Survival Sunday 229: Oden Again

Remember how I've made oden before? I made it again! This time, I used more water, less powdered oden base, and slightly different ingredients!

To make this oden, I used:

• A small "Graffiti" eggplant
• Much more daikon
• hot dogs
• green onion/scallion
• frozen corn
• generic store-brand frozen shaved steak product
• firm tofu

I brought the hotdogs and scallions from my house in a cooler, which is why they're
in sandwich bags and full of condensation!

From left to right: frozen corn, firm tofu, generic shaved "steak" product

A big daikon chunk!

A very blurry photo of the awesome "Graffiti" eggplant

And, of course, the Oden Base

Prepping the corn in a separate bowl for ease of adding to the pot later.

The first thing I did was add a few cups of water (I didn't really measure this time, though I probably should have) to a pot and then toss the weird meat rectangles in. I figured they'd dissolve into the water over time, but they surprised me by holding up fairly well!

Even if they are a bit terrifying to look at...

My first major surprise of the day happened as the water grew closer and closer to a simmer - there was enough red food dye in that meat that the water turned a horrible shade of blood red

The color did not translate well.
Have you ever had a nosebleed in the shower? Yeah.
That's the color.

 Meanwhile, Z got to chopping and slicing and otherwise prepping the veggies that would go in this weird, wonderful oden:

Z did a fantastic job on the eggplant - it's exactly how I envisioned it!

I was worried that these chunks of daikon would be too big, but since they sat in the pot so long, they were great!

The next step was adding the daikon to the pot:

The meat had pretty well shredded itself into oblivion at this point,
but that was exactly what I wanted, so it worked out well.

Then I added the eggplant and frozen corn. If you live in one of the areas where they don't have "eggplant" at the supermarket, that's just what Americans call aubergines, so you'll be fine. It's not some weird local food like fiddleheads or whatever.

Everyone getting to know each other in the hot tub, lol!

The next step was, of course, the tofu!

Z cut it into these great square slabs - perfect for grabbing with chopsticks!

I took this opportunity to also cut the hotdogs into thirds. These were leftover from a cookout my folks had thrown for the family, so they were pretty good quality. I cut them, then I stabbed them gently in a few spots so they wouldn't just explode.

It was pretty pointless to poke them. They exploded anyway...

Not that exploding hotdogs are necessarily bad in an oden!
They were actually really good!

Here, you can see the oden after it has cooked for a looooooooooooong time!

This oden probably boiled together for more than a half hour before I added the seasoning packet. We added some soy sauce, some ramen pepper, and a tiny, tiny hint of delicious sesame oil.

I have a rare treat for you guys today, though:

That's right! Your old pal the Filthy Casual made a real live movie!!! I'm sorry again for the vertical aspect ratio at the beginning, but this was only my second video ever, so I hope you'll forgive me!

I've also got photos of the aftermath:

Look at all of this food!
Look at it! We had leftovers!
Actual legit leftovers!

Now, you may look at that heaping bowl of food (and bare in mind that Z had a bowl of equal size as well!) and think "there's no way that FC and Z finished off their servings!"

We did. And it was awesome.

I will say this - I used too much water. I should have had probably a cup and a half less to get more flavor out of the oden base, but it was still pretty decent. With how heavy all of the ingredients were, it would've been... inadvisable to have too strong a broth. As it was, we were in a food coma for the rest of the darn night!

If you'd like to replicate this at home but you don't have oden broth, you can make your own broth using soy sauce, soup broth (your choice of flavors!), maybe some bonito flakes if you have access, and plenty of pepper of any kind! Then you just gather whatever it is you want to eat in this hearty soup and boil them together for as long as you like. The longer the ingredients mingle, the more flavor you'll get out of them!

If I was really, really crazy, I think I'd add a raw egg straight into the bowl just after adding the oden. If the oden were still hot enough, it would cook the egg enough to be safe, but it wouldn't ruin the thickening properties of the yolk.

That might kill you, though. What with all the calories...

Still, it was a fantastic day spent making fantastic food!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 228: The Aporkalypse Cometh

Sometimes, there comes a time in a person's life when there are leftovers no one wants to eat in the fridge. It may be that you've had a large party in the last few days and one of your entrees wasn't the favorite. It may be that you just had to cook up a large package of something that was about to go bad so you can extend its potential shelf life. It might just be that you kind of didn't succeed 100% at the recipe you were trying, but while the food isn't great it's still edible.

Regardless of the reason you've had the leftovers, you've probably had them. You've probably also looked at them several times over the ensuing days and thought "boy, I do not want to waste food. I'd hate to chuck it, but I'm just not that into it."

So here is the story of how Z and I survived the Aporkalypse.

My mom is a great cook, but pork products are very difficult to keep tender when you're cooking them en masse (or if they're porkchops, but we gave up on those years ago...), and as she still has the mindset of a mom cooking for six or more people, she tends to cook big.

And that's how we ended up with a container of bone-in pork spareribs in the fridge for several days.

Now, I usually love my mom's pork spareribs. They're always coated in tangy barbecue sauce, cooked in the oven in one of her pretty pyrex or ceramic dishes with the flowers and vines painted on, and they're usually really flavorful and good.

