Brazil. When he got to the market, he headed straight for Bar do Mané, the restaurant that’s best known for the mortadella sandwich. He hadn’t announced his visit or told anyone he was coming. On the wall, there was a portrait of him. The only other portraits were of Einstein, Darth Vader, and Yoda.
Anyway, Terry loved the sandwich and so he and Chris decided immediately that they would serve me a version of it, along with my guest Dulcé Sloan. To make it a little more personal, they decided to serve it on a steamed Chinese bun, in honor of Momofuku’s famous pork buns.
Steamed Chinese buns are fluffy and light. Ours is basically a version of the one in Modernist Bread, which you should definitely check out if you want to make your own buns at home. Essentially, you just bloom yeast in water and a little heavy cream, then add sugar, salt, and flour. Mix. Proof. Shape. Proof. Steam. We substituted cake flour for Hong Kong flour and reduced the proofing time a bit, but the recipe is really great. And to give it a little crunch, we pan-fried the buns after steaming. You can also buy steamed buns in the freezer section of most Chinese grocery stores. They fry up almost as well as the homemade one.
For each sandwich:
Flashing back again to that first preproduction call for this episode, the whole DTL crew was blown away when Terry showed up with all sorts of ideas and research about what he wanted to cook. He noted that I love to serve chicken on the show and that he’s a huge fan of eggs and the luxury they bring to a dish. They toyed with the idea of making a frittata, which is one of Terry’s favorite things to cook, but ultimately landed on oyakodon because Dulcé’s palate veers toward Asian cuisines and a lot of my comfort foods are Japanese.
Oyakodon translates to “parent and child bowl” and refers to the main ingredients: chicken (the parent) and egg (the child). Chicken thighs and sliced onions are simmered in seasoned dashi, then covered in egg, which forms a custard-y blanket to be served over rice.
Garnishes:
Soy-cured egg yolks:
Too cure egg yolks, all you have to do is cover the yolks in soy sauce for about an hour. They should firm up a bit but still be runny on the inside.
David’s a noodle guy, and watching him eat noodles is a thing of joy. So, for his comfort menu, even though this will be the third consecutive starch course, we couldn’t resist serving noodles. The noodles we chose are called biang biang mian in Chinese. They’re hand-pulled and slapped dramatically against a countertop as they’re being pulled. Chris has been making them for years and wanted to introduce them to Terry, who, of course, immediately became a pro at it. The guys are serving them with a braised pork sauce, made extra-spicy for Dulcé, who’s a confirmed lover of chili and heat. (The key to the pork is good pork, doubanjiang, and really rich chicken broth.) On top of everything sits an herb salad with lots of Chinese black vinegar to cut through the fattiness of the dish.
For the noodles:
For the braised pork shoulder:
For the meatballs:
For the salad:
“This menu began life as an ode to Bridgerton for our guests Hannah Gadsby and Natasha Leggero. It was going to be a Regency-era menu featuring tea sandwiches, consommé, and a big hunk of beef. But then, I got to know a little bit more about Hannah and Natasha and realized they’d be able to handle more flavor than that. When we asked Hannah about their favorite foods, the first thing out of their mouth was ‘Southeast Asian food,’ which makes sense since they grew up in Australia. Anyway, we kept the beef but pivoted to Vietnam, where there’s something known as Seven Courses of Beef — a whole meal of different beef preparations. These dishes are like a blending of the two ideas, and hopefully it’s all delicious.”
Vietnamese food has been a huge part of the southern California food scene for decades, thanks to immigrant families like the ones who started hugely popular and delicious restaurants like Pho 79, Brodard, and Golden Deli. For better, more authentic Vietnamese recipes than mine, I’d recommend checking out the work of Andrea Nguyen, Diep Tran, and Tien Nguyen. Plus, the hundreds of chefs and cooks around the country who have been cooking incredible Vietnamese and not-Vietnamese food for decades, including Helene An in Los Angeles, Viet Pham in Salt Lake City, Christine Ha in Houston, Jimmy Ly and Yen Vo in NYC, and Teresa Nguyen in Seattle, to name a few.
“I love banh mi, but I don’t necessarily think the crusty baguette is the best part of the sandwich. Putting it on soft, fluffy milk bread was a revelation. If someone else has done this before, I apologize, but I’ve never seen this before in my life. Now, if someone wants to make these, and sell them for, like, $4.75 each, I’ll be your customer every day.”
