Something to chew on

Day 3, 4, 5…….7

Well, I’ll have you know that blogging on the daily is a lot of work.

Day 3: Fruit, spinach and dinner out at a vegan restaurant.
Day 4: Fruit Spinach, avocado aaaannndddd mushroom tofu soup!

Rough guide to mushroom tofu soup

This soup is actually just a favorite of mine…
Cook the onions slow till they are the color of  honey
Then add cut peeled potatoes
Cover with water
Add some miso, a few pieces of Kombu seaweed
Next chop up all the mushrooms you can find, I got 6 different kinds from my local Asian Store… dump them all in when the water comes to a rolling boil
A little Daniel Friendly soy, a little more salt, toss in some tofu…some fresh garlic… AND THEN so much goodness in a bowl! serve with “rice” or rice..

Day 5: leftovers and random veggies.. I think I just slept early

Day 6: cheated at dinner…
Day 7: FREEEEEEEE went H.A.M. on some wine and KBBQ…
Day 8: That’s today, today has been hard.  And I’ve just been more moody and hungry… I keep eating and not feeling full… I eyed someone’s sandwich REAL hard.

 

 

Daniel’s Fast 2018 Day 1

Oh dear, I never finished the Whole 30, it was more like Wholy 5 day and then lots of unwholliness.  Oh welps, apparently I’m not motivated to look like the Whole 30 people.  Also I believe in science, wine, social activities and most things in moderation.  With that said I’ll be headed to another partial fast.  Before you shake that head of yours this time its for a better reason than pure vanity.  It’s to get my mind, body and spirit in check.  My church community and I will deprive ourselves from all things that enter our bodies.. (ahem… mind out of gutter people…) I’m talking about limiting media, limiting the types of food we eat, and introducing more spiritual discipline in our lives.  The thought is that if you deprive yourselves of the clutter of everyday living you will be able to think more clearly and understand God’s intent more clearly… I mean more Jesus time sounds GREAT to me.

Here are the dietary guidelines for the partial fast (called the Daniel’s Fast).  Since I’m not bound by the law and because we’re just all making this up anyway.. I made a few modifications because well I LOVE brown rice it’s a no and I’m keeping coffee.

yes!
fruits
vegetables
legumes
nuts
whole oils like olive and sesame
vinegar
spices
whole grains

no!
meat
fried foods
dairy
alcohol
rice
flours
highly processed things

It sounds pretty easy but from past fasts I know there will be a day when I will eat a lot of potatoes and feel full but completely unsatisfied…

Also to stop myself from obsessing over food I can only have one tasty meal a day.. the other meals are like oatmeal with nothing added or a salad or a potato or just fruit…

Anyway, today is day one and I was traveling in Texas.  My colleague wanted to get Tex-Mex.  As the cheesy goodness passed me by I happily ate a big pile of grilled veggies.

Oh! Let me leave you with the recipe of the day. Salad.  Get a load of spring mix and put it in a bowl.  Now eat it. <insert shrug emoji>

 

Day 1: Thank you Jesus, Coffee is OK!

Take my smoothies but don’t touch the coffee.

The Whole 30 diet recommends that I don’t drink my calories. I usually have a green smoothie of some sort in the morning but they want to encourage chewing.

OK, I prefer chewing anyway.  So Vitamix, you’ll get a break this month.

no. no. no. no. no.

  • No added sugar or artificial sweeteners
  • No alcohol
  • No grains
  • No legumes
  • No dairy

The immediate thought I had was, how much kombucha would I have to drink to get buzzed? I could probably test that.   I know that it may be possible because I brew my own and one day I was drinking one on my way to work and I think it got myself buzzed… I had it on an empty stomach first in the morning (bad idea), mmm but I did get get some hashbrowns to soak up the buzz… phew I just double checked. Kombucha is ok.

Oh potatoes count! yas! mmm roasted potatoes….

Throwback Tuesdays – Drinky Suspicions

Today, they sent us home at 4:30 because of the snow.  To celebrate I bought a few limes on the way home to make some Blueberry Mojitos.  It’s like tasting a bit of summer in the dead center of this snowy, slushy, slightly drawn out winter. 

