Comfort food

January 10, 2025 9:10 PM

Well, I still haven't gotten over this sickness that started over the holidays. I haven't felt terrible, but my throat has been sore and there's some extra nasal congestion. I'm pretty okay during the day most days, but night time is the worst. I'm going to have a lot more free time now, so I'm hoping I can sleep in a little more and finally get better.

Anyway, since I've been sick, I've been wanting to eat more comfort food, and in my mind, comfort food is not only comforting to eat, but it's also comforting to make. It might not be a quick meal, but it's an easy one where I can relax and you know, not flail in my kitchen.

One of my go-to easy and satisfying breakfasts is to make some dumpling soup. And while I do like wrapping my own dumplings, I always go with some store bought mini dumplings for my dumpling soup. I like mini dumplings because I can't eat a regular sized dumpling in one bite. And it's awkward to have to cut your dumplings even smaller when you're eating them in a soup. (Okay, I'll admit, I still cut up the mini dumplings in my soup)

All I do is boil 10 or so dumplings, and then I throw in some sauces to give it some flavor. I usually end up adding:

• Black vinegar
• Light and dark soy sauces
• "Granulated Chicken Flavor Soup Base Mix" (It's basically chicken flavored MSG. This gigantic container is enough to last a life time)
• and a dash of something spicy (right now that's this "Sichuan Gold" sauce that I got from a Hot Ones box)

I taste it and maybe add a little more of something. Then I top it with some scallions and/or cilantro.

It's so good, and such a nice way to start my day.

So in the past when I've made Japanese style curry, I've always included chicken and I made it with curry powder (not Japanese curry powder so who knows how Japanese this really was). But I had seen other people just buy those curry blocks and I figured I would give it a try because it sounds so much easier! And at a local meetup last year, someone had brought some curry and they used tofu, and ever since then I had been wanting to try tofu in this instead.

I'm sure I could have just tried to make a similar recipe as the chicken one, but I'm really bad at throwing things together, so I googled "golden curry with tofu" and the first thing that comes up is a reddit post which linked to this Vegan Japanese Tofu Curry recipe, and it sounded so good and I had to try it. (Also I seriously appreciate that this recipe webpage is simple and has no ads and doesn't totally drain my phone battery while I'm viewing it)

I actually first tried it a few months ago, but I keep going back to it because it really is so good. I mostly follow the recipe as-is, but I actually halve the amount of curry blocks, and I think it's plenty flavorful. I also use chicken bouillon instead of veggie just because that's what I have. But I'm definitely going to keep this in mind as a potential vegan dish to make if I need one.

It required a little extra attention to fry up the tofu because I'm flipping every single one of these tofu cubes one by one just to make sure I brown as many sides as possible, but there's something nice and relaxing about standing at the stove and seeing the tofu slowly get nice and golden.

I always pop one of the tofu cubes in my mouth before I throw the rest into the curry. The final result is so comforting and so delicious.

Finally, I wanted to share some mac n cheese that I made. I love making mac n cheese. One of my go-to mac n cheese recipes is from Budget Bytes. The recipe actually has pretty mixed reviews, but I think it's great every time I make it. And I like that I can use up a little bit of hot sauce in it.

Making mac n cheese definitely takes patience. You have to make a roux in the beginning and you need to keep stirring the milk+flour+butter mixture until it thickens. When you start stirring it, it seems like it's going nowhere, but slowly and surely it thickens up and then you can start mixing in the cheese. I don't know, maybe I just like to keep mixing things.

I decided to actually throw this one in the oven after I was done putting it all together on the stove. Sometimes baked mac n cheese can get a little too dry, but this one had so much cheesy sauce. Adding the extra shredded cheese and letting it broil (and watching it broil the whole time so it doesn't burn!) was definitely a nice touch. But next time I'll try to remember breadcrumbs!

Using up what I have

January 7, 2025 10:42 PM

So I had most of a lemon sitting in my fridge for the past week because it was left over from my hummus and my green beans. I really could have gotten by with a single lemon that day, but I ended up buying two, and here I was with 4/5 of a lemon. I was struggling to find a creative use for this lemon, so I decided to make more hummus.

