Bone Marrow Rice with Fermented Daikon

by Erchen Chang, Shing Tat Chung and Wai Ting Chung, featured in BAO

Published by Phaidon

Introduction

We like to hide a few of our favourite dishes in the sides section of the menu. They’re the kind of thing you order without thinking about it too much, and then when it comes it’s a nice surprise. Tucked away on the side menu at BAO Fitz is a dish inspired by St. JOHN’s classic roast bone marrow on toast with parsley salad. It brings back memories of our student years, when we would eat at the legendary bar. Here we place the bone marrow on torched, dressed rice, which we match with the umami flavour of aged white soy sauce and balance with fermented daikon and soy-cured egg yolk. The daikon gives the dish the acidity it needs similar to the freshness of the parsley salad at St. JOHN. When our BAO OG Alice’s mum came to visit us from Taiwan, she said our bone marrow rice tasted like an upgraded version of Lu Rou Fan, which brought a tear to my eye. I cannot think of a better compliment.

The daikon and bone marrow need to be prepared in advance of making this dish.

As featured in

Image of Bao's Bone Marrow Rice with Fermented Daikon — Photo courtesy BAO

Ingredients

Serves: 2

FOR THE SPICY PICKLED DAIKON

85 millilitres rice vinegar
20 grams caster sugar
1 teaspoon salt
160 grams daikon radishes (peeled and diced)
15 grams garlic (peeled and crushed whole)
½ bird's eye chilli (left whole)
½ red chilli
½ jalapeño
12 grams fresh ginger (sliced)
50 grams onions (sliced)

FOR THE BONE MARROW RICE

170 grams canoe-cut marrow bones (ask your butcher to do this for you)
150 grams short grain rice (preferably Chishang or Japanese sushi rice)
150 millilitres filtered water

FOR THE SOY-CURED EGG YOLK

100 millilitres mirin
70 millilitres light soy sauce
30 millilitres dark soy sauce
2 egg yolks

TO SERVE

2 soy-cured egg yolks (see above)
10 millilitres aged white soy sauce (see Additional Info below)

Method

Bone Marrow Rice with Fermented Daikon is a guest recipe by Erchen Chang, Shing Tat Chung and Wai Ting Chung so we are not able to answer questions regarding this recipe

For the spicy pickled daikon

Combine the vinegar with sugar and salt in a bowl, until fully dissolved. Add all the remaining ingredients and transfer to a 500ml sterilized jar, leaving a 1 cm (½ inch) head space, and seal. Leave to pickle in the refrigerator or a cool, dark place for 1 day before using. The pickled daikon can be stored in the refrigerator or a cool, dark place for up to 1 week (the daikon will start to lose its texture and colour after 2 days but will still be tasty). Once opened, keep in the refrigerator.

For the bone marrow rice

Soak the marrow bones in cold water for 48 hours, changing the water each evening.
Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4. Drain the bones and pat dry, then put onto a baking sheet and roast in the oven for 20–25 minutes until blistered. Remove from the oven and scoop out the marrow into a small saucepan. Keep warm.
Meanwhile, wash the rice thoroughly, 3 times. After the final rinse, tip the rice into a bowl, cover with cold water and leave to soak for 30 minutes.
Pour the filtered water into a saucepan and bring to the boil. Drain the soaked rice and add to the boiling water. When the water is boiling again, put a lid on, reduce the heat to low and cook for 18 minutes. Open the lid to check that the rice is cooked and ever-so-slightly glistening but not wet. Put the lid back on, remove from the heat and let the rice stand for 10 minutes before serving (this process allows the remaining steam to absorb back into the grains, resulting in fluffy and bouncy rice). At no point remove the lid from the pan.

For the soy-cured egg yolk

Mix together all the liquid ingredients in a small bowl, then carefully lower in the egg yolk and leave to cure for 10 minutes.
Tip: when preparing the egg yolk, make sure to remove all the egg white as well as the cloudy placenta. Hold the yolk gently in your fingers as you separate off the egg white and use the side of the index and middle finger to cut away the small chalaza as you do so.

To assemble

Scoop the cooked rice into 2 bowls using a rice paddle or wooden spoon and very gently smooth the surface. Do not press or compact the rice down. Using a cook’s blowtorch, lightly blacken the top of the rice, then roughly score. Scoop the bone marrow into a saucepan and mix with the aged white soy. Give it a good swirl then spoon half into the middle of each bowl of rice. For each serving, create a depression in the marrow with the back of a spoon, top with a soy-cured egg yolk. Finish with 1 tablespoon of the spicy pickled daikon, set to one side of the yolk.

Additional Information

Aged white soy sauce

Soy like no other, this is the first pressing of the sauce made from soy beans, aged for 400 days, from Ping Tung, Taiwan. We mainly use it as a dipping soy as it's so good, but it can also be added to sauces to give them that extra depth — I even add them to meat jus to give it that rounded touch without overpowering it.