Recipe: Red Lentil Miso Cured Kanpachi

Frustration level: 4/10

Oh my, has it really been almost a month since my last newsletter on burnout? Please accept my sincerest apologies—I don’t think I’ve ever experienced this level of overwhelm before. It’s been (mostly) good things, but the level of personal consulting work combined with the perpetual need for more time/resources at the Studio, trying to keep on top of life organization (I’m going to graduate school, yay! Hopefully second time’s the charm), and maybe do one nice thing “for me” each week has left very little time and emotional bandwidth to write and cook freely.

This recipe is another one of my favorites. It looks so deceptively simple, but to create its many layers of freshness and umami there’s a fair number of steps involved. The biggest one, honestly, is waiting around for your miso to develop. Before you ask—you certainly can do this with a store-bought sweet white or red miso, but the end product is just not going to be the same. There’s something about the nuttiness of the red lentil that transforms the kanpachi into something unexpected. So if you have some time on your hands, today’s recipe is for you.

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Red lentil cured kanpachi, plated on chinoiserie (more on that below)

Some symbolism behind this dish

This cured kanpachi is the main feature on a dish titled Substitutions, the first course in my Asian in America dinner series that I’ve mentioned previously. If you’ve read some of my past Instagram posts, you might know that the idea of substitutions is one I find endlessly fascinating. In mainstream food media recipes, the presence of built-in (e.g., written into the ingredient list) substitutions reveal a great deal about what audience demographic the publication implicitly centers, and the level of esteem we hold those corresponding dishes/cuisines and creators.

Now, is there anything inherently wrong with asking for, or offering, substitutions? Of course not. There are millions of webpages dedicated to deciphering how to substitute an egg if you’re lacking one, or make faux pastry flour in a pinch. These objective-oriented (or functional) substitutions make total sense and are often necessary, but they are not written into every ingredient list. (Imagine how long a cake recipe would be if that were the case.) Other examples in this manner include substitutions for ingredients that may go out of season quickly, or are extremely expensive. Personally, I always encourage anyone making my recipes to adapt and substitute as they wish based on their lifestyle/preferences, what they have available, and what they want to spend their money on.

There’s a very different power dynamic at play, however, when substitutions are required for a recipe to even be published. When chefs/recipe developers are demanded to volunteer substitutions on their work so it can be made more “accessible” to a mainstream (code: white, affluent, suburban) audience, it creates a vicious cycle of entitlement that you can find in the comments section of almost any “ethnic” recipe. Does it not seem bizarre that if I’m being commissioned to write a recipe that’s representative of who I am, the ingredients must only be comprised of ingredients available at Vons? I don’t shop there. I shop at Ranch 99. At El Super, H Mart, Marukai Market. Treating the act of patronizing an “ethnic” grocery store as some sort of not-to-be-breached inconvenience, as a diversion from “normalcy,” when someone willingly chose to cook a certain recipe, screams “I want diversity and culture, but only if it’s easy and palatable to me.”

Note: This is why I very much appreciated the assigning editor who specified that I buy ingredients for my set of recipes “at one specific grocery store. Ideally this is a neighborhood grocery store. It can be a chain but not a pricey/gourmet market. We will publish the specific store, as well, for anyone interested in going there.” Also in the guidelines: “The [recipes should] also speak to your personality – don’t worry about having to appease a wide audience, just do you.”

My favorite example? Shaoxing wine (the cooking variety), which I argue is not anywhere close to its typical written substitution, dry sherry. Shaoxing wine is not challenging to source, and you can also easily buy it online since it’s nonperishable. Yet almost every single publication I’ve ever mentioned this ingredient in has asked for a substitute. Even in culinary school, while we were literally in our Chinese cuisine class, this substitute was offered. (Stewarding went as far as to send up a bottle of dry sherry alongside the Shaoxing wine they clearly had in stock!) But why? Especially considering the fact dry sherry is more expensive, more confusing to select an appropriate bottle, and (arguably) more difficult to source, it becomes apparent this substitution is not so much about functional equivalence or ease of access. It’s about coddling a certain demographic to which “Shaoxing” feels too alien and off-putting to use, too unnecessary and worthless to buy.

