Buri To Daikon No Nimono (Simmered Japanese Yellowtail and Daikon)

Japanese yellowtail (buri) and daikon simmered in mirin, soy sauce, sake, and sugar. The garnishings are Japanese parsley (mitsuba) and slivered ginger.

After a bit of a hiatus from the blogosphere, which may be extended due to other commitments, I want to share a really tasty recipe that brings back to me vivid memories of Japan. In Japan there is a kind of yellowtail fish called buri, which, oddly enough, I seem to remember being introduced to in Bien Hoa, Vietnam, about fifteen years ago -- impossible, probably, and yet whenever I have buri I flash back to the Vietnamese countryside and the woman at the campus canteen with whom I had a meal plan of sorts. Maybe I'm finally losing it...

In any case, buri to daikon no nimono is a great recipe for any time of the year, but it's particularly an excellent wintertime dish. Perhaps I say this because I remember having it in Japan as snow drifted past the windows like pure white macaroons, and to keep warm everyone huddled around the kotatsu surrounded by cups of hot sake. There's really no better atmosphere for this dish, but hey, we can't always be so lucky, right?

This is truly an amazing dish. The daikon becomes tender with cooking, absorbing the mix of flavors like nothing else can, and pairs extraordinarily with the sweet, deeply flavorful yellowtail. This is also one of those dishes that tastes even better on the second day, after the daikon has had additional time to be transformed by absorbing more of the sauces and yellowtail juices.

Ingredients

3 yellowtail (buri) fillets

2 medium daikon

4 slices ginger root

Salt

Water from washed rice

Ginger, cut into long strips

Mitsuba leaves (Japanese parsley), chopped

This dish uses two sauces, which are similar to each other but not identical.

Sauce #1

1 teaspoon dashi powder

1/2 cup sake

3 tablespoons mirin

3 tablespoons soy sauce

2 tablespoons sugar

Sauce #2

1/2 cup sake
2 tablespoons mirin

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoons sugar

Directions

1. Cut fish into large bite-sized pieces. Salt pieces lightly on both sides and let sit for 30 minutes.

2. Pour boiling water over fish, then rinse with cold water.

3. Peel daikon. Cut into 1 or 2 cm wedges. Boil in enough water (from the washed rice, preferably) to cover daikon, adding a tablespoon of rice if you'd like, for 15 minutes. After boiling, drain daikon. Let it cool, then pat dry with paper towel.

4. Pour into a pot the sliced ginger and sauce #1 and bring to a boil. Add fish and cook for 15 minutes.

5. Add sauce #2 and simmer for 5 minutes.

6. Add daikon. Cook on low heat for 30 minutes or until light brown. (At this point, taste the daikon to make sure it has absorbed the cooking flavors.)
7. Serve with ginger strips and chopped mitsuba.

Homemade Tofu, Soy Milk, and a Vietnamese Ginger-Tofu Dessert

In Honolulu, I regularly pay more than I can stand for 12 oz. blocks of tofu and half-gallon containers of soy milk. After tax, the former usually costs around $3 and the latter around $6. I easily go through this much tofu and soy milk in a week, which means that in a month I pay around $40 for these two products alone. I decided to look around Honolulu for tofu molds but came up empty handed. After my fruitless two-week search I headed online, and in a matter of seconds I found a Connecticut-based company that carries what I was looking for. Although the mold cost $40, and shipping an extra $20, I figured that if the product wasn't a scam I could recoup that total in a couple of months.

Well, my tofu mold arrived yesterday afternoon. I was taken aback by how small it was, but was pleased that it came with several packs of nigari -- a coagulant derived from sea water and also known by the unappetizing scientific name of magnesium chloride -- and two cheesecloths for straining. (The mold, incidentally, is made from hinoki, or cedar wood, and its fragrance is like an early spring walk in the woods.) In the evening I went shopping for organic soybeans. (For those living in Honolulu, I found these at Kokua Market, 2643 S. King St.) A pound of these hard little yellow beans went for a mere $2.19. I splurged for a pound and a half and then raced home to soak my fresh new beans in water overnight.

