Weekend Warble 321

Apologies for the Radio Silence...

What a whirlwind weekend it's been here in Quarantine/Social Distancingville! Let me give you a brief rundown of what things have been like since Thursday:

• I was an exhausted, sleepless mess on Friday, spending most of the day watching silly YouTube videos and playing Breath of the Wild.
• My mom made roast chicken for dinner that night.
• Saturday, I was so tired that I'd become dizzy with exhaustion. Been a while since I've done that.
• The roast chicken was reworked into a delicious leftover-based dinner!
• Despite the sleepiness, however, I managed to write over 200 words!!! That, I credit entirely to a very productive and enjoyable digital work session with my partner. <3 li="">
• Today, I helped my mother fix one of our windows, which became weirdly angled in its tracks. It took the better part of two hours to wrestle the dang thing back into the right position. Tilt to clean windows are great, but they pose their own risks lol.

So I mentioned a leftover-based recipe above. You want it? I give it:

CHIKKY BIKKY BAKE

• Leftover cooked chicken
• Chicken Gravy mix
• herbs & spices to taste
• Frozen Corn
• Onion
• Cooking Oil
• A biscuit recipe, prepared

Do you have your grandma's drop biscuit recipe? If you don't, just find one online. They're usually pretty simple. You don't really want a firm, cut biscuit recipe, though, so don't pop open the Pillsbury or whatever - you want to splat that dough on at the end, so hold off on it until you've got everything assembled.

1. Pre-heat the oven according to your biscuit recipe
2. Shred up that cooked chicken as thick or fine as you want, then dump it into the bottom of a casserole dish in a more or less uniform layer
3. Sprinkle the gravy mix over your chicken - use as much or little as you like! Then add maybe 1/4 the water it calls for, throwing in any herbs or spices you like and think would go well (like thyme, for instance). Smooth the new chicken/gravy mixture out into a nice layer.
4. In a saute pan, drizzle some cooking oil and cook up some frozen corn and diced onion! You can use any veggies here, though you'll want to par-boil any potatoes if you use them. You want the onions to get translucent and the corn to get soft.
5. Dump your veggies on top of your chicken, spread this layer out gently so that it's still on top of the chicken
6. Remember your biscuits? You want them to be a little wetter than your recipe calls for, so add milk or water (whichever liquid your biscuit uses) until it's just a bit easier to move around. You want it to be able to easily cover your casserole dish of meat and veg.
7. Once your biscuits are plopped/spread over the casserole, you want to pop it in the oven for about the same time as you would if you were just straight-up making biscuits.
8. Watch this like a hawk! Don't let these biscuits burn!
9. Once the biscuits seem done to you (they're the only thing uncooked, after all!) take this puppy out and let cool just long enough to be edible.
10. Spoon this tastiness out and gobble it up!

I'd have a photo for you, but we ate the food so fast there wasn't a chance to photograph it!

And once you're done eating, if you're looking for a game to play, may I suggest Idle Mine Remix on Kongregate? It's a simple clicker game with a lot of random chance to it. If you like that kind of gameplay plus simple graphics, go for it!

That'll do it for me today. I'll go back to sipping my coffee and griping about the hole in my sock :P

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Survival Sunday 304: Kimchi Stirfry

In Which I Eat The Leaf

We received a lovely Kimchi Stir Fry kit in one of our recent Umai Crates, and since both of us really, really like kimchi, it seemed like we should get on that.

But we didn't.

For weeks.

Because 1) I'm lazy and 2) we kept forgetting to pick up kimchi.

But then we got the kimchi, some bacon, and some scallions, so I set to work preparing our stirfry!

The stirfry in question.

The prepackaged items included some delicate vermicelli noodles and a small packet of what we were informed was some kind of gochujang sauce. Easy enough, right? It's all the same spices as you'd get in kimchi, mixed with noodles.

But we wanted more than clear noodles in a rich red sauce (though that sounded delicious).

It also came with "instructions"...

The directions in the actual booklet were confusing and almost no help at all. See, we had been under the impression that the bag contained some kind of kimchi, but there wasn't any. It doesn't even suggest kimchi under the "try it with" section. Not very promising. Also - the instructions call for sesame oil (not included or suggested) and heating everything over medium which... uh... that doesn't always work.

