#nibblesandbites

[loopscarvesnelfboots]

Nibbles and Bites: Kimchi Jiggae [Kimchi Stew]

What do you do with a handful of kimchi, a package of ramen, a big handful of spinach, one whole onion (small onion), one potato and pork??

Well, my title is a dead giveaway, so good job! Yes, kimchi jiggae is right. A common dish in Korean households, kimchi jiggae is delicious, easy to make, and can be molded to suit your tastes and your ingredients on hand. What I mean by this is that there are a lot of ingredients that you can include or not include based on what you like to eat. I had lots of spinach, so I added spinach. I also wanted to eat potatoes, so I added potatoes (sorry to all Koreans out there who are shocked by my untraditional ways...forgive me!!). At the end of this post, I will post some other suggestions on what you can add to the pot that I did not add.

So cut your veggies and meat up. I did cubes for potatoes, and slices for the pork. And I cut the onions pretty small but you can cut it however you would like it. In your main pot, add water to the pot, based on how much stew you want. I did half the pot. Add a handful of kimchi onto the pot (more or less based on how much spice you can take, you can also add spicy pepper paste to make it more spicy and yummy) and let the water boil. After the water starts boiling, add in the potatoes. Marinate your pork in soy sauce and sugar for 15 minutes and then fry that in a pan with onions until they're almost fully cooked (you're going to boil it in the pot for awhile as well). Add that into the pot and then add the package of ramen noodles (the sauce packages are unnecessary). After that's been cooking for a bit, add the spinach finally! Make sure the noodles are done cooking and you're ready to turn the heat off and eat eat eat! Make sure you get some side dishes to enjoy along with this delicious stew! I have my preserved radish which is sweet and refreshing. And of course, milk! Definitely a must for those who have low heat tolerance.

Other ingredients to consider:

1. Egg

Especially if you have low spicy tolerance, eggs are a blessing in kimchi stew. In fact, I was originally going to add an egg into my stew, but I completely forgot about it! But seriously, when you bite into the egg yolk, it counteracts the spiciness of the stew and it's the perfect feeling. You must try it sometime!

2. Tofu

Yum yum tofu! What would our korean dish be without tofu?? Unfortunately, I only have one block in my house right now and I must save ALL of it for my tofu stew coming up next week!!! I definitely prefer soft tofu over firm tofu, but, do what you like!

3. Mushrooms

I confess. I detest mushrooms with a passion. I really tried to eat it, but I really don't enjoy the taste. But if you like them, by all means, add them! Bring more pleasure to your eating.

4. Green Onion

The universal ingredient to make food yummier! I actually did not have any on hand, so I somewhat substituted normal onions, next time, green onions for sure!

5. No ramen

I believe the more traditional way to enjoy kimchi jiggae is to not add ramen noodles and to cook rice instead and eat those two together. And it is a delicious combo! So if you're a rice fan, go for it!

6. No meat

For you vegetarians or people who don't enjoy meat. Or maybe you just don't have any meat on hand. No worries! This dish tastes just as delicious without the meat!

Hope you guys enjoyed that and happy eating! For all you people who enjoy kimchi jiggae, what do you put in your kimchi jiggae?

[loopscarvesnelfboots]

Nibbles and Bites: Green Eggs and Spam!

Hello, it's me again! I've been up to a lot more cooking this past week or so, so I finally have time to share my most recent accomplishments! And the chief ingredient of today's food is spam! I will not try to convey the healthiness of spam, since it is probably ridiculously high in sodium and a lot of other preservatives and not so good stuff, but I will say for those of you who have never had it before, it is DELICIOUS! And I just so happened to have a can of it in the fridge so of course I was dying to use it! I think the classic dish for spam other than spam musubi is just to fry it with onions and eggs and eat it. But my sister randomly said green eggs and ham, and so I was inspired to make this dish more healthy by adding spinach into the mix! And eat it with white rice and ketchup. Yummmm.

