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 …
Tag: cooking
What’s Cooking?
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 …
Smokey the Brewer
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 …
To Do, New
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 …
Cooking with Pork
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 …