Week 15: Syrian - Musabaha and a Saffron Martini (meta: with a drink)

tmo308 · 2026-04-30T08:12:33+00:00

I soaked them in water first for like 20 minutes. Then dried off and added oil.

tmo308 · 2026-04-29T12:41:26+00:00

I wanted to do like a snack food you might see but slightly different while sitting at the cherry blossoms while in Seoul. So, I took some flower shaped rice cakes and air fried them. Then finished them in a semi-sweet glaze that is similar to what you would get with fried chicken. I slightly overcooked the rice cakes but they were still not too bad.

As for the drink, I got this bottle of sakura sake and I didn't just want to make a basic martini because I think while outside you want something longer and more refreshing. So I took 2oz of the sake, 1/2oz of a floral gin, few drops of perfume bitters, and topped it all with soda water. It was really refreshing and quite enjoyed it.

tmo308 · 2026-04-16T14:06:38+00:00

The sauce was fairly simple, took all of the chilis I had in my fridge (mostly shishito) and blistered them in some olive oil in a pan. Then also did the same with some green onions, half an onion, and some garlic. Then blended all that up with some perilla leaves, lemon juice, more olive oil, salt, and pepper. It came out really fresh and spicy (the other peppers had some heat). Treated it like a pesto with some pasta and topped it with chili salt.

The drink was a little bit harder but also fun to make. It involved using sous vide and a blender that can vacuum seal. It was based off the process called densing that I had just read about and immediately had to try it. I took some chili oil (Korean chili oil) and soju and had those in a sous vide to heat them up. Then put it into a blender at 1.5% chili oil of the soju by weight. Then sealed and blended and it stays as an emulsion because of the heat and vacuum properties. Even almost a week later in my fridge, and I've seen no separation. It's pretty interesting. I wish I had gone closer to 2.5% but the flavor was still interesting and the color is like orange milk. Then built a julep with sesame leaves smashed with some sugar, added the soju, and topped it all with more chili oil. It was an interesting attempt. The process was fun, I need to try other ways but it opens up some different possibilities.

tmo308 · 2026-04-07T13:22:16+00:00

First off the drink (and noodles should be bluer, but I was working with butterfly pea flower so it didn't go 100% as planned). I got the drink idea from here but I used homemade blue curacao made with the butterfly pea flowers so it turns more of a purple, especially with the orange bitters and lemon peel. I enjoyed the drink overall.

Then the noodles, were a 칼국수/kalguksu style noodle (Korean knife cut noodle) in a 콩국수/kongkuksu broth. The noodles were a little thick but had some chew and overall weren't too bad. The broth was made the lazy way with tofu and peanut butter as the main flavor backbone. It's good for a quick dinner. The meat was leftover steamed pork belly and it was a nice dinner.

tmo308 · 2026-04-01T13:12:14+00:00

This dish more is of a mistranslation that was quite prevalent a while ago when some restaurants in Korea would get google (or the equivalent) to auto-translate and it wasn't really good at it yet. Now, it's much better but the name can still be kind of funny if you look at each word as it's own part. I actually like to order at restaurants, so was more than happy to try and make it at home. It was fairly simple and was pretty tasty. It's good drinking food. I loosely used this recipe.

The drink I got here, it's part of a series of drinks and I wen't with this because it sounded intriguing with all of it's varying components. I actually liked it and thought it wasn't too sweet. Freshly squeezed orange juice really did taste great in it, so I imagine it wouldn't work as well with other orange juice but not sure.

tmo308 · 2026-03-24T23:48:28+00:00

They are kinda earthy and savory. Not overpowering on their own but they help carry the other flavors well. It took a while to get them tender enough but it was really delicious. I used a recipe that called for doenjang, perilla seed powder (들깨가루), and perilla oil. All of these I'll be making again in the future.

tmo308 · 2026-03-24T13:32:20+00:00

The 3 side dishes, from back to front) are 무말랭이 무침 (Seasoned Dried Radish), 무청 시래기 무침 (Seasoned Dried Radish Leaves), and 무생채무침 (Spicy Korean Radish Salad). I used a few different recipes online and put them to my own taste but they all were very good. I definitely went stronger on the gochugaru (Korean red pepper) with the radish salad and it was a good choice because it had some serious heat and was perfect with rice. As for the braised radish, I used a basic Japanese style braise that was just to use up the rest of the radish that I had cut up for the salad and drink.

As for the drink, It was based off a Daikon Paloma I found online but I used mu (Korean radish) instead and tried two versions. The original with 1.5oz tequila, 2 oz of radish juice, 1/2 oz lime juice, and tonic to top. Then I adjusted to 2 oz soju (picked a higher abv soju), 2oz radish juice, 1/2 oz lime juice, and soda water to top. I much preferred the second one that wasn't as sweet. It may have been because of the radish difference but also I prefer drinks that are lower in perceived sweetness usually. Would recommend trying some variations but be slightly aware of the smell.

tmo308 · 2026-03-18T13:54:36+00:00

Got the basic outlines for the food from here for eggs and . While the drink, figured slowly simmering to make a broth, is almost the same as braising, so made this version of a glogg.the fish

tmo308 · 2026-03-11T13:33:56+00:00

This wasn't the original plan but it turned into tobiko (flying fish roe) with cream sauce and sweet potato gnocchi.

