Wasabi Odds and Ends. And bagel chips.

Seriously - I not only made wasabi bagel chips, they were delicious.

Well, the two slices I didn't totally fry to a crisp were. More on that later.


Wasabi Taste Test

I honestly wouldn't have thought that wasabi would be so interesting, when I started out. Once again, I really feel like this project has been a rousing success - I'm finding things - and ways to use things - that I never would have, otherwise. At the end of the year, I'll tell you whether or not I feel like the memories have stuck - whether or not learning about Wasabi for a few weeks in May helps me better use it in December. Hopefully, the answer will be yes.


When I was last at the spice store, I picked up some pure powdered wasabi. It was, as I said, quite expensive - fifteen dollars for a jar that held less than an ounce. I expected it to be a pure lark - fifteen dollars spent simply to say I had tried it, two or three lines in a blog post. I've got to admit, I was more than a little surprised by the results.

It would be pure exaggeration to say "Real wasabi is nothing like the horseradish-based powders that we get in Asian groceries and sushi restaurants." At the same time... I'm running into the problem of lack of language again. I simply don't know how to describe the difference in the tastes. They are very similar, no doubt - but I don't feel that you could ever mistake one for the other. Like Jack Nicholson and Christian Slater.

I'm not sure that was quite what I was going for.

The true wasabi is a deeper, earthier green than any of the fake powders I've seen. It is also - totally contrary to my expectations - not nearly as piquant as the horseradish-based powder. I fully expected it to have an even sharper heat, to find that the horseradish was trying vainly to imitate that. Instead, it is less spicy; a much richer and more mellow flavor, one which stays in your mouth a bit longer. Like scotches, I suppose - cheaper scotches deliver more bite and less flavor, more expensive ones taste less like alcohol and more like liquid gold. That's exactly what this was like. The harsh bite of the horseradish was significantly lessened, and the flavor of the wasabi itself was much more able to come through.

Not that I'm saying that I think anyone should run out and spend fifteen bucks on three meals' worth of genuine wasabi. It was different, but different is not necessarily good. Studies show people prefer cheap tequila in margaritas, because like scotch cheap tequila has more bite, and the bite is what people notice once there's other ingredients added. The true wasabi was richer and more flavorful - but it also had a harder time standing out in the symphony of flavors that is sushi.

The best choice, to my mind, is the middle-of-the-road "natural wasabi", which includes pure wasabi powder. It's more expensive than the fake stuff or the tube-of-toothpaste wasabi, but not by much, closer to two dollars an ounce than fifteen. It's plenty flavorful, with a nice piquant kick. And, although we might wish things were different, it tastes the way you expect wasabi to taste. (When I was a kid, my mom made Hungry Jack mashed potatoes. I'm pretty sure they're potatoes you reconstitute from dehydrated flakes. For a long, long time, that was what mashed potatoes were to me - and I hated "real" mashers.)


Bagel Chips


Wasabi definitely endures heat much better when it is in butter than in anything else I've tried so far - not only did it stand up to the microwave (albeit for about thirty seconds) when I melted it to put on popcorn, it even kept some of its zing when it went through the broiler. Now, admittedly, putting it in the broiler was a huge freakin' mistake... but as I've often emphasized, this is warts and all.

Last time my folks came down, they brought bagels. Every time they come down, I make them bring bagels. For those of you who have never lived outside the New York area... you have no freakin' idea how good you have it. In the rest of the country, a "bagel" is just toroid bread.

I love bagels. I'm not kidding about making my folks bring bagels - when they came out to Illinois for Benjamin's bris, I made them bring three dozen bagels along for the party after. In their luggage on the plane. 

The problem is that bagels go stale fairly quickly. And even I can't eat them fast enough to go through two dozen before they go stale. So if my folks visit on Saturday, by Tuesday, there are usually one or two sad, stale bagels left, not inedible but hardly worth the effort.

Holy crap. I am so happy I'm going up to visit my folks this weekend - I want a bagel so badly right now.

Anyway, I decided, this time to try to repurpose one of these stale Yiddish treats. I sliced it lengthwise, as thin as I could, and wound up with about four or five thin pieces and about a dozen smaller chunks. I laid them out on a baking sheet, and decided to try some science. I split the pieces into a bunch of different batches. Some of them got olive oil, some got butter; some got wasabi powder, some would get it after cooking. (This was early in my wasabi experiments, and I didn't yet know that you need to reconstitute wasabi into paste before it really has much flavor.) Finally, the two largest pieces got lovingly slathered with wasabi butter. The whole baking sheet got throw into the oven at three fifty for five minutes, flipped, and given another five.

At this point... I had one of my less successful ideas. Now, bagel chips are supposed to be crispy, right? And these guys, while warm and delicious-looking, didn't really look crispy. What makes things crispy? The broiler.

And it did! I intended to give the whole thing one minute to crisp up - but when I took them out, sixty seconds later, the entire tray was burnt. The only pieces that survived the flames were the two large pieces that had the wasabi butter on. They weren't exactly crispy, despite the broiler - I had drenched them too thoroughly in the butter for that to happen - but they were utterly delicious.

As for the rest, maybe I'll try next time I have leftover bagels. Which should be in a day or two!


See everyone on Monday, when I start to learn about a spice I never use only a little of - dill.