My brother asked me one day if i would make beef noodle soup. He said he wanted to learn how to make the best beef noodle soup in the world. I don’t know if i can deliver that but i hope i can. When we were small my dad used to always take us to eat this one restaurant called Chung King. We only ate lunch there but that’s what he ate for lunch probably everyday at work. Anyways the only thing we ordered was their 红烧牛肉面 (Spicy Beef Noodle Soup) and their 榨菜肉丝面 (Pickled Mustard with Pork Noodles). So my brother wants me to figure out an awesome Beef Noodle Soup recipe. I think i’ll go looking for the best of both noodle soups. I may take a while but i’ll do it for my brother!
So far i’ve found a couple good links as a starting point
http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=5462
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/TAIWANESE-BEEF-NOODLE-SOUP-231502
http://mmm-yoso.typepad.com/mmmyoso/2005/10/niu_rou_mein.html
http://eatdrinknbmerry.blogspot.com/2005/10/notorious-nrm.html
and finally
http://www.tbnf.com.tw/m_diy.htm
all those links have really good starting points and recipes. I’m still reading them and seeing what i should do.
So yea! This was another one of my back dated cooking adventures. Cinco De Mayo passed and i was like DAMN i feel like something spicy with a Mexican flavor. I looked around for what i would like and I saw this article on Brown Rice in May’s Saveur. There was this recipe called Chicken and Brown Rice with Chorizo. It looekd so good on the page that i wanted to cook it. The ingredients were simple and they sounded good! It’s kind of like Arroz Con Pollo but not. Though i might just make Arroz Con Pollo next time! I love Saffron! Anyways back to the food.
Here are the pictures of my little adventure
The Ingredients are
- 4 Chicken Thighs with Skin and Bone
- 1/2 Link of Chorizo (I think it was about 3/4ft Long) Sliced into nice 1″ diagonal slices
- 2 tbsp of Oregano
- 1/2 tsp Red Pepper Flakes
- 4 Cloves of Garlic
- 1 Large Yellow Onion, Thinly Sliced
- 1 Bay Leaf
- 1 Cup of Long Grain Brown Rice
- 1/2 Cup of White Wine
- 2 Roma Tomatoes, Sliced into quarters
- 3 Cups of Chicken Broth
- 1 Cup of Frozen Peas
So basically start off by preheating the oven to 400F. You need to then find a dutch oven or iron pot which is oven safe. You first season the Chicken Thighs with Salt and Pepper. Heat up the pot on medium-highish heat add some olive oil and sautee the chicken skin down till the skin is a nice brown color about 8 minutes or so. Take the Thighs out and put it aside. Dump out the oil inside the pan. Then sautee the chorizo in the pan. Cook it till it’s lightly brown on both sides, about 5 minutes. Then take out the chorizo onto a plate but leave the chorizo oil and juices in there. Throw in the Oregano, Red Pepper Flakes, Garlic, Onion and Bay Leaf and let it cook for a while until the onion is soft and brownish, about 8 minutes. Then add the rice and stir it around coating rice with the oils inside the pan and all around, about 2 minutes. Add the white wine and bring it to a boil to cook off most of the alcohol. That should be around a minute or so. Then throw in the Chicken Thighs, Tomatoes, and Chorizo and pour the chicken broth in along with some salt and pepper for seasoning. Cover the pan and bring it to a boil. After it starts to boil transfer the pot to the oven and let it bake for about 1hr-1hr 10min. By this time everything should be cooked nicely. Be careful about the pan!! I burned myself many times touching the pan because i forgot it was in the oven! Then uncover the pot and throw in the peas. You want to mix them in gently so you don’t shred up all the chicken. The heat of the food will cook the peas. Recover the pot and let it rest for 10 minutes. Everything should be ready to serve! Bon App!!
Soooo i have many different things in the recipe backlog. I’ve made so much but i thought i’d start off with something simple. It’s Mark’s kimbap! I used to always buy the kimbap on the weekends at the manna store down the street and paid the 7 or 9 bucks for the two rolls. I then thought to myself damn i spend a lot on kimbap. So i thought why don’t i just make my own kimbap!!! I went and bought the ingredients and figured i could actually make like a bunch of kimbap rolls for the same price as 1. So i bought all the ingredients at manna and made them myself.