Drinky – Blueberry Mojitos
Brown Sugar simple syrup (50% brown sugar/50% hot water)
Mint
Basil
Blueberry
Light Rum
Lots of fresh lime juice
Ice
Lime Zest
Oh and club soda

Suspicions
I see pictures from home and realized that things have moved on, of course things have changed, but a small insecure part of me feels like I’ve been replaced. I think we come to a point where we realize that we are replaceable.  It’s true. Life moves on, people are forgotten, new people come around… can someone give me another drink?

Speaking of being replaced, today I made a pesto and replaced the pine nuts for walnuts.

I had basil, so, I took the opportunity to make pesto at home.  I mashed garlic, salt, basil, and a handful of walnuts (we always have them around, they are common) together and created a paste.  And you know what? Pine nuts are better.  They are smoother, richer and create a more refined and delicate flavor. Yea, you hear that! Pine nuts are classy; we’re nicer, and awesome and prettier too!   Lol ridiculous.  I’m ridiculous.

But the walnuts were good.  They have those tough skins so when you chop them fine you get a rougher consistency, I may try it again with roasted walnuts.  Overall the pasta was pretty good.  I have some left; I’ll have to experiment with other flavors.

Throwback Tuesday – Meatloaf

I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that!
Meatloaf, what was that? What didn’t you want to do?

My best friend growing up was this Dutch girl who lived across the way.  Her mom made the best meatloaf.  I didn’t even know the Dutch ate meatloaf, but it was delicious.  First of all, it was laced with bacon and then she basted the bacon with ketchup, as it baked the sugar in the ketchup would start to caramelize and the bacon would crisp up.  The final result was this juicy, bacony, delicious cut of meatloaf.

The cover of this month’s Fine Cooking Magazine is meatloaf.  The article goes into all these variation on meatloaves; they encourage the home chef to experiment with various aromatic, meats, cheeses and toppings.

Meatloaf is pretty easy, you’re going to sauté some veggies, soak a bunch of stale bread in milk, mix everything together, make it pretty and bake it off.

Here’s the loaf I made for my sister, she likes her food good and straightforward.

STEP ONE: Sauté the vegetables. Fry them up till they are just translucent, you don’t want a bunch of color; just get the vegetables nervous and sweaty.  Pull them off to the side to cool while you do the next step.

2 Tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion (diced)
2 large cloves of garlic (minced)
½ cup diced carrot
½ cup diced celery
1 jalapeno pepper diced
Salt and Pepper

STEP TWO: The bread. Get about ½ of a stale loaf of bread and cut it into 2’’ pieces.  Soak the bread in a shallow dish; it should be wet but not falling apart (5-10 mins)

About 2.5 cups 2’’ pieces of stale bread
1 cup whole milk

STEP THREE: Mix!  Combine all the ingredients together. Get messy!

The Veggies (step one)
The Bread (step two)
¾ cup pilsner beer
2lb ground beef
2 large eggs
1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
Salt and pepper

Step Four: Mold the loaf it should be about 2 inches tall and rectangular. on a baking sheet no fancy meatloaf pan needed.  Then top with 10 strips of bacon! Baste with Ketchup

Step Five: Bake the baby! 375F for around 55 minutes get a thermometer (160F).

Throwback Tuesdays – Instant v. Slow

I love instant noodles of all kinds….

Instant mac and cheese, we don’t really eat it because we think it’s delicious, it’s easy and for the time you invest it’s good! I’ll do it from time to time but we eat these things more out of convenience than taste. The only exception I can think of is haet ban. The Korean instant rice things, I don’t know what they do to that rice but it’s so good (I digress).

Good foods often take a lot more time than their instant counterparts. Just like people. Relationships that are reinforced with time and energy are often better than “instant” ones. I have a lot of “instant” friends, we could get a beer, we could have dinner, go dancing, but I wouldn’t share my life with them. The relationships that go deep are ones gilded with lots of time, energy and are often costly. They are and should be my favorites.

To prove the point here is my Mac and cheese recipe. It’s expensive, it takes a long time to make and there is so much fat that it’ll stick with you for a while.

