This punchy Japanese spaghetti is tart with pickled plum paste, rich in butter, and fragrant with the citrusy, minty herb shiso. Japanese pickled plums (ume) have a distinctive sour, fruity and salty flavor, so intense that they wrinkle. High-impact umami is a great match for butter, helping to give the sauce its glossy creaminess. The recipe is inspired by a version once served at Masayuki Ishikawa's unconventional Sawtelle Kitchen, a small house of a Japanese French restaurant on Sawtelle Boulevard. The handwritten menu always included fan-favorite ume-shiso spaghetti. I've eaten it so many times that I think I got a pretty 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. Since umeboshi is very salty, taste as you go.
This ume-shiso spaghetti shines with butter Recipe
