Japanese Cheesecake

I love cheesecake and have been hearing about this trendy light Japanese crustless version, so I tried to make it. On my third attempt, I think I've come up with something that works well: it's fluffy, almost soufflé-like. Everything here is taken from the exquisitely-detailed recipe/technique from Nami at Just One Cookbook, so look there for better photos and descriptions, including a link to a helpful video. Hers looks a lot more professional than mine, but I'm happy with the flavor and texture I've gotten with my too-short pan.

Cheesecake has a muffin top due to my short cake pan

For my first try, I used her parchment lining technique but with a springform pan and was annoyed by the fidgety parchment lining; worse, the water bath seeped through my tin foil lining making the bottom a bit soggy. For my second try, I realized I didn't need to line the springform pan -- it would release fine -- and I put the water bath below the cake pan (for humidity) instead of bathing the pan: it came out dense on the bottom, indicating the cake needed the heat moderated by the bath.  On my third try, I used a solid pan -- as Nami does -- directly in a water bath, and just dealt with the parchment lining; my pan is slope-sided where hers is straight, which makes lining a little more difficult, but it doesn't have to be exact; it worked well enough that I don't think I need to buy another pan with straight sides -- I can live with the muffin-top profile.

Her recipe is long, but very detailed, which I appreciate. First, note that if your pan is smaller than hers/mine, she provides ingredients scaled to a single egg, then she provides the full 6-egg recipe, so you can scale for your pan. 

As an overview, you "melt" the cream cheese and other batter ingredients then whisk in the egg yolks and flour to make a batter. Then you whip the egg whites into a stiff meringue, then gently fold them together.  I follow her advice about dropping the oven temperature twice.

The 6 eggs barely fit my slope-sided pan which is 20 cm at bottom and 23 cm at the top; the parchment lining must be higher than my pan's 4 cm to accommodate the rise, but the parchment lining flexed and created the muffin-top shape. If you have a different sized pan, scale the recipe appropriately, but realize this will rise dramatically before falling while it slowly cools.

Do take her advice to measure the ingredients beforehand: there's plenty of prep work. I'm trying to simplify this a little by combining measuring into cooking vessels.

Prep the Cake Pan

Use a 23 cm / 9 inch solid cake pan, preferably 10 cm / 4 inch high (mine's only about 4 cm).
Butter the pan bottom and sides so the parchment will stick.
Cut parchment strips to make straps long enough to cross the bottom, up the sides, and over the edge; set them in an X-shaped pattern to make a sling to remove the finished cake.
Cut another strip 10 cm high and line the side of the pan.
Cut a disk for the bottom and press into place.
Set aside.

Sling straps, sides and bottom lined

Batter

  6    Eggs, large

300 g  Cream Cheese

 60 g  Unsalted Butter

200 ml Heavy Whipping Cream (about 35% fat)

       Zest from 1/2 Lemon

 30 ml Lemon Juice (from about 1/2 lemon)

 80 g  Cake Flour

Separate the Eggs and chill the Whites for the Meringue below.
Make a double boiler from a pot of water topped by a medium-sized bowl.
Weigh the Cream Cheese, Butter, Cream, Sugar directly in the bowl.
Add to the double boiler and warm to melt the ingredients, combining with spatula or whisk.
When blended, remove from heat.
Sift in the Cake Flour through a strainer, and whisk to blend.
Strain through the strainer into a large bowl.
Whisk in the Lemon Zest and Juice.
Whisk in the Egg Yolks, one by one, with a hand whisk.

Prepare Oven and Water Bath

Put a roasting pan in the oven and preheat to 165C with convection (15C higher without).

Bring 1 Liter of water to boil.

Meringue

  6   Egg Whites from above, cold

100 g Sugar

1.5 g Cream of Tartar (optional to stabilize)

Clean the medium bowl thoroughly for the Meringue: don't leave any fat, soap, or water on it which would interfere with the development of the foam.

Whip the Egg Whites with an electric whisk (stick blender attachment) on medium until opaque, foamy, and just a little bubbly, about 2-4 minutes.

Whisk in the Sugar and Cream of Tartar, a bit at a time, then increase whisk speed to high; whip until quite dense and it forms stiff peaks.

Gently fold in a third of the Batter with a hand whisk, then repeat with another third, then finally mix it back into the Batter and gently combine with the whisk.

Pour into the lined cake pan.

Pour boiling water carefully into the hot roasting pan, then place the cake pan in water bath; ideally the water will come half way up the cake pan.

Drop the temperature to 145C convection, bake 70-75 minutes.

Reduce temperature to 135C convection and bake another 10 minutes.

Check for doneness: a skewer should come out clean.

Turn off the oven and open the door a crack but let the cake cool very slowly to minimize collapse.

After 20 minutes, remove from the oven.

Use the straps as a sling and move the cake to a plate.

Remove the parchment around the sides. 

Let cool and serve.

Black Cod marinated in Sake Kasu

We first had this at Sushi Taro in DC and enjoyed the dense meaty texture and unusual flavor. It gets this by an extended marinade in Sake Kasu -- the "lees" left over from making sake. It's a preservative, and allows us to marinate raw fish for for a week in the fridge without spoiling. 

The "cod" is really West Coast sablefish but at $20-$30 per pound for the fish, it's a treat.  Kasu comes in square flat-ish plastic packaging from the frozen section of Asian markets.  I paid $3.40 for a 300g package at Katagiri in NYC but have also bought it Han ah Reum (Hmart) in Falls Church, VA and most recently Hana Japanese Market in DC.

The Uwajimaya market defines Kasuzuke and has link to Black Cod Kasuzuke. The New York Times has a good article on a number of Seattle chefs preparing this. I love this: Google's photo-translator says the package reads:
Flavor is rich and nourishing economical, it is well warm sake lees!! 
Minced delicious recipe d) Kasujiru serving 40g lees of lees use, place for a while over the water, to the Toka to Kasujiru, and the lower salmon small, green onions, radishes, carrots, and include, but are boiled to put konjac such as an O-sweet In addition the Mizuyaku 200ml and sugar to alcohol serving 50g lees, dissolve over the fire. ● miso 6 by reducing the miso of miso soup amounting callings lees miso soup every day, please call up with the seasoned at a rate of sake lees 4. Sake lees, the spots of white or yellow or generated on the surface, you Yuki discolored (pink, etc.) without it, please use it and worry because is due to aging of sake lees. It should be noted that, lees, which is a by-product of sake might millet, etc. derived from the raw material rice is mixed but, please use by removing that there is no harm.

I've made this with Black Cod (Sable) and it's terrific, though the fish is $20-30 per pound from DC's better fishmongers.  I've also made it -- at the same time with the same salt and marinade regimen -- with wild-caught Salmon and East Coast Cod: both came out very salty and dry, while the Sable came out moist and sweet; I don't know why.  The Sable cooked without the marinade has a mucilaginous fatty layer under the skin which isn't appealing without the Kasu treatment. I've also done this with unsalted shrimp and scallops, simple and good. Some articles claim to reuse the Kasu marinade, and I've done it repeatedly with the same batch of kasu and lived to tell the tale.

Sushi Taro in DC serves this skin side up but I serve it skin-side down and don't tend to eat the skin. Maybe if I broiled it skin-side up it would be a bit more appetizing but then I'd lose the appealing flesh color.

Serves 2 for a main course of 4 for an appetiser

Ingredients

340 g   Black Cod (Sable fish, 12 ounce)
 23 g   Kosher Salt (1/6 cup)
150 g   Kasu (one half of 300g package, 5 oz)
 25 g   Sugar (1/8 cup)
 60 ml  Sake (1/4 cup)

Preparation

Salt both sides of the fish, cover and refrigerate 12-48 hours. When I did this with less salt for 24 hours it turned out more salty than more salt for 48 hours; I don't know why. You'll have to experiment. Rinse off the salt and pat dry.

Mix up the Kasu, Sugar and Sake until it's like a thick paste, mine was a bit too thick to pour.  Put the fish -- whole -- into the marinade, coat well, and refrigerate for 7 days; you can use a zip-top bag for this.  (I usually throw in some shelled shrimp for a chef's treat).

Wipe off the marinade and cut the fish into individual serving-sized chunks; the fish will have firmed up which makes for well-defined slices.  

Place the pieces on a cookie sheet, skin-side down.  Broil until the fish starts to brown and the fish is barely cooked; the sugar gives it an appealing darkness without over-cooking the fish.

We served this with Horensu Goma-ae, spinach with a toasted sesame dressing.

Horenso Goma-ae: Spinach with Sesame

We had this steamed spinach with sesame dressing at Sushi Taro in DC: it's cool and refreshing. I found various recipes on the web which are similar to the one in _A First Book of Japanese Cooking_ by Masako Yamaoka.

The book does this with green beans and I've done it with steamed broccoli; I bet it would be dynamite on some crunchy Wakame seaweed. I've also substituted sake or rice wine when I didn't have the Dashi.

10 ounce Spinach, stemmed
2 Tbs Sesame Seeds, toasted
1/2 Tbs Dashi (3/4 C water and 1/4 tsp granules)
1 1/2 tsp Miso, white
1 Tbs Soy
1 Tbs Sugar

Blanch the spinach briefly in boiling salted water -- a minute max -- and shock in ice water.  Fish out leaves and lay on kitchen towels to dry; this is a bit of a nuisance but you don't want them to get tangled up in a mass or it will be too dense.

Toast the Sesame Seeds in a dry skillet, then grind the Sesame Seeds with a mortar and pestle until it becomes a crumbly paste.

Dissolve the Sugar in the Soy so it doesn't have a gritty texture when you eat it; it may help to heat the Soy.
Combine all ingredients except the Spinach and adjust liquid until it has the consistency of a thick pancake batter.

Put Spinach into a bowl and stir in sauce to combine.
Serve.