“Originally our menu included a course of potted beef, which we harvested from the oxtails used in the pho broth, but then I thought, ‘No one is going to eat this.’ So we scrapped the potted beef course, but kept the oxtails as the backbone of our super-simple pho (which was inspired by Regency-era consommé). Oxtails are probably my favorite cut of beef. They’re super flavorful and gelatinous and they used to be relatively cheap because nobody ate them.
To start the pho broth, set about 30 oxtails on a sheet tray lined with a roasting rack. Season with salt, then pop into an oven heated to 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 35–40 minutes or until they’re deeply browned.
Toss the oxtails into a pressure cooker and cover with water. Throw a chunk of ginger and an onion that you’ve peeled and cut in half directly onto the stovetop over a medium flame. Give them some char, then toss into the pot with a piece of star anise, a spoonful of black peppercorns, a little white pepper, some rock sugar, and a few black cardamom pods. Cook at full pressure for 90 minutes, then release the pressure naturally. Pull out the oxtails and reserve. (You can toss them in with the pho, or pull off the meat for the Beef Stew recipe, or an Italian ragù, or a quesadilla filling, or whatever you like.)
Season the broth to taste with fish sauce, sugar, salt, and black pepper. (If you like, you can cool the broth down, then skim the fat, but remember, fat is flavor.) Boil some rice noodles, then pop them into the broth with a squeeze of lemon and some sliced scallions.”
“Chuck roast is one of my favorite pieces of meat, and hugely underrated. It contains a number of different muscles and lots of collagen, so when you roast it slowly you get this unctuous, fatty, super tender, super flavorful result. I think a lot of people have negative associations with chuck roast because they grew up eating chewy, gray pot roasts, but this is not that, I promise.
For this stew, you’re going to get a 4-pound piece of chuck roast and season it well with salt and pepper. Toss it into a Dutch oven, cover, and roast at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 3 hours. Pull the meat out, but leave the drippings. Add chunks of carrot, onion, ginger, lemongrass, and a handful of garlic cloves. Add a few tablespoons of tomato paste, and a couple teaspoons of Chinese five-spice (star anise, cinnamon, Sichuan peppercorn, clove, and fennel). Add a couple cups of beef broth (preferably the pho broth from earlier in this menu), a spoonful of sambal, 3 quartered tomatoes, and a cup of chopped Thai basil and cilantro. Season to taste, thinning out with water if it’s too potent, then add the meat back to the pot. (Add some meat from the pho broth, too, if you made it.) Bring to a simmer and cook for 45 minutes. Serve with chunks of crusty baguette.”
“This is maybe the only way I like to eat beef tenderloin. Marinate chunks of tenderloin for a few hours with a couple cloves of garlic, chili, soy sauce, sugar, Maggi, rice-wine vinegar, and scallions.
Toss into a hot wok (or a cast-iron pan) with butter, chunks of tomato, and sliced red onion. Cook through and serve over jasmine rice.”
“I feel like a lot of people who say they don’t like anchovies aren’t aware of the role they play in Caesar salad. I understand that, on their own, salt-cured fish fillets can be intense. But whether they’re in fish sauce, Worcestershire sauce, or pounded into a Caesar dressing, anchovies are a weapon of mass umami.
For my Caesar, I like to use the mortar and pestle to build the whole dressing. First, I pound a couple cloves of garlic, a few anchovies, and a spoonful of mustard. To that, I add black pepper, a pinch of MSG, and the juice of 1 lemon. Pound, grind, pound, grind. Then about ½ cup of extra virgin olive oil and an egg yolk. Work it until the fat and liquid emulsify into a creamy dressing. Toss with romaine leaves and croutons (which I made by coating some supermarket French bread with garlic oil* and baking it until crisp). Season to taste with salt and pepper. Oh, and because my guests this week— Reggie Miller and Mark Jackson — are athletes, I know they’re always looking for a protein hit, so I added some chopped chicken breast that I seasoned with Momofuku Savory Salt and seared in a cast-iron pan.
*To make garlic oil (and garlic confit), throw a handful of whole garlic cloves into a small saucepan and cover with olive oil. Set over low heat and cook for about an hour or until the cloves are soft (but not falling apart). Be sure not to let the oil rise above the barest simmer — you don’t want to burn the garlic or let the delicate aromas of garlic dissipate by heating it too much.”