1 stick of butter (doesn’t matter salted or unsalted…)
1 pint of heavy whipping cream
1/2 lb. of cheddar cheese (sharp) Shredded
8 oz. of Velveeta spread
2.5 tablespoon flour
¼ teaspoon dry mustard powder
salt & pepper

noodles.. Whatever kind you want, try to get stuff with lots of curls and maybe ridges on the outside… get more sauce

1. On low heat melt all the butter then sprinkle in flour and cook for a minute or so
2. Stir in cream (stir like crazy!), make sure you don’t get any lumps
3. Get the Velveeta, melted in
4 Get the cheese melted, save 25% of the cheese
5. Sprinkle in mustard. Salt and pepper to taste (make it a little saltier than you want it since you aren’t going to season your noodles).
6. While making the sauce cook the pasta.  Cook it till it’s just a little undercooked…
7. Stir in pasta
8. Transfer to baking dish.
9. Top off with the remaining cheese
10. Place in oven (375F) till it’s golden (~30 minutes)

VOILA!
Tips:
Don’t microwave leftovers! This is a béchamel-type sauce, if you microwave it the sauce will separate into oil and milk solids… so heat it back up in the oven. This doesn’t happen with the stuff from a box because a really smart food scientist did their magic…  Before placing in the oven the mac and cheese should look runny, if it isn’t add more cream, it needs to be runny or the final product will be too dry.

You can switch out for different types of milk. Just realize that the less fat the milk has the thinner the cheese sauce. So do one of two things to keep the consistency of the sauce, back off on the total amount of milk you use or make more of the butter/flour (which is called a roux) combo.

Oh yea, and don’t cook the roux too much, melt the butter slow on a low heat and cook the flour for a while, but don’t let it get brown. If it’s not cooked enough you’ll get a gross raw flour taste but if it gets to brown you’ll get some weird brown notes that aren’t indicative of a good mac and cheese.

Throwback Tuesdays – Grapefruit Gimlet – some gin and juice

Disclaimers:
1.) This wasn’t my idea, I had a beverage called a something gimlet at Leon’s full service in Atlanta (great place) and thought I could make it at home, so I did.
2.) Gimlets are usually made with Vodkas, but I like gin and alliteration.

Recipe
¼ cup of a good gin
½ cup of grapefruit juice
2 tablespoons of St Germaine liquor
1 tablespoon of fresh lime juice
Dash of  Angostura bitters)
Club soda  or Seltzer (it’s the amount of bubbles and salt content… that’s the difference)

Fill a high ball glass with ice, combine all ingredients and top off with seltzer, shaken not stirred.

Tips and other thoughts

WOW, St. Germaine only comes in two sizes, ginormous and tiny, go ahead buy the ginormous! There is so much you can do with it.   Add a little to Sangria and it adds a little jeux neu cie quex.  A hummingbird – some sparkling wine, a shot of St. Germaine and top it off with seltzer and a twist of lime and garnish with a raspberry.. delicious…..

Bitters give the drink a lot of depth and gives you some weird saltiness that I love, but if you don’t want to purchase them (they’re around 10 bucks a bottle)… just have the Gin and Juice!

Cheers!

Pot Lucky – Grilled skirt steak and green bean salad

 

I was invited to a potluck today.  I like playing mini-iron chef with myself. Mostly because I love a challenge and because it helps keep waste down. They say that over 40% of food purchased in the US is never consumed, and the home chef is one of the major sources of waste. With this in mind, I try to only buy what I need or use everything I buy. I had a lot of green beans and tomatoes, so I tried to find a recipe that had both. it can be tedious to cut each bean in half unless you’re watching TV or something.  I mean who sits next to their computer and cuts green beans while watching Korean Dramas? um, no, not me. I mean, I’d never. Ok I do, I would, I did. 

Adapted from Food and Wine I love that the recipe writer intentionally used the whole onion, I know that sounds silly, but it’s a thoughtful detail!
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The Steak
Ingredients
½ small red onion
2 garlic cloves
½ cup olive oil
salt and pepper (be generous)
2 lbs. skirt steak (flank steak’s ugly and more flavorful cousin)

Instructions
Combine all ingredients in a blender pour the mix into a gallon plastic bag with the steak.  Place the bag in the fridge for at least 2 hours or overnight.  The butcher at my grocery store had the time so he ran the skirt steak through a tenderizing machine which produced a really tender steak, it may be a cheat but it was a delicious cheat. Be nice to the people at the store and they will always go the extra mile, he even got me better cuts of meat from the back (I love Pete’s!).

