nakji

Yes! yesyesyes! I haven't made this soup in ages, thanks for putting it back on my radar. This and that New York Times article LindaK mentioned on asian chicken soups has put me in the mood for a big bowl of fragrant soup. and Bring up another soup question - how do you like to garnish your soups? I like a bit of pesto, olive oil, or yogurt, but I'd never thought of vinegar before.

I had a standard cup of Itoen green tea - my first in about a month. It was perfect and palate-clearing with my bento. It gave me quite the caffeine kick, too.

I think this pretty much every time I step out my door and look around my neighborhood. This is a phenomenon I have witnessed again and again throughout my travels in Asia. Westerners will joyfully eat something merely because it is delicious, like cheesecake or pizza; and while we know it's a caloric dirty bomb, most people shrug it off. In Asia, on the other hand, people will joyfully eat something merely because it's healthy. I can't count the number of times when I've been confronted with a table full of live octopuses/silkworm grubs/cobra hearts/deer antler wine and asked, "So...why are we eating this?" and been met with, "Good for health!" I've heard it so often it used to be my signature line. Of course this is a gross generalization, and all kinds of westerners eat only healthy things, and lots of Asian people eat cheesecake, but there is definitely a cultural difference in the way we perceive healthy food. In Asia, you can offer a wider array of foodstuffs to people and sell them on it by outlining the health benefits; in North America, I feel confident in saying that no amount of discussion of increased sex drive will induce your average man to eat bugs.

Bread or crackers on the side, that is the question for soup. I am a bread person, myself, but allow that with tomato soup, it's got to be goldfish. Or grilled cheese. Or both. I'm not sure this is entirely off-topic, since it raises another crucial soup-related question, which is, "Deep bowl, flat bowl, or mug?" For me, I always have a mug if there's a sandwich on the side, and it's a thinnish soup. Deep bowl for a hearty, main-dish soup; flat bowl for comp'ny. Not that I ever have comp'ny, but you know. In this picture, as before, I have chosen my standard deep bowl, which is made by the lovely people at Muji. Gracing it is Marcella Hazan's incomparably good pasta e ceci soup, from page of 87 of Marcella's Italian Kitchen. I made it last night for today's lunch. It took my husband and I about an hour last night to peel all the chickpeas, which we whiled away watching "the Dark Knight" - this soup is worth all the effort and olive oil (1/2 cup!) that goes into it. I even managed to find some fresh sage at the local supermarket, which I included as per the recipe, but also chopped finely along with some parsley and garlic. I mixed the herbs into yet more oil and used it as a garnish. As good as anything I've ever had in a restaurant.

Is it a kabu? If so, you can use it as you would a turnip.

I kicked this year off with some potato leek soup, using some potatoes and leeks I rescued from the remainder bin at my supermarket. I sweated the leeks in a couple of tablespoons of butter - which probably cost more than the vegetables themselves, but in times of economy, the smallest luxuries go a long way. Then I threw in four small potatoes, scrubbed and cubed, but not peeled. I like the flavour from the skins, it reminds me of potato chips, a delicacy I rarely have anymore. They sauteed briefly in the slippery leeks for a brief minute with some salt and pepper, then I threw in three cups of water and a tablespoon of chicken stock powder. One of these days, when I find a whole chicken for sale, I'll make real stock. Until then: powder. Simmered until soft, then pureed and enriched with a little cream, another small luxury. My husband wandered by the pot at one point and asked, "What's with the soup in non-industrial quantities?" I usually make a huge pot to freeze, but I don't like the way potatoes thaw. What soup are you making?

Okay, I'll go first. I'm not sure how much a daikon runs wherever you live, but here in Japan they are cheap eats. 70 yen bought me one that weighed about a kilo. I cut off the tops, blanched them, and served them with sesame salad dressing. I scrubbed it well, even though they always look unnaturally clean for a vegetable that has spent a lot of time in the dirt. Then I peeled it, and sliced the peels thinly into strips, and added them to julienned carrot, potato, and broccoli peel. They were pan-fried quickly with sesame oil, mirin, chili powder, garlic, and sesame seeds for kinpira. Two-thirds of it went to towards pickles. One third was cut into thin rounds, dried, salted, and then wrapped around yuzu peel, then drenched in vinegar and sugar. The complete method is over here. The other third was cut into thin rounds, quartered, salted and pressed for ten minutes, then squeezed by hand and mixed with one tablespoon of rice vinegar and one tablespoon of sugar. Any or no seasoning could be added to this - chili flakes are nice if you like it spicy, but I added about a half teaspoon of freshly grated ginger. The last third was chopped into hunks and simmered in dashi, ponzu, and mirin as a part of a pork nabe for dinner last night. Lots of it was left over, so I pulled them out of the broth, and we'll have them as a side dish tonight.

