Archive for the ‘Cooking Adventures (with Recipes)’ Category
How t Does Ramen
t says: The other day, a, v, g, and I were discussing childhood foods that we still enjoyed eating today … even if they are a little – shall we say – “unrefined”. For instance, a has found himself eating Spaghettios once or twice a year; I find this to be revolting. I, on the other hand, have been known to eat a Pop-Tart or two in my day (Cherry is the best); a finds this is ridiculous but not necessarily surprising (I believe his exact words might be: “you would … you would!”). g has a secret crush on sugar doughnuts filled with strawberry jelly (she can resist a lot of sweets … but not that one). This is when v reminded me of one of her food weaknesses: ramen. Mmmmmm. Ramen. I, too, love ramen. But not just any ramen – for me it has to be Sapporo Ichiban:
Sapporo Number One! ... Ichiban!
This is the brand that I grew up on – no “Cup-o-Noodles” or “Smack Ramen” (both of which are gross) or anything like that – this is the real deal. And, if you haven’t had this brand before, I strongly advise you find your nearest Asian convenience store and buy it (don’t mess around with the “flavored” Sapporo ones, either, as the “original flavoring” is by far the best).
Back in the day, I’d drop an egg or two into the boiling water to add a little “something extra” to the noodles and MSG goodness. Now, years later, I will cook the ramen using the full seasoning packet but avoid ingesting too much broth (that’s where the salt is). And lately, I’ve been playing around with my ramen toppings by adding some leftovers:
ramen with leftover Chinese food (shrimp and broccoli), leftover kimchi jige, some sauteed spinach, and a hard-boiled egg
No, it’s no Momofuku ramen, but if I close my eyes, I can pretend that it’s a balanced lunch (it’s got three pieces of broccoli in there, right?). One day, I do hope to master David Chang’s ramen, and maybe then I won’t need Sapporo Ichiban anymore … (but I’d still eat it anyways).
I’m back, baby…
g says: t had taken over most of the dinner-making duties for the past couple of years as my work schedule became more challenging (read: i get home late and t is hungry before then). i very much appreciate him stepping up to the plate, but i do miss the meals i used to create when i was the first-string dinner-maker of our home — they were creative, they were delicious, and i plated each one with care (t interjects: my dishes are a little more … “rustic”)
now, t is a bit more busy and i am stepping back in when i am home early enough from my new(er) job. one such meal was the beauty shown below — rosemary lamb sausage (procured from an excursion to the italian market with a and v), sauteed with red bell peppers, spinach, apples, and cinnamon, served on a toasted roll and topped with fresh pecorino.
t says: she loves to add cinnamon to everything…
g says: shut up, t. cinnamon is delicious… (and very versatile!) this time i used the fancy china cinnamon that lr gave us as a gift. that’s right, there are different kinds — and i am all about finding out how many ways i can incorporate each of them into my diet!
anyway, this was a fantastic sandwich and i wanted to share. please feel free to use this idea to spice up your own weekday dinners.
lamb sausage sandwich
j puts bacon everywhere
t says: If kp, j, and me had a fight, and the winner was solely determined by who loves bacon more, I’m not sure who would win. kp’s got the culinary mastery over j and me (he makes bacon-covered breadsticks), but I can claim that I ate a heaping plate of bacon 6 days a week for 6 months straight (and to be honest, it wasn’t even that delicious a bacon – it was at my college cafeteria). I’ve decided to give j a bit of an advantage of her own by gifting her a bacon-centric cookbook for her bday. These were her first attempts:
BFF ... beautiful from far-away ... (I'll give $1 to the first person who can tell me where I'm stealing that from - cast members not permitted to guess)
If you add mussels and snow peas, it's now considered "healthy", right?
j says: Okay so it is bacon and salmon poke (top picture) and pork tenderloin wrapped with bacon with mussels and sugar snap peas (bottom picture)
t says: was it tasty?
j says: sooooo good. i used salmon intead of tuna bc the tuna didnt look fresh. and i of course added my own variations. bc i didnt want to deep fry wonton wrappers so i used triscuits. and [boyfriend’s name] doesnt like regular peas so i opted out. and they didnt have fresh clams so i used mussels. you want me to blog about it? i feel like i will be more likely to do it bc it was good and i made it.
t says: lol – nah, go study or something. what’s the title of the book?
j says: I love bacon
t says: is that a statement you’re making, or the title of the book?
t steals the mic: It turns out that “I love bacon” is the name of the book. Furthermore, it is the center of some kind of controversy as it may or may not be a follow-up to “I <3 Corn”. Check it out. Corn? Seriously? I mean, I love me some SoJo corn just as much as the next guy, but unless it’s that corn dish from Fond, I have a hard time loving it even one-tenth as much as I love bacon.
