Culinary Madness…

I’m too busy for a proper post, but I thought I’d update on last time with more pictures of all the nice stuff we’ve been cooking up here in Saigon. The nice thing about having a fair amount of time, and about food being relatively inexpensive, is that you can experiment with cooking. Mrs. Jiwaku’s been mostly baking, while I’ve mostly been making new foods… well, new to me, I mean. The range is pretty wide. Here’s a look at (almost) everything we’ve done so far:

It’s not a complete log — I’ve made a lot of pasta, especially with Arabiatta and Aglio Olio sauces, that I haven’t bothered to snap, and we also made a Thai dinner a while back that we didn’t photograph. But these were the big deal cooking events. I expect the set will be expanding slowly, as I continue to experiment.

Overall, I’m pretty happy. Southeast Asian, Southern US, Italian, Indian… there’s a nice range, and in my opinion I haven’t made a disappointing meal in months now, which is a nice thing to be able to say! (It does raise the bar on ordering out, though: we’ve been disappointed with a most of the takeout and restaurant food we’ve had since I started cooking more seriously.) As I commented earlier, having free time really helps.

If you click on “Show Info” in the slideshow above, you can see my commentary on each image. Or you can see that over at Flickr, where I’ve hosted the pics. Anyone who wants a recipe for anything, just comment below, and I’ll set you up. I don’t really follow recipes too closely, but I can give you a rough guide to what I did to get my results.

4 thoughts on “Culinary Madness…

  1. Is that the risotto you posted about a while back? The one that turned out pink (the one in the picture looks pink-ish)?

    But seriously. Once you start a string of cooking successes, you get sucked in and want to cook more and more. And yes, it spoils you for eating out. I mostly cook for myself and H., and he now refuses to eat at most places. He also grades my cooking more stringently than he used to. I think he’s setting the bar increasingly higher for me too. :-/

    1. Yeah, I really can’t wait till we’re in a setting when we can cook bulk and freeze it: having learned how to cook for five or six people, I’m pretty good at it now, and what I find is that a lot of the things I make actually get better when they’re allowed to sit a few days in the fridge.

      I have all kinds of recipes I want to try, and things I want to make. For various reasons, though, including the above, I’m saving my energy for when we have a place of our own in a few weeks. Then I’ll be cooking up a storm. The killer thing is how easy so many of these things are to make… once you have a couple more hours in the day.

      The rising bar is a good thing, in the end: it’s a bit like my music homework this week. (See my upcoming post.) But, ha, I cant help but ask: where are you setting the bar on his cooking? Tit for tat, I say. Though be careful: I have set the bar pretty high for my cooking, and have to be careful not to discourage Jihyun with too much objectivity when she cooks something! Encouragement is good, too. :)

      1. H. doesn’t cook anything, and this is the reason why: he’s the kind of guy who would burn tofu (and actually has). He makes pretty great kitchen help, though, and many’s the time I’ve dictated ingredient prep to him over Kakao Talk when I’ve been stuck in traffic on the commute home.

        Yeah, same here. I’ve got a huge list of dishes I want to try this summer, they’re posted over on my blog.

        1. Hey,

          Well, if it might hearten him, I burned a salad once. Seriously. Set it down in a metal bowl on an electric range, and what do you know, the range was on.

          That said, as long as he’s helping in the kitchen, fair enough. In couples, often one person does more of the cooking (and enjoys it more), and some people truly are irremediably bad cooks. I love my mom, and appreciate her feeding us despite how she felt about cooking, but she’s never really loved doing, and it kinda shows. But I do think it’s fairer when both people take a turn. Ha, Kakao Talk-guided ingredient prep guiding: that’s funny.

          And hey, a new post! On your blog! On food! I’ll check it out when I get back from our ramblings… :)

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