I just stuck with regular hummus today, but man, homemade hummus is so good even without any fun add ins. The only thing it was missing was some pita bread. I ate it with cucumbers instead, and even though I don't really love cucumber, I had half a cucumber in my fridge so I figured I should try to get through it.

I actually was originally going to make some Mediterranean hummus bowls, but I ended up pivoting to something else entirely after I bought some queso fresco and one of those pre-marinated pork butts from Aldi.

I had a lot of random ingredients in my fridge, so I decided to try to use those up rather than buy even more stuff. Pulled pork and queso fresco is kind of Mexican leaning I guess? Maybe I could make a burrito bowl! I had some lettuce, a tomato, some onions. This could work.

I did end up buying a container of sour cream and a lime from the store today because I thought that this needed some sort of sauce. I thought about making a salsa, but a lime crema seemed easier so I ran with that.

I also ended up pickling the onions because I had some red wine vinegar and I figured this could give my bowl some extra flavor.

What I didn't include was rice. For once in my life, I actually don't have any cilantro and I didn't feel like buying any more. I did have some potatoes though. So uh, I guess that's the starch in this dish. I've been wanting to roast potatoes with mayonnaise for a while, and even though that doesn't really make any sense with the rest of the ingredients I just rolled with it.

Okay, these potatoes were actually so good. I didn't follow a recipe or measure anything, but I threw in some mayo, some garlic, some thyme, some paprika, some salt, some pepper, and the rest of a container of dried rosemary that I've had for who knows how many years. And then I roasted it. Maybe one day I'll post a proper recipe of this.

As far as the dish as a whole? Eh, it was kind of weird. Honestly, the worst part was the pulled pork. I felt like it was way too salty and kind of overcooked, but maybe the overcooked part is my fault. But I did still eat everything that I put in my plate-bowl, and then I munched on more potatoes when I was done.

Kimchi spring rolls

January 7, 2025 12:09 AM

I often decide on a dish to make because of a single ingredient that I have that I want to use up. A few weeks ago, that ingredient was a bell pepper. I was looking at bell pepper recipes on Budget Bytes, and I had honestly made most of them before, but one of them seemed pretty different, kimchi spring rolls.

Now I make spring rolls all the time. And I think my spring rolls are pretty darn good, but sometimes it's nice to switch it up and try other fillings. The recipe is labeled as an appetizer. It's pretty light, and it's vegan. Of course I didn't actually make it vegan. I had a small amount of imitation crab left over from another dish, so I added that into the spring rolls. It was pretty good! The kimchi filling was interesting, in a good way. The only thing I didn't love was the dipping sauce, which I thought was way too salty, and I ended up adding extra agave into it to try and balance it out more.

I used up all the imitation crab in one meal, so when I had it again a couple of days later, it really was vegan! I told my aunt about my meal and she said "No meat?! Child, does it even taste good?" Yeah, I told her of course it tastes good and you don't need to eat meat during every meal.

I actually hadn't taken a single bite of my spring roll yet, but after eating one I thought "...this could use some meat" 😅

So more recently, I wanted to use up the rest of my kimchi and peanut butter, so I made another batch of that kimchi filling. And I also bought fresh shrimp from Aldi because this spring roll tastes better when it's got some protein. For a while, I avoided buying Aldi's fresh shrimp because I didn't fully trust it. I don't know why, because I always buy their fresh salmon, and I think it's great. When I finally did buy their shrimp, it turned out great!

As I opened the shrimp this time, I took a long hard stare at it and I also sniffed it really closely. It had a slight smell to it. I had bought some Aldi shrimp a couple of weeks ago and I waited a couple of days to cook it, but I ended up trashing it because it smelled off. This was kind of similar. But the smell wasn't as strong and I only noticed it if I put my face real close to it. I decided to just risk it and cook it. After I cooked it, I took a bite of one. It was alright. Not amazing, but it tasted like shrimp.

I don't think I fully trusted this shrimp though. I kept inspecting it some more and sniffing it. Inside of the spring roll, I barely noticed the shrimp and those tasted fine. But it was still bugging me too much, and after I ate three spring rolls with shrimp, I decided to take out my teriyaki chicken and put that in the fourth roll instead.

