"asian" news and stories

Nothing on this plate is intensely complicated to make, yet everything has wonderfully layered and nuanced flavors. Soy-maple glaze gives a salty-sweet boost to mild tilapia, and a side of udon noodles keep the Asian riff going, especially when tossed with a spicy yuzu dressing. (Yuzu is a tangy, aromatic Japanese citrus fruit; you don't often see it fresh here in the U.S., but you can buy the bottled juice in Asian markets and some health food stores.)

The author used a recipe from Gourmet as his creative springboard but didn't worry about following the instructions to the letter. We encourage you to follow his lead whenever you encounter an interesting recipe: Play with flavor combinations, swap out ingredients, change the cooking method, experiment and explore. Make it your own.

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Zesty, spicy and sweet in equal parts, Thai beef salad may be the ideal dish for spring. Though it might simply look like beef plunked on top of greens, its almost-invisible ingredients -- lime juice, minced red chiles and fish sauce -- lend it a flavor profile we crave again and again. Packed with protein, it also features enough veggies that one can walk away feeling a bit lighter on her feet than after, say, downing a porterhouse.

We were reminded how much we love this salad when we came upon La Fille de La Ville's photo. Why La Fille de la Ville? It's pretty literal, we discovered when we emailed her: "I'm just a girl of the town!" she exclaimed. Sounds like a typical New Orleans resident smitten with her city. She's a newbie there but sounds pretty darn enthused about NOLA's "epicurean delights." Find her recipe -- and breathless gastronomical reports -- on her site.

I posted about Shochu recently, and one person commenting noted the difference between Shochu, a Japanese liquor, and Soju, a Korean liquor. (They are similar-tasting, and some Shochu is labelled Soju for marketing purposes.) Not long ago I tried a really interesting citrus liqueur made from Soju called TY KU. TY KU is made from yuzu, an Asian citrus, honeydew melon, ginseng, mangosteen, an Asian superfruit, goji berry, green tea, Soju, and Sake. It's refreshing, with totally exotic flavors that are hard to describe because they're unlike most drinks found in America.

Let's be perfectly frank: the liqueur is quite good. In fact, it's so good that a group of six of us polished the bottle off in one sitting (it's only 20 percent alcohol, so don't schedule an intervention!). But I don't normally write about liqueurs, so in the spirit of honesty, I'll share with you why I'm raving about this bottle.

It has an LED light in the bottom that lights up the liqueur inside, taking me right back to my college days when everyone in the dorm had a lava lamp. The light makes the green liqueur glow irridescent, a perfect conversation piece for a cocktail party (it was for mine!).

Also, apparently TY KU is a celeb favorite. Denzel Washington, Patrick Swayze, Leonardo Dicaprio, Jaime Foxx, and Paris Hilton have all been spotted drinking it.

After the jump, a couple of TK KU recipes (though seriously, it goes down just fine alone).

At the San Antonio New World Wine & Food Festival last month, I ate lunch at Oro in the Emily Morgan Hotel, which is just across the street from the Alamo. We were sitting around chatting about up-and-coming food and drink trends when our hostess, Jeanne, asked, "Have you tried Shochu yet?" We hadn't, so she promptly ordered up a couple of small glasses for us to sip.

Shochu is a clear spirit made by distilling barley, rice, sweet potatoes, black sugar, or even more exotic ingredients like milk or pumpkin. It's served diluted with water, with fruit juice, or on the rocks, and typically has about 25 percent alcohol, making it stronger than sake but weaker than some spirits.

Oro has hosted several special events to introduce Shochu to the San Antonio area, where it's a new item. While Shochu has been a staple in Japan for centuries and has outsold Sake there since 2004, it's just beginning to make its way into the States. You can probably find it easily on the west and east coasts, but it will be harder to track down in middle America.

If you can't find it at your local wine and spirits store, ask if they'll order it. For one thing, it's fun and easy to mix into cocktails, like the recipes after the jump. For another, it's what our hostess calls "sake light"--a 2-ounce serving of Shochu only has about 35 calories, compared to 80 calories for a 2-ounce serving of Sake and 120 calories for the same amount of vodka.

After the jump, some Shochu cocktail recipes.

If you're prone to chef crushes, you could do a lot worse than Matthew Kenney -- and that's solely on the basis of his food. Though Kenney is now a primary practioner of the raw food movement, foodies who found themselves in SoHo during the late 1990s/early 2000s will remember him for Canteen, a restaurant that emphasized the fusion influences that pre-date his raw food conversion and are the highlight of Big City Cooking. But don't be intimidated: Kenney's magic is in revealing the essence of a flavor, an ingredient, or a technique, and thus, though it is essentially a restaurant cookbook, Big City Cooking is very easy to understand and use -- always with delicious results.

The thesis of the book is that the abundance of ingredients and mash of cultures in a city can be the inspiration for a cook's creativity. That's a great idea, and a true one, but I don't believe that fusion influences are specifically urban -- in this day of super supermarkets, including those online, one doesn't have to live in a big city to have za'aatar in one's spice cabinet or, accordingly, on one's flatbread. (In fact, most of those "urban" ingredients or techniques originated with indigenous cuisines.)

The strength of this cookbook is the dishes themselves, which are organized by technique and which highlight a diversity of ingredients. Thus there are sections on raw and steam cooking, sauteeing, grilling, roasting, and stewing. Within each are recipes from appetizers and salads straight through to desert, all of them accessible to the home cook.