“Although I think the clear, brothy Rhode Island–style of clam chowder is severely underrated and needs more attention, my two guests for this episode are specifically fans of New England–style chowder. You gotta give the people what they want!
The key to good clam chowder, in my opinion, is more clams than you think you need. You want plenty of the clam juice to season the soup, and there’s nothing worse than clam chowder without any clams. For the show, I sped things up with the help of the microwave. In a microwave-safe bowl with a lid (I use Anyday bowls, specifically built for microwave cooking). First, I sliced six strips of bacon into lardons, then cooked them in the microwave for about 4 minutes. To that, I added diced potato, onion, and celery, then popped it back in the microwave to soften the veg.
Meanwhile, I steamed open a couple pounds of littleneck clams in a Dutch oven with a good splash of white wine. (Remember to wash and soak the clams for at least an hour before cooking to extract as much sediment as you can.) Once the clams open, pull them out of the pot and discard any clams that didn’t open. Shuck the clams and reserve. Strain the liquid left in the pot and don’t you dare throw that away. That’s liquid gold. I padded my clam liquor out with the juice from a can of clams, which I find to be really delicious.
Now, in the same pot, I melted a big knob of butter, then whisked in an equal amount of flour to make a roux. (You could also use bacon fat to make the roux, if you render the bacon in the pan first.) Cook the roux just until the rawness of the flour is gone, then add a couple cups of milk and allow to thicken. Thin it back down to the consistency you like with clam juice. Add the veg and the bacon, season to taste, and serve with oyster crackers.”
“Before each episode, we do a deep dive into our guests’ social media. Not gonna lie, I saw a lot of creamy pasta on Mark’s Instagram. Not all of it was fettuccine Alfredo, but … a lot of it was. Who can blame him? Fettuccine Alfredo is great, although most Americans like it creamier than they serve in Italy. I’m not being a snob about it — I like it with a little cream, too. I’m just saying…
For the show, I made a dough with about 4 cups of 00 flour and 6 eggs. I rolled it out to order, then sliced it into thick fettuccine noodles. For this dish in particular, I think it’s important not to oversalt the pasta water. You want to season it, but you also want to use the starchy water to give your sauce that silky texture everyone loves from Alfredo. If it’s too salty, you’ll end up with overseasoned sauce.
While the noodles cook, melt a big chunk of butter and add a fat handful of Parmesan in a separate pan. Deposit the cooked noodles in the butter, along with a ladleful of pasta water. Add an egg yolk and a splash of cream, then stir vigorously to emulsify the sauce. Season to taste with salt, and serve immediately.”
“Here’s the other thing we saw a lot of on Mark’s Instagram: salmon. My man likes a nice piece of fish. For the episode, we got ahold of some really nice aged Ora King Salmon from The Joint Seafood and seasoned it ahead of time with salt.
Early in the episode, I started a potato rösti to accompany the salmon. A rösti is basically a fancy-sounding Swiss-German term for hash browns. Grate potatoes, coat with potato starch, and pack into a cast-iron skillet with … a lot of butter. Cook over medium heat for a few minutes, then pop into a 400-degree Fahrenheit oven and cook for another 10 minutes. Carefully flip over, then continue to cook until crisp and brown on both sides.
To cook the salmon, I pan-roasted in a cast-iron skillet with … a lot of butter. No other way to put it. Just a lot of butter, that I use to arrosé (baste) the salmon. For the sauce, I set a metal bowl over a steaming pot of water (the same one I used to cook the pasta in earlier) and melted … a lot of butter. I whisked in capers and the caper liquid. Cooking over low temperature helps the fat and liquid emulsify into a uniform sauce.
Finally, the only vegetable Reggie says he’ll eat is green beans. So, as a little vegetable side, I steamed some cleaned green beans in the microwave, then garnished with a drizzle of olive oil and some garlic confit (see above).”
“The guys are huge fans of chocolate, so I scrounged around the studio and found a bag of fun-size chocolate bars in the kitchen. I melted a whole bag of those (about 500 grams) with half a stick of butter and about ½ cup cream. Separately, I whisked together 6 eggs with two fistfuls of sugar and a pinch of salt. I combined the two mixtures to make the filling, then poured that into a blind-baked tart shell. Honestly, I’d tell you how I made the tart shell if I remembered, but I basically did it the least technical, most inane way you could. It was basically 50:50 flour and butter. Once filled, I baked the tarts for 20–30 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and let it cool. It turned out great, which is annoying, because I have no idea how I did it.”