For whatever reason, however, these ribs came out tough, bland, and unappetizing. My dad, who usually takes leftovers in to work for lunch, refused to touch them, and so they sat for days in one of the tall Tupperwares in the fridge.

I needed something to cook with. We were out of meat or meat substitutes that I could bring with me to the kitchen where Z lives, and I wanted to cook. I really, really wanted to.

My choices were thus: I could try my best to make bao buns with the pork ribs, I could attempt pork floss with them, or I could make soup. Since I only had just so much time, the seven hour process of making the bao just wasn't going to work, and since I was not confident in my abilities to remove the bones and properly fry and pound the meat, the floss would have to wait for another time, too. Pity - both would've been great.

Instead, I got the biggest pot with a handle I could find - the one we usually use for mashed potatoes, and I dropped all of the ribs inside. Then I added about 2 cups of chicken broth and dumped in some soy sauce for good measure (probably 1/4 cup, to be honest, and that was a bit much). Then I let it simmer and boil for several hours while I did my blog and drew. That's right, this was a Thursday endeavor.

Here they are with the bones still in, simmering merrily away on my stove!

After several hours simmering away, I started probing the once-tough meat with a slotted spoon. The spoon sank into the meat, so I used it to fish out the bones and set those aside. I should also mention that these ribs were fatty as heck, which made their earlier toughness even stranger.

The ribs are now de-boned and swimming in... far less liquid than before...

I let the pork soup sit on the stove for another hour or so to cool down before dumping it into the same Tupperware it had come from. After washing the Tupperware, of course. I'm not gross.

Here's where things get... weird.

See, I don't visit Z on Thursdays, more often than not, so I wasn't going to be bringing the soup over then. Instead, I waited a day, then brought it over. It took a couple of tries to get the right-sized pot, but then, when I tried to pour the "soup" out, I found it had completely congealed. That's right. I'd simmered all of the broth out, leaving only the rendered fat and soy sauce. How unappealing!

But we saved it with water, more soy sauce, and some frozen corn! Ah, frozen corn, most noble of the bagged freezer aisle veggies. Blessed among the grasses. Yes, corn is a grass.

Regardless, we let that simmer until the pork was beginning to shred into nothingness, and then we went completely mad.

We added a brick of ramen. These were buckwheat soba, so they were pretty umami to begin with, and when we added the packet of flavoring to the soup, it was even better. The seaweed and extra soy flavors really brought out the flavor of the pork, and with the subtle barbecue flavor from their first cooking, this was a really pleasant meal

Even if it looked faintly terrifying.

So why do I call it the Aporkalypse?

Well...

Remember how I mentioned that my mother cooks like there are still half a dozen people living here?

Yeah. Only two people ate ribs the night she cooked them.

I packed four or more servings of pork ribs into this weird noodle stew, and we absolutely felt it. For days. That's way too much meat for two people!

So my only caution for you all is this: if it looks like there's a lot of food, then there probably is a lot of food, and therefore you should try to consider whether to hold some off for later or just invite at least one more person to eat!

...

I'm totally making it again someday, though.

Maybe with more curry flavor than bbq...

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 226: Hakata Style Part 2

Well, Z and I are maybe a little obsessed with Hakata-Style Tonkotsu. We got a second package of "animal free" Hakata-style Tonkotsu (which, again, is supposed to be an animal-free pork bone broth), and we kinda went... nuts.

So, the first thing we did, we dumped a bunch of frozen corn in a pot to heat up

It's usually pretty wise to add your veggies first while cooking. Veggies tend to heat slowly, especially when they're completely frozen like this corn was.

I used this picture in a previous recipe...

Eggs are a great source of extra protein in these kinds of dishes. You may notice I use eggs a lot in noodle dishes. That's because they're easy to prepare (especially alongside our meals as they cook).

And where would a noodle dish be without the noodles?
These are the Hakata-Style "Animal-Free" Tonkotsu  we've been loving from Umai Crate.

I feel like I did well with this egg.

We cooked the noodles in the usual way, boiling them until they're just soft enough to eat without stabbing ourselves in the gums. Which is to say, too soft for Z, who would rather eat noodles dry. What a butt. :P But seriously, we both like nice, firm noodles. They're really good that way!

We also got some sea lettuce furikake!
Sea Lettuce is a sort of green, flappy seaweed that proliferates the oceans.
It's tasty, it's useful, and it makes awesome furikake!

I like to throw my eggs in around the same time as my noodles if I'm "poaching" them. This is for two reasons: one is that the yolks don't overcook if I take them out with the noodles, and the other is that the noodles can sometimes hold the eggs off of the bottom of the pan, which can keep them from burning.

Trust me, cleaning burned-on egg out of a pan you're borrowing is always a harrowing experience, regardless of how little egg there is.

But you cannot argue with results.

 I love these noodles. They're thin, firm, slippery, and they really just bring out all of the good parts of the rich, creamy broth!

As you can see, that's one creamy, creamy broth!

I leave you with one last glamour shot of this delicious meal:

And yes, this was plenty for two people.
That's right.
The Hakata-style is so filling that you can feed two big people with it.

If you've got the option for Hakata-Style Tonkotsu at any point in the future, take it.

Go Enjoy Something!
FC