I awoke at 6:30, and bam, it was tofu time! I unfolded the directions that came with my tofu mold and in 90 minutes I'd made two slabs of fresh tofu. What's more, it was delicious! Admittedly, it was too soft to cook with, but its softness made it perfect for a dessert I learned to love in Vietnam that uses hot ginger syrup (see below). There are many Japanese desserts that use soft tofu as well, so you can guess what I'll be eating after my meals for the next week or so. And not just that, but one byproduct from tofu-making is okara, which can be used in various dishes, too. (But more on that in a different post.)

With my second batch of beans I made soy milk. And one reason I'm sharing this is because I want people to know that they, too, can make soy milk without a tofu mold, and it's very easy to do.

Homemade Soy Milk Directions

1) Soak about a pound (400 g) of soybeans in water for at least 8 hours. (In the winter, soaking times are almost twice as long.)

2) Put soaked soybeans in a blender along with 3-4 cups of the soaking water.
3) Blend until the soybeans and liquid have reached a smooth, milkshake-like consistency.

4) Boil 7 1/2 cups of water. (I might recommend more water than this, as the soy milk that results tends to taste fairly strong.) Pour blended soybean mix into water and stir constantly until boiling again. Turn off heat and let mixture cool for about 3 minutes. Then simmer mixture for 7-8 minutes on medium heat.

5) Pull cheesecloth over colander and set colander in a large bowl or on a deep pan.

Pour mixture into cheesecloth and strain soy milk from solids. Keep the solids (okara) for use later in cooking.

A colander isn't necessary when you strain out the soy milk. I used

one in case I inadvertently spilled anything.

This is the okara, or the solids that remained after I squeezed the soy milk from the cheesecloth. Okara is incredibly nutritious and should be used within about two days.

If you only want to make soy milk, pour the liquid into a container and keep refrigerated until ready to use. Since the taste will be a tad bitter, you may want to dilute the milk with water, or add sugar, or both.

A cup of fresh hot soy milk

If you want to make tofu, however, continue on to step 6.

Directions for Making Tofu (continued from steps 1-5)

6. Add nigari coagulant (or substitute with 1.5 tablespoons of lemon juice) to soy milk and let sit for around 30 minutes. You will immediately see the soy milk curds separate from the whey. The more you stir it at this stage the firmer your tofu will end up. (I need to remember this for next time...)

7. Pour mixture slowly into your thin cheesecloth-lined tofu mold.

Fold the cheesecloth over the tofu and fit the top of the mold over this. Distribute between 2-5 pounds of weight over the top and let it sit for 15-30 minutes until the water is pressed out of the tofu.

Remove the weight and top of tofu mold, then unfold and peel your cheesecloth from the tofu.

Agh! It's hideous, I know...but it tasted good. I'm hoping that future

attempts will teach me how to make it turn out looking better.

Place tofu into bowl or Tupperware container and cover with cold water.

For whatever reasons, homemade tofu doesn't last nearly as long as the store-bought variety.

Ideally, you should use fresh tofu within just a few days of making it.

Mine turned out quite soft, which meant that I really couldn't use it for cooking. With the soft tofu that I had, I decided to make a simple dessert that I used to enjoy straight from the pots of sidewalk vendors in Vietnam. It's called đậu hủ gừng, which is basically soft tofu with a sweet and spicy ginger sauce served warm. You can make this with any soft tofu available at your local store or market.

Đậu Hủ Gừng

2 cups water

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 2-inch piece of ginger, cut into 1/4-inch wedges and crushed

12 oz. soft tofu

1. Add water, sugar, and ginger to a small pan, stir to dissolve sugar, and boil for 12 minutes. You can add more ginger and boil longer to give the sauce more of a kick. You may also want to include more water to dilute its sweetness.

2. Pour sauce hot over tofu and enjoy.

A bowl of soft tofu in a sweet, hot ginger sauce

Many of you have probably heard of recent studies indicating that tofu eaten in middle age may increase the likelihood of dementia or even brain shrinkage in later life. This may or may not be true. And until scientific research definitively bears one or the other truth out, I'll continue to eat tofu and drink soy milk, the more so now that I'm able to make it at home.