“This episode of Dinner Time Live was different from any of our previous episodes in that there was no menu ahead of time. It’s something that we’ve been wanting to try for a while: a completely improvised meal based on what was in the fridge. It just so happened that I was out of town until the morning of the show, and we had two perfect guests for the experiment in Joel McHale and Harvey Guillén. They’re both great eaters and were open to anything. Before the show, Harvey mentioned loving the seafood boils at Boiling Crab in Koreatown. Joel was just looking to be challenged. (He requested offal and wild game, but we don’t usually keep that in the fridge.) He also said he cooked a steak better than I can, so I made sure to put him to the test on the show.
My first look at the fridge came about two and a half hours before the show. My eyes were drawn to a few things: a pack of smoked whitefish, sliced pork belly, black cod, head-on shrimp, cabbage, bean sprouts, sliced pastrami, summer squash, and stone fruit. From the freezer, I pulled out a box of softshell crabs in the freezer, spring roll wrappers, and frozen artichokes. Not everything got used, but I tried to get to as much of it as I could.”
“When the guys sat down, I served them a few super-quick cucumber pickles I made just before the show. Just chunks of Persian cucumber, salt, agave, rice wine vinegar, MSG, and a squeeze of lime. All they need is about 30 minutes to marinate and they’re ready to go.”
“The first proper course utilized that smoked whitefish that we’d bought when I was messing around with an everything-spiced flatbread for Jay Pharoah and Lil Jon. I peeled off the skin, flaked the meat, and mixed it with mayo, cream cheese, queso fresco, and a bag of frozen artichokes. Popped it in the oven and served it as soon as it was bubbling and brown on top.”
“When I first saw the pork belly, I thought about making my grandfather’s favorite dish: pork belly braised in soy and sugar. But then the head of cabbage caught my eye, and in my mind, I pictured a bowl of pozole topped with shredded cabbage and a squeeze of lime. I love pozole, and hadn’t made it for a long time, so that’s where we went.
I cut the pork belly into cubes and rendered them in a Dutch oven, then added two sliced onions. Meanwhile, in a blender, I combined about 10 cloves of garlic with a handful of dried chilies that we always have on hand (chile Japones, chile de árbol, chile pasilla), rice wine vinegar, oil, chicken bouillon, agave, dried oregano, maggi, fish sauce, and water. Blended that and then added to the pot, and brought everything to a simmer. Toward the end of cooking, I added a can of garbanzo beans left over from the Nikki Glaser and JB Smoove vegan episode. (Ordinarily, you’d add hominy, but we didn’t have any.)
To finish, I garnished with thin-sliced radishes and that shredded cabbage. Not bad for completely off-the-cuff pozole, I have to say.”
“We were originally going to serve softshell crabs with our spring menu for Maya Rudolph and Ron Funches, then I decided at the last second they weren’t going to be delicious unless I fried them. At that point, I didn’t have a fryer, so I bailed. But we kept them in the freezer for a rain day.
Well, that day arrived with Joel and Harvey. We had leftover spring roll wrappers from the “Steak and Sensibility” episode, so I wrapped the crabs and fried them. I tucked those into a maki roll with Kewpie mayo, a squeeze of lime, and some sliced jalapeño for a quick take on a spider roll. It turned out great, but I have to warn you: if you’re going to fry softshell crabs, you need to be prepared for splatter. They’re ticking time bombs. I purposely positioned the fryer as far as possible from the guests, so they’re not in the splash zone. Good thing, too, because Joel nearly got popped a few times during the episode.”
“In honor of Harvey’s love for Boiling Crab, I decided to improvise a seafood boil that’s a little bit Cajun and a little bit Chinese shui zhu yu. We had leftover Chinese sausage, doubanjiang, and Sichuan peppercorns from the episode where Terry Crews and Chris Ying cooked for me. Turns out the piece of Taylor ham I had in the fridge had been aged for a little too long, so that unfortunately had to go in the garbage. But we still had black cod, shrimp, and SPAM, so it was gonna be fine, protein-wise.
