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This dish at Yo+Shoku, a new restaurant on New York City’s Lower East Side, chef and co-owner Ricky Dolinsky and co-owner Mariia Dolinsky, who used to own Tzarevna restaurant in the same spice, combine their two best soups, beef borscht and soba broth, for this dish, and then added curry.
For the borscht, they cook short ribs for eight hours with beets, onions, carrots, potatoes and garlic.
They remove the beef and caramelize the surface in sesame oil.
For the soba broth, they make a dashi with their house-made tare, a reduction of soy sauce, mirin, and sugar. Then they combine the two stocks “creating a sweet, savory and smoky broth base,” they said.
Before service they sweat diced onions in sesame oil, add a Japanese-style curry powder and heat it until it’s aromatic. Then they add the broth and simmer it for about an hour.
To serve the dish they cook udon until it’s chewy and tender and run it under cold water to stop its cooking. They dress a serving bowl with fat from the borscht, then add the noodles, fill it with broth and then finish it with agedama, or crunchy tempura pieces, a poached egg, caramelized beef, and scallions.
Price: $21
At Rana Fifteen in the Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood of Park Slope, co-owner Ahmet Kiranbay developed this dish inspired by a recipe from his uncle Mustafa Asiroglu.
He starts by slowly sautéing minced onions in olive oil and then adding a Turkish medium-grain rice called Baldo, which he coats in the oil and then adds allspice, currants, pine nuts, salt, pepper, and water and cooks it until the rice is just shy of fully cooked. Then he cools it.
Meanwhile he shucks raw mussels, keeping the shell intact, and then stuffs them with the cold rice, closes them and steams them for around 15 minutes.
They’re served slightly cold with lemon wedges.
Price: $14
At Rosemary & Pine in San Francisco’s Design District, lead bartender Michael Hart pours in a shaker one ounce of vodka, ½ ounce of Dubonnet Rouge aperitif, ¼ ounce elderflower liqueur, ¼ ounce crème de mure, ½ ounce lemon juice and ¾ ounce blackberry and sage shrub (made by simmering for 10 minutes a kilogram each of blackberries and sugar, half a liter each of water and red wine vinegar, and 10 sage leaves, and then cooling and straining it). He adds ice, shakes it for 10-12 seconds, strains it into a Collins glass with ice and tops it with 2 ounces of club soda.
“We combine fresh blackberries with savory and herbaceous flavors and use vinegar in addition to fresh citrus to give the drink an even acidity on the palate. The result is a light vodka cocktail that is both complex and easily drinkable,” Hart said.
Price: $16
At Crown Cantina in Cincinnati, chef and owner Anthony Sitek shucks oysters and dresses them in his gluten-free ponzu sauce (made with a tamari base) and whipped adobo butter made with ancho chile, paprika, oregano, garlic, onion, coriander, salt, and cayenne pepper. He puts them on the grill and once the butter starts to foam the oysters are cooked. He transfers them to a plate and garnishes the oysters with machaca, a type of Mexican dried beef floss, and chives.
Price: $3.75 each
Beer can chicken is fun and tasty, but hard to eat in a sports bar while watching a game. So at the new Almost Friday Sporting Club in Nashville, which opened in October, chef Michael Cerrie brushes a whole chicken with oil and a spice blend including f cumin, coriander, and bourbon-smoked paprika.
An open can of beer is inserted into the chicken’s body cavity which is placed upright on a rack and roasted in the oven. Then it’s cooled, butchered and thinly sliced. The meat is layered on a sliced Cuban baguette with Swiss cheese, mustard, pickles, bacon, and a creamy garlic sauce. Then it’s pressed and served.
Price: $16