I just made some yuzu pickles yesterday. I got the recipe from one of the seniors I teach. She made them for a Christmas party we had last month, and as soon as I tried them, I demanded the recipe. This took a bit of time, since she was an elementary-level student, so there was much rapid fire discussion in Japanese amongst the ladies in the class, followed by rapid tapping of their electronic dictionaries, and punctuated with Japanese exclamations of, "Gosh!" "Well, I'm not exactly sure..." "It's a bit difficult.." but I finally managed to pry it out of her. She claims she got this recipe from her husband's mother, and she's seventy if she's a day, so it must be pretty traditional. I'm not sure if I got the steps in the right order, so experienced pickle makers, please pipe up. I think I mixed up the bit about the drying, then salting, but I tried them today and they came out fine. Take about a third of a large daikon, and cut it into thin rounds - around 2-3 mm. Set them outside (or on the heater) to dry out for a few hours. Then salt them lightly and leave them under a heavy weight for another hour or so until they become even thinner and can be rolled easily. I squeezed them dry with my hands, but didn't rinse them. Then zest your yuzu into thin strips. Take one strip and roll it up inside a slice of daikon. If you're prone to flights of fancy, you may find it resembles a small, delicious calla lily. Put it into a plastic container and line up the rest of the slices similarly, packed tightly together in rows. When you've completed one layer of rolls, sprinkle sugar on the top so that it looks like, and I'm quoting Shizue-san, "...snow falling on the ground." Then sprinkle with apple vinegar. I used plain rice vinegar myself, since it's much cheaper here, but you can do as you like. Then repeat with more layers until you run out of yuzu strips. Let them all sit over night in the fridge to let the flavours come together, and then enjoy as a side dish with dinner. They go super nice with pork, I find, but are also lovely on their own with a cup of green tea.

Over in this topic, I described how I took a one-dollar daikon and broke it down into five different dishes. Two different kinds of pickles, one stew, one stir-fry, and greens. Truly, it is a noble vegetable. It's easy to make a one-dish pot of chili and soup, and stretch that over the week; but even the most flavourful and well-prepared dish will start to seem a little dull by day three. I'm proposing that we explore the flexibility of cheap ingredients. Since 2009 is shaping up to be a year of frugality for most, I'd like to issue a challenge: Can you take one ingredient and turn it into at least two individual dishes? The cost of the ingredient shouldn't be much more than three dollars. You can use the ingredient in concert with others, but it should make up at least half of the dish. The ingredient must make two separate dishes from the whole, for example: "A can of tomatoes: I used a half a can of tomatoes whizzed up with some chicken stock and fresh ginger for a cup of soup at lunch today, and used the other half stir-fried with a block of tofu for dinner." Bonus points for making more than two dishes, and extra bonus points for using every bit of it, whatever it may be.

I managed to find a copy of Saveur while I was in Seoul over the holidays, and was thrilled to tear into it and see our name in print. I have learned more about food and cooking in my three short years here than I could have ever hoped by myself. Not only has this community given me solid information on how to cook - I would have starved or gone broke for sure with all the amazing posters in the regional forums; but it's given me the inspiration to try new cuisines, learn new techniques, and approach new ingredients with confidence. I know that if I come home with something strange or random from the supermarket, someone, somewhere on the forums will know what to do with it. The world answers, indeed.