For anyone interested in the tofu mold I bought, the product can be found at http://www.simply-natural.biz/Tofu-Kit.php

And for a video on how to make tofu (or soymilk), this may prove useful:

As a final word, I just want to mention something about the cost savings I'm expecting to enjoy with my new tofu and soy milk making capabilities. Without looking into this all that carefully, I'm guessing that I spend close to $450 a year on these foods (roughly $9/wk), but I should be able to get by spending less than $150 (less than $3/wk) for the soy beans necessary to make them myself. Saving $300 isn't going to change my life, but it is a nice way to save a little money. And what's more, in a year I'll end up with close to 100 pounds of uber-nutritious okara to cook with, all as a byproduct. I'm not sure if so much okara is a good thing or not, but I guess I'll find out soon...

Hawaiian Style Steamed Fish

This recipe elicited wolf-like howls of pleasure even before we started eating it, while our first bite witnessed our entire apartment shake with the giddiness that shot in waves from the hot, happy centers of our stomachs. Not only did this dish take a mere 15 minutes to prepare, but the flavors were intensely light yet screamingly delicious. Imagine a combination of ginger, cilantro, green onions, steamed yellowtail, and a citrusy yuzu ponzu sauce exploding all over your taste buds. Then imagine yourself not even wanting to chew your food, but to let it sit in your mouth as you savor its flavors. And then, finally, imagine looking dolefully down at your plate, mourning the fact that there’s only so much left to eat and nothing more.

It’s that good. We weren’t prepared for it to be that good.

The following recipe -- Hawaiian Style Steamed Kona Kampachi® (with my substitutions) -- was created by a private chef on Oahu named Stephen Butler and posted online here: http://www.kona-blue.com/download/KonaKampachi_Obama_Recipe2.pdf.

You can also check out this useful video of Chef Butler preparing the dish on YouTube.



Chef Butler apparently made this dish for the Obama family when they were vacationing in Hawaii.

What follows is my own adaptation of the ingredients list as well as the cooking directions. I made the changes because neither Kona Kampachi® nor macadamia nut oil were available at any of the six stores I visited near my home. Instead of using kampachi, which is expensive even when one can find it, I used a combination of hamachi (relatively expensive, too) and mongchong (about half the price of hamachi). And I halved the portions since he was cooking for four and I was cooking for two.

Ingredients:

3/4 lbs hamachi (yellowtail) combined with 3/4 lbs mongchong (yellow snapper)
3 Tbsp (I like lots of ginger) fresh ginger, diced
1 bunch green onions, chopped
1 bunch cilantro, chopped
6 Tbsp peanut oil
1 Tbsp chile oil
6 Tbsp ponzu sauce (try yuzu ponzu, if you can find it)

Directions:

1) If using a whole fish, filet it, remove its skin, and de-bone it lengthwise. If using filets, slice each in half lengthwise. Each filet should be sliced in two. Slice into thin sashimi-like pieces and arrange on plates for steaming.

2) Drizzle raw fish pieces with chile oil (or sesame oil, if you must).

3) Cover each plate with plastic wrap and steam for up to five minutes (until the pink flesh of the fish has turned white). Remove plastic wrap when fish is cooked.

4) Sprinkle green onions, cilantro and ginger over fish.

5) In a pan, heat the peanut oil until just before it begins to smoke. Pour an equal amount of hot oil over each plate. I used 4 plates, which meant pouring 1.5 Tbsp of hot peanut oil on each. (Listen to the fish crackle beneath the heat of the oil!)

6) Drizzle ponzu sauce around perimeter of the plates. Serve immediately.

7) Rejoice.

Salmon Soup

Here is another of my mom’s great recipes. I’m not sure where she got it, but I know she’s adapted it to her own tastes. Although salmon is one of the most versatile fish around, I realize that salmon soup probably doesn’t sound that good, especially since the salmon used here comes from a can. (Eek!) But this is a delicious, pretty healthy dish, it’s easy to make, and it’s an excellent soup for freezing.

Ingredients
2-3 potatoes, cubed
2 large carrots, sliced
1 green pepper, chopped
1/3 cup onion, chopped
1-2 ribs celery, chopped
One can cream of celery soup
1 lb can of tomatoes (or 1 can of Rotel tomatoes)
1/8 teaspoon thyme
4 cups milk (I use 2%)
1/4 cup flour
1 lb can of salmon

Directions
1. Microwave all vegetables until tender (8-10 minutes or so on high).

