some cooking babbling

I said it before, but I feel that cooking here is much more difficult than cooking at home. Efforts take about twice as long as they did in Virginia... I often find myself yearning for the kitchen I left behind at South View. The meat selection at Homeplus is pretty awful. There aren't a lot of cuts offered, there are often grey spots on pork and beef, and meat (no matter where you go) is pretty expensive. It's been expensive equipping myself with cooking supplies, too. I've been trying to cook/ make some different things here. Without an oven, I can't make turkey meatloaf- ground poultry doesn't seem to exist here anyway. I miss turkey loaf. 

Plus, my "stove" is a double hot plate. It barely fits 2 pans. It really kind of takes some of the fun away from cooking. I've made 떡 (ddeok), steamed rice cake, with cabbage and a red tomatoey-chili-y sauce. The sauce was packaged, and the ddeok was store bought. It's a dish that is pretty common at street food vendors' tents. Definitely yummier at 2 am on the streets. I made tacos with the taco seasoning sent from home. Freaking awesome. I think my proudest achievement didn't involve much cooking at all. Vietnamese spring rolls based on what John's host family served us for lunch once. She called it fusion, I guess because they incorporated Korean stuff, but it's basically just sliced vegetables, some meat if you like, and this stuff called rice paper- your wrapper. You dip it in hot water to soften it up then load up on whatever you want in it. The cool thing about this is that you can get as creative as you want or can with this dish. Plus it's pretty healthy. 

Actually, I should be proud that I pulled off Thanksgiving with no stove and 2 burners. Stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn pudding, broccoli, glazed carrots. Made in my little faux kitchen. Although I did have to cook some dishes the night before. Tonight, I tried 2 different dishes: fried chicken wings in a reduced garlic, soy sauce and honey mixture, and a kalbi recipe that I modified based on 2 versions. Not so hot, although they both look  impressive. The kalbi (it means rib meat, but the meat I bought wasn't that...) was kind of tasteless. It's smell was deceiving! As for the reduction mixture... I don't know how to reduce. I figure John will snack on the chicken... hopefully, and the next meal I'll get lettuce to wrap the beef in and cover up the blandness. This dish is to be conquered. 


But seriously. Can you believe that I'm cooking beef? omg, I cooked BEEF. And I didn't even think about it. 


My treasure for the day was green beans! Today was the first time I've seen them here, but they're pretty expensive. Just enough for 2 people cost almost $3. So worth it. Cauliflower is starting to show up in the stores, so I'm planning to get some and do the cheesy cauliflower like home. I have a giant head of cabbage that I didn't get to use today... now I need to figure out how to make it tasty. It is almost one of my favorite vegetables now. It's dirt cheap and PACKED with nutrients. Toss is in the family with broccoli and cauliflower. Awesome.

On a closing note, Korea as someone put it, is all about free stuff. At Homeplus, random things get taped to products as freebies. I got a cereal bowl and a fork off of 2 different cereal boxes. Giant boxes of instant coffee had tuppeware containers stuck to them, some products get doubled up. Chili paste was coming with cooking oil. STORY. An associate chased me down in Homeplus to try and convince me to buy a huge container of chili paste because it also came with a small bottle of the oil in my cart. I mean first, how did she see those things in my card. And secondly, I turned her down because the chili paste was way too much, and the oil was way too small. She probably just thinks I was clueless.