Go Crazy with Kimchi

Lake shot of the day

I woke up pretty sore from these last few days of running. I looked out the window, realized that I really didn't feel like going outside today (good thing I didn't, because it turned out to be really windy), so I went down to the weight room and did my usual 40 minutes on the elliptical while looking at some stupid book on colleges... I need big books that will stay open. Boring, but at least I got to sweat some.
Breakfast was amazing, if I do say so myself. I plan on eating this amazing gingerbread until it's gone, so I need to get creative here.
Gingerbread Parfait with Caramelized Apple Chutney, Greek Yogurt, and Cashew Butter
Sounds gourmet, no?
Basically, I just layered the ingredients with a drizzle of Whole Foods raw fresh cashew butter, which I'd never had before. Very mild, but refined. Delicious, in fact, but a completely different creature from peanut butter, which is attention-seeking and hogs the spotlight.
I heated the gingerbread first. It went great with my chutney, which has proven to be versatile! My dad ate it with chicken for lunch, and, just as I predicted, it makes a nice accompaniment to meat.
Lunch: leftovers! We must clean out that fridge! More of that seitan pie (now that I think about it, it really isn't a pot pie, because the crust isn't puff pastry and there's a bottom crust), spinach and more vegetables.

And a pear.

I went to the bookstore and bought:
-A better edition of Anna Karenina
-TALES OF BEETLE THE BARD, which I've already read. And all the proceeds are going to charity! Go Rowling!
-There was a 20% off cook book sale, but I couldn't find anything I wanted! I have more than enough cookbooks, but what I really want are some good Japanese, Korean, and African (not just North African) cookbooks.

I was a little hungry later on and had a bowl of Amy's chocolate vanilla bunnies with a little GoLean Crunch, half a banana, blackberries, and soymilk.

Therefore, I wasn't too hungry for dinner, but my dad and I cooked, and I'm really glad we did. We were thinking of just having more leftovers, but we ended up incorporating leftovers into what I made, which was bibimbap! I've never made Korean food at home, but it really wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. The only difficulty was stir-frying EVERY single topping separately. (Check out the awesome peanut oil-pouring shot!)


Toppings we used:
-Carrots
-Burdock (also known as mountain yam... it looks like an extra thick, hairy, brown carrot)
-Cucumber (But only the skins, which is interesting)
-Watercress
-Instead of beef, I used some "soy chicken" from Chinatown, which is basically just tofu rolled up to look like chicken... no TVP here. I seasoned it with sesame oil, soy sauce, sesame seeds, ginger, garlic, and a little sugar.
-Leftover mung bean sprouts
-Leftover Korean zucchini seafood-pancake (literally a tiny piece)-- we used this instead of a sunny side up egg
-MUSHROOMS
-and of course, kimchi.
-AND some pear-- this really evened out the spiciness


(All mixed together)
We microwaved leftover brown rice and mixed it with chili paste and sesame oil, then topped it with the vegetables... and more chili paste.
I ate the entire bowl, minus some of the soy chicken. The carrots and burdock were the best part-- they were a little burned, almost like shoestring potatoes or something!
Mm, this is one of those meals where I just don't want a dessert because I want to remember it. To get rid of that garlicky kimchi taste, I had a tangerine.

I finished Interview with the Vampire. How come nobody told me it was so philosophical and depressing? Any slightly more cheerful vampire stories? Or just good books in general?

Neighborhood eats again

Hyde Park really is improving (and if Obama is elected, who knows what changes will take place?)!
They've even opened a new gourmet foods store on 47th, Zeleski and Horvath. My mom also let me know that Experimental Station on 61st has an organic foods cafe! Who knew?
We still mainly eat dinner at home, but on those nights, especially after swim meets, where it makes more sense to drop by a cheap restaurant and get home by 7:30, my dad and I go out to eat.
We've agreed that Hyde Park's best food is found at the incredibly underrated and decently authentic Seoul Korea, or Cafe Corea... the name of the restaurant is still unclear, since the menu and neon sign tend to say different things...
It had been a while since we had actually eaten at the restaurant as opposed to just getting takeout, and I realized what a cute, family-run restaurant it is. It's run by a Korean couple, and the kitchen and fridge are out in the open. The menu shows that the variety of ingredients is somewhat limited, and yet they are able to turn out three or four pages of different dishes. Of course, a true Korean would turn up their nose at this restaurant compared to the BBQ places on Lawrence Ave, but who am I to complain?
We asked for the small plates of pickles, which are one of my favorite parts of Korean food: soy bean sprouts, spicy potatoes, kimchi, and daikon.
I was tempted by the seafood pancake, which I'd had before, but since we ended up ordering both noodle and rice dishes (CARB LOAD), I opted for my favorite appetizer: blanched spinach with an almost decadently sugary sesame sauce.
We ordered perfectly: we decided to order three dishes, despite there being two of us, and eat them family style. The three dishes were sufficiently different to keep the tastes interesting-- my dad ordered bibimbap (with meat), but i managed to steal some of the vegetables before everything got mixed together.
The other two dishes were a noodle soup with egg, seafood, and vegetables (carrots, onion, scallions). The noodles and octopus provided great chew, and the broth was mild and warming. I would have added hot sauce if the second dish hadn't been so incredibly spicy.
My dad was most impressed by the tofu, vegetable, egg, and kimchi stew (see what I mean about repetitive ingredients?), and I definitely understood why he would say so-- there was something extremely complex in the flavor of the broth and the intermingling of different textures. The spice was more complex than just being hot, and the kimchi was crunchy, while the dofu was tender (nen, as we say in Chinese). The stew had to be eaten with their sticky, short-grain white rice, which I love.
We managed to eat almost everything. Even as I write this I'm getting a craving for some more kimchi...