This is certainly not confined to Shaoxing wine; you also see it play out with hing, chiles de arbol, red palm oil…the list goes on. They are the quiet little microaggressions, visible to readers and experienced by creators, that prevent food media from feeling truly inclusive. And it is the clear deviation from this norm that makes the cookbook Rosetta so wonderful. It pulls no punches; half of its dishes I’ll just have to dream about (or maybe relocate to Mexico and attempt sometime). Because the reality is, we are not meant to make every recipe—and that’s okay. Some of the magic of cooking and food is that it is so tied to a sense of place, and it’s not available all the time, at our every whim. Honestly, embracing that complexity is part of the reason I started this newsletter in the first place.

Each component of the dish Substitutions was meant to encourage diners to explore what exactly a substitution means. That little rabbit hole we just journeyed on with Shaoxing is just the beginning; dig a little further, and plenty of other questions arise. For example, the thought paradox of the Ship of Theseus: if every part of an object has been replaced, can it still be referred to as the same as the original? What is the “fundamental truth” within each recipe that must be maintained? I still recall Chef Michael Laiskonis telling our class how the most important part of a financier is brown butter; to him, if there is no brown butter one cannot call the end product a financier.

This is in jest re: Ship of Theseus, but I think you understand what I’m getting at.

Beyond the cured kanpachi, the other edible components are covered here. I’ll specifically call out the fact that the photo at top of this newsletter shows the dish plated on chinoiserie. That is, an exaggerated substitute of real imports from East Asia (namely ceramics and home goods) that became popular in the 17th century. These imitation pieces, made by European artisans, used incredibly stylized, stereotypical motifs as shortcut imaginaries of the mysterious “Orient.” I don’t have time to get too deep into it today, but if that introduction piqued your interest you can read more here.

This all being said, substitution and adaptation are also two sides of the same coin. If you look at Chinese American food, or Chinese Peruvian food (chifa), you’ll find dishes that are manifestations of something familiar, adapted to unfamiliar land and ingredients. They now distinctly comprise their own cuisine, and deserving of separate categorization from its origins. Is this a bad thing? Most definitely not, I would say! Like many other fuzzy, complicated themes within food and representation, I think the guiding question of substitutions comes down to: who does this substitution ultimately serve?

That was a long introduction…let’s get back to the recipe.

This dish’s symbolic tie-in to the theme of “substitutions” is a nod to the (very) confusing ways we’ve opted to name fish in English—something I learned first-hand while doing a scholarship/training stint at Browne Trading Company in Portland, ME. Most fish varieties have a lot of different names, and kanpachi is also known as the:

“greater amberjack, the allied kingfish, great amberfish, greater yellowtail, jenny lind, purplish amberjack, reef donkey, rock salmon, sailors choice, and yellow trevally.”

LOL. (I actually compiled a whole PowerPoint of fishes and their various names in my GDrive somewhere during my training, because I was always so confused at work.) This made kanpachi a delightful choice to to ask diners, if I labeled this as yellowtail—which is generally seen as a more expensive fish—is it a substitution? Is it being misrepresented? Or something else entirely?

I also love this dish because it’s a happy marriage of techniques I picked up over the years. To start, you have to make some red lentil miso. I based this off of the ratios from The Noma Guide to Fermentation. Although I have some…feelings…about Zilber and his views as well as the institution of Noma, I must say this book is excellent and I’ve learned so very much from it. Don’t panic if you don’t have a little fermentation chamber to grow your own koji—I don’t either, so I buy mine prepackaged, and it still makes for great miso! Of all the miso base varieties, red lentil has been consistently my favorite for its sweetness and almost hay-like flavor. It complements the oiliness of the kanpachi in a way the standard soy misos just can’t seem to replicate.

Red lentil miso

After your miso is finished, you’ll need to acquire a nice kanpachi. In Los Angeles, I buy mine whole from Luxe Seafood, the Hawaiian kanpachi specifically. It’s preferable to fillet the whole fish yourself if possible, but if that makes you nervous just ask your fishmonger to fillet it for you. I do really recommend at least buying the whole fish though—you’ll be able to use the bones and head/tail for some creamy stock, and if you’re lucky maybe you’ll even have some roe to cure and use.