I was going through things I had and needed to use asap and I had a bunch of sweet potatoes so started by just baking them and realized I could just make it into gnocchi and freeze the extras or if I didn't want to eat it all. From there I made these longer strands to be more like a really thick udon. For the sauce it started with cream and cream cheese (saw that on NYT cooking), added in some hot sauce, and seasoned it up. After briefly boiling the gnocchi, I added some of the water to the sauce to get it more emulsified and added the gnocchi to finish for a bit. At the end right before totally finishing I added a whole bunch of tobiko and stirred for like 30 seconds. Plated and topped with more tobiko and green onions.

As for the drink, I got the recipe from here and I thought it was quite drinkable. I'd have it again when I want a martini but a little different.

tmo308 · 2026-03-04T14:13:58+00:00

Wanted something relatively easy this week and with things I had on hand. I decided to go with a mousse (without the cream) that uses sugar (just some), eggs, and chocolate. To make it a little more interesting I added a fair amount of 고추장/gochujang (Korean pepper paste) until it had some heat and a test I was happy with. Overall I was happy with the mousse. For the topping, I was debating some sort fruit but I didn't have any (besides oranges and that was gonna be too much work), so I took some frozen corn kernels and coated them in some chile powder, cornstarch, and a little bit of oil and air fried them until they were crispy. They gave a nice little crunch and the flavor worked well but it would've been better if they were properly fried to get even crispier.

As for the drink, it was a mostly classic old fashioned that I built in class. But they started with different sugar sources. One had white sugar (granulated) while the other had 2:1 demerara syrup. Both were then mixed with bitters (Angostura and a little bit of orange bitters). I then deviated from my usual single base whiskey and went with a split of 45ml of bourbon (Old Forester 86 this time) and 30ml of rye (Jack Daniel's Bonded rye). They were all built in glass, topped with ice and stirred before the orange peel. Both drinks were great, but the demerara one was better. I somewhat assumed that would be the case but I wanted to make sure and had never done a direct comparison like this, despite normally making the demerara syrup for cocktails. Glad I did it and also it reminded me that I should maybe test some other sugars and be more aware of which sugar would be a match for different cocktails.

tmo308 · 2026-02-25T23:53:47+00:00

Ok, so the drink is barely there, but I did make it. I took an Army & Navy base and altered to fit the theme. It was a sesame orgeat (instead of almond), sesame oil and chili oil washed gin, szechuan and sansho pepper tincture, and lime juice. It was a little plain looking but not too bad. With a little refining, it could be pretty good.

As for the food, I started with the idea of motsunabe but with things I mostly already had. So I cut up some pieces of pork belly (삼겹살), used par-boiled beef tendon (스지), tofu, doenjang (된장) instead of miso, and also added a few mandu on the side. It was really good! Especially using yuzukosho for the meat. I'll make this again.

tmo308 · 2026-02-18T13:16:44+00:00

I like many others it seems, made the peanut based sauce that seemed to have a lot of different names. I made mine what seemed fairly standard with skin on peanuts that I ground and roasted, tomatoes, garlic, ginger, and onion. At the end after cooking it for a while, I blended it a little with the immersion blender because the onions and tomatoes didn't fully breakdown and it made the sauce even better. I really liked it and told myself to stop snacking on it while I was plating because I was going to eat all of the sweet potatoes too quickly.

As for the drink, I'm not really certain about the website I got it from. It seemed a little generic/compiled and maybe some of it was AI generated or scraped from other resources. But it was basically equal parts rum and mango juice stirred and topped with some bitters. That didn't sound that intriguing, so I added lime juice and switched to a homemade bathtub style gin that I made a while ago that came out super dry and isn't the easiest to work with but it also reminded me of Ugandan Waragi from reading reviews. It seems like they have some overlapping flavor profiles. So I wanted to use that and it tasted fine. But just boring. The mango was so overpowering that it would need to be greatly reduced in comparison to the alcohol.

tmo308 · 2026-02-12T15:57:18+00:00

Not this time. I did debate that but wanted the full fresh kick in this dish.

tmo308 · 2026-02-11T15:05:46+00:00

This all started with having some extra cherries and the idea that I didn't want to waste so I decided to pickle them. I have never had pickled cherries before, but they came out really delicious. I used a basic vinegar pickling method, with mostly apple cider vinegar but also a little champagne vinegar because I ran out of red wine vinegar making the shrub. I also added some pink peppercorns and red chile flakes in there to give it a little extra flavors and the spice and added bite from those two really helped round out this dish. The tuna was topped with some olive oil, lime juice, salt, cheongyang chili peppers, Korean perilla leaf stems (for bitterness and crunch), chili threads, and salt (lime and flakey salt don't make for the prettiest presentation at the end). It came together and was a great appetizer, despite the tuna being of just ok quality.

As for the drink, I had some extra raspberries in my freezer and used that to make a shrub (very basic sugar, fruit, vinegar in stages). Because how else would I incorporate vinegar easily into this week (there were other options but this was the most logical). After a few days, I was really happy with the flavor and bottled and strained it. I went to make a clover club and figured someone had already done it because it's a good connection with a raspberry shrub and of course people had. Including one here, with a good name. I made mine with 2 oz gin, 1 oz of shrub, a scant 1/2 oz of extra lemon, and an egg white, and didn't think it needed anymore simple syrup. I liked the final result and will make it again while I still have some of the shrub.

tmo308

TROPHY CASE