Ottolenghi's Kalbi Butter
For noodles, bibimbap, or just a piece of toast
Sabrina,
How did you know I was in a cooking rut?! You read my mind – I have been feeling very uninspired when cooking the past few weeks, and your content recs are exactly what I needed. I started with The Recipe podcast and I’m loving it. I listened to the caesar salad episode today and was inspired to make a kale tahini caesar salad for dinner tonight (loosely based on this recipe from Soom).
Before I had all of your content recs I was trying to drag myself out of the rut using a tried and true method – cooking from an Ottolenghi book. His recipes always have some extra ingredients that I don’t usually think of using, or a method that isn’t in my everyday repertoire which usually gets me excited about the possibilities of cooking again.
I’ve been making things from his latest book, Extra Good Things, and last week I tried his recipe for kalbi buttered noodles. To make it, first you simmer down soy sauce, brown sugar, and aleppo chili into a salty-sweet syrup. Then you blend it up with garlic, ginger, fresh chiles, green onion, and sesame seeds into a flavorful kalbi paste. You could use this to marinate meat, or, you can trust Ottolenghi and blend in 2 sticks of butter to create a magical compound butter.
Ottolenghi puts the butter over noodles, which gives you all the nostalgia of a bowl of buttered pasta, but with a complex mix of spicy, salty flavor. I devoured my bowl of noodles and still had most of a stick of kalbi butter left over. So, I found a few other ways to use it up.
On a piece of toast – obviously. I added some thick slices of aged cheddar because why not.
On roasted sweet potatoes. Then I used these sweet potatoes as part of a roast vegetable bibimbap. If you’re only going to make one thing with the butter, this is the one.
With beans. I used a jar of Navarrico butter beans (the best beans!) and added some white wine, miso, and some kalbi butter, and I had a very happy lunch.
Kalbi Butter
Thank you Ottolenghi for the recipe
5 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 ½ teaspoons aleppo pepper
1 ½ tablespoons sesame oil
3-4 spring onions, roughly chopped
3 red chiles, roughly chopped (I used British ones which aren’t very spicy, but choose whatever you want)
A piece of ginger the size of your thumb, roughly chopped
2 ½ tablespoons sesame seeds
2 sticks of butter
Put the soy sauce, sugar, and aleppo pepper into a small pot, and cook for 8 mins or so on medium high heat, until it’s syrupy. Take it off the heat and stir in the sesame oil.
Using a blender or immersion blender or whatever you have, add the cooled soy syrup, the ginger, garlic, green onions, sesame seeds, and red chiles. Blend until smooth. Then add the butter, and blend until combined.
You can store the butter in the fridge for a while and put it on anything you can dream of.
Okay finally, some bonus content for you, in the spirit of content recs…
Bonus content: Off Menu podcast episode with Ottolenghi. Do you know this podcast? Two British comedians interview celebs in an imaginary restaurant every week, and the person describes their dream meal.
Bonus bonus content: Cold lasagna hate myself 1999. A standup show by James Acaster, one of the comedians from Off Menu. He has a completely bizarre sense of humor and you will love him.
A running letter between long distance friends who love to eat
Do you miss your best friend? Are really hungry you right now? If the answer to either of these is yes, you know what to do.