It's very basic. You just have to cut everything up and fry it together in a pan with oil. Some tips however if you would like to replicate this dish yourself. After making this, I felt like the spam was overpowering everything else in the dish, so I would say if you use a full can of spam, use at least 3 eggs (I used 2) and if you are using the big store bought onions, you probably only need half an onion. Also, concerning the order in which you cook everything, add spam first and make sure it's almost completely cooked before you add in onions. Otherwise the onions will burn like crazy. Then add eggs and the spinach last. I think there are recipes where you can ground up the spinach and add it to egg which will make a real Green Eggs and Spam dish!

On a side note, what was most exciting about this dish was that the onion is from my own garden! There is such a great satisfaction in being able to go to your backyard right before you cook and digging out a fresh onion from the ground for your recipe! And of course it saves money and is organic too! Do you use any vegetables fresh from your backyard in your cooking? 

[loopscarvesnelfboots]

Nibbles and Bites: Salmon Time!

Okay, don't be like me...don't play with your food while you're preparing it! Well, one of my favorite foods to eat nowadays is salmon and so I wanted to share how we prepare it in my family. This recipe is super easy and quite tasty as well. All you need is a salmon fillet (remember, WILD ALASKAN!! More expensive, but soo much better than fish farmed for reasons I will not expand on right now...), black pepper, sliced garlic (2-3 cloves), 1/2 cup of maple syrup, and 1/2 cup of soy sauce. 

So wash your fillet and scale the fish first! This is probably my favorite part as you can tell from the picture XD. Once you're done with that, put the salmon in a pan (probably 13x9) and sprinkle black pepper onto both sides of the fillet. I don't know exactly how much you need, but I spread it pretty liberally. Take your maple syrup and soy sauce and mix it together in a bowl. It's important to mix it before you pour it onto the salmon because you want the flavor to be even throughout. Pour your mixture onto the salmon and put half the garlic on the fish. Let it sit for 10 minutes or so and then flip the salmon over, put the rest of the garlic on top and let it sit for another 10 minutes. And you're ready to bake the salmon! When you're baking, make sure that the flesh of the salmon is on top and that the skin on the side facing the pan. So just pop your salmon into the oven on 400 degrees for about 20 minutes and you're ready to feast!

Note: If you bake the salmon this way, the flavor is very strong and very sweet. So if you like your salmon more savory (ie, mayonnaise and lemon) or you don't like heavy flavors with your fish, this is not the method for you! Hope you try this recipe and enjoy it!

[loopscarvesnelfboots]

Nibbles and Bites: All Things Sweet and Yummy

I made almond jelly today! What a perfect summer dessert to enjoy, sweet and scrumptious! If you've never had this Taiwanese treat before, you should definitely try it sometime soon! It's super simple to make. You just buy almond gelatin mix from an asian (Chinese probably) supermarket and follow the instructions on the back. It works just like jell-o! After you've cooled it in the fridge, cut it up in squares, add fruit, and make a float with it by adding sprite! So goodd :). They also have mango flavored gelatin nowadays, but personally, I prefer the almond one! Eat up! 

[loopscarvesnelfboots]

Nibbles And Bites: Independence

I'm celebrated my independence...by waking up and making whatever food first pops into my head with what little ingredients I have at home! And for some reason, I decided I wanted to eat Korean potato stew (aka, Kamja Kuk), so that is what I made. The result...was very different from the recipe that I followed, but it was pretty good...

The main concept behind this dish is boiling vegetables in chicken broth until the vegetables are soft. So I added potatoes, carrots, onions, tofu, and woodear mushroom. And then you add pepper for flavoring.

I think my main problems with this dish came from the fact that I had limited amounts of chicken broth and I added too much pepper, so most of the broth was gone by the time the vegetables were soft enough to eat. And the taste of pepper was very apparent while eating this dish. Which could be good and could be bad depending on who you are. I really wish I made rice to eat with this though. I think that would've been so delicious! Rice with a light vegetable stew for breakfast :). Yum yum!

[loopscarvesnelfboots]

Nibbles And Bites: Curry Up!