I definitely agree, if you don't have much money, but have a lot of time on your hands, you can eat well - as long as you're willing to sacrifice daytime TV for cooking. Or if you can set your TV up in the kitchen, you can have both. Just this evening I was remarking to myself about the versatility of daikon. I bought a huge one - maybe more than a kilo in weight? - for 70 yen at my nearest discount supermarket. I soaked the tops, then blanched them and dressed them for a side dish for dinner. I peeled the rest of it, and sliced the peels thinly for a kinpira, along with some chopped peels and stalks of some broccoli I found in the discount bin. (The broccoli tops went chopped into the freezer to be pulled out later this week and micro-steamed to round out bento.) Then, I divided it in three - one part cut in thick hunks for nabe for dinner. (Pork, mushrooms, negi, yuzu, noodles, and daikon hunks, simmered in dashi and soy, and rounded out with some noodles.) I've also just simmered it with a bit of stock and soy to go with rice and some pan fried tofu - yowza! Good, cheap, and you get that little thrill that comes from making something from nothing. I can feel my Scottish granny doing whatever is the opposite of rolling in the grave. Two more parts for quick pickles for dinner- one part cut into triangles, salted and pressed for ten minutes, squeezed, then tossed with sugar, vinegar, and fresh grated ginger. The other part sliced into thin rounds for a two-day pickle project that will involve the slices first being dried, then rolled around yuzu peel, then dusted with sugar and vinegar to make a crazy-unbelievably-good pickle that one of my students taught me to make. One vegetable, one dollar, five tastes, four meals. As a bonus, not all of the daikon hunks were eaten out of the nabe, so I fished them out and popped them in the fridge to go into bento - which are the ultimate user-up of tiny bits of things that normally get thrown out, but instead magically become lunch. Last fall when I had to live in Tokyo, but had a very small food budget, learning to make bento and incorporate bits and pieces of vegetables, rice and proteins from the night before saved me hundreds of dollars. When I abandoned the idea of having to make sandwiches and have a whole separate category of foods on hand for lunches, lunch became a heckuva lot cheaper. Maki at Just Bento! makes some good arguments for making bento even if you're at home all day.

A good point. When I first moved overseas and had to deal with a kitchen different from the one I grew up with, I felt my my cooking and eating were curtailed considerably. Then I learned new recipes, new foods, and new methods of preparation that expanded my eating options (and waistline ). I don't agree that having less equipment in your kitchen necessarily limits your eating, although not having an oven does rule out baking. Fortunately for me, Tokyo has some pretty spectacular bakers. Not everybody has the sort of limitations that I do, of course, and there's nothing wrong with having lots of kitchen equipment - I'd love to have a kitchen full of le Crueset, silpats, and a Kitchenaid (blue, please). But I think I can still eat well even if I don't have all those things. Over the holidays, I visited a couple of friends living in Seoul, Korea. I cooked a Christmas dinner in one apartment, and a New Year's dinner in another. The first apartment had everything I've been missing for a few years - a large oven and four-ring gas range, a mixer, blender, food processor, all the pans and tongs and knives my heart could want. We made a leg of lamb and a pork shoulder, plus two kinds of potatoes, apple sauce, roast broccoli, squash, pies, cookies, trifle...and more. We fed 12 people well, and it was nice to work with an oven again. If I had this equipment, I'd be quite happy, but the reality is I have to do without it for while to meet some other goals in my life. I'm sure there are other people in similar situations. For New Year's, I cooked a meal for seven using a single gas ring, one knife, a cutting board, a pot, a fry pan, and a microwave. I made mushroom maze gohan (rice with sauteed mushrooms), tofu steaks, chicken cutlets with ponzu and green onion, fried mushrooms and peppers, braised daikon, salad, and fresh daikon pickle. It was just as delicious and satisfying as the Christmas meal, but made with the sort of equipment I usually have on hand. Seven years ago, I would have had no idea what to do with half of those ingredients, let alone how to cook a meal for a large group using them and the equipment at hand. Of course, it's limiting that I can't bake or roast; but I'm still eating well without those methods. That being said, there are two things that I'd really like to add to my kitchen this year: A mandoline would really help out with all the vegetable preparation that I do. I blew out my elbow this year in a hiking accident, and chopping is a (literal) pain. I'll probably buy one, since it's small and portable enough for me to justify. A dutch oven is on my want-but-cannot-justify list - it would be perfect for roasting large joints of meat on the stovetop, along with braising. But it would be too heavy to ship from country to country as I moved, I think - plus they're quite expensive. If anyone would like to make a persuasive case for buying one...... Absolutely, critically important. A must-have for me.

I usually use hunks of pork shoulder when I cook thit kho too, I've never tried it with galbi ribs. Hmm. I feel a kitchen experiment coming on. I made thit kho once a week for a couple of months last winter, but my husband got sick of eating it and begged me to stop. I think he's ready to try it again.

Wow, fabulous memories of time spent in Hmong villages are flooding back! Thanks for this. Was that rice whisky in the cup? That really packs a punch. I see in the centre of this photo there are some lotus seed pods for sale. Did you get a chance to cook with these, and how did you prepare them? They're usually a snack or part of a dessert in Vietnam, and I can see they're being sold with fruit in this picture, which leads me to believe they must be the same in Thailand. I love this stuff! No meal in Vietnam is complete without it, stir-fried with garlic and a bit of oyster sauce. Did you have a chance to try it, and if so, how was it served? Yes but think of the walking you must have done. That would have worked off at least half of it, right?

