Category: COOKING

Can You Make Risotto with a Southeast-Asian-Twang?

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Apparently yes. I was dealing with some stuff so I wasn’t so into it, but other people who tried it liked it… I suppose that’s encouraging, this being my first risotto. (It was a bit too salty, though.) I basically followed Felicity Cloake’s advice, though: I had to use arborio rice–the other stuff wasn’t available. I forgot to get white cooking wine, so I just used red, which gave the risotto a pinkish color (deepened by the red bell pepper I threw in later). I ended up using a mix of cheddar and pecorino cheeses, again beause that’s what we …

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The Day I Made a Gumbo…

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… was today. My first gumbo, too. Vegetarian and gluten-free, because I was cooking for the house. Apparently a success. The gumbo itself is sort of a mishmash of recipes I saw online. I found such an incredible amount of diversity among the recipes that finally I decided, there is no such thing as a definitive gumbo recipe. Gumbo is conceptual: stew, with chunks. Herbs, spicy if you like that. Slow cooked. Okra and smoked sausage are nice, but not absolutely required. (The latter I’m omitting only because this meal is to be en famille.) Often served with rice. Beans …

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Bacon #4

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When I am insanely busy — and these days, with me at the office until midnight getting various things done, I am — one thing I can do that takes very little time or attention, but which still results in Neat Stuff in the end, is curing meat. I’m now on my 4th pork belly as far as my bacon-making adventures are concerned, and about to make a departure. To recap the last three bacons: Oversalted savory bacon. This was not usable for much besides throwing in a piece or two into a soup, for seasoning and meat flavor (in …

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Getting Pickled

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So, lately, I’ve had a few experimental fermentations going on. One of them is a simple revisiting of the sauerkaraut I made last year. It’s a much smaller batch, and made with non-iodized salt, but with one difference: Yeah, I used red cabbage. I salted it in exactly the way I had the white cabbage, but to my surprise, the cabbage didn’t sweat as much, and there wasn’t much brine. Probably it’s because I used only one small head of red cabbage, not two very large heads of green cabbage. In any case, the problem was easy to solve: I …

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What’s Cooking?

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The food in my neighborhood is stunning in its badness. Perhaps I was spoiled by my first few years in Korea, down in Jeollabukdo — they had, and still have, the best food in the country. But even by Seoul standards, the food options in my neighborhood are pretty poor pickings, and what is available is mostly quite bad. Worse, all the little, dependable places run by underpaid women but which provided standard, decent foods have shut down.  Aside from places to get snacks (there are a couple of okay ones) I know of about five restaurants in Yeokgok that …

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