So instead, I sliced up some bacon into about one inch chunks, my awesome partner chopped up some green onions and ran out to grab some kimchi (really, really good kimchi) and we decided to wing it.

Choppy choppy

A locally made kimchi, no less!

So I followed the instructions and grabbed our sesame oil... it's spicy so I usually proceed with caution.

It's really good, though...

 I dumped a small amount in a frying pan and got ready to make up the rest of the food.

Spicy sesame oil always looks vaguely horrifying in a clean frying pan...

Once we got the stovetop up to temp, we chucked in the kimchi, green onion/scallion, and bacon to fry together. Here's where you may be guessing my first problems arose:

I'm a big weenie and I'm scared of grease burns.

To be clear, I still cooked with it (though I had to hand it off in the end for the final few minutes because it was spattering me and I was trying not to freak out) and it was delicious. If you don't like cooking bacon, though, stick with the pre-cooked stuff. It's still delicious (it's bacon, after all) and it's still pretty dang awesome. I haven't cooked turkey bacon before, so I don't know if it has a similar issue with spattering.

Experiments for other times lol.

While the bacon was rendering and the oil was coating everything and the liquid was cooking out of the kimchi, we added both the sauce and the noodles. We didn't presoak the vermicelli - we just let it soak up the in-pan goodness. We didn't even have to add water!

Maybe if we got it again, I would add a little water, though, to help deglaze the bottom of the pan. Still, it came up well after a brief soak, so don't be too concerned over your pan's well-being.

Eventually, the noodles were soft, the bacon was cooked, and the kitchen smelled like gochujang and happiness, so we dumped it all in a bowl and took it back to the table. No chopsticks here - we were going for the four-pronged food shovel one might call a fork. Why? Because we were hungry and didn't want to spend forty minutes clumsily trying to wield chopsticks.

No matter how many times I use them, I still struggle for the first five minutes as my Irish-American fingers confusedly stumble around.

And who wouldn't want to just shovel this into their face?

If I were to try this again, from the comfort of my own home, this is what I'd do:

INGREDIENTS:

• Kimchi
• Either vermicelli or wide rice noodles (like for pad thai)
• Bacon (precooked or non-pork)
• Green onion/Scallion
• An Egg
• Sesame oil (plain)
• Gochujang and/or sriracha sauce (probably both)
• Fish sauce
• Soy sauce
• Peanuts and/or sesame seeds
• Possibly peanut butter?

TO MAKE:

1. Chop up any big ingredients (bacon, scallion). If using pad thai noodles, soak them in hot water until soft.
2. Dribble a bunch of sesame oil in the bottom of a fairly good-sized pan, turn heat to medium or medium-high
3. Start cooking the kimchi, protein, and green onion/scallion together in the oil
4. As the pan-fried foods start to look cooked, add your egg. You can either scramble it ahead of time or just let the scrambling happen as you move things around in the pan.
5. Start adding sauces, buttercup. Let your heart be your guide. Do you like fishier flavors? More fish sauce. Don't like fishy flavors? Less fish sauce. Want to have your sinuses pressure washed? Add more gochujang and/or sriracha. Add soy sauce if you think there's not enough lubrication. Add peanut butter at this stage if you want a  more pad thai-like experience.
6. Add them noodles and stir everything together until either a) you can't stand to look at it anymore and just have to eat it or b) things are starting to look 100% done and you want to eat it.
7. Plate that goodness and sprinkle on some crushed peanuts or some sesame seeds for garnish. Maybe a few fresh scallions or whatever if you're feeling extra fancy/are serving this on a date.
8. That pan's probably pretty crusty right now. Go soak it while you eat. Future dishwasher you will thank hungry-but-sensible you. I promise.

So that's my idea for next time I'm craving a kimchi stirfry!

How about you guys? Have you ever bought a convenience food and realized you could make it yourself? Do you have any suggestions for future recipes? Let me know!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Survival Sunday 302: Kumamoto Spicy Ramen

New Year, New... Noodz?