The first Christmas I travelled home to Nova Scotia from Korea, my Korean friend was worried that I'd be going three weeks without kimchi, so she boxed a head or so of it up for me in a styrofoam container "to go". I got it home through Canadian Customs, and proceeded to open it up in the kitchen. My mother got one whiff and declared that my kimchi would have to be stored in the "outdoor fridge" - the patio, of course, already covered with 20 cm of snow. I duly boxed it up and stowed it in a convenient drift. Flash forward to three o'clock that morning - my mother wakes me up and says - "Get out of bed - there's someone prowling around outside!" (My parents live on the edge of the woods - there's nothing around for about a kilometer out back.) We sat, huddled in fear for about five minutes while thumping sounds came from the patio. Then they stopped. "Raccoons?" I asked. "Maybe," said my mother. The next morning, we got up and went out to retrieve the kimchi. Raccoon prints abounded, and there were a few halfhearted claw marks on the styrofoam box. Even the raccoons wouldn't eat the kimchi. I did, though, it made a brilliant kimchi bokkumbap for dinner.

I'm interested to hear what you think of this book. I have Andoh's book, which I love, because while it's easy for me to make most of these recipes in Japan, I can also see it being useful for me when I eventually leave Japan. I also see it as an insight into how Japanese food get put together, which has been just as helpful for me. I also have Kurihara's book, which I enjoy - especially her miso scallop dish. I've been wondering whether I should add Tsuji's book to my collection, and whether it adds anything to what I've learned from the other books.

The Minimalist himself weighs in on this issue: "So Your Kitchen is Tiny. So What?" It seems Mark Bittman has dealt with kitchen horrors such as electric stoves, microwaves - and - a classic in my life - the basement apartment; and has not let them stop him from writing cookbooks and a weekly column for the New York Times. According to Batali in the article, "Only bad cooks blame the equipment." In these straitened times, what sorts of things are you doing without?

I'll play. In 2009, I will eat more Pierre Herme macarons while I have the chance. I will make that no-rise bread stuff that's such a phenomenon. Once. When I have access to an oven. I will find some %@! Ras al Hout, a spice I've been scouring Asia for over the past two years. I will teach my husband where I keep the pots for the umpteenth time. I will read something by that MFK Fisher lady everyone is so keen on.

When I was young, I remember my Dad hanging deer in our basement. At the time all I could think about was Bambi, but now I'd love to try game again. When I was growing up, we always had deer on the table, or rabbit, caught out in the backyard in snares. Occasionally, my aunt in Newfoundland would send down some potted moose or rabbit she'd made. My grandmother always thoughtfully brought a frozen char with her when she came down from Labrador for visits, and I always remember thinking, "Gawd, why can't we just eat chicken like normal people." But one summer I visited my family in Labrador, and we had the sweetest trout, char, and elk fondue - I still remember it to this day, although I couldn't have been more than seven at the time. It's great to see that your kids are involved in the hunt, and enjoy eating game; I was a complete brat about it most of the time. But I wonder what my Korean friends would say about that bibimbap! Deer is taken medicinally in Korea in the form of antlers, but I don't think it's that common to eat the flesh. I can't wait to see what else you make with it. Do you have any tips for cooking deer? I remember my mothers' always coming out tough and chewy, one reason why I hated it so much.

[Moderator note: The original Bentos topic became too large for our servers to handle efficiently, so we've divided it up; the following part of this discussion is here: Bentos (2009)] Thanks! We'll find out in February if the lucky food made any difference to his results. Actually, I made a really great bento for today's lunch, but I didn't have time this morning to snap a picture. We've been having class parties all week, and I ended up having lots of little salads leftover in my fridge. Bentos have been a great way to use them up. Today I had rice mixed with shio gomae (salted sesame seeds) and a yuzu soboro. The soboro was made with ground chicken, ponzu soy sauce, sugar, and some dried yuzu peel that my husband picked up in the supermarket. I rounded it out with gobo salad and roasted asparagus. Lip-smacking good!