Some dinners

Stir-fried string beans, tofu with cabbage and dried shrimp (with red rice). Also a pickle-relish made with radishes, sugar and vinegar

Grilled scallops with tomatoes, stir-fried watercress, baked potatoes, and leftover Chinese corn cakes.

Middle Eastern takeout-- oh yeah.
Me: portabello mushroom burger and sweet potato. Parents: pasta with breakfast sausage. Also stir-fried eggs and cucumber.
Asian gathering at my friend Sherry's house!
Lots of meat things I couldn't eat, but a really delicious broiled salmon with mustard sauce, as well as a kind of squash (maybe kabocha) stir-fry with sichuan peppers!!!!!
PURPLE cauliflower with scallions, tofu and summer squash, pre-cooked brown rice and soybeans.
So-so catered dinner at our house: pan-Asian salad, pineapple coconut scallop skewers, ratatouille, polenta, a beef dish over seaweed salad, and various desserts.

Korean takeout while watching the vice presidential debate

Goodbye Beijing

To sum it up, here is what we mainly ate:

For breakfast I ate oatmeal and very occasionally Chinese-style (i.e. a sesame shaobing).

For lunch, we usually ordered fast, home-style dishes from downstairs, such as eggplant, stir fried eggs and tomatoes, Ma Po tofu without the meat, etc. etc.

If we were feeling slightly less lazy, we would eat at the restaurant in our building: again, simple, but more Cantonese-style food: fish head tofu soup, stir fried greens, and clay pots with mushrooms and five spice powder.

Other wonderful restaurants nearby:

A Xin Jiang noodle place. Xin Jiang food is basically Chinese-Middle Eastern fusion, so they eat flatbread (Nang, obviously the same root as the Indian naan) and hand-pulled noodles like extremely chewy, thick, spaghetti, which you can eat with tomato and egg, or eggplant, peppers, and garlic shoots for the vegetarian options. As a carnivore, they have a ton of meat options: lamb, sliced beef, you name it. Everything comes in huge portions and is just great to carb-load after a swimming workout. My dad once ordered something called shou zhua fan (rice to eat with your hands), that was basically a biryani/pilaf/fried rice hybrid. The rice was short grained, but stir fried with lamb, cumin, and dried apricots. It looked great. Recently, we also had the lightest dish of cabbage in broth with nothing but a little bit of dried shrimp and goji berries—the perfect restorative tonic. We also ordered a huge pot of soup (made vegetarian) with a base of spices and hot pepper, swimming with cubes of tofu, noodle scraps (that’s the only way I can think of to describe their shape), and vegetables. Last but not least, I sampled two sweet pumpkin dishes: one served with glutinous black rice in a sticky orange syrup, the second much less sweet, but filled with raisins, figs, and Chinese dates (jujubes)—that one was much better. I saved it the next day to eat for breakfast.

This restaurant I mentioned earlier—the one hidden away in the village part of our neighborhood that has yet to be modernized. Every time we went there, we would order ge da tang, soup thickened with lumps of dough, egg, wild vegetables and tomatoes. In addition to this, we would get the fabulous sesame pancakes, filled with a sandy, sticky and sweet sesame paste within a crispy flatbread. Even the simplest stir fried vegetables they did amazingly well, especially the mung bean sprouts, which were cooked with nothing besides Sichuan peppers, peppercorns, and a little vinegar. Two more great dishes that we tried: a variety of vegetables topped with an omelette (“vegetables covered with a quilt”) and smoked tofu with garlic shoots: usually smoked tofu is too hard, but this was soft and tasted more like bacon than anything I’ve had in years.

The dumpling place—I only came here once this year, but it’s great if you’re looking for something easy and quick. Pick a filling, any filling, and the weight you want (usually 2-3 ounces), in addition to some simple cold salads and you’re good to go. Some of the fillings they might have would be any combination of beef, lamb, chicken, or pork with any kind of vegetable, vegetable fillings with egg, and of course seafood dumplings. When I went, we got pork and cabbage, green bean, lotus root and egg, and lamb with scallion. Sometimes the simplest things are best, especially drenched with lots of vinegar.

Another dish I love is zhou: there's a specific place we went to for it: known for health benefits, rice porridge is a way to get a lot of volume for very few carbs. You can get it either salty or sweet. Some zhou I've ordered in the past is mushroom and broccoli zhou and boneless fish zhou. Of course, Korea and Japan have their own versions, where the rice is already cooked and added to a broth, whereas in China the rice is cooked slowly like oatmeal into a thick porridge.

Of course, we had the occasional Korean

or Japanese meal.

And I always found time to grab one of the yogurts on the street—Chinese yogurt, although you can get it in the store, is always better served in the ceramic jugs that you drink on the spot with a straw. More of a drink than Western yogurt, it’s only slightly sweetened and is a wonderful thirst-quencher.

So that’s it! I’ll miss you, Beijing… I’m also in for a shock when I find out how expensive everything is when I get back.