I was overdue for a visit to Oaxaca, a place where I had once spent a lot of time, the place that perhaps first left me floored by its depth and history and arts and crafts. And so I went back at the end of March, for not long enough, and was reminded of this recipe I learned there a couple of years ago from a Zapotec family living in Teotilan de Valle. I visited them to learn about their textiles, which are produced on looms using natural dyes–but I got an invite to come back a few days later for a lesson in Chintextle from the mother of the family, Bibiana.

Chintextle is hardly known anymore, even within Oaxaca. I do see it popping up on more and more menus within the city, but if you ask people around my age about it you’re occasionally met with a blank stare. It’s an ancient sauce that tells a story of the complexity and success of indigenous trade routes, given that it combines the flavors of both the mountains and the sea. Dried shrimp from the coast is ground with smoky inland chiles, alongside tomatoes, tomatillos, avocado leaf, and garlic. The result is something earthy, smoky, yet saline and refreshing all at once.

As we cooked, Bibiana spoke of the importance of passing along recipes and the Zapotec language to younger generations. I’m transcribing the recipe from our lesson the best I can here, which of course was all dictated by eyeballing and by feel. Any version I’ll make at home will never be quite as good as it was that day in Tlacolua, cooked over the comal and ground with the metate, spread across a tostada and served with a dollop of fresh cheese.

This family, Familia Lazo, hosts visitors both for textile tours and for cooking classes, and both are wel worth a visit. They also sell their stunning textiles on site. You can connect with them directly on Instagram at @niviet_ru_zaa, or book a tour through Airbnb experiences here

Ingredients:

3 guajillo chiles

2 medium or 3 small pasilla chiles

2 big leaves Hierba Santa, or Avocado leaves.

3 small tomatoes

2 cups tomatillos

4 large cloves of garlic

1 cup dried shrimp

Instructions:

1. In a skillet or cast-iron pan (unless you have a comal), toast the chiles until puffed up and deeply fragrant. Remove and place in a heat-proof bowl.

2. Toast the Hierba Santa leaves with the dried shrimp briefly, until browned but not charred. Add to chiles and pour water over the mixture to soak.

3. Toast the tomatoes, tomatillos, and garlic until lightly charred. Remove from heat.

4. Drain the mixture of chiles, Hierba Santa, and shrimp, reserving the soaking water. Add the garlic cloves and blend in a large mortar and pestle or in a blender. If using the blender, start on low speed–this sauce is better left with some texture instead of being a puree. If the mixture won’t blend, you may need to add a drizzle of the soaking water to help get it started.

5. When the mixture is coarsely mixed together, add in the tomatoes and tomatillos and continue to blend until a cohesive mixture forms. There should be no large chunks of any ingredient. Season with salt to taste.

   Some ideas for how to serve this: in Teotitlan de Valle that day, we had this with a plain tlayuda, cooked and peeled potatoes, a hard boiled egg, and firm queso fresco. The Chintextle served as the vibrancy to the meal, both in color and flavor, adding heat and flair and depth. I’ve also been thinking about this sauce as the perfect accompaniment to steak, but I think it would also be a great companion to just about any grilled, smoky protein or charred vegetable.

makes: about 2 dozen

Ingredients:

3 large egg whites, room temp

1/2 teaspoon lemon juice, or a pinch of cream of tartar

338 g powdered sugar, plus more for dusting

338 g almond flour

1 teaspoon almond or vanilla extract

zest of 1 orange

flaked almonds (optional)

Instructions:

Whip the whites with the lemon juice until stiff, but not dry, peaks form. Sift in powdered sugar and almond flour, and whisk to combine along with the extract and orange zest. Cover the dough well with plastic wrap and let sit in the fridge overnight.

The next day, preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Using a handful more of powdered sugar, roll the dough into a log about 1” thick. Cut into 1.5”pieces, flatten each slightly, and, if desired, top with flaked almonds.

Space them a couple of inches apart on a baking tray lined with parchment paper and let them sit about 15 minutes while the oven preheats to dry out a bit—this will help create a cracked surface. Bake for about 15 minutes, or until cracked open and just beginning to brown on the outside. Add another 5 minutes if they have yet to brown at all. If desired, dust with powdered sugar when they come out of the oven, and wait at least 10 minutes to eat or transfer to a container, as they will be very soft.

Ingredients:

113g water

212g sugar

¼ tsp salt

55g lard or bacon fat

30g butter

250g almond meal

1 T Amaretto

1 t orange zest

2 eggs

6 egg yolks

Additional butter or lard for lining cake pan

Powdered sugar, for dusting

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350. Coat a springform pan with butter or lard, and cut out a circle of parchment paper to fit into the bottom.

Bring the water, sugar, salt, lard, and butter to a simmer until the fats are melted and the sugar is dissolved. Slowly pour in the almond meal and stir with a wooden spoon for about 2 to 3 minutes, or until the liquid has been absorbed by the almond meal and a smooth paste has formed.

Take it off the heat and, once cooled until warm to the touch but not scalding (you don’t want to cook the eggs at this step), add in the eggs, yolks, orange zest and Amaretto and mix again until combined. Pour into prepared springform pan and bake for 25 minutes. Remove from oven, let cool, remove the side wall of the springform pan, and dust with powdered sugar.

makes: 1 9” or 10” cake

Ingredients:

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In part, I’m publishing these because I’ll be spending the end of this year on some tea-focused trips to Taiwan and Japan and elsewhere in Asia, and there will likely be some essays posted about tea production and tea-drinking cultures. These can serve as a reference point for future writings on the subject, and as a way readers can learn about and try some amazing teas themselves.

Brewing:

OK, so you’ve got some nice tea, and you really want to make it sing. How do you brew it?

This is, frankly, the part that can be the most confusing or intimidating at first–but also the most eye-opening. That’s because there are different brewing styles in the East and West, and ours here is much simpler. Western style brewing generally relies on a small amount of leaf, generally stored in a bag or another small receptacle, brewed in a large cup or in a teapot. Eastern style brewing, generally called Gong Fu, tends to be much more leaf, and much less water, brewed for a shorter amount of time. The advantages to the former are ease, simplicity, and less of a need for equipment; it’s a nice way to brew a big batch of black tea, to give the most prominent example, and brew it pretty strongly so you can cut it with milk and sugar. But what our brewing style lacks is the ability to bring out the full character of a nice tea. Teas open up and unfold throughout brewing, offering different aromas and flavors as they progress. Repeatedly steeping the same leaves three times, four times, sometimes up to seven or eight times, and drinking small cups of each over the course of an hour is a really special way to get to know a tea. It just requires things we are made to be in short supply of here: time, attention, and nice tea. There is something a bit radical, I think, about sitting with a single ingredient for so long.