Microwaved veggies

2. In a large pan that holds at least 3 quarts (12 cups), place one can of cream of celery soup, one 1-lb can of tomatoes with juice, and 1/8 teaspoon of thyme with a little pepper to taste. Thicken this mixture with at least 1 cup of milk and about 1/4 cup flour, stirring occasionally for a couple of minutes. At this point there's no need to use heat. Or at least I don't...

3. Combine all of the previous ingredients with 3 cups of milk and a 1 lb can of salmon. (My mom usually picks out the big pieces of skin but leaves the bones in; they're soft and full of calcium.) Bring to serving temperature (you don’t have to cook it too long), then let it cook a little longer. Try not to let it boil, but make sure it gets hot enough for eating.

4. Add a little Tabasco sauce if you want. You can also sprinkle the soup with some grated cheese (we used leftover goat cheese tonight, and it was excellent) and let it melt in the soup. My mom usually thickens the soup with flour, but you can also use pureed or grated potato or additional carrot for thickening. Add a little parsley and voila! It goes great with a salad and garlic bread (the kind where garlic bulbs are baked into the bread).

A little garlic bread...

...and dinner is served

Inspired by Avocado

This evening I decided to make my first Burmese dish. I found it on Foodbuzz, but the contributor has his own website where the recipe can be viewed. Here's the URL in case you're interested:

http://whatyouhavingforyourtea.wordpress.com/2007/06/21/burmese-chicken-curry/

I followed the recipe word for word, sans the gamal masala, which I couldn't locate anywhere. It turned out well, but probably not as well as it turns out for most people who try making it. It seemed to lack something -- probably the gamal masala -- and I had an urge to add some kind of Vietnamese herb to it. If only I'd had some rau ram or cilantro on hand...

In any case, I threw together a simple bowl of green beans (as the recipe recommends), and with the Burmese chicken curry we had a good dinner.

This is kind of a boring photo -- except for the fact that the curried chicken looks like the head of a goat, doesn't it? (It even has an eye and a pair of lips.) Or some headless turkey? Maybe I'm on drugs and don't know it...

As I was heading back to the kitchen I noticed an avocado sitting by the window. It looked so lonely there, getting all brown (and dusty) in its corner, and I had a sudden inspiration to make sinh to bo (an avocado smoothie). I immediately grabbed my wallet, threw my shoes on, and went to the Korean mini-mart near my apartment and bought some Haggen Daas French vanilla ice cream.

Here's what I did to make the sinh to:

1) Dumped 4 heaping spoonfuls of French vanilla ice cream into a blender
2) Added 1/2 a cup of 2% milk (maybe a little more than that)
3) Added one ripe, medium size avocado
4) Added 2 spoonfuls of brown sugar (brown sugar only because it happened to be on hand just then)
5) And then blended everything together for about 45 seconds or so

My wife had no idea what I was doing, so when I brought out our desserts and she spooned into hers (it was too thick to drink with a straw, which is how one deals with sinh to in Vietnam) she was, I must say, pretty impressed.

I dressed mine up with an oversized, Salinas-grown strawberry sliced in half. (Hey, there's a face in that bowl, too!)

This is not a true Vietnamese avocado shake. Usually they make it with crushed ice instead of ice cream, and use sweetened condensed milk rather than 2% (I don't think I've ever even seen 2% milk in Vietnam). It's better in Vietnam, somehow, but this is pretty darn good, too.

When I lived in Hanoi, there was a period when I used to go to a small cafe near Ba Dinh Square and place this double breakfast order: sinh to bo and ca phe sua da (iced coffee with sweetened condensed milk). Then I'd ask the woman running the cafe to blend the two together, and I'd end up with a deliciously sweet, thick, and highly caffeinated white-milk-avocado-coffee-shake. Or whatever you want to call it.

I stopped drinking this when I could no longer fit my body through the door of her cafe...

Jackfruit Salad (Goi Mit Tron)

This evening I went back to an old recipe I haven’t made in over five years. I found some fresh jackfruit while wandering around Chinatown yesterday and immediately the following thought popped into my head: Oy! Tomorrow I’ll make goi!