Here is the end result of my kimbap adventure!
The ingredients i used were very simple
- For the beef
- 1/2 Pound Thinly Sliced Beef (Bulgogi sliced beef)
- 1 tablespoons of grated ginger
- 2 tablespoons of grated korean pear
- 4 tablespoons of soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon of sugar
- 1 tablespoon of minced garlic
- 1/2 medium onion
- For the rest of the kimbap
- Package of Burdock root strips
- Package of pickled radish
- 2-3 carrots
- 3 eggs
- 1/2 tablespoon of mirin
- 1 tablespoon of sugar
- 1/2 cup of frozen spinach
- 2 teaspoon sesame oil
- a bunch of cooked white rice
- a bunch of seaweed sheets
I put the ingredients but for the bulgogi i really just did it by feel. I threw the sliced beef into a big ziplock bag and then threw in all the other ingredients for the bulgogi in the bag and shook it all up. Basically you want a sweetish marinade so that the beef absorbs it all. The grated pears actually contain calpain which is a natural meat tenderizer like in papaya and kiwis. It also adds a nice clean taste. So shake it up and let it sit for a while in the marinade. Remember don’t let it sit too long or it’ll get too soft. While that’s marinating go and prepare the eggs. I beat up the eggs and added mirin and sugar to make the eggs taste sweet. I was going to add some dashi too but got lazy. Basically i was making edo-style tamago but without all the ingredients. So cook and while you cook the eggs fold them so it creates a nice thick rectangle piece of egg. Boil the frozen spinach till it’s done. Then take it out and chill it in cold water. Strain and then mix the spinach with the sesame oil. Slice up all the vegetables so they are nice strips to be put into the kimbap. After the meat has tenderized go and throw the meat and onions in a medium-high heat pan and cook it. I usually just put the meat in and not the juices because more juice will come out of the meat when you cook it.
Now it’s just time to put it all together. Lay the seaweed down on your bamboo sushi roll roller and then spread a thin layer of rice all over the sheet. Don’t put too much rice or you won’t be able to put a lot of ingredients inside. Then lay all the ingredients down in the center of the roll. Put however much of each you like. Then roll it up however style you like rolling it. Voila! Simple Kimbap! You can now feed an army of hungry people! Enjoy!
Ok so i guess it has been a very long time since i last posted. Lots of stuff has happened and lots of food has been cooked since the last time i posted. I guess when i went back home for winter i kinda got lazy and stopped posting. That doesn’t mean i stopped cooking! And it doesn’t mean i stopped taking pictures of my cooking! (Well i’ve only taken pictures of a handful of them) I hope to put them all up eventually when i get back to posting!
So i guess i’ll say what i did over winter break. I went to the Philippines, Hong Kong and China. I started to play golf. I just joined some group lessons offered by umove. I don’t really expect that much out of the lessons except the fundamentals. I’m pretty sure i’m not going to be tiger woods with 6 45-minute group lessons. Truthfully, I didn’t know that golf would be as fun as it is. I actually enjoy going to the driving range and hitting some golf balls. I’m just doing the 6-iron so far. Maybe in time i’ll invest in a half set and start working the courses!
On another note i’m going to start an Ann Arbor message board. I don’t know if anyone will join or post on the message board but i don’t really care. I don’t even know if anyone reads this blog. But i’d like something like sdunderground for ann arbor. Facebook seems to kinda suck at that and only a message board can really do some things like that. O well whatever. Maybe if i build it they will come.
Sooo i couldn’t figure out which one to make. I asked some people what they would like and it seems they like chocolate cake. So i wanted to do the Chocolate Cake with Caramel-Milk Chocolate Frosting but i read the cake portion of the recipe was a real hit and miss. So i went searching for the perfect Chocolate Cake recipe and i found this double chocolate layer cake. Everyone seems to really like the cake that is made from this recipe so i thought i’d mix it with the Caramel-Milk Chocolate Frosting which everyone loves on the other cake. Hopefully this comes out to be the best cake in the world!
Here’s a picture of the Dobule Chocolate Layer Cake!
!!! Can’t wait to see how this comes out!
