Monday

[The featured image: An Asian spread. Deep fried yam puffs stuffed with minced meat with all the green vegetables I bought from Harris Farms. Pork belly skewers with homemade kimchi. Prawn and avocado salad with sesame dressing, steamed rainbow trout, and japchae. Basically, everything I had in my fridge and then some. Not pictured: creamy prawn noodle soup and black sesame ice cream with mochi.]

I think I can’t do food blogs in their purest form. I keep thinking of things I want to say, then, realise that they’re absolutely not food-related.

It’s almost a punch in the gut. My identity hinges on my obsession with food. How else can I explain all the extra pounds I’m packing? How?

Then, again, that’s only because I think cooks have a good reason to be portly. All that tasting. Not for pleasure. For work. I once tasted almost a tablespoon of basil garlic aioli trying to figure out if I had the balance right. I plated a five course dinner for friends and was too full to eat because I was eye-balling all the recipes and had to taste the whole time.

I’ve forgotten my point.

Anyway. I’ve decided to take the liberty of branching out. And I think the title is still apt. Empty spaces still demand to be filled. And there are very many empty spaces in the nooks of my mind. Most of which I cram with unrelated things.

I like books, you see. And technology. And art. And foreign entertainment. And games. And comics. And doing random courses on edX/Coursera/udacity.

The anonymity also helps. I can be as shallow or as deep as I want. And it’s so much easier to be shallow.

I think this post still needs to be food related. Hm. So…

I want to talk about Asian food. I am annoyed, sometimes, when people define cultures purely by their food. Although, this is probably less offensive than defining people by their stereotypes in Western media. (Then, again, you should see how Asians portray Westerners. I think the white skin still makes them the colonel overlords we snicker about in the kitchen while we eat our rice. But, then, again, many Asian ads are whitewashed, too. The carnage.)

Maybe that’s the reason I’ve been digging deep; I’ve been trying to find my Asian roots. This doesn’t help when (a) I don’t speak any of the Eastern languages, (b) my culture is largely foreign to me, and (c) by their definition I’m not technically Asian either.

It was no surprise, then, that this Chinese girl wandered into Korean cuisine. Same difference? Maybe?

There is a large overlap in their food, though. Granted, some regional differences are a given. Heck, go from one end of China to the other, and you’ll taste a world of difference.

I’ve made kalguksu recently. A bastardised version of it. But, darn, it was delicious.

As usual, I have no photos. Which is a shame because kalguksu means I made noodles from scratch. They were the ugliest strands you’ll ever see.

Actually, that’s probably why I have no pictures.

I’ve linked the recipe above. And I’ll link it again here.

I think Maangchi’s recipe is a good start. It’s good ol’ comfort food. But I wanted it to have a richer mouth feel and a deeper umami sort of flavour.

You’ll notice her recipe has chicken stock made of chicken breast, garlic, and onions. I had two chicken carcasses in the freezer. Both of which had been roasted after being dry brined for two days. I made a sort of stock by cooking those carcasses on a rolling boil for about an hour before I threw in in the chicken.

And, you know what, may as well throw in some eggplant. It was on sale. May as well deep fry it. Because, holy moly, eggplant is excellent deep fried. Slight crispness with this mad creaminess. I was confused for a moment. It didn’t seem to be a vegetable anymore. That was Japanese influenced, I admit. I wrapped that all up in soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and mirin. About a 1:2:2 ratio. (Because we all know ratios are flexible and great for lazy people.) Bash some chillies or throw in chilli flakes from the bottle – whatever gives you that kick of spice – and toss.

And that eggplant goes really well with that garlicky paste we end up making from the stock.

I’m hungry again.