But back to the questions at hand. For how long do you brew tea? What quantity of leaves? Does temperature matter? Part of the answer might be a bit frustrating–it depends on the leaf and where it’s from–but there’s also some simple methods that work for most everything. By that I mean, here’s the basic premise: 1 gram of tea per 2 ounces of tea for lighter teas like whites, greens, and lightly oxidized oolongs. Try 1 gram of tea per 1 ounce of water for darker teas–darker oolongs and black teas–that pack more of a punch. Steep for about 30 seconds, then strain out all the water into a small pitcher or something else you can pour from. Really fresh leaves might need only 15 seconds to steep; lower quality or older tea might take a minute to steep; you’ll know after your first steep whether to shorten or lengthen the brewing time.

Temperature is less important than you might think: generally, you can bring the tea to a full boil, as good quality tea generally shouldn’t have much acrid or bitter flavors that conventional logic says will be brought out at hot temperatures. There’s a bit of an exception here with some Japanese teas, especially green teas and matcha, which are a bit more delicate and do better at temperatures below 200.

One last note: for aged teas, namely puer, give it a quick rinse in the teapot with boiling water before the brew. Discard this water: these teas are aged in dark, dusty places for years and decades, and that dustiness will cloud the flavor of the brew if not first washed away. You’ll see some tea aficionados rinse just about every tea they brew, not just the aged ones, but if you’re using high quality tea you shouldn’t need to worry about that.

Equipment:

Knowing what kind of equipment you’ll need for brewing—and more importantly, all the things you won’t need to buy—can be the most confusing part. There’s a lot to know here, and honestly I only know the tip of the iceberg. Different regions have different tea vessels; different types of tea do better in some vessels over others, and so on. This is where tea becomes a very expensive hobby very quickly.

The good news is that for our more modest purposes, there are simple solutions. The easiest thing to get is a simple glass steeper, like this one from Spirit Tea for $22. If you want one more cheap item, get their glass pitcher for an additional $10, so you have something to pour your steeped tea into before it goes into your cup. If you want something a bit more true to form, find your favorite tea company–try Red Blossom, Kettl, Spirit, and In Pursuit of Tea for starters–and look up their selection of Gaiwans and Yizing teapots. Buy yourself an affordable one, see how it feels to use, and then maybe splurge for a very nice one after if it feels right. The final item you’ll need for now: a small strainer, so leaves don’t get into the cup, unless your teapot has one built in.

What I currently have in my rather threadbare collection (threadbare compared to some, at least) is one cheap gaiwan, one small porcelain pot, and one big teapot with a strainer inside, plus a little pitcher to pour tea into and a small metal strainer. The gaiwan I use for lighter teas–greens, whites, oolongs–and the porcelain pot I keep for puer and aged oolongs. The flavor of these stronger aged teas hold up better in sturdier vessels, but also can give some of their flavor to the vessel overtime, meaning it’s best to have one pot set aside for them. And the big teapot? That’s largely for herbal teas or blends, which I’ll sometimes mix with lower quality teas I have that take longer to steep; better put, it’s for when I want to brew a big batch of tea to bring with me to the couch or fireplace and truly unwind, without needing to re-steep a tea countless times.

A starter pack of teas to try

Working in the food and wine world, it’s always a joy when an expert in their field shows you an item they think is foundational, enlightening, or otherwise important to know. Teas can be that way too, and even though I’m not a true expert in the way others are, there’s a handful of teas that I think can be a really exciting introduction to the world of tea, the kind of tea you can really spend an hour with getting to know, or can wow your friends with. Here’s a starter pack of relatively inexpensive tea, of sorts, for the tea-curious.

Black tea - Honey Alpine, from Spirit Tea: if you’ve only ever had conventional black teas, this one will be a joy. I had this at a coffee shop in Knoxville earlier this year–Spirit does a lot of their business through wholesale on the east coast and central US–and was totally charmed. It’s name says it all: it’s honey-sweet, from the high mountains of Taiwan, where the tea never gets quite as round and dark as it does in warmer climates. That means a light, brisk brew, like the best Darjeelings, with a really satisfying natural sweetness. It might not hold up to many repeated steeps, but it’s the kind of tea you can brew in the Western style (small amount of leaves, lots of water, longer steep time) and get a black tea profile you’ve likely not experienced before.

White tea - Wild Gongmei, from Song Tea: I’m drinking this tea as I write this. I’ve been loving it recently, a perfect late summer/early fall tea that’s both cooling and energizing at once. Song’s descriptions of their teas are excellent, and shed light on what makes this tea both traditional and a bit groundbreaking, but the short of it is this: wild foraged leaves go through a long, slow, age-old process of drying (modern practices often use indoor fans to speed up the process), developing their full complexity and depth.

Oolong - Milk Oolong, from Red Blossom Tea Company: Milk oolongs are a sort of low-hanging fruit in the tea world, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t deserving of all the attention they get. The distinctly creamy flavor develops from very light oxidization, and this variety in particular has been cultivated through four-decades of cross-breeding to bring out as much of that creaminess as possible. While many milk oolongs these days are artificially flavored, this one is all-natural. It’s this kind of tea that will get many people excited about oolongs and tea more broadly, a sort of eye-opening realization that simple tea leaves can carry this much flavor.

Herbal - Alder Oolong, from Bardo Tea: this tea continues to astound me and countless others, and it’s from right here in the Pacific Northwest. Balazs Henger studied tea making techniques across Asia before deciding to apply those skills to native plants of Washington and Oregon; in this tea, he’s using oolong processes of massaging and oxidizing the tea leaves before drying, bringing out a depth of flavor that is nearly impossible to find otherwise in herbal teas. It’s totally caffeine free, and holds up to repeated steeps. Even for those with a deep level of tea knowledge and experience, this tea will intrigue and impress.