After you portioned out your fresh kanpachi, get some gloves on and smother it in the red lentil miso (see below). Gloves are really ideal for this not just because it’s more sanitary, but also because the miso sticks less to gloves than your hands. (I seem to have a thing for smothering proteins with sticky stuff? That sounded oddly inappropriate.) You’ll put this on a resting rack on a tray, and leave it to cure in the refrigerator for 3-5 days. You can start slicing off small pieces and tasting at the 3 day mark, and let it keep going if you want it to be saltier. Please note you will be rinsing off the miso and drying off your kanpachi before serving. Bonus: put your kanpachi in the freezer for ~30 minutes before slicing so it’s a bit easier.

Kanpachi curing in fridge, alongside some big sacs o’ roe

Unless you are feeding a very large party, you’ll probably have extra kanpachi left over. In that case, something I learned from Sushi Master Tatsu Sekiguchi when writing his book a few years ago is to store fillets like so:

1. Clean and dry fillets thoroughly. (I think it goes without saying that if you’ve processed your fillets badly and/or with unsanitary equipment, they won’t store as well.)

2. Wrap fillets tightly in 3 layers of Bounty brand paper towels. (Bounty, specifically, was very important for Chef Tatsu!)

3. Wrap paper towel-lined fillets tightly in plastic wrap.

4. Store in the coldest freezer you have—Chef Tatsu and many other sushi chefs will use a medical freezer to store premium cuts like tuna until they are ready to start the aging process of turning raw fish into nigiri-ready fish. (I usually put mine on a small quarter-sheet tray, wrap it again in plastic wrap, and put in my chest freezer.)

5. It’s ideal to consume your fish within a year. To do so, let thaw in your refrigerator until fully thawed (usually 24 hours), then unwrap and use however you’d like. (I’ve used frozen-and-thawed kanpachi I had stored a year in advance for this dish and it tasted pretty much the same as the fresh one.)

Now finally, you’re ready for the toss-toss portion. This is the easiest part, but also the most unnerving part, because you’re going to have to use your own intuition and you don’t have a very long window to consume this once finished. (I promise you probably don’t need it, because it’s very tasty!) The ingredients are specific, and while I don’t have substitutions built in for you, you are of course welcome to play around with whatever inspires you.

• Sakura shoyu: soy sauce infused with sakura blossoms. This offers a really beautiful, delicate floral tint to the dish.

• Fresh meyer lemon juice

• Green Sichuan peppercorn oil: extremely important to use a quality version of this, because a little goes a long way, and the subpar ones are very lacking in flavor.

• Fresh lemon balm (see photo below): not the same as lemon verbena. This is admittedly hard to source, so it’s probably easiest to just buy some seeds or seedlings and plant it yourself as you’re waiting for your miso to develop. (It grows fine indoors.) Bonus: lemon balm also makes for great tea and is a natural mosquito repellent!

Lemon balm growing in my Gardyn

And that’s it! You’ll do a little mix-mix to taste, and serve the kanpachi immediately. It keeps for about 30 minutes, and while you can definitely eat it after that time period it’ll cure a little from the Meyer lemon juice, which throws off the flavor/texture. Such is the fleeting nature of food and pleasure. Happy cooking! Please tag me in 3 months when your dish is complete and you can finally take a photo.

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Red Lentil Miso Cured Kanpachi

Yield: Roughly 85% of however many ounces of kanpachi you started with

For the Red Lentil Miso

• 8oz dry red lentils, washed thoroughly, drained (you can use more lentils if you’d like to make a big batch of miso)

• Water, as needed

• Rice koji, as needed, blitzed in a Vitamix until fairly fine (doesn’t need to be powder)

• Kosher salt, as needed (I use Morton’s Coarse)

1. Place all your lentils into a suitably sized pot, and cover with enough cold water to submerge by ~1 inch.

2. Bring lentils to a simmer, and let cook until they are easily squishable with your fingers, but not falling apart. You’re looking for something that still has some dryness in the middle, not something that would turn into a puree.

3. Drain any excess water from the pot, rinse your cooked lentils, strain, and place on a paper towel-lined sheet tray to absorb excess water and cool.

4. Once lentils are cool, weigh them.

5. Now calculate the amount of koji and salt you need. For koji, it should 66.6% of your lentil weight; salt should by 6.6%.

6. In a food processor (not a blender!), combine your lentils, koji, and salt and process until it is still a little crumbly, but holding together. As Noma describes, you should be able to make a nice compact fistful easily, without it crumbling off into pieces or seeping through your fingers.

7. Sterilize whatever containers you’ll be using for your miso, and dry them thoroughly. (I like to use my pressure cooker for this. I wrote a book about understanding the mechanics of Instant Pots and pressure cookers here.)

8. Carefully pack your miso into chosen containers, making sure there aren’t any gaping holes, but also not pressing so tightly no air can circulate throughout. You’ll need some oxygen for the fermentation process!

9. Once finished, level off your miso so it’s smooth, and pour ~1/2 inch of salt on top. Press a plastic wrap directly onto the salt, leaving it loose (so not sealing it over the opening of your container) so again, air can still circulate. Place a heavy weight (like a fermentation weight) on top of the plastic wrap to keep it in place.

10. Cover the entire vessel with some cheesecloth, secure it with a rubber band or something similar, and leave it for 3 months. Noma recommends a place that is 82F, but honestly, I don’t have that much control over the temperature of my house so I just leave it on the mantle and it’s been fine. Just make sure to store your misos in a place where there aren’t tons of particles floating around (e.g., your kitchen).

11. At the 2 month mark, I like to start tasting the miso. You can carefully push away some of the salt crust with a sanitized spoon, taste the miso (it’ll be a little salty since the bit you’re tasting was touching the salt crust), and continue forth until you like the flavor. After tasting, make sure to replace the salt crust and re-seal the way you did the first time.

12. One note of encouragement—it’s okay if your miso grows a little mold sometime through the fermentation process. That happened to me in one of the batches. Just carefully scrape it off, pour a lot of fresh kosher salt on top to create a nice new bacteria protection layer, repeat the other steps (plastic, weight, cheesecloth).

For the cured kanpachi

• 8oz kanpachi fillets, patted dry

• Red lentil miso, from above, as needed

1. Using gloved handles, smother the kanpachi fillets with an even layer of red lentil miso.

2. Place miso-covered kanpachi on a resting rack on a sheet tray. Let cure 3-5 days, or until the salinity is to the level you desire.

3. Rinse off all the miso from the fish using cold water, then pat dry again with paper towels.

4. Place fillets on a parchment-lined sheet tray and place in freezer for 30 minutes to firm up before slicing.

5. Slice kanpachi in 1/4 inch thick pieces using a thin, sharp knife.

To finish

• 8oz sliced kanpachi, from above

• Sakura shoyu, to taste

• Fresh meyer lemon juice, to taste

• 1 Tbsp fresh lemon balm leaves, cleaned, chiffonade, plus more to taste

• 1/2 tsp green Sichuan peppercorn oil, plus more to taste

Toss kanpachi with shoyu, lemon juice, lemon balm, Sichuan peppercorn oil and adjust to taste. Go light to start, and add more little by little until things feel balanced. I know that’s not super helpful, but honestly the ratios change a little every time; just keep in mind this dish is meant to be a delicate appetizer. If you’re feeling nervous, you can’t go wrong with only using 1 tsp of shoyu/lemon at a time.

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Weekly Meme Roundup

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Personal Things From The Last Few Weeks

Listening to: Been on an Adele kick recently

Watching: I am still bitter I wasted 6 hours of my life on The Batman and Eternals, both of which were terrible and pointless

Reading: The Book of Dust by Philip Pullman; just finished Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

Eating: Been ordering Everytable for lunches throughout the workweek, and they are really great! Currently only for SoCal, but they are expanding nationally soon

Drinking: This excellent pétillant naturel gifted from my friend Angela

Nice thing I did for myself: Slept in late on Saturday, after many days of jumping out of bed at 5:30am from anxiety and/or meetings