It's time for me to tell you about some tasty ramen from Umai Crate!

That's right, the first thing I've made up for the blog this year isn't some sort of scratch-made treat or easy access meal, it's another random pack of noodles shipped from Japan. If you're studying abroad, live in Japan, or have access to a proper Asian market here in the US, however, you may be able to find this Kumamoto Spicy Ramen, which, spoilers, is delicious.

Here's the handsome package!

Ideally, you'd have some fried meat, some veggies, and an onsen egg to go with this delicious, thick-brothed ramen, but I was feeling lazy and hungry and just wanted to stuff my face with delicious noodles and spicy flavor!

A slightly blurry picture of what was in the package

In this sleeve of noodles, you get a robust handful of noodles (which are slightly salty when dry and are addictive to snack on while you wait for the water to boil), a powder flavor packet (the red one), and a packet of hot oil - probably hot sesame oil, if I had to guess.

The instructions from Umai Crate!

I looked up the conversion for 500ml because I didn't know if I'd have access to a measuring cup with ml instead of "cups" (thanks US Imperial system...), and it turns out that 500ml is about 2 cups (2.11 to be more accurate...).

Lucky me, the kitchen I was using had a multi-measure cup that I used to pour about 450ml of water into the pan, since my partner's not really a broth person and I was in the mood for some extra-thick soup. You can, of course, cook your noodles how you like.

I let the water boil on the stovetop in a fairly small pot (I figured that since it was a simple packet of noodles I wouldn't need much of a pot, and I was right). Once the water was bubbling around, I put the noodles in.

I don't break my noodles when I put them in the pot. I know some people do that as a space-and-time-saving method (shorter noodles cook faster, I guess?), but I'm more of a naturalist and allow the noodles to slowly wilt into the pot like a grumpy toddler slipping into dreamland.

Except I don't want to eat a toddler, and I really, really wanted to eat these noodles.

And once the noodles had been in their spa for a couple of minutes, I grabbed the red packet.

Opening the soup base on one of these Umai Crate packs is always exciting. It's basically a party every time, and you never know what you're going to smell, really. This time, the rich umami flavor came across in the scent of soy sauce and some meaty undertones. It smelled salty and savory and delightful, and I made sure to sample some of the powder that was left behind on the packet when I dumped it in the noodles. It was absolute heaven.

Salty, faintly sweet from the small amount of sugar in the soy sauce, meaty, soy sauce-y... perfection.

I turned off the heat and stirred in the flavors.

The water was almost completely opaque once I added the broth packet.

By now, the kitchen was filled with the wonderful smells of cooked noodles and rich broth, so I dumped the whole thing in a large bowl.

Look at that glossy, oily sheen!
Gorgeous!

Of course, there was one more step to add to this wonderful ramen - the spicy oil!

I tore open the sachet of oil very carefully, because that stuff is no joke to get in your eye, man. I promise, chili oil is a nightmare that you'll never forget when it's in your eyes.

Thankfully, though, it cooperated perfectly and drizzled into the bowl without fighting me at all.

Beautiful.

The oil itself has a very neutral flavor, since it only exists to lend spice, but once it combined with the actual noodles and broth? Call Guy Fieri, because that's a one-way-trip to Flavortown.

Oh god. Why did I write that...

But seriously, that's some addictively spicy, perfectly rounded deliciousness right there. If I could, I'd eat that once a week. It's the flavor equivalent of a sweater that, yeah, can sometimes be a little too warm, but it's so comforting to wear that you can't stop putting it on, even though it's mid-April and you might get heat stroke!

Mind, this isn't crazy hot. It's spicy, don't get me wrong, and if you get it down the wrong pipe, you're going to feel it for a while, but this isn't Shin Cup spicy in any way. It's not even as spicy as a Tijuana Mama sausage. It's just... comfortably spicy. It's the kind of spicy you keep going back for.

If you do live somewhere that carries this Kumamoto Spicy Ramen, then please do pick it up. Even if it's just to shoot a pack my way...

mmm....

noodles...

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 249: Bibim Men!

In Which I Try Some Instant Bibim-Men!