This recipe comes from The Food of Vietnam and is called goi mit tron (jackfruit salad). Although this dish is said to do best with unripe jackfruit – the book explains that young jackfruit is like a vegetable, with a firm texture and mild flavor – I hardly had the luxury of being choosy. I just bought whatever jackfruit was being sold, and all of it was ripe and ready to be eaten.

Two pieces of advice if you decide to make this: 1) don’t boil the jackfruit too long or it will become gluey and hard to chew, and 2) the salad is better when served warm.

Ingredients
2 cloves garlic, diced or crushed
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
4 large shrimp, peeled
2 ounces lean pork
Pepper to taste
1/3 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
8 ounces jackfruit, boiled (for 2-3 minutes) and thinly sliced
1 teaspoon chopped rau ram (in English it’s called polygonum, not that this helps)
1 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds
Sesame seed rice crackers (banh trang me)

Directions
1. Sauté garlic in oil until fragrant.
2. Add shrimp, pork, pepper, salt, and sugar.
3. Stir until shrimp and pork are cooked, then add the boiled jackfruit and mix well.
4. Add chopped rau ram leaves and sesame seeds.
5. Mix well again and then arrange on a plate. Sprinkle sesame seeds over the salad.
6. Serve with sesame seed rice crackers.

The flavors are rich and surprising: deeply fruity, lightly salty, garlicky, and the freshness of the rau ram is absolutely wow-inducing.

Fried Fish Fillet (with spicy fish sauce and lettuce wraps)

This, too, comes from Deh-Ta Hsiung’s The Book of Vietnamese Cooking. Again, this simple dish isn’t something I remember coming across in Vietnam, but the ingredients and flavors are all Vietnamese to me. This really is about as simple as it gets, and the spicy sauce used here is shatteringly good.

Ingredients
1 lb. halibut fillet (or other firm white fish) cut into 1/4-inch pieces
Salt and fresh ground pepper
1 egg, beaten
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour mixed with 2 tablespoons water
Vegetable oil for deep-frying
Cilantro leaves, chopped
Lettuce leaves
*Spicy Fish Sauce

*Ingredients for Spicy Fish Sauce
2 cloves garlic
2 small red chilies, seeded and chopped
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons lime juice
2 tablespoons fish sauce

Preparation of Spicy Fish Sauce: Finely mince garlic and chilies. Add sugar, lime juice, fish sauce, and 3 tablespoons of water. Blend well.

Cooking Directions
1. In a dish, season the fish with salt and pepper and let stand for about half an hour.

2. In a small bowl, blend the egg with the flour and water paste; this will be your batter.

3. Heat oil in a wok or deep-fat fryer to 350F. Coat the fish pieces with batter and deep-fry them, in batches, 4-5 minutes until golden. (Make sure fish is cooked through.) Remove and drain.

4. Place fish pieces on a dish with chopped cilantro and lettuce leaves. Wrap fish pieces and cilantro in lettuce leaves and dip in spicy fish sauce.

Vietnamese Fish in Curry Sauce

This recipe comes from The Book of Vietnamese Cooking, by Deh’ta Hsiung. While there are better Vietnamese cookbooks out there, this one does contain a few excellent recipes. Here’s my favorite; it includes some minor, time-saving changes to the original. Expect your preparations and cooking to take approximately 45 minutes.

I should add that I’ve never had a dish exactly like this in Vietnam. Even so, the lemongrass, fish sauce, chilies, lime juice, and cilantro are quintessential flavors found throughout the south. This tastes like southern Vietnam to me, and I highly recommend it.

