Tag Archives: Chicago

a dash of confessionals – meet the garbage bowl.

2015, what a ride already!! We are well established in March how did we get here?  This is the first evening in a long time I get to sit and process.  I could bore you with all the details, but who really wants to know about boring details.

Friends why are we so awkward in front of those we want to impress?  Maybe I just want to impress, lame, I’m lame I get it.  Being relatively new to an area and social group makes me do weird things…  in an effort to be well liked, to be known, to catch the eye of someone.  Oh the later, smh..le sigh.

When are you the best version of yourself?  Who are you the best version with? Who are you?! If who you are or how you are changes in light of who you are around, how are you sure you know? Do you just pick your favorite you or take an average?  Is reflecting differently around others truly authentic? Should our desire to be authentic always?

New situations, new people are not my forte, more like my piano.  – Nerd!  Nervousness takes over.  Ironically, often I over share in hopes that we will be comfortable with one another faster, but it comes off as self-involved and pretentious. booooo

To be known, authentically by others, I think this is the closest, realest definition of community I can come up with.  Who is your community?

This sounds like a Xanga post.  I loved Xanga, EMO EMO EMO… I should just have Dashboard Confessionals embedded in the background with blinking hearts on my wallpaper.  haha

Anyway lets move on to the food.  Garbage bowls maybe the most common thing I eat at home.  Buddha bowls are super healthy (adheres to Buddhist traditions) and skews Asian but garbage bowls are those random dinners that are consumed more out of need than want.

Tonight’s is left over Jigae that I put over leftover otomoyaki. When they were fresh, both dishes were brilliant! The stew was velvety with in your face miso flavor and spice from the jalapenos.  The otonomoyaki was great! Roasty flavor from the nagaimo layered with peppers, carrots, and cabbage with a thin layer of egg.  Pillowy and delicious.  Now, it’s all mush in a bowl.  Mush mush mush, tasty mush.  Would I serve this to you if you came over, no, but its Monday dinner.

Gearing up for the New Year!

We are on the heels of 2015 and I wonder, what does this coming year have in store for us? For all my readers and loved ones out there, I hope only the best!

Resolutions, what are you resolving?   What is in your life? Have you chosen to take a better look at your financial decisions? Diet and exercise? Be less crazy? Identify your crazy and stop it? Whatever you’ve resolved to do, go head with your bad self!

Here’s a healthy way to start the year!

Hwe Dup Bap

Dup baps are awesome, take a bowl of steamy rice and “dup puh” – cover it with good things.  Koreans do it with various meats: grilled chicken, beef, cuttlefish and in our case raw fish.

The premise is simple, take a lot of veggies and a little sashimi grade fish, throw it on top of rice and cover it with hot sauce, mix and eat.

This is probably one of my favorite dishes.

RECIPE (for 2-3 servings)
1/2 cup Carrot, thinly sliced
4-breakfast raddish, thinly sliced
½ cup Red Cabbage, thinly sliced
1 cup Red Leaf Lettuce (or romaine, green leaf, anything relatively mild)
6 Perilla leaf, thinly sliced
¼ Cucumber, gutted and thinly sliced
½ Avocado, diced
|½ cup Japanese seaweed salad  (wakame salad)
2-3 oz assorted sashimi grade fish, cut into small cubes

The prep work is a little time consuming, a lot of chopping.  I usually chop more veggies than I need, I can usually find a way to use the rest of them, for instance, I’m going to blend the rest of them in my morning smoothie.

The trick to really crunchy veggies is soaking them in cold water for at least 20 minutes.  I promise it’s worth it.

Assembly is the easy part, remember ladies and gents we eat with our eyes, so make it pretty!  A sushi chef once told me that 3D is the way to be, so plot a  scoop of rice on the bottom of a deep bowl, arrange the veggies, put the fish in the center of the bowl and leave the sauce for the side.

Whoops, the sauce!
Mix all the following ingredients together for the sauce
¼ cup  gochujang (hot pepper paste)
½ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 teaspoon lemon zest
3 tablespoons sesame seed oil (sounds like a lot but it’s a lot of sauce)
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds

Random thought, radishes are beautiful!

SAMSUNG CSCSAMSUNG CSC

 

 

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!
SAMSUNG CSC

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.

SAMSUNG CSCSAMSUNG CSC

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?

Blog at WordPress.com.