Puer - Limelight Lily, from Bardo Tea: You read part one of this tea guide last month and you’re curious about puer and its cult-like following. You need a place to start and don’t want to splurge quite yet for a full on cake, which can cost hundreds of dollars and whose acquired taste you may not have yet acquired. Limelight Lily, another one sold online by Bardo, is a terrific introduction to puer, specifically shu puer. Shu puers tend to have a deep, dark flavor, often compared to soil or to the forest floor, and Limelight Lily carries those notes but in a remarkably clean, springy cup of tea, providing a great introduction to the world of puer without breaking the bank.

There’s a lot to know about tea–especially because most of us stateside are coming from a coffee-centric culture–and I’ve been getting more and more questions on the topic. I thought I’d jot down some notes here, a sort of primer on tea types, tea regions, and brewing styles. This is for the tea-curious, the tea-obsessed, or anyone that just wants to learn about another of the world’s great ancient, ever-modernizing culinary traditions. Part 1, below, covers different types of tea and shouts out a few of my favorite places to buy them; part 2 will dive further in-depth and discuss brewing styles, tea regions, and more.

A note before getting into the details: we’re living in a very exciting time for tea. Up until recently, it was very, very hard to get good quality tea in the states. We’ve inherited our tea culture from Great Britain, whose own, while more adamant and picky than ours, is rooted in the colonization and exploitation of India. It was often about quantity over quality, and even more so about subjugating another culture through agricultural servitude. That’s not to say there’s no good tea coming out of India: Darjeeling in particular produces some exceptional black teas, which is in no small way related to worker-owned cooperatives taking back some autonomy and control over production.

But there’s good tea from around the world now becoming more widely available. The reasons, if I had to guess: a pandemic that drew many folks to shop online and support small businesses; a broader awareness that the majority of our beloved beverages like wine, coffee, and tea are grown in unsustainable ways; a growing acceptance of psychotropic substances (more on this later); and, ultimately, the irrefutable quality of excellent tea. When you are used to mediocre tea, very good tea can be startling.

Down below I’ll shout out some of my favorite distributors and purveyors of tea. First, though, some basics. While I’ve learned a lot about tea in the last few years, I feel like I’ve really only scratched the surface; true tea aficionados could get into greater depth, and could probably correct a few smaller points in what I’ve written below.

Tea types:

A good way to think about tea types is this: it’s more or less a scale of how oxidized/fermented the leaves become. All tea comes from the same type of plant, Camellia sinensis, and the leaves are treated in various ways for different effects:

Green: tea leaves that have been taken off the plant, withered slightly, and then quickly processed to halt oxidation, preserving green color and vegetal flavor. In Japan, this is generally done through steaming, which preserves the umami and minerality of the leaf. In China, it’s more often that the leaves are toasted in a wok or otherwise slightly roasted, to mellow out any astringency.

White: leaves that have been withered and dried without the steaming or wok-toasting. This results in the green color diminishing, and along with it the umami, but what’s left is an elegant, white to yellow colored brew full with a soft, often floral flavor. Think: stonefruit, honeysuckle, that sort of thing. The finest white teas are made from the buds of the tea tree, making the product extra delicate. Other white teas are compressed into a cake and aged, which adds a really interesting contrast between the complexity an aging process can bring out in a tea and that initial gentle flavor of the leaves. These are some of my favorite teas, though some of the most difficult to find.

Oolong: to me, oolong is something of the gateway drug into a broader appreciation of teas. That’s largely because the category itself is so wide-ranging: if green tea is unoxidized and black tea is fully oxidized, oolong is anything in between those extremes. That can mean light, milky teas that taste like they must have cream in them; it can mean semi-oxidized leaves that are taste like flowers and fruit; it can mean highly-oxidized brews that are dark, rich, almost syrupy. In general, the leaves are allowed to wither and are bruised or massaged by hand or machine to help facilitate the oxidization process. Only after these steps are done are the leaves treated with heat to halt the fermentation process, and some oolongs will be roasted later on as well to impart more flavor.

Black: fully oxidized leaves, and the type of tea the bulk of us are the most familiar with. There are still many days where all I want is a cup of strong black tea with a splash of milk. That said, not all black teas are as rich and strong as what we’re used to from our usual purveyors: it’s worth seeking out some more delicate black teas from the uplands of Taiwan, which can be floral and sweet, or the woodsier Wakouchas of Japan, or, if you can find them, bug-bitten black teas, which is a totally eye-opening experience. The process is the same as oolong, but the bruising and withering is more thorough and the oxidization is taken to the fullest extent possible

Puer: Puer is a trip. It’s worthy of a whole different guide on its own, and I’ll try to get into it in more detail in later pieces on substack. But for now, the upshot: strong, astringent tea leaves from ancient, tall trees get pressed into cakes and stored for years, even for decades. What happens along the way is something magical: those flavors mellow out and coalesce, much like an aged wine, through microbial fermentation, leading to a complexity of flavor that’s hard to put into words. Puer attracts a cult-like following for this reason, with aficionados collecting samples from different decades and different producers in the same way folks do with Burgundian wines. Plus, all that microbial fermentation brings out some wild effects, at times bordering more subtle version of magic mushrooms in a way (again, puer is a trip!): some puers are euphoria inducing, others contemplative, and a particularly bad one (this is rare) can send you spiraling.

Herbal: true tea snobs might tell you that herbal tea isn’t actually tea, since it isn’t made with the same plant. I could care less about whether to call it tea or tisane or something else, because ultimately herbal tea plays a big role in global tea culture. In many of the countries I’ve visited in Central and South America, herbal tea is the main tea of choice and is rooted in ancient folk traditions surrounding the medicinal benefits of chamomile, lemon verbena, mushrooms, and more. In central Europe, there’s fennel tea to aid digestion; in Japan, toasted buckwheat tea to soothe the soul; the list goes on.

Sourcing:

Where to get good tea? I can type out as many words as I’d like about the flavor profiles of semi-oxidized oolongs or high-altitude black teas, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the experience of actually drinking it. I’ll go into more detail in later posts about tea profiles from different regions, and where to buy these, but here’s a brief list of some of my favorite vendors for now:

-Bardo: my favorite tea shop in Portland, maybe anywhere, where I’ve learned most of what I know about tea. They are well worth a visit if you are in the area, and they sell their tea online too. They specialize in puer and oolongs, though offer a little bit of everything. It’s not cheap, but it’s worth it.

-Spirit: A great entry-level option for those looking to sample different types of tea without breaking the bank. Spirit is a big wholesale distributor based in Chicago, though I’ve found their teas in coffee shops all over the central and eastern US. It’s especially great if you want to source, say, different types of black tea that stand up on their own without milk, or if you want to learn what white teas are all about. Another good option based out of the Midwest is Hugo.