What was the point of this post? Three-fold:
1) To show off j’s cooking skills.
2) To make kp salivate.
3) To make certain vegetarians queasy at the thought of bacon-wrapped pork (you know who you are).
If j feels so inspired, she’ll send me the recipe. If not, then you’ll just have to deconstruct it, yourself.
Kimchi Jigae (for Real)
t says: A while ago, we posted a kimchi jigae recipe, but it was kind of a cop-out – it used a pork shoulder that was cooked for another dish and then added the leftovers to kimchi … That needed to be fixed – kimchi jigae deserves its own recipe. ha has her own way of cooking it, but even she admits that it’s something she thought up – not a formal recipe. Plus, sometimes the meat just ended up very tough to chew. So I set out to re-do kimchi jigae, but this time in the method of a braise … but it had to be done outside because cooking kimchi indoors for hours on end produces an ugly smell. I did some experimenting and this is what I’ve come up with. It’s a piece of pork, a piece of brisket, and some tofu, braised over a long period of time. While using just one or the other is permissible, I kind of like having a mix of meats so this way I can eat the same dish over a few days and not get bored of it.
Ingredients:
__ 1 package of kimchi (from Hmart … the older/stinkier the better)
__ 1 slab of pork shoulder (will be determined by vessel size)
__ 1 slab of brisket (will be determined by vessel size)
__ 1 slab of extra-firm tofu (will be determined by vessel size)
__ 1 box of beef stock (~26 oz)
__ salt, pepper
__ oil (to sear the meats)
Methods:
-2) Find a Dutch oven that will fit on your grill – ideally with the cover closed (therefore emulating a real oven) – or find an outdoor burner capable of low heat (a lot of outdoor burners may heat the Dutch oven to way too high a temperature for an effective braise – you’re aiming for ~300 degrees F.
-1) Season meats with salt and pepper and allow to stand at room temperature for at least a half-hour. At the end of this time, preheat the Dutch oven on the grill/burner with high heat.
0) Add oil to Dutch oven and sear meats and set aside.
1) Lower the heat of the grill/burner and add just enough kimchi to cover the bottom of the Dutch oven. Stir around the kimchi to soak up those brown bits.
2) Return the meats to the Dutch oven. Pour the remaining kimchi on top. Add enough beef stock to just get half-way up the side of the meat. Place lid. If you have a Dutch oven with a domed lid (like the Le Creuset we used), you may be well-served by adding a sheet of parchment paper between the lid and the vessel so the moisture will fall back down the center of the vessel and not just down the sides – it also tightens the seal of the lid, too.
3) Cook at the lowest heat needed to just keep a light simmer in the vessel going – peek under the lid every fifteen minutes or so in the beginning to ensure that you’re not boiling too vigorously (the meat will be tough if you do).
4) Wait several hours. Flip every hour or so.
5) For me, the pork shoulder gets done first, well before the brisket, so I remove the pork shoulder and the kimchi when the pork shoulder gets to that ridiculously tender stage and falls apart as you try to flip it. I leave the brisket and liquid in to go longer (for me, the brisket needs to go about an hour longer for a comparably sized piece of meat).
6) When done, remove the meats, and eat! … OR, allow to cool to room temp and stick back into fridge to allow the flavors to meld together and eat the next day. Both are acceptable!
PB&J Cereal
t says: The other day I wanted lunch. But there was no food in the house. I spied some PB and J, so I figured that I’d make myself a sandwich. Unfortunately, I forgot about a critical ingredient – there was no food in the house … including no bread. Darn! I cursed my luck as I stared at the jars of PB and J sitting on the counter. Also on the counter was a box of Multigrain Cheerios (left out from earlier in the morning). And then it hit me. What if I had PB and Jelly cereal. Blasphemy, right? But why’s it song wrong? Cereal’s kind of like a grain! And it’s fortified! Maybe it’s even better than bread! So here’s what I did.
Ingredients:
__ 1 spoonful of PB
__ 1 spoonful of jelly/preserves (strawberry rules!)
__ a microwave-safe bowl
__ some cereal
__ some milk
Methods:
1) Put the PB into the bowl. Nuke for 30 seconds.