For the soup base, I combined Sichuan peppercorns, a handful of dried chilies, garlic, butter, doubanjiang, crab paste, Momofuku Tingly Salt, the shrimp shells, and a quart of dashi I found in the freezer. That was the flavor base, in which I cooked the black cod, shrimp, SPAM, and Chinese sausage. At the very last second, some boiled vermicelli went in. It looked insane, but I swear it tasted really spectacular.”
“Wish I could tell you how I made fruit tart, but again, I eyeballed a pie crust at the last second. I remember there was a lot of butter and actually whole cubes of ice that I tossed into the food processor. (Ordinarily, you use ice water to keep the butter from melting, so why not just ice cubes?) The filling was some nice stone fruit, which is coming into season in California, a squeeze of lemon, sugar, and a sprinkle of cornstarch. Turned out pretty well, actually.”
“Sometimes it can be tough to plan a menu that fits our two guests’ tastes and dietary restrictions, but this episode was actually perfect. I’ve cooked for Lily Collins before, and I know her tastes really well. She’s pescatarian and loves Copenhagen and Noma. I’ve never cooked for Ashley Park, but she’s Korean-American like me, and seems like she’s down to eat anything. Between the two of them, it was a perfect opportunity to cook a few things I’ve been saving for the right occasion. So, for the episode, we got a really nice marbled flounder from The Joint in Sherman Oaks. I sliced some of it for a couple Korean-style raw fish dishes. The bones, skin, and fins went into a really nice fish broth. And I roasted the rest on the bone. In between courses, I served a lobster dish as an ode to Noma. And to finish, a classic French dessert in honor of Emily in Paris.
The kimchi and various Korean jangs we used in the episode all came specially from our friend Corey Lee, the chef of Benu and San Ho Won (@sanhowon) in San Francisco. For my money, Corey’s one of the greatest chefs in the world and makes some of the best kimchi I’ve ever tasted. He’s just now starting to produce some for the public with one of Korea’s most storied companies, Jongga. Look out for it later this summer.
And, in honor of Lily’s love for Noma, we also asked René Redzepi if he’d send us some of his own fermented goods from Noma Projects. We deployed their delicious mushroom garum, rose vinegar, and dashi reduction throughout the menu, as well.”
“Hwe means ‘raw’ in Korean. Saengseon-hoe is raw, thinly sliced fish. And while there’s plenty of resemblance to Japanese preparations, there are important differences. Koreans are all about texture and prefer their fish to have crunch, which you can get from slicing extremely fresh fish —like, straight out of the tank or ocean. The rice is seasoned with sesame oil rather than vinegar. And Korean hwe dishes are often dressed with a gochujang-based sauce rather than soy.
For Lily and Ashley, we got a beautiful marbled flounder that had been dry-aged by our friend Liwei at The Joint in Sherman Oaks. I sliced one of the filets from the belly side, as well as a piece of salmon that I cured for about an hour before the show. (See below for more about the cure, which I used multiple times in the episode.)
The first hwe course was just the sliced fish with a plate of lettuces, Korean chilies, tomato ssamjang (sent to us by Corey Lee from his restaurant San Ho Won in San Francisco), gim (seasoned seaweed), sliced cucumbers, kimchi, sliced garlic, and daikon. Before serving, I spritzed the lettuces and vegetables with the same MSG water I used for the crudité in the ‘Burger Party’ episode earlier this season. The idea was for them to make their own wraps (ssam), customizing each bite however they like.
The second hwe course was hwedupbap, which translates to ‘raw fish on rice.’ I seasoned some really nice short grain rice with sesame oil and salt, then topped it with sliced fish (the flounder and salmon, along with lean tuna, fatty tuna, and amberjack), thinly sliced cabbage, cherry tomatoes, shredded seaweed, pickled daikon, and cucumber. On top, I drizzled a sauce of gochujang, sesame oil, sesame seeds, agave, and a splash of water.
Fish cure:
For both the raw salmon and the roasted flounder, I made a cure of salt, sugar, MSG, and dried seaweed that I quickly blitzed into a fine powder in a blender.”