-Song: very cool, very excellent SF-based tea company that’s at the forefront of showcasing new trends, cultivars, and producers. I’ve loved what I’ve sampled from them, and could read their descriptions of teas all day. There’s an amazing ceramics selection to peruse, too.

-Norm: Japanese tea is its own distinct world; what you’ll generally find is that shops either specialize in Taiwanese and Chinese teas (and occasionally Korean), or instead specialize in Japanese teas. There are a variety of reasons for that, but for our purposes here it’s just important to know that the types of tea in Japan are quite distinct from the other regions. Think matcha, hojicha, sencha, gyokoru (worth a google if you don’t know it)--specialty types of tea that have been refined and perfected over generations. These teas are all worth seeking out, but my favorite tea shop in Tokyo specializes in all the other sorts of Japanese tea that don’t get enough attention. It’s a tiny fraction of what’s produced in Japan, but younger producers and worldly entrepreneurs are starting to look towards Taiwan and China for inspiration, crafting Japanese oolongs, white teas, and more. Norm, run by my friend Ai San, is the place to go or to buy online from to sample this sort of thing–and yes, they still carry excellent matcha and hojicha powders too.

Yunnan Sourcing: I’ve been doing more shopping from Yunnan Sourcing recently, which has become my go-to place to stock up on affordable teaware. That’s what I’d recommend them for, as their selection of gaiwans and teapots are of good quality but won’t break the bank. Beyond this, they have a wide swath of tea from. I’ve had mixed results with the quality, but it’s generally pretty good and equally well-priced. If you’re looking for a source to sample some different styles of tea, from countless puers to aged oolongs to compressed white teas, this is a great choice.

Part 2 available here

I’ve been making a sauce to try to capture the end of summer, something of a pesto but with more body from the addition of zucchini, and acidity from the use of green tomatoes. It’s trying to capture that green and verdant peak at the end of summer, all that herbaceousness and freshness. The technique here is not difficult, but requires a watchful eye, as the ingredients need to be cooked slightly to soften but not so much that they lose their vibrancy.

One thing to note: like the end of summer, the quality of this sauce is fleeting too. It will brown within a couple of days, and all those fresh herbaceous flavors will mellow out. Use this in a day or two over fish, over tomatoes, chicken, or all of the great produce this time of year.

Ingredients:

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A chef friend and I were talking last week about the similarities of many of the world’s great condiments and sauces. A salsa verde looks a lot like a zhug, which also is a bit like a gremolata or a pesto; a muhammara resembles a romesco resembles a pesto rosso. It should come as no surprise that this area of the world in particular–where the Middle East meets North Africa and the Mediterranean–is full of culinary overlap in the same way its history and trade has long been intertwined. But other cultures in other parts of the world make similar sauces, such as an Argentinian Chimichurri or a Mexican Pipian, which speaks both to the individual resourcefulness of all these cultures and the collective capacity to combine herbs and/or veg with salt, acid, and heat to make something better than the sum of its parts.

Romesco was the very first sauce I learned. Well, one of two, both from the same Bobby Flay cookbook in fact (the other was a BBQ sauce :)). It’s a Spanish sauce made from red peppers, tomatoes, almonds, bread, and a splash of wine or sherry, meant to pair with seafood or vegetables.

It’s utterly delicious, and so simple to make, and I’d actually prefer to give you more of a template than a recipe because it’s infinitely adaptable. Which is to say, you don’t need to run to the store to make sure you have every last ingredient. No almonds? Subbing in walnuts makes this more like a muhammara, especially if you add pomegranate molasses. No fresh tomatoes, if you’re making this in the colder months? Sub in sundried tomatoes. Are you gf, like me? Add more nuts to compensate for the lack of breadcrumbs. Nut allergy? Sub in pumpkin seeds.

The template is this: red peppers are the star. Tomato is the sidekick–don’t give it a lead roll or it will overpower! Nuts add texture, bread adds body. Acidity to make it shine. Olive oil to harmonize. A touch of sweetness to round it out. And, of course, salt.

So here’s a rough outline that you can adapt however you’d like.

Romesco

makes about 1 quart

Ingredients:

450g (1 16oz jar) preserved or roasted red pepper, made from bell peppers or, if you’d prefer, something a bit spicier

130g roasted tomato, or a smaller amount of sundried tomato or even tomato paste

15g sherry vinegar

30g pomegranate molasses (or 15g each of lemon juice and honey)

20g alliums (shallot and garlic, preferably roasted alongside the tomato, but green onion would also work)

30g stale bread or breadcrumbs

70g almonds or other nuts

70g olive oil

A handful of fresh oregano, parsley, or marjoram, optional

Salt

Instructions:

Blend everything but the olive oil and herbs together in a food processor, for about a minute so the nuts and bread to begin to emulsify with the liquid. Add in the olive oil and herbs and blend a bit longer until well combined but the herbs still are visible.

Use as a dip for crackers or crudite, a base sauce for grilled squash or roasted carrots, a topping for fish, a condiment for roasted chicken–whatever!

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Savory versions do all of that too but only incorporate a touch of sweetness. This is my version, made with a touch of white miso, dashi, and brown butter, and it could go with a whole lot of things. Turnips, of course: I cook them at the winery by cutting them into wedges, leaving the greens attached, and searing them in sesame oil on both exposed sides before adding a bit of dashi to the pan and covering to finish cooking them through, which is another way to say that putting the same care and technique that one uses with meat and applying it to vegetables yields great results. But the last of the season’s asparagus would work beautifully as well, and green beans in summer, and pumpkin come fall. Chicken or white fish are also natural fits for this–I had a beautiful dish at Le Servan of trout and carrots seared with lemon and served with a brown butter sabayon.

One note: this sauce will keep in the fridge, but the foamy ariness will dissipate as it sits, and it can get grainy as well when the butter solidifies. It’s always best served fresh, but you can put it back in a double boiler and whisk again to bring it back to life. Should it break and separate, add another splash of wine or dashi and whisk til smooth

.