2) Mix the PB in the bowl so it’s nice and smooth (should be very soft). Add cereal and toss lightly until cereal is coated. It’s funky at first cuz it’ll seem like there’s not enough PB, but just keep on it and it should spread out.
3) Add the spoonful of jelly/preserves and toss – the jelly will end up thinly coating the cereal and hiding in some nooks and crannies – it’ll seem like there’s not enough – add more if you want, but try not to overdo it – it’ll be too sweet.
4) Add milk and enjoy!
Now, I know this doesn’t sound complicated. It’s not! It also doesn’t look pretty – but that’s ok!
PB and Jelly and Cereal
Who cares what it looks like? Eat it as you would cereal. I find that it adds some “oomph” to the cereal (i.e. it cuts down my AM cereal consumption from 2.5 bowls to 1) and is quite tasty. Give it a whirl once – chances are likely that you’ll more often have PB and J and cereal lying around than you will slices of bread!
Crack Chex
t says: a pointed out that perhaps I’ve been posting too much about desserts, accusing me of having a sweet tooth. Well, it’s true. I do have quite the sweet tooth, especially as stress levels rise (e.g. little is more comforting at midnight-1-2-am than a handful of Swedish Fish … or a Crunch bar … or Twix). Things have been more stressful recently, as exams approached, meaning that I have a few more posts about some sweet encounters coming up … sorry a.
The first is a recipe. It’s not my recipe – and I’m not changing anything about it, so I’ll link you to the original: Crack Chex. As you can see, it’s not actually called “Crack Chex” … but it should be. Basically, you melt down chocolate, peanut butter, and butter … toss some cereal in it … and then toss with powdered sugar. And that’s it. The end result isn’t exactly “beautiful”, but it tastes awesome!
Crack Chex ain't pretty ... but you're not making it to look at it.
Here are some tips/tricks:
1) Personally, I use dark chocolate chips – but you might have to cut back a little on how much you use because it can easily overwhelm peanut butter.
2) As you can see in the pic, there are some other non-Chex shapes in there. That’s because I replace some of the volume allotted to cereal with some trail mix and/or some of those mixes of dried fruit and nuts – it really punches up the eating experience with different textures and tastes. I recommend this tactic because without this substitution, the flavors/textures might get a bit monotonous, meaning that you might actually be able to stop eating it at a certain point. If you do it my way, you break up the monotony so you can easily polish off an entire bowl in a single movie (especially if you get one with dried fruit). Oh wow. I just thought that maybe I should do this to popcorn. That sounds amazing. I have to try it …
3) There is genius in this recipe. And it’s the powdered sugar. The powdered sugar’s purpose is not just to add sugar – it’s to make it so that you can consume a chocolate-covered snack without getting chocolate all over your fingers. And the powdered sugar usually sticks to the treat and not to your fingers (unless you’re one of those freaks with really warm hands).
4) It’s gluten free!!! So that means that just so long as you coat gluten-free snacks with this chocolate-peanut-butter-sugar concoction, you and your celiac disease suffering friends can enjoy a sinfully sugary snack together. And the kingdom will rejoice. Yay! Ironically, I have no idea if Rice Chex itself is gluten free or not – so before you accidentally cause a lot of horrible GI distress upon your gluten-sensitive friends, check that first!!!
Revisiting Braised Cow …
t says: I was at a new super-Walmart-atron the other day. I was surprised to find that they had beef cheek! No one else (i.e. no normal run-of-the-mill grocery store) has beef cheek! And now it was mine … for less than $2 a pound! So I bought some …
What did I do with it? I braised it, of course. I used our short rib pasta recipe. It … was … awesome.
It took a bit over 3 hours to braise a mere 3 lbs. I did trim the beef cheek substantially cuz there’s a lot of big pockets of fat. I did, however, save one huge piece of fat and stuck it into the Dutch oven to braise with the meats so it could add some luscious sweet deliciosity. The result was a wonderful pasta dish. Mmmmm.
It didn’t taste as gamey as a short rib or an oxtail – and the texture was even more tender, so I imagine I’ll continue to use it in the future (without telling anyone it’s “beef cheek” – that name might turn some people off). It’s also cheaper than the other two – even if you consider that approximately 1/4-1/3 of what you get is fat that gets trimmed …
Rock on beef cheek …
after dinner sneeze 