My friend came to visit our lovely San Jose for the week and so for the first night, we decided to make curry! Golden...curry, of course! I've actually never been a huge fan of curry before, but honestly, my friend makes some awesome curry! Plus it's relatively simple and as I've found before, cooking curry is a great way to bond! Our curry below!

So for our curry, we used 5 potatoes (cubed), 2 carrots (cut into quarters), 1/2 onion, and 1 package of beef (actually not sure of the amount, but it was a package from Safeway...just add how much meat you like!). Feel free to use whatever meat you like as well. Marinate the meat in soy sauce and sugar for about 15 minutes.

Once you have everything cut up and prepared, get a large pot and first add the potatoes and carrots. Let it cook for awhile and when the potatoes start to get a bit cooked, add the meat. Make sure to stir often. You're going to add the onions last.

* Note:My friend says that she adds the onions last because she doesn't want the onions to caramelize too much...so depending on what consistency you like your onions, you might want to add vegetables in different order. Also make sure not to cook everything completely because you're still going to have to add water and the curry into the pot and let it stew for awhile.

To be honest, I didn't pay attention to the last few steps too much...I know there was water adding involved, and then I would assume that you add the curry in afterwards. Then let it boil. Don't listen to me though. But I'm sure that the package has the instructions so follow that! But this is the result!:

Yummy yummy! And of course since my friend is Korean, of course we must have plenty of delicious side dishes. And that means kimchi!!! I got to cut the kimchi for the first time ever...and it wasn't hard, but it was quite exciting!

This was seriously the most amazing curry ever, and that's coming from a person who really does not like curry. I'm definitely going to try cook this for people sometime since it's so easy, but at the same time, ridiculously delicious! Here's our crew getting ready to eat! :)

[loopscarvesnelfboots]

Nibbles and Bites: Tune A Fish?

I have to start off with a rant today. I was going to do it yesterday since the same thing happened, but I restrained myself. But two days in a row is a bit of a stretch so here it goes. I totally wrote basically this entire post already and I left my computer on because I had to go to church, and when I got back, my account was logged out. Thanks Dad...thanks. This is the second day in a row! Not to mention that I had a lot of tabs that I needed to save for summer DIY projects that I need to refind now. Why doesn't Firefox have the "Save Tabs and Quit" option anymore? Because I could use it right now. Anyway...

To be honest, I am quite discouraged by my failed omelet attempt. And because of that, I have been reluctant to do any big cooking projects and instead have opted for simple and yummy. While still being able to utilize those skills that I refer to as "cooking." So today I decided to make apple tuna sandwiches! It may not sound that good to you, but it amazingly delicious (at least to me!). This was actually a recent recipe that I found out about through my good friend and future roommate at UCLA and I am so thankful for it! Since it's really easy to make, I'm just going to share the recipe so that everyone can enjoy it. Especially if you're in a bit of a time crunch and just want something simple, but good and wholesome to eat. Here we go!

So as the title suggests, an apple tuna sandwich is a sandwich with apple and tuna inside. So the only ingredients you need to make this are bread (I totally recommend white because I love white bread, but we only eat wheat bread in my house, so Oroweat it is!), canned tuna, mayonnaise, and an apple (I use Fujii apples because it's sweet and crisp which contrasts with the tuna which is more mushy, so the taste comes out really nice and clear...but I haven't used any other apple before, so feel free to experiment!).

Have the ingredients ready? Well, you're essentially halfway done already! From here, drain the water from the tuna, put it in a bowl and mix it with mayonnaise. the proportion of tuna to mayonnaise is basically up to you. I put a bit less this time so it wasn't as creamy. Afterwards, peel the apple and dice it into really small pieces. I used a little bit less than half the apple with one can of tuna, but I think you could definitely add a bit more or less if you want. Add the apples to the mixture and mix well, being careful that you don't mush up the apples.

From there, add the mixture into your bread and make it into a sandwich! I recommend adding a lot of the tuna mix into your sandwich or else it will just taste like bread. Which is not the point of the recipe. And enjoy! Goes well with milk, I decided today! Enjoy! Sorry my pictures don't look the most appetizing. I need to work a bit on my photography skills...