This iconic Japanese spaghetti glistens with butter
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This punchy Japanese spaghetti is tart with pickled plum paste, rich with butter and fragrant with the citrusy-minty herb shiso. Japanese pickled plums (ume) have a distinctive sour-fruity-salty flavor, so intense they’re puckering. The high-impact umami is an excellent match for butter, which helps give the sauce its glistening creaminess. The recipe is inspired by a version once served at Masayuki Ishikawa’s unconventional Sawtelle Kitchen, a tiny house of a French Japanese restaurant on Sawtelle Boulevard. The handwritten menu always included the fan-favorite ume-shiso spaghetti. I ate it so many times that I think I came up with a fairly close approximation. You can buy pickled plum paste at Japanese grocery stores. Or you can buy whole pickled plums, remove the pits and mash them into a paste. Because umeboshi is so salty, taste as you go.
This ume-shiso spaghetti glistens with butter
Bring a pot of water to boil over high heat. Add the spaghetti and cook according to package instructions until al dente. Drain.
In the same pot, soften half a stick of butter on low heat and add the pickled plum paste. Stir with a wooden spoon to start to combine.
Return the drained spaghetti to the pot and stir gently until the butter melts completely and the pickled plum paste is well distributed. You can add more pickled plum taste if desired, but note that it’s salty.
Divide the spaghetti between two plates and top with shiso, grated cheese and chile flakes to taste.