White Miso Sabayon

makes a little over 1 pint

Ingredients:

1 large egg + 2 egg yolks

1 ½ Tbsp white miso

⅓ cup (80g) dry white wine–leftover, oxidized wine is great for this, but anything will do

½ cup (about 120g) dashi, chicken stock, or veg stock

2 tsp honey or maple syrup

127g (1 stick + 1 Tbsp) butter, preferably browned, at room temp

1 Tbsp lemon juice

Salt to taste

Instructions:

Whisk the egg and yolks together with the miso in a bowl that can fit atop a double boiler. Add in the wine, dashi, and honey and whisk until smooth. Place over a double boiler and cook, whisking constantly, until it begins to turn pale and thicken. It should grow in volume as air gets incorporated into the cooking eggs. As soon as the mixture can coat the back of a spoon, remove from the double boiler and whisk in the butter a little bit at a time. Whisk until smooth, and add in the lemon juice to finish.

Taste and see what it needs: if it needs more salt, you can add more miso or simply kosher salt. Add in another few tablespoons of butter, if you want it richer, or more wine or dashi if you want it lighter. If you’re serving this with something very rich on its own, like a fatty fish, add in a touch more lemon.

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I’m in this region for a couple workshops with my friend , a phenomenal painter and illustrator whose work centers around plants and food. We’ve been using things like redbuds—and violets, magnolia, garlic mustard, wild mint, and more—as our muses these last two weeks for both food and painting alike, and I’m including many of the baking recipes we made in class below for paid subscribers, and the polenta tart dough we used to showcase some of them for all subscribers.

While I don’t bake much anymore, I’m still drawn to the practice, and specifically I’m drawn to the question of how to make baking as regional and seasonal as possible; if we want to celebrate local millers, local produce, and the land around us, I think it has to be. What does that look like in Southern Appalachia in springtime? It could look like so many things, really. But what it looked like in our class is something you can get a small taste of below, with recipes for knotweed/rhubarb curd, magnolia pastry cream, and candied flowers and herbs.

Polenta Tart Dough

Ingredients:

Dry:

720g AP or Pastry Flour

300g polenta or cornmeal

300g sugar

6g salt

Wet:

450g butter, cold, cubed

120g yolks

60g cream

15g vanilla

Zest of 3 lemons

Mixing:

-Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.

-Crumble in the butter by hand or with a stand mixer on medium-low speed, until the butter is in very small pieces and the mixture resembles a coarse cornmeal.

-Mix in the yolks, cream, vanilla, and lemon zest and mix everything until combined. Press into tart shell: 85-90g for a 6” tart shell. Chill at least 30 minutes in the fridge or freezer and prick with a fork.

Baking:

-Parbake 15-25 minutes at 350 with weights. The bottom should be set but the top edges should not be significantly browning yet. I’ve done this recently in a hot convection oven and it took only 15 minutes, and a normal oven that may not have been as hot as it said and it took 25 minutes.

-Cool, then fill with curd or other filling. Bake 20 to 30 minutes at 325, until the filling has set. Alternatively, par-bake until fully cooked and fill with pastry cream and fruit or flowers and serve as-is, without the need for a second bake.

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I was working at a restaurant in Japan in January and we got in two big boxes of Dai Dai, a Japanese citrus fruit that’s a bit like a hybrid of grapefruit and orange. They were a bit too astringent to do much with, and had so much peel there was hardly any juice. My solution: making a Japanese-style Kosho that could be used the rest of the winter and beyond.

While Koshos are generally made with yuzu, but I’ve been playing around with other citrus since I’ve gotten back to the States. You can use just about any citrus you can find, and any peppers you can find, but think about color as much as you do flavor. Green peppers and orange, for example, are going to make a fairly putrid color in the final product. Blood orange and red peppers, however, create a stunning red that communicates a level of vibrancy you don’t often see in winter foods. Meyer lemon and banana peppers, a calming yet invigorating yellow. Limes and poblanos, a nice verdant green. You get the point.

What to use it on? Try it on pizza, as odd as that may sound; we did it in a workshop this past weekend and it really brightens up the flavor. Stew pork or beef with it, like you are making pastor or cochinita or barbacoa. Use it to marinate fish for raw or cooked preparations alike. For the simplest use of all, add a small dollop to your rice bowl.

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“Enriched” just means that fat gets mixed into the dough to tenderize it, and just about all bread cultures have their own recipe: lard in Mexico and parts of England; butter (and a cooked mix of flour and milk for an extra soft crumb—perhaps a recipe for this another time) in Japanese Milk Bread; more butter in pretzel doughs, brioche, panettone, and so many other iconic doughs.

I’m tapping into my own Swedish ancestry for this version, a one-size-fits-all enriched dough that you can use as a simple stand-in for anything you can use brioche for, from cardamom buns to doughnuts to Semla (look it up! It’s almost Semla season :)). This one is adapted from an old family recipe, but with a bit more liquid and a bit less yeast, to allow for a slower ferment and a more tender dough. What makes it easier is that you melt the butter with the milk, then mix together everything in one fell swoop. It comes together in a couple minutes, rises quickly, and can be used that day or, better yet, chilled overnight in the fridge and used the next day. It also freezes very well, meaning you can keep some on hand for a rainy day a couple months down the road.

A little bonus for paid subscribers awaits at the end of the post: a recipe for Potica. This is an Eastern European bread in which either a walnut filling or a poppy seed filling is rolled up in thin layers of enriched bread dough in basically equal proportions. That means a whole lot of filling in every slice, making this one of my very favorite winter baking projects. I’ve generally preferred to make this one with this style of enriched dough instead of brioche, in fact: when such a large amount of filling is used, this sturdier dough can hold up a bit better in the final product.

Enriched Bread Dough

Ingredients (makes 20-24 buns, or about 4 loaves of Potica):

11 fl oz/334 grams (1 ¼ C plus 1 Tbl) milk

5 oz/150 g (1 stick plus 2 ½ Tbl) unsalted butter

2 teaspoons finely ground cardamom seeds (optional—use these if you are making cardamom buns)

6 g (about 2 teaspoons) instant yeast

1 egg + 1 yolk

4 ½ oz/125 g (1/2 C plus 2 Tbl) sugar

1 tsp salt

1 lb 10 oz/760 g (5 ½ C) all-purpose or bread flour, plus extra for dusting

Egg Wash: 1 egg white

Directions:

Combine the milk, butter, and ground cardamom (if using) in a small pan and heat until the butter has melted. Let cool to just above room temperature.

