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Miso two and a half more ways:
- Cucumber Miso Gazpacho
- Miso mashed potatos
- Miso short ribs (improved)
—Background—
When I tried doing miso three ways and I said I couldn’t do it 6 ways it genuinely made me mad. I absolutely hate hate hate when someone tells me I can’t do something, or worse yet, I tell myself I can’t do something. So obviously I had to make 2.5 more miso dishes this weekend.
Although I loved the traditional miso soup it’s just way too hot outside for a hot soup. In Spain when it’s hot I really enjoyed drinking gazpacho, a cold salty tomato soup. My friend had brought over these fresh Kirby cucumbers from her garden which I needed to use up. So I thought a cucumber miso gazpacho could hit the spot.
Re: the mashed potato’s, although the short ribs tasted very Asian, I felt the texture of the sauce would be more suited for mashed potato’s. It’s great on rice but this took it to another level. Can’t go wrong with stew and mash. Obviously I had to incorporate miso cuz.. why not.
Lastly, when I made the first round of short ribs this weekend, I felt panicked following the recipe to a tee. It upset me that I had to make so many changes, and it was mentally taxing to follow the recipe. The way I cook is, I watch a million tiktoks or YouTube videos on how to make [insert dish here], read some recipes on google, and I consolidate them by taking the best techniques from each. I always taste as I go when I add each ingredient too. I was cooking for my good friends and thought that by following the recipe, it would turn out well, which I didn’t feel like it did, so I needed to be true to my intuition and taste this time around. So I made them again.
—Recipes—
Miso cucumber gazpacho: https://iheartumami.com/cucumber-gazpacho/. I took out the seeds of the cucumber as I thought it added bitterness. I also took out the pepper flakes, basil, pesto, and maple syrup. I did it in two batches today, one with the pepper flakes and maple syrup and honestly it was gross, because of the raw ingredients, you would cycle through tastes in a slurp, and it just didn’t feel cohesive. Sometimes you gotta subtract. In the recipe she uses a lemon, but I also had a yuzu vinaigrette on hand which I added. I didn’t have pine nuts but would’ve been a nice addition. I also think some goat cheese would’ve been nice.
Miso mashed potato’s: https://www.travelcookrepeat.com/miso-mashed-potatoes/. Honestly used the recipe as a reference but didn’t measure anything. It’s mashed potato’s it’s easy.
Miso braised short ribs: https://whisperofyum.com/post/miso-short-ribs-with-cilantro-sauce/. This time around, instead of buying individual short ribs already packaged I asked for the whole rack at the meat counter. I wanted some more consistency in terms of sizing, because in the first batch I had two little ones and two big ones, which are fine, but I wanted them all to cook at the same time. I took diligence to sear the fatty parts of the ribs first, as opposed to a random side, and the sear on all sides came out much better. When it was time to add the vegetables I added half of a white onion, and spent a much longer time than the recipe suggests frying down and cooking the vegetables. Overall I added double the amount of vegetables because I felt it needed less meat taste and more lightness. I added a whole other cup of sake, because it was too salty the first time around, and this was much better. And 2 tablespoons of sugar at the beginning. The rest of the changes you can see I made on my previous post about it just 1-2 days ago.
— Closing —
Overall I’m very happy that I learned how to make 5 different miso dishes this weekend. There weren’t many new techniques but the gazpacho was particularly difficult because my sense of taste for cold soup has not been calibrated. If you’ve gotten this far, thanks for reading! 0 reply
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