Momofuku Cornflake-Chocolate-Chip-Marshmallow "Cookies" :: Toffee x Cookie Time

I finally now have in my possession, copies of the Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook. Yes, copies plural. My love of all things Momofuku is so widely known that I've made it dead-simple for people to shop for me. To all of you that gifted me with the Milk Bar cookbook, one million thanks to you. I will probably need all 3 copies, somehow, someway. 

People rave about the compost cookie and everyone is obsessed with the cheeky crack pie. Those are amazing, yes. But me? I love the Cornflake Chocolate Chip Marshmallow Cookies. It is everything I love in a cookie. Super chewy, super buttery, not too chocolate-y and has a nice texture. So naturally, when I got the book, I flipped right to this recipe and started gathering everything I needed. 

 

And that didn't take very long since I had everything but cornflakes on hand. This is a pretty basic cookie recipe...sort of. Before you start creaming your butter and sugar, you have to make the Momofuku Cornflake Crunch. Basically, you toss a box of cornflakes with sugar, milk powder, salt and melted butter, then bake until you get golden brown crispy clusters. It's not hard, just an extra but necessary step. If you've been to Milk Bar, this is the stuff they crumble on top of their soft serves as a salty-sweet topping. And yes, you can just eat it plain. I know because I've tried. 

After you have the cornflake crunch, it's pretty easy. I would highly recommend refrigerating the dough for at least 3 hours. The book says just 1, but these cookies spread like a motha'f*#%^ in the oven. Mine came out a little funky texture wise: crispy like toffee on the edge but gooey and cookie-like in the middle. Not necessarily a bad thing though! I brought a batch on a ski trip over the weekend and we renamed these "Tookies". 

Here's the recipe online, but get the book! It's filled with a lot of great stories and recipes.

My Lunch :: May 21st

It is ALMOST like I'm in New York. I made a batch of the spicy pork sausage ragout on Wednesday and my roomie brought back from NY my favorite Momofuku Milk Bar Cookie - cornflake-chocolate chip-marshmallow. Now all I need is some Apple Kimchi...

I have to say, this ragout is pretty much my all time favorite thing to make. The entire recipe calls for rice cakes, bok choy and tofu but lately I've just been making the pork sauce (it does look a lot like a bolognese...hence my ragout reference) and putting it on other stuff because unless you eat it right away, rice cakes get dry and it's just not too appetizing. You could also just eat the sauce by itself -that's how tasty it is, but since I eat at my desk in front of my coworkers, I thought it best not to eat ground pork sauce by the spoonful at work. Yesterday I mixed the sauce with some udon noodles - a natural pair since udon noodles are kind of similar to rice cakes. (Asian Spaghetti anyone?) Today I kind of made the original recipe by topping it with some boiled bok choy and a block of silken tofu. Also delicious but note to self: silken tofu is mad watery so you shouldn't pack it overnight in your bento. I didn't let all the drained water get me down though - it turned my lunch into a spicy tofu soup...kind of like soon du bu. Have I stumbled upon something great?! Me thinks so.

¡Muy Caliente!

Maybe a little too caliente -- I made the spicy pork with rice cakes
recipe from the Momofuku cookbook again. A few flubs on my part:

•  I accidentally bought beef instead of pork. For future reference 牛 means beef and 豚 means pork. Geez, I really need to ramp up my Japanese studying...

•  I suggest not following thr book's measurements exactly -- I like spicy but not so spicy that you can't even taste anything. I suggest maybe 1 to 1.5 TB of spicy bean paste (book calls for 2) and half the amount of dried peppers. The book calls for 2 cups which is kind of incredible now having eaten it twice with half that amount.

Momofuku Love in Japan

I'm not sure if you know about my obsession with David Change and his Momofuku empire...if not, refer back to here, here, here and here. My sister gave me the BEST (and only by the way...that's right, I received ONE Christmas present this year...and it was in January...do I sound bitter?!) Christmas gift a girl (like me) could ask for - an autographed copy of the Momofuku cookbook. Voila!

Full disclosure, I knew this gift was coming and I asked her before she went to his book signing, to ask him to write down some food recommendations in Tokyo, since, like a stalker, I knew that he had lived here once. David Chang's advice?

"Get lost in Nakano + Ogikubo  best spots for eats."

Ok! So we did get lost in Ogikubo a few weekends ago and we did stumble upon some great finds. I had a soy bean donut (sounds gross, but it was very tasty) and yummy keiten sushi. I hear Nakano is supposed to be pretty cool, so we'll be heading there sometime soon.

The cookbook itself is pretty bitchin'. I mean, it has all the staple Momofuku recipes in it, but to be honest, I'm probably not going to ever make my own ramen and I definitely will never have a need to recreate the Ko Caviar egg. What is cool about the book is the story he tells about his journey to where he is now. He talks a lot about living in Japan and his obsession with noodles and ramen. Since I live here, that part is particularly interesting. I guess maybe if you don't know about the Momfuku hype, the book is kind of whatevs, but I love it. I tried one of the more accesible recipes, the spicy pork and rice cakes, a few weeks ago and it was BLOWWWINYOFACEZOMGSOOOOOGOOOD. No seriously. Licked the pot clean in under an hour. If you have the book, I recommend trying this one out first since it will stock your kitchen with the ingredients you need for all the other stuff.

PS - I just read that Christina Tosi, the pastry chef for Ko and Momofuku Milk Bar is working on a Milk Bar cookbook. Courtney, if you're reading this, that's what I want for Christmas next year.

