Ginger & Toasted Sesame

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Crispy Korean Tofu Bites

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Crispy Korean Tofu Bites-5

A big snowstorm hit the DC area yesterday. It was a large storm that affected large parts of the country- from 100 cars being stranded on a Kentucky highway to a plane skidding off the runway at La Guardia Airport. Everything was covered in up to 8 inches of snow where I live (a lot for this area) and since the office was closed I stayed home most of the day except to go out and buy flour from the grocery store next door and to go to the gym which is thankfully only a block away.

The last time I had walked around in snow like this was about two years ago in Seoul. I had been in France for most of December, and when I returned to Seoul on Christmas Eve, I discovered that the city had been experiencing record snowfalls. The streets and alleyways had turned to sheets of ice, and snow just kept falling and falling. Despite that, I spent what I knew to be my last Christmas Eve in Seoul out with my friend Rosemary, doing what we always did- wandering the streets of Hongdae, which was where I lived during my last few years in Korea….

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Purple Sweet Potato Ricotta Gnocchi

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Purple Sweet Potato Ricotta Gnocchi-7

One of the pleasures of dating someone who loves eating as much as you do is that there are no restrictions to what they’re willing to try. This is especially helpful when you cook and spend a lot of time in the kitchen experimenting. Your partner is a willing taste tester for all your new inventions. They’ll volunteer to go to the store when you realize that there is hardly a quarter cup of milk left in the carton in the midst of recipe development (thanks, sweetie!). Or they understand the importance of spotting ramps or purple sweet potatoes at the farmers market because you’ve been mentioning them constantly for weeks (sorry, sweetie!). When you love food, the only thing that makes food even better, more enjoyable, is a companion to share that love with….

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Egg in a Grilled Cheese Basket + Happy Friday

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Egg in a Grilled Cheese Basket-3

Today is Friday the 13th and the day before Valentine’s day. I’m not the biggest fan of this holiday but I do like a reason to do something extra special for someone I love. On the morning of the 14th I’ll be making this egg-in-a-grilled-cheese-basket for my boyfriend, with a special addition of fresh Mexican style chorizo. Why? Because dark chocolate is my food love and chorizo is his. If we are out together at a restaurant and there’s something with chorizo on the menu I know that’s what he’ll order. 95% of the time that’s the case. So here is my special Valentine’s day brunch dedicated to my chorizo obsessed, runny yolk loving boyfriend. <3…

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Poppy Seed Cake with Blood Orange Glaze

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Poppy Seed Cake with Blood Orange Glaze-6

The other day I had a bit of a baking mishap. I had followed the instructions for an old family recipe from a photo I had taken of a quick handwritten note in the back of my mom’s planner. She’d written down that recipe into her planner years ago and every time she got a new planner she transferred this recipe into the note section in the back along with the phone numbers from Korea she’d scribbled down over the years. I don’t know who she got it from originally- it was most likely my grandma (on my dad’s side) or my aunt Cris- but it is something my dad absolutely loves to eat. Anyway, the cake was stuck in the pan and when I attempted to remove it I tore several huge chunks out of it and it was not salvageable. I texted a photo of the sad thing to my dad and of course he offered to take the cake off my hands….

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Happy Friday: Kimchi Edition

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I didn’t have a computer to use for the past week and a half because I left my laptop’s charger in New Jersey! At first I wasn’t too happy about it and I would go over to my parents’ house to charge my computer every other day. But eventually I gave in and realized it was a nice opportunity to unplug and enjoy evenings at home free from the time suck of articles on the web and binge watching terrible reality TV.

It seems like kimchi has taken over the world… or at least the world wide web. I grew up eating kimchi as part of my family’s Korean dinner table. Now I try and find any way I can to add kimchi to a dish.

  • To start, let’s look at a quick overview on cooking with kimchi.
  • Kimchi getting a bit old? Throw it in a pot with pork belly and make some some kimchi stew.
  • What’s your comfort food? For many Koreans, especially in my mom’s generation, it’s budae jigae, or “army base stew”. It’s basically an amalgamation of the Korean ingredients you see in stew like kimchi, tofu and rice cakes with a random assortment of Western food items like Spam, hot dogs, cheese, and baked beans- items originally sourced from US Forces Korea when food was scarce.
  • In the last few years I was in Korea, Tex Mex became the trendy cuisine in Korea. I remember the first time I tried kimchi carnitas fries– I felt really skeptical about it initially but after the first delicious bite I knew it was a tasty mix. I can’t wait to try this recipe for kimchi fries!
  • I love this creative take on kimchi jeon. Jeon is a type of savory pancake (like a latke chock full of vegetables and/or meat) and one of my favorites is kimchi jeon. Mabel decided to waffle some kimchi jeon and make a bulgogi kimchi-jeon sandwich.

And finally, not kimchi related but Korea related. My friend Amy Ginther was featured in this week’s cover story on New York Time Magazine. I am incredibly proud to be her friend. Please read this article about international adoption, adoptee identity and its implications.