Some friends dropped off a package of Instant Bibim Men, and I was eager to try it. What's Bibim Men? Well, imagine if you took Bibimbap and Ramen and made them have a baby.

What's Bibimbap?

IT'S HEAVEN IN A BOWL!

This is Bibimbap

Korean cooking has mastered the art of "I have it, so I'll eat it" in a way few cultures have quite approached. Bibimbap is basically several veggies and/or meats, stir-fried, and placed in a bowl. A runny fried egg is placed on top. There might be rice or noodles on the bottom. And then there's the sauce.

Korean sauces are notoriously delicious. Korean barbecue is some of the best on earth, so of course I'm going to love a Korean breakfast with a barbecue-style sauce that you pour on top!

And then there's Bibim Men.

See, Bibim Men takes that sauce and pours it onto ramen. Perfection!

But perhaps not enough for a single meal.
We had some yuzu soba left over from an Umai Crate, and had that as well!

Unfortunately, it being winter, veggies are harder to get hold of (plus, I was feeling lazy), so I had some leftover chicken that I added to the mix.

The Chicken.

I boiled the chicken and noodles together - can't remember if I did an egg, but I don't think I did? I should've. Regardless, I boiled the precooked chicken to heat it up.

It smelled great!

I also used the chicken noodle water to reconstitute the soba, but that's not really important right now.

The Bibim Men Sauce.

Once the noodles were cooked, I drained all the water and put all of the noodles and chicken in a bowl, where I eagerly snipped open the sauce packet and began to pour it out.

Apologies for the autopsy photo quality, but it was dark in the kitchen...

Thick, dark, fragrant sauce spiraled down onto the bed of noodles and chicken and my eyes widened significantly as I took it all in. Oh. My. God.

This is an amazing dish.

It's so amazing that, yeah, it didn't even quite make it to the table to get photographed before we dove in!

The sauce is sweet, spicy, savory - delicious. It buoys the noodles from bland to grad and pairs so perfectly with chicken that it was as though it was preordained! Honestly, I'd pay money to eat this at a restaurant, it's that good. I can only imagine what a 100% home-made version would taste like, and that's without veggies. Ideally, I'll get more and make it with bean sprouts, some stir-fried spinach or collards, carrots, mushrooms, peppers, etc. And I'll put the over easy egg on top and let the yolk soak through.

Just thinking about it is torture.

And yes, the soba was never more than an afterthought, which is a pity.

Because yuzu soba is always good.

If you've been wondering what yuzu tastes like, it's basically what happens when all the citrus fruits get together and create a Frankenflavor. It's... citrus. There's not really any other way to describe it. It has the freshness of grapefruit, the zing of lemon, and the mellow juiciness of oranges, and it's delicious. It pairs so well with the earthy flavors of a chicken-tinged soba broth and the thin-but-firm noodles. Definitely worth making up, but it does pale by comparison to the Bibim Men, which was the absolute star of the show.

I think that'll do it for me today.

I've made myself hungry :P

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 248: Butter Spaghetti from Japan?

In Which I Make Japanese Spaghetti... For A Third Time.

Now, I've made these kinds of fusion dishes before from Umai Crate, and there's always a hint of trepidation. Sometimes you'll get tasty bolognese, sometimes you'll get weird watery konjac noodles. Thankfully, this week's attempt was some tasty soy and butter spaghetti!

But of course, I couldn't just have the spaghetti, so I decided to use some leftover steak we had in our fridge and do my best to follow the instructions.

I melted about a tablespoon of butter in a frying pan and fried up the slices of steak.

A few things to note about cooking with butter:

• Butter can and will snap and pop at you, so if you're like me and a wimp about these things, clear the kitchen of other people first. Then you can't be a jerk to them when you burn yourself.
• Butter can and will get grease stains all over your shirt when you inevitably burn yourself.
• Butter burns fast, so keep an eye on that pan!
• Butter is freaking delicious.

With the meat heating through, I took the ingredients out of their package and took a look at what I was working with.

I was a bit nervous about this spaghetti, since it was so bloated-looking. I was afraid it would be too soft.
It was not!

The package for the Butter and Soy Sauce Spaghetti!