I don’t have a grill, so these were pan fried, it was still delicious.  The steak is super thin so it will cook fast, and if you’re patient and only flip the meat once, it’ll turn crispy at the edges.  I like my steak rare but for the party I left it on for a little longer, about 3 minutes/side.  Let the steak rest and slice thin.  You have options here, you can serve the steak warm or cool it down and serve the whole thing cold.  I liked it cold.

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The Salad
Ingredients
Vinaigrette (this makes more than you need)
¼ extra virgin olive oil
2 limes juiced
1 tablespoon Sriracha
1 tablespoon Asian fish sauce
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar (or white, or champagne, or anything lighter and fruity, nothing heavy)
1 zest of a tangerine
salt and pepper

Veggies
¾ lbs. green beans (I used the fancy French kind (haricot verts) trimmed and sliced down the middle
1 pint Campari tomatoes cut into wedges
½ small red onion sliced super thin
1 jalapeno sliced super thin
¼ cup chopped Cashews (I picked the cashews out of my mixed nut blend from Costco… hehehe)
½ cup (about 1/3 of a bunch) chopped cilantro leaves

Instructions
To keep the onions and jalapenos extra crunchy and light, run them under cold water for about 10 minutes. It also ensures you don’t kill anybody with the power of the Jalapeno! Place all the ingredients in a large bowl to hang out while you prepare the vinaigrette.
Just combine all the ingredients in the vinaigrette add about ½ of the sauce, and keep adding till you think it’s enough. I like mine dressed lightly, and it’s much easier to add more…

Final Assembly!
For the pot luck I tossed the steak in with the salad, but you could also serve it how it is pictured above with the steak placed on top.  It’s your perogative, you can do what you want to do.  What’s bobby brown up to lately anyhow?

Dancing with Miso

My sister is down for the count.  I suspect a mix of wintery weather, lack of sleep, and too much time in airports made her sick.  It stinks when people are sick, as a common person (aka non-medical professional) there is very little I can do to help.  The best thing I can think to do is make her feel comfortable, aka feed her.  I was out with a friend last night she told me to make my sister miso soup, she believes that it’s a cure all for everything.  I’ll take that advice and put a spin on it!  Dwenjang Jigae, is a riff on your standard miso soup.  Ok, I lie, if miso soup is like Miley in her Disney days, this stew is like a long night dancing with Molly and Miley today…

My grandma taught me how to make it in middle school.  The way we make it is a little unconventional from the Korean standard.  The standard recipe usually doesn’t have the gochujang (Korean hot pepper paste), uses dwenjang (Korean fermented soy bean paste) and usually has a thinner consistency than mine. I prefer using Japanese red miso to its Korean counterpart.  I tried switching to Korean Dwenjang a few years back, but there is so much variation within the brands of dwenjang and I couldn’t find one that I liked.  My absolute favorite is the stuff my grandma makes but she’s back in the mother land and I don’t think I’d be able to get that through customs.

Here’s the recipe

Kim Family Dwenjang Jigae

6” dashima
5 large dried anchovies
2 small onions ½” diced
3 medium potatoes ½” diced
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
3 tablespoon gochujang (Korean hot pepper paste)
¼ cup Japanese red miso
2 king oyster mushrooms (or about 1 cup shitake mushrooms sliced) shredded
1 zucchini ½” diced
1 pack (16 oz) tofu (soft) ½” diced
3 cloves garlic minced
1 jalapeno sliced thin
3 green onions cut into 2” strips

First the Broth, this is pretty basic in Korean cooking you want to make an anchovy broth, they don’t add a huge amount of salt but they pack in a lot of flavor.  In a pinch, skip this step, but using it does add another flavor dimension. Basically, it’s anchovy and dashima (aka Kombu) infusion… (I’d say tea but my nerdy side wants to protest, teas only come from the camellia sinensis plant!).  Place your anchovies and dashima into about 64 oz of cold water and let it boil while you’re preparing the rest of your veggies.