Main Ingredients
1 lb fish fillet or steak (I recommend halibut for its firmness, but you can also use other whitefish such as cod or monkfish) cut into bite-size pieces
Freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons Vietnamese fish sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
2-3 shallots, finely chopped
1 cup Vietnamese hot sauce (see below)
1 1/2 cups water
12 oz. firm tofu, cut into small cubes

Ingredients for Vietnamese Hot Sauce
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
2 red chilies, seeded and chopped
1 tablespoon ginger root, finely chopped
1 tablespoon chili sauce
4 tablespoons pre-chopped lemon grass (or 2 sticks of lemon grass, peeled and chopped)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons lime juice
5 tablespoons water
4 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro leaves
2-3 tablespoons mild curry powder (reduce this is you can’t handle spiciness)

Directions

1. In a dish, marinate the halibut with a mixture of pepper, sugar, and fish sauce.

2. Prepare the hot sauce.

A. Heat oil in a medium saucepan and gently stir-fry the garlic, chilies, ginger, chili sauce, and lemon grass for one minute.
B. Add mixture of soy sauce, fish sauce, sugar, lime juice, and water. Bring to a boil.
C. Blend in chopped cilantro.
D. Add 2 tablespoons of water. Remove from heat.
E. Add 2-3 tablespoons of mild curry powder. (No need to mix.)

3. Heat the vegetable oil in a saucepan and stir-fry the garlic and shallots for one minute.

4. Add the hot sauce and cook for one minute, stirring constantly.

5. Add 1 1/2 cups water, blend well, and bring to a boil.

6. Add the fish and tofu. Stir gently, then reduce heat. Cover and let simmer for ten minutes.

7. Serve hot. (The dish is also good when served cold.)

For garnishing, I recommend adding more chopped fresh cilantro to taste. You can also add 2-3 green onions, cut into short lengths, and/or 1-2 red chilies, seeded and chopped.

Bo Luc Lac (Seared Garlic Beef Dipped in Lime Juice)

This recipe comes from Ghillie Basan’s The Complete Vietnamese Cookbook, which is a decent source of both Vietnamese and Cambodian cuisine, with a long and interesting introduction on Indochinese food cultures.

Bo luc lac is easy to make. Aside from needing to marinate the beef for 1-2 hours, the preparation time is only about 15-20 minutes.

Main Ingredients
12 oz. beef fillet or sirloin, cut into bite-size chunks
1 tablespoon sugar
Juice from 3 limes
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped or crushed
2 tablespoons fresh ground pepper
2 or 3 tablespoons unsalted roasted peanuts, finely chopped
12 lettuce leaves

Marinade Ingredients
1 tablespoon peanut oil
5 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped or crushed
2 teaspoons fresh ground pepper

Directions

1. Start by making the marinade by: in a bowl, beat together the peanut oil, soy sauce, and sugar. When the sugar has dissolved, mix in the garlic and black pepper. Add the beef and slather it with the marinade. Leave it for 1 to 2 hours.

2. In a bowl, stir together the sugar and lime juice. When the sugar has dissolved, add the garlic and black pepper and beat well. Stir in the chopped peanuts and set aside.

3. Heat a wok or heavy pan and sear the meat on all sides. (You can also chargrill the beef.) Serve immediately with lettuce leaves for wrapping and the lime sauce for dipping. Another good dipping sauce, if you prefer the saltiness of fish sauce to the tang of this much lime juice, is nuoc mam.

Strawberry Puff Pancake

The following is a recipe that my mom adapted from a magazine about thirty years ago. This is, hands down, my all-time favorite breakfast, and has been since I was a kid. The pancake itself is airy yet custardy, and the brown sugar, when it seeps through the sour cream and crystallizes onto the pancake’s surface, gives a deeper, second layer of sweetness. The fresh strawberries provide a cooling kick as well as a third layer of sweetness, both juicy and refreshingly tart.

This is the kind of breakfast that, if I’m first at the table (which is always) and others don’t join me quickly enough, there’s a real danger that it’ll be gone before anyone else can get a bite. It’s that good; the photos don’t do it justice.

Ingredients

4 tablespoons (or a little less) of margarine
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups of milk
1/2 cup of sugar
3/4 cup of flour
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/4 teaspoon of cardamom (optional)
About 3 cups of fresh strawberries, halved (fresh peaches can also be used)
Light sour cream for serving
Brown sugar for serving

Directions

1. Put margarine in a 9-inch ovenproof pan and place the pan in a 425-degree oven for 10 minutes.

2. Beat together the eggs, milk, 6 tablespoons of sugar, flour, cardamom, and salt.

3. Take pan from oven just long enough to pour in the mixture from step two all at once. Bake at 425 degrees for 30 minutes or until the edges are puffed and browned and the center isn’t runny.