The instructions on the back of the package were in Japanese, but luckily, Umai Crate came through for us and had their own instructions in their pamphlet.

It said to just... dump the noodles in? Actually, it said to dissolve the noodles in the pan.
I figured that meant "detangle" rather than "melt into oblivion"...

And thankfully, they detangled pretty well!

Once my noodles were separated and mingling with the steak in the pan, I added a couple tablespoons of water to help loosen up both the pasta and the oncoming sauce!

Sadly, everything moved way too fast at this point and I got no pics of the sauce going in, but it was thick and rich and smelled really good. It was butter and soy sauce. Of course it smelled good.

It smelled and tasted so good that I literally couldn't get a picture without my burned hand shaking lol.

Now, as a side note, the steak had been stored with some leftover rice, so we reheated that and added some tasty shiso furikake we'd also received from Umai Crate.

Which was also very tasty!

So how did the spaghetti taste?

The Butter and Soy Sauce Spaghetti tasted like heaven. Warm and buttery with that umami soy sauce undertone, it was a gloriously mellow experience. If I'd remembered to add some black pepper, it might have been even better, but utterly unseasoned (aside from the steak), it was still fantastic. The steak paired perfectly with the noodles, so it was overall a very good experience. I'd pay for that in a restaurant.

It was so good that I'm planning to look up a recipe for Soy Sauce and Butter spaghetti to make at home...

How about the furikake and rice?

Well, the rice was your standard grocery store rice that had been cooked several days prior and left to sit in the fridge. Once reheated (and with a bit of steak juice soaked in from the storage), it was pleasant on its own. I should mention that it's my mother's habit to add butter to a pot of rice as it steams and cools on the stovetop, so there was butter in this, too. The salty butter flavor was perfect with the herbal, ume plum-hinted flavor of this furikake, and it was fun to watch the white rice slowly get stained magenta.

If you ever see that particular kind of spaghetti in an Asian Market, absolutely pick it up! And, uh, if you accidentally buy too much, feel free to send one my way ;)

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 236: Quesadilla Madness

It's crunchy, it's cheesy, it's easy, it's a quesadilla!

My mother was awesome and made a whole roasted chicken last week, which meant that I had access to leftover chicken. Since we also had leftover veggies from burger-making on Labor Day (well, the day before, but close enough), I decided to use the onions, tomato, and peppers to make up a delicious chicken quesadilla.

Everything you need for a quesadilla. Except oil. I couldn't fit the oil in the shot.

First things first, prep your veggies! I fried mine up with a little pepper (since I couldn't find any of the taco spices I thought we had but didn't).

The way you know they're done is if they smell really good and they're softer than when you started!

Next, you want to pick your chicken apart into bite-sized pieces or shred it, depending on your preference. Some folks prefer to cube their chicken before they add it to their quesadilla. That sounds like more work than I'm into.

Also, I like the control of hand-separation. It means less veins.

Next, you re-oil your pan so that nothing sticks and put down your first taco shell/burrito shell/tortilla. I like to let my tortilla toast a tiny bit before I put the veggies and cheese down. I strongly suggest using a Mexican cheese like queso fresco or a fun cheese like jack, but we only had cheddar, so that's what I did. I also suggest putting a thin layer of cheese between your veg and your shell so that it anchors the veggies and chicken to the first shell. I didn't do this.

It still looks pretty darn good, though, doesn't it?

Next you level things off with your spatula. After things are relatively flat, you want to plop your second shell/tortilla on top and prepare to flip. This is the most annoying part. I always botch something. This time, some of the filling escaped and started burning, despite my having the pan on low heat.

It still looked delicious, though.

Once you're pretty sure the second side is toasted and your cheese has melted, you can flip your quesadilla onto a plate! This part is usually much easier due to the cheese holding things together.

Lovely!

The final steps are cutting and garnishing. Obviously, you can eat whatever you like with your quesadilla, but I like to have some salsa and sour cream. If I can get some, I also like to add a layer of refried beans inside the quesadilla to help hold things together, but that's before I cook the thing, so... doesn't count. I also like to have some sort of salad with it, but like the salsa and sour cream, we didn't have any. I had to mangle the quesadilla with a pizza cutter (use one hand to hold your food still while you cut with the other and it'll come out fine!) only to consume it nude.