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I get to washing, peeling, cutting the veggies while the broth is steeping. This whole blog thing is new for me so the pictures aren’t the best but stick with me, I’m a quick study and this thing will be looking good in no time!

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By now, the broth should be finished, set it aside and now we begin!  Saute the onions and potatoes in a heavy bottomed pot with the vegetable oil.  When they are sweaty and nervous add in the hot pepper paste and miso, it’ll look messy. Stay with your pot and keep stirring if you burn this part it will be bitter.  When the mixture looks homogenous, like everyone is playing nicely with each other, pour in the broth.

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Bring the soup to a full rolling boil and add in the remaining ingredients, continue cooking for about 10 minutes.
Serve with rice.

This recipe makes a lot of jigae, but this stuff just gets better with time. Today it will be good, tomorrow it will be even better.

Notes:
Shred the mushrooms – king oyster mushrooms are pretty common in the Korean Supermarket, I like adding them like this because it looks pretty and it is easier to bite into than when you just slice them.  Cut the “shitake” looking cap off of the mushroom.  You’ll have a long log of mushroom.  The mushroom shreds lengthwise so cut the log in half and just put pressure on it, it’ll give and you’ll see how it can be shredded.  Think pulled pork or Jang Jorim.
Meat? Where is the Meat? – My family doesn’t really eat that much meat, but it’s really easy to add in.  Add about 1/2 lb of 1″ diced cubes of beef stew meat (usually chuck or even heel meat) to the potato and onion mixture.  Don’t let the meat brown too much or it’ll be tough. sweaty and happy..

A New Begining

I have been postponing the first entry for this blog because I thought it would need to be profound or particularly thought provoking.
Something that would stand out… but it’s been 2 months and I got nothing that stands out. So I’ll just begin, softly and see how it all pans out.

The prime mover for this blog is food. By day,  I’m food scientist and by evening time I’d like to think I transform into a culinary maverick!  Unless you are Andy Ricker (owner of Pok Pok here in NYC), you tend to cook what you know.  Seeing as I’m Korean American, I’ll be cooking a lot of Korean with dabbles in other types of cuisines.  I’d say I’m passionate about food… passion makes me think of fire and what’s more fire-y than a Thai Curry (see the Pok Pok Thai food connection!)?

I love Thai food! What’s not to like about chilies, lime, ginger, sweet, aromatic, and savory combos.  This recipe isn’t super fancy but it is delicious!

Ingredients:
2.5 lbs of boneless skinless chicken breast (cut into 1.5” chunks)
1 medium onion
1 red bell pepper
1 green bell pepper
1 yellow bell pepper
1.5 cup of baby portobello mushrooms
1 cup snow peas (trimmed)
1 can of coconut cream (16 oz)
1 cup red curry paste (it’s a lot, but be generous it’s worth it!)
1 teaspoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon brown sugar (or the legit kind from the Thai market)
3 Keiffer lime leaves
3 Thai bird chillies
Thai basil, a big handful

Woah, I guess that’s a lot of ingredients, it didn’t seem like it when I was making it…
So here is what you do, I’m going to give my recipes in the order I do it in my kitchen, the nerdy scientist in me loves efficiency so I like making every minute in the kitchen count.

Put the chicken cubes in with the onion that you have cut into long strips, cover the chicken and onions with water. Boil the chicken and onions over medium heat while you’re cutting the rest of the veggies. Cut all the veggies nice and long and don’t cut them too thin, you want to make sure that they won’t disappear in the curry as it cooks down. I only halved the mushrooms because they were on the small side.

At this point, your chicken should be cooked through (unless you have superhuman knife skills, in which case, you should grab a beer and chill for a moment… ), add in your coconut cream to get every drop I rinsed out the can with water and poured that water into the pot. Now you have the chicken, onions, initial water, coconut cream, and another can full of water in the pot. Now add the curry paste, fish sauce, lime leaves, and sugar. Let all of that come to a boil on med/high heat. Now add in all the veggies and chilies. I love it when the veggies still have a little crunch so I just let them warm through and then serve over rice.

In the famous words of the original Duck Commander, Phil, “this makes me happy happy.. happy happy happy.. ” enjoy!

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