Day Ten - Marathon - Pages 40, 73, 178

I was busy all day making three dishes. The ramen broth took several hours of watching the pot boil and I'm not sure if the result was worth it. It had nice flavor but I think that I would have been just as happy with a simpler broth that had just a couple of flavor components instead of the chicken, bacon, pork, konbu, shiitake, and other veggies that the recipe called for. Or maybe make the whole concoction easier by putting all the ingredients in at once rather than in succession and removing each depending on your taste. It will be worth trying that the next time but for now we will have something to go with our New Year's ramen.

I used the plumped shitakes from the broth to make pickles and then made Spicy Pork Sausage with Rice Cakes.

This dish is a little of "throw everything you have in the wok" which isn't necessarily a bad thing but again, like the broth, there may be too many flavors in one place. In spite of the full cup of dried chilies the heat was pretty mild and I used my Kitchenaid food grinder attachment to grind a pork chop which was really fun.

The dok (rice cakes) made for a very hearty dish but what I find really satisfying is this:

Boiled dok drizzled with a little maple syrup.

Day Nine - Page 294 - My Sources

Just got back from L.A. where I got Xmas loot from Ava and Sun that will help me cook from Momofuku using the real ingredients. Starting at the lower left and moving counterclockwise: kochukaru (chile powder), denjang (fermented bean paste), kochujang (chile paste), then left: rice cakes, yuzu juice. And I went to A1 Market on Sunset where I picked up shiro (white miso), Vietnamese bottled shrimp (still looking for Korean salted shrimp in a jar), and fish sauce.

Last night I threw out the first attempt at kimchi and started over using my new bag of kochukaru and followed the Momofuku recipe closely using the right amount of salt and sugar. Already it looked so much better - that first batch was positively anemic.

Lesson learned: don't substitute essential ingredients because it just won't be delicious and if nothing else, deliciousness is the main component of Chang's recipes. I will never ever again use cayenne powder for kochukaru but I am thinking of using the savoy cabbage that is in the garden for my next kimchi...

While we were in L.A. we got to try a Korean barbeque restaurant: Soowon Galbi. In addition to four kinds of meat and all the small plates we had a bowl of stew (kimchichigae). I'm looking forward to making the Momofuku version soon.

Day Eight - Page 94 - Cauliflower, Kimchi Puree & Bacon

Last week we had some freezing days and then it rained for two. Today I went outside to survey the damage and was surprised to see that the cauliflower plants survived and this one actually grew to a nice size during the harsh weather. This is my first attempt at cauliflower and I'm really happy that I now have a fall vegetable that I can grow successfully. Thanks to Ellen, who gave me the starts, they had a really healthy beginning.

The kimchi is just starting to get stinky so it seemed like a good time to try Chang's Brussels sprouts/kimchi puree/bacon dish and substitute the cauliflower for the sprouts.

The kimchi puree sounded like a sort of odd thing to do but it turned out to be a delicious sauce and will be a good staple to mix with anything on hand. Fish sauce, garlic, and chilies are always going to be tasty. This, along with a pan fried duck breast and fried rice, was dinner tonight. Yum!

Day Seven - Page 74- Napa Cabbage Kimchi

I wanted to do the impossible: make kimchi without all the salt. After some searching I ended up using a recipe by David Lebovitz and used less salt and left out the daikon. It is basically cabbage and onions, salt, cayenne pepper, and garlic.


And because one pickle leads to the next and I found some really fresh-looking gai choy at May Wah in the city, I made up some of Rhoda Yee's Pickled Mustard Greens (Suen-Gai-Choy) recipe.
Do you know how hard it is to keep the camera clean while licking pickling juice off of your fingers? What's impossible is to wait for these to be fully pickled.

And then this is what happened over Thanksgiving!


I've posted some photos of Oaxaca on Flickr: HERE