Transfer the liquid to a mixing bowl. Add the egg plus the yolk, sugar, salt, flour, and yeast and mix until all the flour is moistened. If using a stand mixer: mix until everything comes together, let rest 1 minute, then mix on medium speed for about 3 to 4 minutes. If mixing by hand, mix until everything comes together, let sit for 5 minutes (it’ll be too wet to mix by hand right away), then pour out onto a countertop, lightly dusted with flour, and knead for 5 minutes. The dough should be smooth, shiny and elastic. Return to the bowl and cover the dough with plastic wrap or a clean dish towel for 60 to 90 minutes or until doubled in size.

If using the same day, punch down the dough and proceed to make whatever kind of baked good you have in mind (consult this earlier post for some ideas, or this one for cardamom bun instructions). Otherwise, punch down, wrap, and chill in the fridge for up to two days, or the freezer for up to three months.

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Consider the fruitcake, an exercise in merging tradition with refinement.

At least, that’s how I like to think about it. Before I started making my own, my conception of a fruitcake was a sugary, stale white bread studded with weird candied fruits that didn’t seem like fruit at all. What kind of fruit makes those weird chewy green cubes?

I think I would have been drawn more towards the original Roman version, which was something of the original energy bar, a mashed mix of dried fruits and honey and wine and barley meant to sustain soldiers or other travelers for weeks or months on the road. It’s changed a lot overtime, entering the Canon of British holiday pastries and made its way over to the States at some point too. I didn’t taste a true aged fruitcake until a handful of years ago, when I spent a Christmas with friends in Marshall, North Carolina, where I used to run my baking school. This one had been made the year before, soaked in booze, wrapped in cheesecloth, and aged…and aged…and aged. Not stale at all, but potent enough to get you a lil tipsy after a single slice. And simply delicious.

I’m honing in on my ideal fruitcake. It’s all real dried fruit–this year was figs, apricots, cranberries, and currants–plus toasted nuts and a bit of rye or buckwheat flour and a mix of brandy and nocino. A few years ago I replicated the booziness of the one I tried in North Carolina, brushing them with liquor daily for over a week before aging them. This year I cut back a bit, brushing just for the first four days after they were baked, which I found opened up more of the flavor of all the other components.

How long to age them? That depends on your taste. I find two weeks to be a good minimum, so that there is just enough time for the cake to dry out slightly and for the flavors to meld together. You can age these for a year or longer, remarkably, wrapping them in cheesecloth and then putting them in a plastic bag or container–just note that the longer you age them, the more you’ll have to remove them from the cheesecloth and brush them once again with liquor, to keep them moist and to sterilize the outside.

While Christmas is over, this still makes a great winter baking project for those looking for some new cooking inspo come January. I’m enjoying the fruitcakes I made right now about 3.5 weeks after I made them and am loving every bite. Each element still stands on its own yet blends together beautifully–I’m getting notes of the black pepper and cardamom I used, but still can taste the nuttiness of the brown butter and the hint of buckwheat. The version below is a wheat and rye based version, but feel free to play around with the flours. I made my personal version with half buckwheat flour and half GF AP, and have even made one before with all buckwheat.

Aged Fruitcake

Makes: 2 large loaves

Overnight soak:

925g dried fruit, chopped into bite size pieces (apricots, figs, dates, prunes, cherries, raisins, etc)

75g candied fruit peel (see note below if you’d prefer to make your own)

65g candied ginger (see note below if you’d prefer to make your own)

100g rum or brandy

90g cherry juice, pineapple juice, or other juice

Combine all ingredients in a large container. Cover and let sit overnight. The next day, pour off any liquid and reserve it. Save the fruit mixture and candied peel and ginger for the fruitcake.

Fruitcake:

½ lb. brown butter, at room temp

425g brown sugar

4 eggs

1 ¼ t salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp your favorite spices (I love cardamom, black pepper, and allspice for this, but you can add whatever you’d like)

260g AP flour

60g rye flour (substitute buckwheat, spelt, or more AP if you’d like)

1 Tbsp cocoa powder

85g sorghum syrup, maple syrup, or reserved orange ginger syrup from candying fruit peel (see note below)

60g cherry juice, pineapple juice, or other juice

225g (about 2 cups) toasted nuts

100 g sourdough starter (or substitute 50g more each of AP flour and water instead)

All of the soaked fruit mixture

Beat brown butter and brown sugar together in a large bowl. Add in the eggs one at a time. Whisk your dry ingredients together separately and slowly add a portion of this to the mixture, alternating between the dries and the syrup and juice until all are incorporated. Add in the sourdough starter and mix gently. Do not overmix.

Scrape down the sides of the bowl so that everything is well combined. Add in the fruit mixture and toasted nuts. Mix until they are incorporated evenly into the batter.

Preheat the oven to 310. Brush two large loaf pans with butter, and pour the batter evenly into each. They should be about ¾ full. If you have extra batter, you can make a mini loaf or muffins with it. Place the loaves on a half sheet tray and put them in the oven. Bake the cakes for….a long time! A very long time. About 2 hours and 10 minutes, to be specific. Check on them after 100 minutes and then again at about 2 hours. The top should no longer be sticky and the edges should be beginning to brown. A cake tester inserted into the top should come out clean.

While they bake, prepare your brushing liquid. You have many options here. I like to mix in a touch of maple syrup or honey or the leftover candied citrus peel syrup (see note below) into brandy, nocino, bourbon, dark rum, or some combination thereof, at a ratio of about 1 part sugar syrup to 4 parts liquor. If you have extra liquid from what was leftover after soaking the fruit, add this in for good measure. Or, simply use all liquor to make it easier.

Let cool about 10 to 15 minutes, then unmold onto a cooling rack by loosening the edges first and then tipping over. Store the cooled cake in a large container with a lid, or a sealed plastic bag. At least once a day for the next 4 days, preferably twice a day if you can, brush the entire outside of the loaves with the liquor mixture. You can keep this up for a week or more if you want it even more boozy. Then, wrap the loaf in cheesecloth and age for as long as you’d like. If you want to age it for over four weeks, remove it from the cheesecloth once a week and brush with liquor. I’ll often just leave the wrapped cakes out on the counter for the first week to help dry them out, but if there is potential for pests or fruit flies where you live you may want to keep it in a container or bag.