As you know from reading the strategies for small kitchens topic, I live with a tiny kitchen - one drawer, one sink, two cupboards, two shelves, and no wall space. I have a butcher's block counter that I got at Ikea that adds prep space (about a half a meter square - that's all the prep space I have). Also: two burners. And a dishwasher named Peter. So I feel your pain. Looking at your pictures, three things come to mind: vertical space; hooks; and bins. That corner where you have the blue cocottes? I'd see if you couldn't find a stainless steel shelf that could expand your space upwards in that corner. Maybe something that is open on both side, so you can see through it, and it doesn't cut off that area. Use a flat cutting board or similar across the top and turn the top shelf into a display for your cocottes. Or some of them. Use the rest for more storage. Use the hooks to dangle tools off the side of the shelf. Add bins anywhere stuff tends to collect - I get another bin every time I'm at the 100 yen store. I favour ones with flat bottoms, so a variety of items will fit in them comfortably. You can get nice wicker baskets, or steel mesh, or whatever floats your boat. Put them where things collect. Then put things into them, instead of on your counter. When you need to clear that area quickly for whatever reason - to cool cookies, or prep something - pick up the bin and stow it on the dining room floor, or wherever. Put it back later. You can also use trays or stiff cutting boards to similar effect. You've already organized your areas into prep stations, which is a big help. Have you thought of keeping a kitchen log on how often you use things? I notice you have at least three whisks in one of those containers. Do you really use those three on a daily basis? Maybe there's only one you use all the time? Maybe keep only that one out. Then store the others in task specific bins or rubbermaid containers, possibly somewhere else you have more room, like in a cupboard.

I think you might be looking at two different recipes. Grilled galbi is just that - put it on the grill, cook to your preferred level of doneness, and served with deonjang, sliced garlic, and lettuce leaves for wrapping. It should be cooked in small pieces. If you have a long strip, like the one pictured above, roll it out on the grill, and after a minute or so of cooking like that, cut it into small pieces using scissors, and finish cooking them. The pieces should be small enough for one person to manage with chopsticks. The recipe that calls for stewing is probably "galbi jjim", which is another delicious recipe, although it yields a much different product than grilled galbi. In this case, it's braised with some vegetables, and soy and sugar. It's the sort of dish that I was often served in Korean homes, but rarely found a restaurant making. If you've got a lot of beef on those bones, I'd go for grilled galbi. But galbi jjim is less likely to smoke out your house.

Torakris - your daughter's lunch looks lovely! And how lucky for you she's interested in making her own bento! I guess she'll need her own login for eGullet soon. Does she make her own lunch in the morning, or does she prepare it the night before? Thanks! I hope my bento helped in some small way. Mushroom maze gohan with decorative carrot leaves; Sauteed spinach with sesame oil and garlic (a favourite from Korea); Lucky black beans (these are yummy); Katsu on a bed of cabbage (hat tip to Hiroyuki); apple and blueberries for dessert. Kit kat and tonkatsu sauce were packed on the side, along with a "gambatte!" note tucked into the bento elastic. He feels that made the difference for him on the listening section.

My favourite French restaurant in Hanoi always served them as merguez frites - several links served with a lightly dressed side salad, and a heaping mound of fresh fries. Heaven on a plate!

Both my parents start every day with a cup of tea. Since they're Canadian, it was Red Rose brand while I was growing up, but on my last visit home to Canada, I noticed they'd switched to Tetley. I hated orange pekoe tea, and assumed I basically hated tea. I was a confirmed coffee drinker. Then I moved to Asia. The first tea I fell in love with was in Korea, where they drink a lot of things billed as tea that aren't actually made with tea leaves. This tea was, however - nokcha. It's green tea mixed with toasted rice, and after three years of getting up at 5:30 am to teach businessmen on their way to work, I gave up on the whole grinding beans and brewing coffee thing, and started my day with sad resignation and a bag of nokcha poked into my mug instead. It kept me propped up many a cold morning, the toasty smell filling the classroom and keeping me from falling asleep while the suits churned through their set dialogues in pairs. "That's right, Mr. Lee. Your boss is an imPORTant man. Not an INportant man. Carry on. SLLLUUUURRRRPPPP." Vietnam was a wash for me, on the tea front - I was too busy falling in love with coffee again. But now I'm living in Japan, I like cold jasmine tea in the summer, and hot cups of houjicha in the winter. My first few months in my apartment last winter, before I got my first paycheck, and could afford heat or coffee, I heated my rooms with a kettle of hot water and warmed my hands up with a mug full of houjicha. Even now, the smell of roasted tea reminds me of poverty. But in a good way. The Koreans have a word for this - I forget what it is, exactly, but it translates into something like, "Remembering the bitterness of the past with the sweetness of the present."