It has been a month since my last post.
Perhaps I haven't updated because I felt that nothing could top my Fulbright orientation, or perhaps the wonderful newness of London has slightly faded. What would be more interesting than meeting Members of Parliament or gazing upon the treasures of museums? Certainly, plenty of things have happened, but more quotidian than spectacular and newsworthy. In the interest of trying to breathe a different kind of life into this blog (at least for a post), I will show a new skill I have picked up in London: cooking in a foreign country. The inspiration for this endeavor is both an attempt to lower food costs and a desperate attempt to eat good Asian food outside of the San Gabriel Valley. I recently encountered a post on the matter that sums up the situation nicely:
http://blogs.laweekly.com/squidink/2013/10/10_foods_los_angeles_better_an.php
To put it simply, there is no place in the world, even inside Asia, that has as spectacular a collection of various Asian restaurants and food outside of the San Gabriel Valley. Imagine Chinatown or Koreatown, but as big as several cities, with every restaurant having great, cheap, and authentic Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, etc. food. Truly, there is no better place to eat, and anyone who does not believe that fact has not been there. So in an attempt to relive some of this magic, I went to the London Chinatown and attempted my own dish:
Making Dan Dan Noodles
(recipe adapted from Gordon Ramsay's Ultimate Cookery Course)
Start with:
minced pork, egg noodles, spring onions, garlic, ginger, Sichuan peppers, chili bean paste, cooking wine (mirin in my case), rice vinegar, soy sauce, fish sauce, sesame oil, olive oil, salt (wasn't used). For a vegetable side dish I used bok choi
My newly bought cookware:
Mise en place is important! Wash the vegetables and chop them up:
For the pork: marinate in mirin, soy sauce, sesame oil, and fish sauce for about 10 minutes.
(I didn't take a picture since I was dealing with raw pork)
Noodles are easy, just boil in hot water:
The garlic, peppers, and ginger are sauteed very quickly and the mince was then added in. Soy sauce and chili bean paste are added very liberally. The wok didn't get hot enough to sizzle the meat at first, so I actually had to pour out some of the liquid, making it a rather "dry" noodle experience.
The bok choi is just "steamed", and everything is combined together. The spring onions are sprinkled on top of the dish as garnish:
While not that spicy, the flavors were all there, which I will consider a moderate success for a first time dish. Unfortunately, since I was attempting to make a week's worth of dinners, the large portion sizes made the wok unwieldy, hence partly why there was barely any "sauce".
Next time, I will try to aim somewhere in the middle of the excitement range, and will not wait a month. While I will try not to give cooking lessons (since I will probably ruin the food more often than not), I will probably put up a few more dishes, especially when they are the highlight of a rainy week.
Perhaps I haven't updated because I felt that nothing could top my Fulbright orientation, or perhaps the wonderful newness of London has slightly faded. What would be more interesting than meeting Members of Parliament or gazing upon the treasures of museums? Certainly, plenty of things have happened, but more quotidian than spectacular and newsworthy. In the interest of trying to breathe a different kind of life into this blog (at least for a post), I will show a new skill I have picked up in London: cooking in a foreign country. The inspiration for this endeavor is both an attempt to lower food costs and a desperate attempt to eat good Asian food outside of the San Gabriel Valley. I recently encountered a post on the matter that sums up the situation nicely:
http://blogs.laweekly.com/squidink/2013/10/10_foods_los_angeles_better_an.php
To put it simply, there is no place in the world, even inside Asia, that has as spectacular a collection of various Asian restaurants and food outside of the San Gabriel Valley. Imagine Chinatown or Koreatown, but as big as several cities, with every restaurant having great, cheap, and authentic Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, etc. food. Truly, there is no better place to eat, and anyone who does not believe that fact has not been there. So in an attempt to relive some of this magic, I went to the London Chinatown and attempted my own dish:
Making Dan Dan Noodles
(recipe adapted from Gordon Ramsay's Ultimate Cookery Course)
Start with:
minced pork, egg noodles, spring onions, garlic, ginger, Sichuan peppers, chili bean paste, cooking wine (mirin in my case), rice vinegar, soy sauce, fish sauce, sesame oil, olive oil, salt (wasn't used). For a vegetable side dish I used bok choi
My newly bought cookware:
Mise en place is important! Wash the vegetables and chop them up:
For the pork: marinate in mirin, soy sauce, sesame oil, and fish sauce for about 10 minutes.
(I didn't take a picture since I was dealing with raw pork)
Noodles are easy, just boil in hot water:
The garlic, peppers, and ginger are sauteed very quickly and the mince was then added in. Soy sauce and chili bean paste are added very liberally. The wok didn't get hot enough to sizzle the meat at first, so I actually had to pour out some of the liquid, making it a rather "dry" noodle experience.
While not that spicy, the flavors were all there, which I will consider a moderate success for a first time dish. Unfortunately, since I was attempting to make a week's worth of dinners, the large portion sizes made the wok unwieldy, hence partly why there was barely any "sauce".
Next time, I will try to aim somewhere in the middle of the excitement range, and will not wait a month. While I will try not to give cooking lessons (since I will probably ruin the food more often than not), I will probably put up a few more dishes, especially when they are the highlight of a rainy week.
Yummy! You can feed an army with that much meat! Cooking does alleviate home sick. Aren't you miss Texas BBQ? JK.
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