kimchi and a korean seafood pancake

When Drew and I moved in together a few years ago, we made a peculiar discovery. This discovery, however, was not about one another, but rather, about our former roommates. Both moved out of our respective apartments before us, and both left behind a box of rubber gloves (to be fair, both left behind things that were not so odd and of immediate use to us, like a table and chairs). We had no idea what they did with rubber gloves, and we concluded that for whatever reason, hard science students must have to have them, as this was the only commonality between the two (my roommate was in chemistry, and Drew's was in biology). But that explanation didn't really make much sense because it's not as though my roommate was conducting science experiments in our apartment, at least to my knowledge. Anyway, we didn't really know what we'd do with the rubber gloves, but after one too many incidents involving jalapeno peppers and contact lenses, I figured they'd come in handy. 

Fast forward.

I began making sauerkraut a year or two ago, inspired by The Homemade Pantry. This naturally led to making kimchi and finally having a use for the rubber gloves. Making sauerkraut and kimchi are more or less the same process, except that when you make kimchi, you add things like shredded carrots, scallions, ginger, garlic, and gochujang to the cabbage. Gochujang (don't ask me how to pronounce it) is a Korean red pepper. It's hot and spicy, and when you're mixing everything together, you certainly don't want to handle the mixture with your bare hands (fortunately, I didn't learn this lesson the hard way--the internet warned me). So every time I make kimchi, I put on the rubber gloves and silently thank our former roommates and apologize for ever questioning why they ever had them.   

(I have no picture of the kimchi. As I was mixing it, it occurred to me to take one, but my hands were messy and I wasn't going to deglove, get my phone, and reglove. And now that the kimchi has fermented, it's a big mess and not very photogenic. My apologies.)

I do have this picture of a Korean seafood pancake for you:

I have had Korean seafood pancakes twice in my life. The first time was at this restaurant in this Korean spa in Irvine and the second time was in Seoul. I had a craving last weekend, and instead of hunting down a restaurant and paying Orange County prices, I decided that it would be much cheaper and probably just as tasty if I made them at home. I don't regret my decision. 

stir fried tomatoes and eggs

Drew and I were introduced to stir fried tomatoes and eggs when we were in Beijing together, 3 years ago. I believe it was our first meal there. Since then, I've tried my best to replicate this dish, but nothing I've made compares to what we ate in Beijing.

Drew has been in Beijing for 2 weeks now, and he's eaten this dish many times, sometimes with rice and sometimes with noodles. So in his honor, and because my tomatoes suddenly began ripening all at once, I made this a couple times last week. It's a very simple dish- just tomatoes, eggs, scallions, salt, pepper, and sugar. It doesn't really require a recipe, but I used this one, from Appetite for China. It was good, but definitely not as good as the versions I ate in Beijing. 

veggie sushi and chinese chicken salad

I'm back. April was crazy. We barely cooked at all, and I think we turned the oven on once and that was to make a Costco pizza. And so we stayed in last weekend and actually cooked. And baked.

It all began with pickled daikon and carrots. The recipe calls for way, way too much salt, but I've got it figured out now. Instead of 1/4 cup of salt, I add just 1 tablespoon. 

We made veggie sushi, with tofu, cucumber, avocado, green onions, and the pickled daikon and carrots. To be more precise, Drew and I made veggie sushi burritos, not proper sushi. All the rolling and cutting is just too much for us and more complicated than it should be.

As a way to further detox, we also made a Chinese chicken salad, which is loosely based on Giada's Chinese Turkey Salad.

Let's just hope we don't have another month like April.

lemon chicken and broccoli

When life hands you lemons (or you buy a big bag from Whole Foods because it is cheaper in the long run than buying just the two that you really need), you make lemon chicken. 

The recipe is from a blog called Appetite for China. Of course, we substitute fake chicken for the real thing (we use Morning Star chicken strips). I roasted some broccoli with sliced garlic, and then tossed it with chili garlic paste, sambal oelek, and sesame oil.

tofu banh mi

I have a strange fascination with banh mi.  I say "strange" because I really haven't had authentic banh mi.  The only ones I've eaten are the ones at Native Foods and at Lee's sandwiches.  This is embarrassing to admit,  Please don't give me grief, and if you have a recommendation for a place to get good banh mi, please post it in the comments.

Earlier in the week, Drew and I made tofu banh mi, using the recipe from Post Punk Kitchen.    

It was easy to make, and making the pickled veggies earlier in the day really helped.  The pickled veggies were really good, but too salty, even on the sandwich.  I would not hesitate to use this recipe again, but I would cut the salt in half.  Also, I couldn't find star anise in the store last weekend, so I used fennel seed instead.   

Don't be scared off by the tofu; if it's made properly, it can be really good.  (I will note that the recipe calls for scrambled tofu, but we ignored that part.  Basically, the only part of the recipe we used was the part for the pickled veggies.)  Not surprisingly, I think we do a pretty good job, and by "we," I really mean Drew (he is always in charge of the tofu because I'm not good at making marinades without a recipe).  I'm sure there are many ways to make tofu, but there are only two ways that we make it: scrambling it (for breakfast burritos) or baking it.  We first press it for about 30 minutes to expel as much water as possible.  Then Drew makes up some sort of marinade (this time it consisted of soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, garlic powder, onion powder) and brushes it on the tofu before popping it in the oven.  We never bake the tofu in the marinade; doing so doesn't allow the tofu to firm up and it remains on the mushy side, which we don't care for.  

The sandwich was really good, and the pickled veggies offered a nice crunch to contrast the tofu.  We ate the banh mi with roasted brussel sprouts, tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper.