7.4.07: Cooking Extravaganza

July 2007. This is when boredom really began to set in and the urge to cook became ever stronger. The week of Fourth of July, my parents went on vacation and left me in charge of the house. I dutifully used the car for only two purposes: going to work and grocery shopping. The adventure began July 3 when I ran out of other things to do. I don't remember the exact order I made these foods in but ... what does that matter.




This first picture is of what I call a zucchini scramble. This may have been prior to any grocery purchasing expedition. I like zucchini, I like eggs, and I like cheese. Oh, I was also in a basil phase in which every egg-related food automatically required a healthy dose of the herb. Not quite knowing what I was doing or where I was going with the dish, I sauteed the zuchs first, then poured in the scrambled egg. Honestly, I can't really say what I was thinking at the time. Then again, since I made this shortly after waking up, it's hard to say that I was thinking much at all. Taste-wise it was digestible but it probably would've been better off as an omelette with the zuchis quartered. Halved was a bit on the large side for me.







This is another fried rice. My original intention was to do a poor man's bibimbap but there are simply far too many ingredients involved. So what's in the fridge? More zucchini. Oh, and broccoli, match stick carrots, and our good friend the egg. Not too much to say about this except that the fried egg doesn't really look like a heart, does it? Oh well.






During my exchange student days at Yonsei University, a fellow student introduced me to the brand new world of "toast," a whole new way of looking at a crusty piece of bread. "Toast" (or toastu, as it will be referred to as such henceforth) is actually not toasted. The bread is warmed over a buttered skillet. Meanwhile, vegetables are loaded into scrambled egg and flattened out into a patty. Corn is usually involved. Cabbage, carrots, and other unidentifiable veggies may also appear on the scene depending on who's making it. Slightly fancier toastu establishments offer different toppings such as processed cheese, bulgogi, ham, and other things.



Well, I wasn't personally keen on making a big deal out of this so I went with the basic corn/cheese/ham combo. Aside from (again) overloading the egg with corn, it tasted pretty darn good. This is one food that could definitely be exported to the US with great success.





This is supposed to be bibim nangmyun, or mixed cold noodles. In mool nangmyun (cold water noodles) the noodles are bathed in a shallow beef broth in addition to a spicy sauce. Vinegar and mustard (or something mustard-esque I think) are served on the side as condiments. Well, I didn't have time or the forethought to get a hold of beef broth so... this one is sans the mool.





Let's go clockwise, starting with the carrots. Carrots. Cucumber. Half a boiled egg. Ultra spicy red pepper sauce. Now... I didn't intend for the sauce to be that spicy but like I've told you before, I'm bad with proportions. It's a mixture of red pepper paste (gochujang), sugar, chopped garlic, red pepper powder, and probably some other things I'm forgetting. Anyway, if you're dealing with a red pepper paste, it's probably not necessary to put in that much powder. More does NOT equal tastier.

I had mixed feelings about the result. It may have tasted ok but secretly I'm not a big fan of nangmyun. "Then why the hell did you make?" you ask. Good question. Because it seemed easy and I just felt like making something.

Hi, my name is dwen jang kook (soy bean past soup). This was another one of my favorites in Korea. However, no matter how many times I've made it, no matter how many variations I put on it, it has never tasted great. The secret is... coming later.

This is another one of those dishes that looks really easy on the outside but is waiting to frustrate you with glee on the inside. The key thing is watching the proportions (uh oh) of soy bean paste, water, and maybe gochujang if you want it. Again, I always make this way too spicy.

As for the main ingredients, I usually put in my pal zucchini, tofu, white onion, green onion, and potato. I've also added spinach. For as mediocre as it turned out, it was admittedly really easy to make. That could be the reason I've made this so many times in an undelicious way even though I knew the ... SECRET INGREDIENT(s). Here it is.

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Seafood. In order to make a tasty broth, you have to add @%%^$^#* seafood. Maybe you can figure out that I don't much care for seafood. At any rate, standard additions are dried kelp, dried sardines, and/or some other nasty creatures of the sea. There was and is no way that I would shell out the money for those just to make the soup base. While I mostly hate seafood, I'll grant that it can make an ordinary soup broth taste much better. Oh, and if you do add those, don't forget to scoop out the little sardines' entrails!!!

P.S. You don't eat the above ingredients. You remove them before adding the vegetables or before serving. Or I suppose you could leave it all in and have the guest discover that a disdainful eye is looking at them from the soup.

April 2007: Breakfast Taco of Sorts

First semester senior, winter semester 2007.
I had an unusual craving for something tortilla related. Unfortunately, Ann Arbor doesn't seem to have a Taco Bell. It does have Mexican/Tex-Mex restaurants, but most of them are overpriced. The most popular one that delivers (until 4 AM!) is Tios, and wow... those can make a drunk evening much worse. At any rate, I'm not good at dealing with meat. I think at that point in time I had tried to cube chicken breast once. The sensation of finger-on-uncooked meat is not spectacular. "Soz whut shood I putz in it??" I thought. Then it came to me. The one thing that I could put into a pan and make it taste good... scrambled eggs. That was the grand conception of my "breakfast taco."

Well, what else goes in breakfast tacos besides scrambled egg? Sausage? Oh wait, I can't deal with meat. OK. Potatoes, meat's best friend. Well, scrambled eggs and potatoes don't really work by themselves. OK. Onion. And thus there was onion. Wait. This breakfast taco will have no flavor. I have no salsa or sour cream. What to do, what to do. Well, there's some dried basil... and ketchup that's been in the fridge ever since I bought hot dogs two months ago... OK. Basil and ketchup it is.

And that's how my breakfast taco was born. It probably doesn't sound that great, but to a starving college student who didn't want to shop on a Sunday morning, it was the perfect change of pace (from eating nothing).

December 2006: Is it food?

I really like cream and oil-based pastas, the fattier the better. So I decided to try my hand at an olive oil sauce. It seemed fairly simple-just add olive oil and some herbs to cooked pasta and toss to coat. And that's exactly what I did the first time I made it. Wow, was that a disaster of unknown proportions, not to mention a waste of resources. It was basically like dunking a piece of rotini in olive oil and sprinkling salt on it. Not so good.

I tried to improve it by adding vegetables like zucchini, carrots, and roma tomatoes. Oh, and our good friend garlic. That didn't help. The above picture is somewhere in between nasty and edible... if enough parmesan cheese was on top. Then, I discovered what was wrong.

This is common knowledge to most people, but I stupidly didn't realize that one should slightly sautee the garlic in the olive oil, then add veggies, then add the cooked pasta. Wow, what a difference that makes. Along with some Italian seasoning or a combo of basil, parsley, and thyme, it tastes just fine.

These days, instead of rotini, I use either spaghetti or linguine, but subtract the vegetables. Because zucchini is fairly expensive in Korea and the pasta finally tastes fine on its own, I don't bother with sprucing it up much. It basically takes only 11 minutes too, depending on the cooking time of the pasta!

P.S. I also add butter to the olive oil. Why? Cuz I love me some fat.

11.24.06 Egg Drop Soup

I worked at a Chinese restaurant as a waitress over the course of five years. Compared to other egg drop soups, our restaurant was probably the best in the city. I wanted to replicate it, but no recipe on the internet came close to it. Also, I had never seen the chefs make it because it was already made by the time I got to work in the morning. Asking them the recipe wouldn't have helped because they were Mexican and didn't speak much English, hahaha.

I decided to start with the basics and just used a chicken broth and thickened it with cornstarch. A key thing I didn't know about cornstarch is that you have to add it while the broth is COLD, or mix it with the broth in another bowl and then add it slowly to the pot if it's hot. The first time I tried, it became a lumpy mess. After the broth came to a rolling boil, I poured in the whisked egg little by little, using a fork to sort of strain it. The egg cooked almost instantly. Then I gave it one stir and took it off the heat as many recipes suggested. In the future, I may not stir it at all because it breaks up the ribbons.

In the picture above, I had put in some chopped up baby carrots and garnished it with green onion. The restaurant I worked at also added some small cpieces of cabbage leaves. Overall it tasted fine, but it was lacking the thickness I wanted in the broth. In the future, I may want to try adding flour in addition to the cornstarch. Also, I want to find out how to make the egg more ribbon-y instead of having congealed chunks of egg floating in there...

2.2.07 Fried Rice

Senior year, first semester. This was about the time I started to go to the grocery store more often. Oh, the memories of standing in the freezing cold, waiting for the bus to come. At the grocery store, I discovered a plethora of veggies that could be used for something very simple, like fried rice. So I picked out something that seemed like a common addition, the broccoli. Scrambled egg is also pretty standard. The corn... well I probably had that sitting around in a can and figured it would go fine with everything else. So there it is, mixed together with a splash of soysauce and a few drops of sesame oil. I also sprinkled some sesame seeds on top for

good measure.

Fried rice is definitely one of those dishes that you can't go wrong with. You also don't need a wok; a sautee pan will work just great. One thing I have a real problem with though is eyeballing the appropriate amounts of each ingredient. I usually put in way too much rice and not enough of everything else. Then the pan gets overloaded and rice/broccoli/corn/egg goes flying. Oh well. Who wants to bother with measuring cups and spoons? Chopping that stuff up took enough of my time.

Welcome to Life (Almost) Beyond Pre-Packaged Foods

I was 21 years old in the summer of 2006. I had been in college for 3 1/2 years at that time and didn't know how to make anything aside from ramen or something from a box. Tired of instant foods and expensive restaurants, I decided to use my free time to get acquainted with raw veggies and things. Using recipes from the internet as guides, I attempted to make various foods, mostly with nasty results. I ate those abominations with bitterness, resolved to make something more delicious, more palatable, more gourmet, more... edible. With that goal in mind, I began to compile a book of recipes that turned out decently or probably would taste good. This blog is a record of my journey from the vile to the foods-that-are-ok-when-drunk-and-there's-nothing-else-around-to-eat. If you are a college student or just beginning to learn (in your forties? shame on you) then this "blog" may have some good insight to help you on your path to good cookdom by showing you what not (and occasionally what you might want to try) to do.