At the last second, our friend Liwei from The Joint showed up at the kitchen with a tray of uni, so as a starter course, I decided to make a riff on a classic course from Momofuku Ko: chickpeas and uni. Back in the day at our culinary lab in New York, I think we were the first people to try to make miso from chickpeas. The result was amazing: nutty, slightly sweet, with tons of umami, and the flavor of aged cheese. We called it Hozon, and it became the basis for a lot of dishes at the various restaurants. At Ko, we blended Hozon with chickpeas, lemon, and olive oil, and served it with uni as an early course. We don’t make Hozon anymore, so I had to get some store-bought chickpea miso (which wasn’t as good as Momofuku’s) for our dish. It wasn’t the same, but when life gives you uni…
“Lily loves Noma, as she should. It’s one of the greatest restaurants in the history of the world. But nobody’s as old school of a Noma fan as me. I’ve been eating there for almost 20 years and consider René Redzepi to be one of my best friends. It’ll probably pain him to see me dragging out this dish from almost 15 years ago, but that’s what friends are for. It’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever eaten at the restaurant, and I think it’s hugely influential. The original dish is langoustine tails (the huge, beautiful kind they get in Scandinavia) served with an emulsion of oysters and fresh parsley and a sprinkling of toasted rye crumbles.
For the show, I substituted lobster tails for the beautiful langoustines we don’t have access to. They’re nowhere near as good, but you can’t have it all. I pulled the tails out of their shells, skewered them so they’d stay straight, then cooked them in a cast-iron pan (with some lobster shell–infused butter). To finish, a drizzle of Noma’s ‘Dashi RDX’ to stay on theme. For the oyster-parsley emulsion, I still don’t believe that René didn’t add any stabilizers or gums, but he says he didn’t. Just fresh oysters, fresh parsley, oil, and what Rene calls “the touch.” For the show, I had some xanthan gum standing by in case my ‘touch’ failed me. The rye crumbs are just dark rye bread from Tartine, toasted, crumbled, coated with olive oil, and toasted again until crunchy.”
“I love whole roasted flatfish, whether it’s flounder, turbot, or fluke. I left the back filets on the flounder so we could roast them on the bone. There’s really not much to it. I cured it in the fish cure described above for a couple hours. Then placed it in a pan and roasted it in a hot oven (400 degrees Fahrenheit) for about 20–25 minutes. That’s it.”
“I hate waste, especially when you have really nice ingredients, so we used every scrap of the fish we bought. The bones, fins, and skin all went into a stock pot with a couple pieces of kombu, salt, MSG, and a splash of Corey’s anchovy sauce (aekjeot). After straining the broth, I dropped in the last filet of flounder to poach for a couple minutes. This is the kind of dish I love to eat — super flavorful but clean broth, nice fish, a bowl of perfect rice, and some pickles on the side.”
“Someone at Netflix asked for a French dessert in honor of Emily in Paris, and for some reason, my mind went straight to the flottante (or oeufs à la neige). It’s basically ice cream before the advent of freezer technology: a pool of crème Anglaise with an ‘island’ of meringue floating on top. Essentially, I made a crème Anglaise with 6 egg yolks, vanilla, a cup of milk, a cup of cream, and a whole mess of sugar. Cooked it slowly and gently until thickened, then flavored with matcha. The island is a sweet meringue that I poached in milk and flavored with yuzu. The last touch is a sprinkling of crushed caramel shards (microwave sugar and agave for two minutes until caramelized, pour it on a sheet tray to harden, then break it into pieces).
“For Tony Hale and Sam Richardson, we decided to do an homage to the classic New York diner. I love eating and living in Los Angeles, but there is nothing remotely close here to the diner culture of New York and New Jersey. Most of the menu is classic: matzo ball soup, patty melts (which actually originate from LA), disco fries, egg creams, black-and-white cookies. But there’s one dish in particular that we came up with for the show: a riff on the Denver omelet, but with a twist.”
“When the guys sat down, I served them each a bowl of matzo ball soup, which I think is the greatest of all chicken soups. I’ve tried many times in the past to freestyle a matzo ball soup, and I’ve failed every time. So for the episode, I went by the book. This is more or less exactly a Joan Nathan recipe for matzo balls, with boxed matzo meal, eggs, fat, a little nutmeg, and chopped dill. The key seems to be resting the matzo balls before cooking, which I’m usually not patient enough to do. As for the soup, it’s a classic chicken stock that I finished with thyme, thyme, parsley, dill, and a little chicken bouillon because that’s really the flavor most of us associate with diner chicken soup.”
“I love to wrap. In Korean, we call it ssam — wrapping meats in lettuces or herbs with aromatics and sauces. My second restaurant, Momofuku Ssäm Bar, was based on the way I used to eat Chinese takeout, which was to wrap everything — rice, noodles, stir-fries — in a mu shu pork pancake. In the diner, you’ll see people wrapping sausages up in pancakes, but that’s about as fast as most people are willing to go. For this dish, I wanted to make something like a Denver omelet — ham, peppers, onions, cheese, the whole kitchen sink, basically — while spreading the wrap gospel. So, I expanded the Denver omelet to include a few more ingredients, including chopped up tater tots. Then I made mu shu–style crepes for Tony and Sam to wrap everything up. During rehearsal, we started calling it the ‘Mu Shu Denver,’ as a tongue-in-cheek nickname.
But then Chris came with this crazy revelation. He found out that the Denver omelet is actually a direct descendant of Chinese egg foo young. Egg foo young is a fluffy omelet with pork and vegetables that apparently Chinese laborers in the late19th-century would place between two slices of bread and eat as a sandwich. It wasn’t wrapped in a pancake, but it’s basically the exact same idea. I live for this kind of discovery, when you realize the things you think you’ve invented are actually 150 years old, and that deliciousness can unite us across time, space, and culture.”
For the Mu Shu Denver filling:
For the Mu Shu crepes:
For the plum sauce:
Mix grape jelly (or whatever jelly you like) with a splash of soy sauce and some Momofuku Sweet and Spicy sauce in a saucepan. Stir to combine, adjust for seasoning, and serve.
“For the patty melt, I smashed a couple burger patties (a blend of short rib, brisket, and chuck) in a cast-iron pan, then topped them with onions I softened in the microwave (two onions in a large Anyday bowl with a fat knob of butter for 7 minutes). The bread was marbled rye. The cheese was Swiss. The sauce, special.
Disco fries are a New Jersey specialty. The gravy was a super-quick, super-hacky version made by melting half a stick of butter in a pan, then adding flour to make a roux. To that, I added a big spoonful of beef bouillon, water, a garlic clove, and sprigs of parsley and thyme. Once it thickened, I strained it through a fine-mesh sieve. If it’s not thick enough, add a sprinkle of cornstarch. The French fries were fried from frozen and topped with cheese.”
For the special sauce:
10 gherkins, chopped
1/2 cup Kewpie mayo
Squeeze of ketchup
1 teaspoon hot mustard
For the frosting:
Little-known fact: Jimmy Kimmel’s dad is actually the master of egg creams. Somehow, he’s able to elevate chocolate syrup, milk, and seltzer to something that’s greater than the sum of its parts. I tried to get him to come on the show to demonstrate, but unfortunately he wasn’t available, so the guys had to make do with the version I served them. The nice thing is, there’s a high floor for egg creams.
At the last second I decided to switch up the disco fries by adding a Coney dog–style chili in honor of Sam’s Detroit roots. The Coney chili is classically a bean-less, mild, slightly sweet, rich meat sauce. Mine is… not classical. And spicy.
1 pound 80-20 ground beef
1 pound brisket, cut into small pieces
1 large onion, diced
8 cloves garlic
1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 dried chilies (I used chile guajillo), seeded
1 star anise
1 serrano chili
2 teaspoon dried oregano
1 can nonalcoholic beer (I used a dark beer from Athletic Brewing)
2 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
3 tablespoon tamari
3 tablespoon tomato paste
1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
Salt
MSG
“Here’s a little behind-the-scenes story. Last week, for Tony Hale and Sam Richardson, we planned on serving one of the heavier menus we’ve ever made on the show. That morning, the air conditioner in the studio crapped out. By the time the show started, I was sweating like crazy. This week, the air conditioner’s working (for now), but it’s even hotter outside. Point is, I’m doing a summer menu for Mandy Moore and Kate Berlant. Light, refreshing, lots of seafood, slightly less time in front of a hot stove for me.”
“White gazpacho is probably the most obscure of the cold, bread-based soups. It lives in the shadow of its much more popular cousin, tomato gazpacho, and it’s pretty rare to find out in the wild. But I like it. It’s like sipping on salad dressing and salad all blended together — in a good way. Traditionally, it’s made with day-old bread, almonds, garlic, and a little sherry vinegar. And while it doesn’t always include grape juice, I’ve always had it garnished with green grapes, so I made ours with fresh-squeezed grape juice. (I tried using bottled grape juice, but it was too sweet.) Just puree green grapes, then let the liquid drip slowly through a fine-mesh sieve. Finally, for some reason, white gazpacho (ajo blanco) reminds me of jatjuk, or Korean pine nut porridge, so I made mine with pine nuts instead of almonds. Basically, all you have to do is puree everything with olive oil, a little cucumber, salt, and MSG. Pass it through a fine-mesh sieve, and chill until ready to serve. Serve a small portion — a little goes a long way — and garnish with olive oil and a few pine nuts.”