To candy fruit peels and ginger:

Remove any large pieces of pith from the citrus peel and chop into small cubes. Peel the ginger and chop into pieces around the same size. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add the chopped citrus peels. Cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, and then drain. Rinse, then leave to drain again while you bring a pot of 3 cups of water and 3 cups of sugar to a simmer. Add in the drained citrus peel and the chopped ginger. Cook, stirring occasionally, for about 40 to 45 minutes. The syrup should be much thicker and the peels should look soft. Turn off heat and let cool for a few minutes, then use a slotted spoon to place the candied peel and ginger onto a parchment-lined sheet tray to cool completely. Save the remaining syrup to use to brush the fruitcake, or to use in cocktails or for whatever your heart desires!

Pumpkin Pie was one of those things that made me interested in being a pastry chef. Highlighting a vegetable in a dessert is just something we accept about this November tradition, but we raise our eyebrow at in other circumstances. I went down a rabbit hole for a little bit after getting into making these: how about other squash in desserts, what about parsnips, how can we celebrate a rutabaga in a sweet preparation? 

This is the version I’ve settled on over the years because it is not too sweet, extra luscious, well-spiced, and above all highlights pumpkin. I can’t take all the credit for these techniques, as I derived a couple of them from an old America’s Test Kitchen article about Pumpkin Pie, but I’ve added my own tweaks on this over the years. The real trick to this? Cooking out the water by sauteing the squash, then replacing that back with cream or creme fraiche for an extra decadent, silky custard.

Included for paid subscribers is a crust recipe too, because the crust shouldn’t just be an afterthought. Good crust is the type of thing that makes me swoon, because it’s all about thought and intention and grace.

A note on baking: blind baking is always good for custard pies, as it keeps the bottom from getting soaked by the liquidy filling. I’d recommend it, but, in a pinch, you don’t need to for this recipe. The custard here is pretty thick, as it’s mostly squash, so it doesn’t soak in as much, plus it takes a long time to cook,long enough for the bottom to cook pretty well in a single go. The egg white in the crust helps it stay sturdy, too. In fact, I’ve never blind-baked the crust for this when I’ve sold these before and the results have been fine. It’s a little something extra you can do to make this pie extra special, but don’t fret about it. 

Ingredients: pumpkin filling

11.5oz roasted pumpkin or squash, skin removed, preferably homemade (but a can will do!)

320g creme fraiche or whipping cream

110g brown sugar

60g maple syrup or sorghum

54g butter

3 eggs + 1 yolk

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon nutmeg

½ teaspoon ground ginger

¼ teaspoon allspice

1 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated on a microplane until fine

Instructions:

Melt the butter in a large saucepan or wide skillet over medium heat. When it begins to brown (you should smell a nutty aroma), add in the spices and ground ginger. Cook for 10 seconds just to bloom the spices, then add in the pumpkin or squash. Reduce the heat to medium low and cook, stirring frequently with a whisk, for 5 to 10 minutes until cooked down and jammy. It should be a thick paste. Remove from heat and let cool. You want it to be 10.5 oz total after cooking, so correct the amount if necessary by removing a bit or by adding a spoonful more of roasted squash.

Use an immersion blender to blend together the squash paste, the eggs, creme fraiche/whipping cream, sugar and maple/sorghum, and vanilla until smooth. Strain through a sieve if it feels like there are still visible strands of pumpkin.

If not parbaking, preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Fill a chilled crust and bake, dropping the heat from 425 to 400 as you load in the crust, for 15 minutes. Lower the heat to 350 and bake for another 25 to 35 minutes, or until the crust is deeply browned and the filling has set. You’re trying to catch the filling just after it has set and before it starts to crack.

If parbaking, fill a parbaked crust and just bake for 40 to 50 minutes at 350 or until the custard is set. If the crust gets too dark, cover it with foil for the final part of the bake. Check on this one from time to time: I’ve rarely parbaked the crust for this so I’m not certain on exact timing!

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You can fill these with just about anything: go savory with ham and cheese, a fried egg and pesto perhaps, or go sweet with fruit. When it comes to fruit, I find buckwheat pairs best with early summer flavors like sour cherries or apricots, and then again with the fall arrival of apples, pears, even pumpkin. Brighter, more watery mid-summer produce–melons, peaches, raspberries–demand something a bit lighter than buckwheat. 

A couple notes on this one: this one is a lighter version with all water, but feel free to substitute milk for half or all of that for a richer crepe. More importantly, make sure to make this batter and chill in the fridge for at least an hour, and even better overnight, to hydrate the flour. 

Makes about 10 to 12 crepes

2 eggs

500ml water

200g buckwheat flour

1 teaspoon salt

Instructions:

Whisk the eggs and water until combined and add the buckwheat flour and salt. Whisk for a minute to aerate, or alternatively mix the whole batter with a blender on medium speed for 30 seconds. Cover and refrigerate at least a few hours, or better yet overnight.

The next day, remove the batter from fridge. It should be about the consistency of heavy cream; add a touch more water if needed. Melt about 1/2 tablespoon of the butter in a medium-sized skillet over medium-low heat and pour in about 1/4 cup of batter at the edge ofthe pan. Immediately swirl so as to coat the entire bottom of the pan. Cook for about 1 minute on the first side, then gently flip it over to cook the second side just until it dries out a bit, about 30 seconds. If desired, add in your cheese or other fillings during this stage of the cooking to heat them up. 

There’s two ways to shape these. The first is to simply roll it up with the fillings inside, or roll them up while empty and top with fruit and syrup. The second method is to fold over the outer ring of the crepe on all four sides to make the signature square shape. Repeat with remaining batter, adding more butter to the skillet for cooking as needed.

Apple Butter

I learned how to make apple butter in Appalachia, where apples are abundant and incorporated into many foods sweet and savory. They are turned into apple butter for an Apple Stack Cake, for example, but what I quickly learned was that not all apple butters are made the same.

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It’s the time of year where all of summer’s produce needs to be used up. You either have too much of it, or it’s withering away on the vine, the first colder nights causing tomatoes and corn and squash to shrivel in self-defense. There’s a beautiful, simple outlet for these things: focaccia. Cut them into wedges, shove as much as you can onto proofed bread dough, and bake it as hot as possible. This dough will be wet and sticky at first, but give it time to proof and for the sourdough to activate and it’ll develop more structure over time.

Don’t have sourdough starter? Mix 85g water, 85g whole wheat flour, and ½ teaspoon of yeast together and let sit for 3 to 4 hours or until active and bubbly, then use that in place of the sourdough. Your proofing time for this will probably be cut in half accordingly. 

For one half-sheet tray of focaccia:

850g bread flour (I prefer high-extraction flour here–if you don’t know what that means, don’t worry about it!)

