Tag: cooking

Perspective… and Pizza

gordsellar0 Comments

A while ago I mentioned being in the “home stretch” on the book I’m writing. A bunch of people were very encouraging when I said that, which, well, encouraged me. (Thanks, everyone.) Thing is, I still am in that home stretch, pretty close to where I was at the time I made that comment, in fact. I’m kind of stuck there. Not writing-stuck: I would be done the draft if it wasn’t for the exigencies of life. A recurrent, won’t-go-away ear infection has been gnawing on our son, and I developed bronchitis (seemingly the same damned bug), just as a …

Continue Reading

Things I’ve Recently Learned in the Kitchen

gordsellar0 Comments

So, the last few days have been a whirlwind of cooking, and I’ve learned a few interesting things. Let’s see: 1. When you make pesto, grind the nuts first. Then add the leaves, then the cheese. Oil and butter come later, along with salt. Nuts first allows the leaves to be ground up dry, which gets you a better grind. (I didn’t make the pesto, Mrs. Jiwaku did. It turned out really good!) 2. With homemade pesto, substitutions are the name of the game. If you’re unable to use pine nuts–say, because your spouse is allergic to them–other nuts are …

Continue Reading

Easy Recipes to Blow Your Mind, #1: Omija Bacon

gordsellar3 Comments

A post in response to the request of a friend. Omija is an interesting berry: its Latin nomenclature is Schisandra chinensis, the latter portion of the name being a hint that it is native to Asia–particularly Northeast Asia. Back in Korea, I first experienced the stuff as tea, but got curious about what it would do to a beer. The one experiment I managed before leaving, I didn’t add enough berries, so it was nice, but a very restrained effect. But I had some berries left over, and decided on a very different experiment: adding them to so bacon cure. …

Continue Reading

The Stuff I’ve Been Doing of Late

gordsellar2 Comments

This is just a quick update for those wondering why I haven’t posted anything in a while. There’s snaps of food I’ve cooked, a rare recording of the current state of my sax playing as of right now (and a discussion of an online course in jazz improvisation I’m taking with Gary Burton, yes, that Gary Burton), and a little discussion of my writing.

Continue Reading

The Day I Made a Gumbo…

gordsellar0 Comments

… 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 …

Continue Reading

Getting Pickled

gordsellar2 Comments

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 …

Continue Reading

What’s Cooking?

gordsellar0 Comments

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 …

Continue Reading

Smokey the Brewer

gordsellar0 Comments

Finally! Yesterday afternoon, the wood chips Miss Jiwaku ordered for me arrived, so now I can start trying to smoke various grains and foods! I got the stuff in a few different forms. For traditional wood chips, we got two bags of hickory (and now I guess I have to make home-cured bacon, right?) and one bag of mesquite. We also got three sticks of processed smoking wood of Japanese origin: one each of chestnut, oak, and walnut. (Rant warning: every webshop we checked listed three other very enticing varieties of processed smoking wood — apple, cherry, and something else …

Continue Reading

To Do, New

gordsellar2 Comments

In my last personal post, I mentioned how I was focusing on three things this semester: time management expectations management novel-drafting I mentioned how I need to get all three in the bag if I’m going to fulfill my goals for the semester. Allow me to back up a bit to explain. I came to Korea, in part, because I knew that in academic jobs, I could have more hours free during the day or week. This has materialized in a half-completed draft of one novel, a completed (first, roughish) draft of a second novel, and nothing else in long-form …

Continue Reading

Cooking with Pork

gordsellar2 Comments

UPDATE (4 Jan 2010): Wow, color me embarrassed! Yeah, so… I actually wrote this on the afternoon of the 1st, and then schedule it for posting on the 2nd. Little did I know I would be food poisoned by the evening of the 1st, and spend the day of the 2nd in bed, with a fever, pain, and the worst digestive issues this side of hell. Ironically, it’s not any of the pork that made me sick, as far as I can tell, but some yogurt. That said, the chops (which never got marinated) have been put off till I …

Continue Reading