How can I be sad when I have breakfast, lunch, and dinner?
Before I had even moved into my new apartment, one of my friends gifted me an ice cream maker as a housewarming present. I'll admit that when I saw it, my first reaction was momentary panic because I had not planned for an ice cream maker to sit in my new (not-so-spacious) kitchen. But after my dad built me some shelves, I was able to find a spot for it to live.
It's a very thoughtful gift! Ga lemice cream is my favorite dessert, and I eat it three times a day.
...okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but I do eat ice cream pretty much every day. I don't think I eat that much of it, but it's nice to have as my breakfast, lunch, and dinner dessert.
I figured I should start with the most basic ice cream recipe, the "Simple Vanilla Ice Cream" that was listed in the manual. It was pretty easy to make and only had four ingredients: milk, heavy cream, sugar, and vanilla. I let it churn for about 25 minutes, and it thickened a bit and it was kinda cool!
So this Cuisinart ice cream maker claims to be able to make ice cream ✨ in under 30 minutes ✨ Except that's a LIE. First, you need to make sure the ice cream bowl has been sitting in the freezer for 24 hours. And even if you discount that time, you still need to freeze it for several hours after it's done churning in order for it to have a good ice cream consistency.
But that's okay. I'm living life slowly these days so I can wait a whole day for some ice cream. So after it was done churning, I tried a little spoonful and I put it in the freezer until the next morning. It tasted like vanilla ice cream! I didn't love the texture, but I thought it was a success.
You know what makes it even better, though? Oreos. I LOVE oreos in my ice cream. I bought a small pack of them and I crushed one up and mixed it in (just like Cold Stone!). I should crush up an oreo every time I scoop myself a bowl of ice cream.
So I decided that I would try making cookies 'n cream next. And it's basically the same as making vanilla, I just add crushed oreos to the churner for the last five minutes of it. I only used four oreos (because I had an individually wrapped snack pack), and I think it could have used one more. Recipes online will typically tell you to use a knife to chop the oreo into chunks, but I prefer to just put it in a plastic bag and smash it with something heavy enough.
I lied in this video! I actually only let it churn for twenty minutes! I don't think it really made a difference in the texture of the ice cream though. I enjoyed it, but I'll definitely want to switch up the recipe next time. I really want to try and create a creamier texture, and I think I want to try incorporating some egg yolk next!
Guys, the day has finally come.
After 6 years (!!) of searching, I am finally able to eat mue pue ou nam糜配烏欖 - congee with black olives!
So I need to talk about these ou nam烏欖 - black olives. They're black and football shaped. They're very salty, but they don't taste anything like your black olive that you find on a pizza or a charcuterie board. And you have to get them whole, with the pit still inside.
Back when I was little, you could easily find cans of ou nam at the Asian grocery store. But at some point, I guess they stopped shipping them to the US? When I asked my Soy Go細姑 - aunt (dad's youngest sister) about trying to find them back in 2022, she told me something like "Child! Don't waste your time! They don't sell them anymore!" BUT I KEPT LOOKING. Every time I went into an Asian grocery store, I'd look for them. Whenever strangers online posted about them, I'd respond and ask them where they got them. I basically never talked to strangers online, but I always made an exception for ou nam.
I heard a lot of crazy theories from people about why ou nam are so hard to find in the US. They're too salty and too unhealthy. They cause cancer. I don't know. The thing is, I knew they still existed somewhere. They were even featured on a Netflix documentary about Teochew food! See that? Olives were the very first episode.
But after six years of searching and not finding anything, I really thought I was going to have to travel to China just to get some ou nam. And then just a month ago, I visited my dad's family and I talked to my Soy Sim細嬸 - aunt (dad's youngest brother's wife), and she told me she's seen them at the market somewhere in California. "Why didn't you ask me?" 😅
She started searching on Weee! and she pulled up a page and showed it to me, and yeah, there it was, and they were able to deliver them to my apartment. I had never heard of Weee! before, but apparently they've existed since 2015.
So we placed an order, and it actually took over three weeks to get them delivered to me. I had honestly completely forgotten about it when a mysterious little box showed up in front of my door. I'm used to getting ou nam in a can, so I was surprised to see them in vacuum-sealed bags! Soy Go seems to think this is better though. I mean, it certainly seems a lot easier and safer to transfer these little bags than it would be to transfer cans or jars.
Because they're so salty, they're usually eaten with mue糜 - porridge/congee. Plain mue. I know I've mentioned a few times already that I LOVED eating mue as a child, and even today, I think I could eat mue every day and not be sick of it.
It had been a while since I last made beh mue白糜 - plain ('white') congee, but the process is pretty simple. You just wash a cup of rice and add maybe 4-5 cups of water and boil that. Once it's boiling, lower the heat so it's at a simmer, and keep it cooking until it's at the consistency you like. I actually prefer my mue to be a little thicker and less jui jui水水 - watery.
And you guys know I love lah bhah臘肉 - cured meat as well, right? When I last visited my mom's family, Gong公 - grandpa would cook mue and lah bhah and have that for lunch every day! (And you know I am more than happy to eat this for lunch every day) Lah bhah is typically made with pork belly, but he also prepares other meats in a similar way. Before I left, he made sure to give me some lah bhah to take home ❤️
I've been having many meals of mue and ou nam and lah bhah for the past couple of weeks! I really don't ever get tired of it.
I feel like I want to try to have more of my favorite dishes from childhood. Because...can you believe ou nam is actually not my favorite thing to eat with mue? (Well, you'd know this already if you read my blog posts pretty closely) But that's a post for another day.