725g water

170g sourdough starter, at 100% hydration 

40g olive oil, plus additional for the top

20g salt

2 cups (or more, be bold!) veg or fruit

Instructions:

-Mix flours, water, and leaven until combined. Sprinkle on salt and pour over the 40g of olive oil. Let sit for 30 minutes.

-Mix in the salt and the oil. Bulk ferment for 3 hours at room temperature, giving it folds every 30 minutes. By folds, I mean think of the dough as having four corners, and use your hand to stretch each corner of the dough upward and then back down over the top of the dough. Pulling and stretching like this helps develop gluten.

-Place dough, covered, in fridge overnight. 

-The next day, pour onto a well-greased sheet pan, spread it to the corners as much as possible, and proof for 4 to 5 hours until very bubbly.

-Preheat the oven to 475 degrees. Using wet fingers, dimple the dough, consolidating the small air bubbles into bigger ones and leaving imprints in between. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle on flake salt, and then fill these imprints with any desired toppings. Bake until browned on top, usually about 25 to 35 minutes, but it might be longer depending on how many toppings you put on and how proofed the dough was.

This is perhaps the recipe that I think of most when I think of my time in Appalachia. An all-corn cornbread that every cook makes a little bit differently: most, but not all, refuse to use wheat; most, but not all, wouldn’t think of putting any sugar in. And most, if not all, will tell you the key is a very hot skillet, hot enough to make the batter sizzle as it hits the pan. That’s how you get the crisp edges, and a nice rise.

But ultimately, it’s pretty dang good any way you want to make it. This version is adapted from a couple of my favorite cornbread recipes: that of Sean Brock in South, Ronni Lundy’s in Vittles. Play around with it! Try adding an extra egg if you want it to hold together more (I find 1.5 is the sweet spot, but I can’t suggest 1.5 eggs in a recipe without doing a face palm). Add a touch of sugar or sorghum or honey if you want a bit more browning. Try different colors of cornmeal. Make it with bacon fat if you’re feeling bold. Make it your own.

Paid subscribers will find a recipe for a Tamale Pie below that uses this same cornbread as a topping. It’s been an obsession with mine recently, which started with a silly question: can I bake this cornbread on top of other things? The answer, it turns out, is yes, and that you should, and that you can play around with just about every combination of ingredients as a base. I offer some tips and pointers for ratios and flavor profiles below. 

Cornbread Ingredients:

2 cups cornmeal (a mix of coarse and fine is nice)

1 tsp salt

1.5 tsp baking powder

1 3/4 cups buttermilk

1 egg

1 T sugar or sorghum

4 T butter or lard

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Mix all dry ingredients together in a large bowl. When the oven is preheated,  add the butter or lard to a 10” cast iron skillet and put into the oven for a few minutes, til the pan is hot and the butter or lard is melted but not browned. While the skillet is in the oven, whisk in the buttermilk, eggs, and, if using, the sugar. Take the skillet out of the oven, pour the melted butter into the batter and whisk it into the batter. Immediately pour the batter into the hot skillet—you want it to sizzle a bit and immediately puff up on the edges. Return the skillet to the oven and bake the cornbread for about 20 minutes, or until it is set in the middle. It’s best warm, but wait for about 10 minutes before cutting into it.

A Guide to Tamale Pie:

To return to the question of this month’s essay: what is American Food? I still don’t know, but Tamale Pie has recently become part of my personal Canon. Maybe it’s just a phase, but Southwestern cuisine has long fascinated me, as someone that loves regional Mexican food and is intrigued by what happens when it crosses the border. I was wondering if others were also taking this dish seriously, and found that Kenji Alt-Lopez had done a deep dive as well. But of course! It’s worth looking up, if you care to do so.

As someone that is largely gluten-free, however, and as someone that wanted to make an North Carolina version for a recent event outside of Charlotte, I wondered if I could use Appalachian Cornbread as the topping. Pulled pork and beans and squash and herbs and salsa went below and it all came together beautifully. But still, it wasn’t quite there for me, so I’ve tinkered with it more. Here’s a rough guideline for the ratios:

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There was a solid week in late April where I spent nearly every morning foraging for Fukinoto (Butterbur) at the nearby ski resort. We’d wind our way up the roadsides and scour the sides of the road for a couple hours, each of us filling a bag with the budding plants. The harvest of Fukinoto is abrupt and fleeting: young buds would poke their heads out of the snow one day, but by the next had grown too large and bitter to use for the beloved condiment of Fuki Miso. 

While Fukinoto doesn’t pop up all over roadsides here on America’s west coast, fennel does. I’ve been looking for ways to replicate this condiment at home and fennel seems like the perfect vehicle: widely available farmed or foraged, containing a good mix of stalk and greens (fronds), and bracing but not quite as bitter as Fuki, which should make it a better fit for the American palate. 

The technique here is simple, as you can skip the blanching that’s usually done to fuki to leach its bitterness. Simply chop the fennel very finely, cook it down in oil, add sake or mirin, brown sugar, and miso and cook down into a paste. As long as you cook out much of the water content, it should last in the fridge for at least a few weeks (or freeze for a later date), and makes the perfect accompaniment to a bowl of rice, a pork chop, slathered over grilled bread, used in a marinade for fish, cooked into a miso soup, and more. 

Fennel Miso

makes: about 1 cup

1/4 cup neutral oil 

200g fennel, finely chopped (stems, bulbs, fronds, whatever, from about 2 bulbs plus stalks)

1 small dried chili

35g sake + 35 g mirin (or use all sake or all mirin if you only have one or the other)

110g miso

12g (1 Tbsp) brown sugar

Instructions: 

1. Heat oil in a pan over medium heat until it is shimmering. Add the fennel and cook, stirring frequently, for about 2 to 3 minutes or until the fennel is just beginning to brown. 

2. Add in the chili, sake, and mirin, and cook until all but a few tablespoons of the liquid has evaporated. 

3. Lower the heat to medium-low and add in the miso. Using a wooden spoon or whisk, stir rapidly to try to break up the miso and mix all the ingredients together. If your miso is dryer, you may need to add a tablespoon or two of water into the part to help it incorporate. Once the mixture is cohesive, add in the brown sugar and cook and stir for an additional minute. 

4. The final mixture should be smooth and glossy. Add salt or more brown sugar to taste, though it should be plenty salty on its own. Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to a few weeks.