July Flavors @ Momofuku Milk

Attention! New soft serve flavors at Momofuku Milk Bar! I have to admit, when I first read the new flavors (Rosemary, Lemon Verbena, Blackberry and Apricot), I was a little disappointed. It was hard for me to say goodbye to the classic candy flavors because to me, combining candy and soft serve is the ultimate treat. However, I ate my words and my whole soft serve cup when I tried the Rosemary Soft Serve with Pretzel Crumb topping. Salty and subtle, it was an addicting and unique flavor. I was a little jealous of my friend's Apricot/Rosemary swirl with Olive Oil Cake topping - but now I just have an excuse to go back for more.

Momofuku Ko

Oh boy. Momofuku Ko hangover! I have never in my life, dined like that. Needless to say, it was amazing and one of the best dining experiences of my life. I got to try a bunch of things I'd never order if it were on a menu. (So that's what Foie Gras tastes like...Buttery!). I'm not a huge seafood eater. If there is meat on the menu, I'll always choose something that moos over something that swims. BUT! I'm glad that the chefs make the decisions for you and you just have to trust that what they put in front of you is worth eating. Dish after dish after dish, I was delighted and giddy and wanted to give the chefs a big giant sloppy caviar coated kiss. Unfortunately, you can't take pictures inside the restaurant, so I don't have anything to show you but the outside of the door and my glass of alka seltzer. You're just going to have to trust me on this stuff...

From memory, here's what we were served:

• Soft Tofu and Chinese Sausage amuse bouche
• Swiss Chard with pork
• Buttery Pepper Biscuit
• Long Island Fluke with Buttermilk and Poppy Seeds
• Green and White Asparagus with Scallops
• Sea Urchin in a Miso Broth
• Poached Egg, Caviar and Potato Chips
• Soft Shell Crab with Bay Sauce
• Shaved Foie Gras over Lychee, Pine Nut Brittle and Riesling Gelee
• Deep Fried Steak with a tasting of Onions
• Guava Sorbet with a Skin of Cream Cheese
• Black Sesame Ice Cream with Funnel Cake and Lemon Sugar

My favorites? Everything in bold above. These are things that I'm craving this morning. The Poached Egg and the Long Island Fluke were fantastic. I liked the different textures with the egg (potato chips?!) and the long island fluke kind of tasted like lox on a bagel with cream cheese. The Foie Gras dish was very fun because I wasn't sure if it was sweet or savory. I'm big on fruity desserts so I preferred the Guava Sorbet over the Funnel Cake (even though I finished off my dish before everyone else...oops!) but I was really happy to see that Black Sesame is Chang approved!

Aside from the food, it was really cool to watch the 3 chefs preparing our dishes. The ingredients they used were incredibly fresh. They blasted Led Zepplin and The Beatles. For $100 per person, I think it's totally worth it. So...anyone want to go with me again?!

Ko Here I Come

Ladies and gentleman, I scored a reservation at Momofuku Ko. After 8 failed attempts, I finally did it. My index finger is a little sore and I may need to get a new mouse but it was totally worth it. For those of you that aren't familiar, Ko has an online reservation system that is reminiscent of Ticketmaster in the early 90's. You have to log in at exactly 10am to have a shot at one of the 12 seat available 7 days out. Your heart races, you wait for the clock to turn to 9am and you incessantly refresh the page with your state-of-the-art dial up internet service provided by Prodigy. All you wanted was to see *nsync in concert but nOOooOO, those damn ticket scalpers beat you to the punch with their crazy hacking systems. Heartbreak.

This is so much better than sitting front row center for *nysnc. Like, waaaay better. Next Monday at 7:40 PM, I will sit down in front of the Momofuku Ko Executive Chef and he will feed me and my companion to be named later, what I suspect to be a spectacular meal of magical goodness.

For those of you wishing to get reservations of your own, I highly reccommend this tutorial on how to get a resi, brought to you by Deep Fried Kimchee.

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Update: My reservation has been changed to this Thursday at 7:10pm so you'll get a full review Friday!

The Sweet Side of Momofuku

Make no mistake about it, I'm a huge Momofuku fan. Unless you're a vegetarian or a member of PETA, there's no way you can't love his food. I can't really afford to eat at Momofuku meals every week but thankfully, Momofuku Bakery & Milk Bar opened a few months ago and I'm pretty much a regular here. The Cereal Milk Soft Serve was my gateway drug into Milk Bar heaven. Cereal Milk is basically milk steeped with sugary childhood favorites such as Fruity Pebbles and Lucky Charms, then mixed into super creamy soft serve. Yeah, it was awesome. Then I read this article about their head Pastry Chef/my hero and decided that I had to try every single one of their cookies. I am really hoping David Chang puts the recipe for the cornflake-marshmallow-chocolate chip cookies in his upcoming book.

Since Milk Bar has opened, there have been 3 different soft serve themes. Cereal, donuts and currently, they're serving up candy flavors. On my last trip, I tried the Atomic Fireball flavor because when I was little, my sister and I would get them on road trips to LA and see who could keep it in their mouth the longest. (I'm pretty sure that was just a game my parents made up to shut us up.) There's something really weird about eating cold soft serve that tastes exactly like something completely familiar. Your brain is like "Huh?!" and your mouth is like "Say what?!" and then eventually, they come together and sing at the top of their lungs "THIS IS CRAZY!!". Ok, I'll admit, it's not the best soft serve in the world, but it's playful and fun and it keeps me coming back. (JUST LIKE DRUGS!!!)

At this point, I've eaten at all the Momofukus except for Ko and you better believe I'm online every morning at 10am to check for reservations. Needless to say, this post is to be continued...