First of all, I've replaced the old header text on the site with a new handmade graphic! You can tell it's handmade because it looks like a 5 year old wrote it (well, a 5 year old that likes loopy l's). Even so, I took an embarrassingly long time working on it. I'll probably try to make a nicer graphic in the future, but this is good enough for today. Oh, but it only shows up on larger screens, so if you're on a phone, please check out my site on your computer!
Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled programming...
Shortly after my dad's and cousin's visit to help me move into my apartment, I was left with a slightly-larger-than-usual amount of ginger. And I was talking to my sister about it:
It's like, too much ginger for most stir fries, and not enough ginger for chicken, but the right amount for salmon
Jeje姐姐 - big sister, I know exactly what you mean
I'm glad she gets it, because I'm not sure anyone else would.
I normally buy ang heu紅魚 - 'red fish' (salmon) from Aldi, but I was feeling a little fancy (and a little lazy) and I wanted to actually be able to eat the skin. The Aldi skin-on salmon is never de-scaled and de-scaling fish is kind of a mess. So I went to Giant Eagle, and I saw that their frozen sashimi grade salmon was on sale for $4.99 for an 8oz fillet!
I'm used to eating steamed salmon with ginger, but I decided I would try something a little different and cook it on the pan. I followed this crispy scallion ginger salmon recipe from Woks of Life because it sounded pretty straightforward, and I swear I've successfully luah烙 - pan fried salmon before, even though I cannot find evidence of it on this blog. 🧐
Well, I must have forgotten, because I totally burned these. I think I was still getting used to my new stove being hotter than I expect. I also didn't make it easy on myself because I used my stainless steel pan instead of my non-stick. I was so worried about it sticking to the pan (but it didn't!) and I think the recipe calls for way more oil than you need because I ended up with a splatter-y mess and I was kind of freaking out.
Okay, maybe the mess was actually because I didn't let the salmon fillets fully thaw before cooking them 😬 Man, what am I even doing?!
Hey, but when you throw all the toppings on top, you don't even notice how burnt it is! And even though the skin is overcooked, I actually way undercooked this salmon. It's basically raw in the middle. But this is the same salmon that I use for poke so I don't really care. In fact, it's preferable this way. (Side note, I dislike seared tuna. Why even bother searing it at all)
I thought the recipe was way saltier than it needed to be, but the fish itself was ho jiah好食 - delicious.
I wanted to try making this again, with adjustments. I figured it would be easier if I just cooked one piece of salmon and cut the recipe in half. But when I got to Giant Eagle, the sashimi grade salmon was on sale for EVEN CHEAPER! It was now $3.99 a piece! pin si便死 - extremely cheap! I had to buy two!
I still only cooked one of them though. I had to make this a little easier on myself. But I still used my stainless steel pan, and I really should have just gone with the non-stick. So I completely omitted the salt, and I also cut the amount of oil in half, and I think those were good changes! But I still ended up burning the salmon!
I did some researching on Reddit afterwards, and it sounds like it might have been better if I cooked the salmon on medium-low instead of medium-high or medium. I'll have to try that next time, but e jua下匝 - next time might be a while from now because I got a little sick of seared (burnt) salmon. I did still have that extra salmon fillet though, so I made some poke! I could never get sick of poke.
And I didn't want to be wasteful, so I took the unused piece of salmon skin and I even fried that up! Using my non-stick pan!
It was hoh sou好酥 - quite crispy and a very nicely cooked piece of salmon skin.
Earlier this year, I went on a family vacation to California and we all ate at a restaurant called Phoholic. And I don't know why this surprised me, but the restaurant served nothing but phở. I'm used to going to a pho restaurant and seeing lots of different Vietnamese dishes, so I was so thrown off by this. And my go-to Vietnamese dish to order is not pho--it's pork chops.
Ideally, I would go halfsies with another person and one of us would order pho and the other person would order pork chops. But I wasn't able to do that this time. The pho was pretty good, but I admit I felt a little disappointed. So when I saw a recipe for Vietnamese pork chops I decided that I would try making it myself.
I was really excited to try this after I saw that sweetened condensed milk is used in the marinade! The only thing I ever really use condensed milk for is Vietnamese coffee and it is always so exciting to have another use for an ingredient.
Unfortunately, she cooks her pork chops in an air fryer and I don't have an air fryer. In fact, I have an irrational dislike of air fryers, and I felt like I was going to start a fire the last couple of times I've used one. But I don't want to get into that today. She mentions that you can cook it on the stove instead, so that's what I did.
And yes, it was indeed a very splatter-y mess! But it was tasty! I made a second batch and cooked those in the oven instead. It was much easier cleanup, and it still tasted good, but it was so pale.
I don't really think you need to add more flavor to this meat, but restaurants will always give you a side of dipping fish sauce. Since I already had all the ingredients I needed for it, I figured I'd make some. It's not nước chấm, maybe it's more Cambodian style, I don't exactly know, but it's the way my mom makes heu jui魚水 - fish sauce:
And you just boil the water and mix everything in. Easy peasy. Makes your house smell like fish sauce which might be undesirable to some, but I kinda like the smell.
One of the things I liked the most about this meal was actually the oily scallions. I don't know why I never thought to just microwave chopped scallions in oil. I sprinkled just a touch of salt on top and it was SO good. I should have tripled the amount of scallions.
But in order to get the full experience, I needed to have some pickled veggies. When I was younger, I actually never ate the vegetables that came with my pork chops. I just completely ignored them. What was wrong with me?! Why didn't my parents make me try them?!
So I looked up a pickled carrot and daikon recipe and even though it was a lot of cutting, it was pretty easy to make. They also lasted me a while. I was happy to have them when my dad visited because he loves pickles.
For my third and final batch of this, I mixed it up a bit and cooked chicken! I went back to cooking the meat on the stove, which was a little bit messy during cooking and such a pain to clean up afterwards. But it was worth it!