Anyway, that was a few days ago, and I feel fine and I never got a stomachache, so I guess that shrimp was perfectly fine. I made another batch of spring rolls yesterday, and I ate more of the shrimp. I even ate a little bit more today, but I ended up not finishing it all. I think I might be avoiding Aldi's fresh shrimp again.

Questionable shrimp aside, these spring rolls were pretty good!

Teriyaki chicken and stir fried broccoli

January 4, 2025 12:00 PM

In order to use up the rest of that piece of ginger, I decided to make some teriyaki chicken and broccoli. Trying a Made with Lau recipe always feels like I'm cooking on expert mode, but the results area always really great so I figured it would be good on a Friday night where I have more time. In order to prepare, I made sure to watch the youtube video the night before and take notes in my journal.

And yes, it was time consuming. I still feel like stir fries are some of the hardest things for me to make. I had to wash the broccoli in a special way, cut it up, and blanch it before I got to the actual stir frying part. I ended up using so many pots and pans (especially because I also needed one for the chicken).

But it was really tasty so I think it was worth it.

I thought that cooking the chicken would be easier, and I guess it was a little easier, but I still struggled to give it a nice dark brown color. If I make it again, I think I'll marinate it in a bag instead and make sure to jostle the chicken around more so the marinade really gets into all of the pieces of chicken.

I also thought about doing the whole, cooking two things at once, but I am not at that level, so I actually finished cooking the chicken before I started cooking the broccoli, which meant having to microwave the chicken right before eating it. It's okay, still tasted good.

And I'm trying to embrace my new philosphy of living life as inefficiently as possible so it's okay that dinner takes me a while to make.

Mapo tofu

January 4, 2025 12:08 AM

I've been really into cooking tofu lately. In the past I would look at a tofu recipe, but I would replace the tofu with chicken, and honestly? I don't know why I did that. Tofu usually tastes better. And it's cheaper! It's only $1.55 for a block of tofu at Aldi! I think that's cheaper than the Asian stores around here!

So for a while I wanted to try making some mapo tofu. I've actually never had mapo tofu from a restaurant before. But a couple of my friends have made it and shared it with me and it was pretty good when they made it, so I wanted to try it myself. I decided to follow the recipe from Woks of Life, which claims that it's

the true blue, authentic real deal—the spicy, tongue-numbing, rice-is-absolutely-not-optional, can't-have-just-one-scoop mapo tofu that you get in the restaurants

Sounds a little scary actually 😬

Well, first I had to buy some spicy bean sauce. I initially looked in one of the local Korean grocery stores because it's nearby, and they were selling really large jars of it, and there was no way I was buying that much spicy bean sauce when the recipe called for 2 tablespoons at most. I ended up buying the smallest container I could find from another Asian store. It was 6 oz and I ended up making mapo tofu at least 4 times to get through it all! But I finally did today (actually yesterday, I'm just publishing this late), and I even used up some of that ginger.

The first time I made this, I tried to follow the recipe as closely as possible. The only things I changed were

• using extra firm tofu rather than silken (it's all Aldi sells)
• omitting the fresh Thai bird chili peppers
• and adding a little bit of Chinese five spice because another recipe called for it, and I really have no idea how I'm going to use up all of this five spice

And man was it peppercorn-y. SO PEPPERCORN-Y. I guess some people like the numbing effect, but I want maybe a hint of numbing. Not this.

It was also really oily. I think it's supposed to be like that, but it's a little too much for me.

So the next time I made it, I cut the amount of oil in half and decided to just cook it all in one pan. I would make the chili oil first, and then just leave it there to cook the rest of the dish with. I also cut the amount of peppercorn to 1 teaspoon.

These changes were good! But I think that keeping that chili oil in the pan the whole time made the dish really spicy. And I honestly don't handle super spicy foods all that well. Maybe it was this spicy the first time I made it, but I was so distracted by the peppercorn that the spicy-ness didn't hit me as hard.

So I kept making this and lowering the number of dried chilies, but it was still way too spicy. I also tried using silken tofu one time, but that really did just all fall apart.

So today, I told myself I would not put any dried chilies in this dish so it would not be spicy at all.

Okay, maybe one wouldn't hurt. I do have a really large bag of these dried chili peppers. Actually, two shouldn't be so bad...maybe three.

Nope, I made this too spicy again. At least I've finally used up the can of spicy bean sauce.