“This salad is based on a dish I used to make at Café Boulud, although my version is much less complicated. One reason I wanted to make this dish — in addition to it being light and refreshing — is because it really highlights the difference between home and restaurant cooking. If you make this at home, you can simply cube some watermelon and toss it with everything else. In a restaurant, a cook would spend hours and hours with a tiny melon baller, scooping perfect tiny marbles of fruit for the dish. I still made the fancy version for the show, but only with help and only for two people.
To start, shell 2 or 3 lobster tails. Deposit the shells in a saucepan with 1/2 cup olive oil. Set over medium-low heat and cook for 10 minutes or so, stirring often. You’re looking to infuse the oil with the flavor of the shells. Strain and return the shell oil to the pan. Sauté the lobster tails in the lobster oil along with a little bit of julienned makrut lime leaf, then remove and chill until ready to serve.
For the salad, slice or ball a few different varieties of melon until you have about a cup per serving. (I used three different melons from the farmers market.) Puree the rest of the melon with a splash of rice wine vinegar, a touch of fish sauce, salt, a tiny bit of chili, a squeeze of lime, and MSG. (For the show, I also hydrated .5% xanthan gum by weight, then blended that in, too.) That’s your dressing.
Combine the melon balls with an equal amount of fresh corn kernels, thinly sliced shallot, thinly sliced makrut lime leaf, and the dressing. Season to taste, then top with sliced, chilled lobster.”
Fish en Papillote
“Cooking en papillote means to wrap food in a parchment pouch and bake it. You really don’t see it very often anymore, but I think it’s great. It’s a really nice presentation, and the parchment pouch traps steam and creates a moist cooking environment.
For the episode, I wanted to serve the fish with ratatouille, which is one of the first dishes I think of when I think of summer. Mandy doesn’t love eggplant, so I left it out, but otherwise all the typical ratatouille ingredients are here. First, I cooked down some fresh tomato with diced bell pepper and garlic in olive oil. I laid a layer of that onto a sheet of parchment, then shingled thin slices of zucchini and yellow squash on the tomato. The fish (rockfish) went on top, along with a sprig of thyme. I wrapped it all with another sheet of parchment, crimped the edges, and sealed it with a staple. It all comes together in a hot oven in about 20 minutes.
While the fish cooks, puree a few jarred, roasted piquillo peppers with garlic, olive oil, sherry vinegar, and a little agave. That’s your sauce.
Pull the parchment package out of the oven and slice open immediately. Top the fish with sauce and serve.”
“I know very little about this dish outside of the Italian-American context, so I don’t know how authentically Italian it is. But that’s one of the reasons I love it. It’s so simple that it feels universal. With a few very small tweaks, you could imagine it as Chinese. It comes down to fresh clams, the liquor within, fat, umami, and noodles.
Boil some spaghetti. If you’re me, use the least amount of water possible so you don’t have to strain the pasta. All you want is a little bit of very starchy water to help give the sauce body.
Meanwhile, steam a couple pounds of clams with minced garlic in white wine. As soon as the first clams open, remove from the heat or else you’ll definitely overcook them. Shuck half the clams and puree with the cooking liquid and a stick of butter. (This is a trick I first saw the great chef Alain Ducasse do with oysters.) Season to taste with a splash of fish sauce. That’s your clam sauce.
Add the sauce to the pasta (and starchy water), along with a handful of fresh parsley. Stir until the sauce reduces and coats the pasta. Add the rest of the clams and serve.”
For the roasted plums:
15 large plums
Sugar
For the cake batter:
9 1/4 tablespoons butter
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 egg
1 egg white
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla powder
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
270 grams cake flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
Whipped mascarpone:
60 grams powdered sugar
200 grams mascarpone cheese
80 grams heavy cream
Combine ingredients and whip to stiff peaks in a stand mixer.
Watch Dinner Time Live with David Chang on Netflix now, and tune in each Tuesday at 4 p.m. PST to watch live.