The quesadilla was nude. Not me.

Even naked, though, this combination was delightful!

Since it was a day where I had some free time, I was able to take a video of this adventure:

I hope today's blog was as fun for you guys to check out as it was to make :)

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 233: Taiwan Mix Soba Sauce

An Umai Crate Adventure

I love exploring Asian cuisine via Umai Crate - they do not sponsor this blog by any means (though I wouldn't say no if they offered...). Every month, a new giant yellow box on my doorstep. Every month, oodles of noodles from Japan (though I've gotten plenty of Korean and Chinese dishes as well). Every month, deliciousness.

The meal I prepped for this blog was Taiwanese with a Japanese spin. I believe it was from the August 2019 crate. These noodles were served cold - which is always fun! Some time, I'd love to find a way to film the process of making cold noodles, because it's a blast, and I think you'd probably enjoy watching me flail around without a colander.

We didn't use the middle packet for this venture, figuring that a Yuzu sauce would be
a bit much on top of the already thick and rich Taiwanese sauce in the first bag.

I believe this is the very first time we've received meat in our Umai Crate, too, so this was an extra neat adventure!

This packet felt heavy and chunky, which sounds very unappealing, I know,
but it was actually pretty neat. Again, I don't think we've ever gotten anything
like this before in previous crates!

They're not soba, not really, but we love these Chinese noodles.
They're thick, salty, and really awesome hot or cold.

The first step in prepping most noodle dishes is, of course, to boil water. In this case, I boiled the water in a saucepan on a stovetop, but sometimes you can get away with a kettle. Here in the US, our power doesn't work the way it does in other countries, so it's actually faster to boil water on the stovetop in a teakettle than it is to get an electric kettle. I know that's not the case in the rest of the world, but like with our ridiculous Imperial measurements, we're too stubborn to get with it.

Here we see the water juuuuuust starting to simmer.

 After you get the water to a boil, add your noodles. I try to fan them out when I can, but... it's not always so easy to do that. If your noodles won't drop into a nice fan, just grab your cooking chopsticks (or, you know, a pasta spoon or whatever you're planning to stir with) and start moving those noodz around. You don't want them stuck to the bottom of the pan! Boy is that a pain to wash up after...

If you can find these Chinese Noodles, you're probably going to be a bit startled at just how... odd the water looks when you're done boiling them and making them soft.

The water in question.

The water from mine became this weird, thick, yellowish slurry that I assume was the result of different proteins cooking out of the noodles or something. Definitely dispose of this with the water running so it doesn't coat your pipes. You also want to start draining your noodles as soon as you feel like they're done enough (that's a subjective thing, dude - some like 'em stiff, others like 'em squishy).

For me, the process is a bit weird, since I don't use a colander. Instead, I just plop the noodles into a bowl and immediately begin rinsing them with cold water. This process is pretty simple, but it's also made complicated by the slipperiness of the noodz. Basically, I fill the bowl with cold water, swish the noodles around, and then carefully drain the water, repeating the process until the noodles are all cool to the touch. Then I gently squeeze the remaining water from the clump of noodles and dump the bowl out. Finally, I return the noodles to the bowl and let them relax, sometimes spreading them around with chopsticks if they're getting sticky.

Cold noodles in a bowl. This is where things really get started, flavor-wise.

Now that your noodles are situated in their environment, you want to get started adding flavor. Sometimes this means a broth or soup that you pour over the top or save off to the side. Sometimes you're adding veggies or meat at this stage. In this case, we had the Taiwanese Soba sauce.

This was a beautiful sauce in real life. It was shiny
and reddish brown with chunks of minced meat throughout.

I don't know if I could ever do the sweet, savory flavor of this sauce justice. Something like a barbecue flavor was balanced with a gentle soy undertone with just enough saltiness and spiciness to really keep you eating. This meal barely made it to the table and it was incredibly tasty. I could probably eat this five nights a week in the summer and be happy every single time.

So that's all from me today. Have any of you tried this or something like it? Let me know in the comments!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC