This year I made the dishes for our Christmas dinner over 3 days so that I’m not a complete wreck at at dinner time.
- Holubtsi
- 60 Varenyky made and bagged
- Borscht is simmering
4 Likes
Hanging them like this before bagging them is a great idea.
2 Likes
it really is!
I made Korean Sweet and Sour Chicken (Dakgangjeong 닭강정) for the first time last night and it came out great. The double frying is a bit of work but the taste is so worth it.
Ingredients:
Cut up chicken
Salt & pepper
Minced ginger
Corn starch/potato starch, etc.
Glaze:
Minced garlic
Minced dry chili (I used fresh)
Soy sauce
Mulyeot (corn syrup, I used honey)
Vinegar
Mustard
Brown sugar
Peanuts
The recipe is here (I’m a big fan of this sweet lady)
By the way, I don’t coat my chicken in starch individually like the lady in the video. I simply put the starch and all the chicken pieces in a zip loc bag and shake. Much faster!
9 Likes
My co-workers back in South Bay damned me by bringing me to fantastic Korean Chinese food places with amazing Jjamppong. Since moving back to Taiwan, I haven’t had any good Jjamppong here. So I eventually resorted to making my own.
Ingredients:
1 x Onion
1 x Zucchini
¼ x Cabbage
1 x Leek
1 x Daikon radish
3 or more garlic cloves sliced
Some oyster mushrooms
shrimps
clams
Optional: octopus
Korean style chili powder
Chicken stock
5 table spoon cooking oil
Optional: Green chili peppers
Optional: Red chili pepper
ramen noodles (not instant noodles)
- Chop up daikon into chunks.
- Chop up the rest of the veggies. You can julienne then or just chop them up into strips.
- Bring stock to boil and cook all the seafood, then set seafood in ice water.
- In a deep pan or wok, heat up the cooking oil with medium-low heat, stir-fry garlic slices and chili powder until aromatic to make spicy oil
- With medium-high heat, add the onions first and the all the veggies to the pan and lightly stir-fry
- Before the veggies get cooked all the way, add stock and bring to a boil with medium heat, then let it simmer with low heat.
- In a separate pot, bring water to a boil and cook the ramen noodles.
- Combine noodles and soup in a large bowl and add seafood on top.
I think I saw the Chinese Korean chef Lee Yeon-bok make it in one of the Korean variety shows, and roughly wrote down what he did. It tasted pretty much like how I remembered Jjamppong tasted like back in Sunnyvale. It’s a bit more complex than food I’d usually make for myself, but doesn’t seem like something that would be too hard for restaurants to make. Don’t know why it’s so hard find a place that tastes just like this.
6 Likes
Made chili today. Usually for dishes like this I start with caramelizing onions, then I add aromatics, then before I add the meat I use lime juice or wine to clean the brown off the bottom of the pan. Unfortunately, the limes today didn’t give enough juice to spare (putting it all in too early kills the lime flavor in the end), and I don’t have a bottle of cheap cooking wine in the fridge
My choice were Chinese cooking wine, or whiskey. I figured the Laphroaig Quarter Cask peat was kinda smokey, maybe an expensive choice but what the hey
Wow, what an amazing flavor. I also dumped in a lot of paprika to get the smokey.
@Explant, this time I used beans from a traditional market (so cheap!) and after your experience with old beans I started by boiling them for 5 minutes then letting them sit overnight. I changed the water in the morning and boiled a bit more until starting to soften but still firm. Moved them over to the big pot after the vegetables were mostly finished cooking. Worked very well
Probably one of the best pots of chili I’ve ever made. Ingredient list is too long to write here, and I dont measure anything. I like a rainbow of veggies, all fresh except tomatoes (and sometimes corn)
That whiskey, though. 
7 Likes
…mind blown…
1 Like
I think everyone wants to know more about that whiskey addition! Never done it or tried someone else’s that did it. I can totally get what you mean by that with paprika and smokey. That seems like a damn fine chili!!! Any more info on the whiskey, like whenuoua deed, with which things and what general temp? more to gauge how it blends then how it burns off more than anything. Seems amazing…all of a sudden many if us southern based forum members want to have dinner with you over the new year 
Looks good!
I have given up on dried beans now. I use either fresh local or canned, no more f’ing around.
1 Like
First, olive oil on low to medium heat. When it feels the right temp when i hold my hand over, add diced onions
I brown the onions with the lid on. Takes longer because it holds the moisture, but less chance of sticking while I continue prep. Keep checking and stirring periodically, goal is to turn all the onion from white to brown, no black. I might turn down the heat if it is too dry in there
At the same time finely chopping a chunk of ginger, a lot of garlic, and a bunch of Thai bird chili
When the onion is close to done, add the aromatics, stir them in. By this time, the caramelized onion is starting to stick to the bottom of the pot
So, as soon as the aromatics are kicked off (just as the garlic starts to brown, I add the liquid. On this case, whiskey. I guess i added an ounce or a bit more, gave it a stir, and when I came back with the meat there was still brown stuck to the bottom and all the liquid had cooked off, so i added another health splash. Stirred to scrape clean the bottom of the pot. I find the lime juice or alchol works best for this (beef stew use Guinness, tomato sauce red wine, for chili usually lime juice). This adds to the flavor, while preseving the flavor built so far, and vleaning the bottom of the pot at this stage helps prevent sticking. When the bottom of the pot is clean there shouldnt be much liquid left, and at this stage I add some of the dried spices to heat them (tumeric, paprika, and cumin) and then the ground pork. You could go straight to water and veggies. I brown the meat, because I want to melt all the fat and I prefer a crumbly texture for the ground meat. Salt and pepper on the meat, no salt later.
When there is next to no liquid, just heavily seasoned (and now, peaty!) ground meat is when I add veggies and water
Best time to add the beans will depend on your bean consistency at that time, your veggies, and your preferences. I like the beans to start going mushy for a thicker chili, and I like to keep the veggies firm (borderline crisp)
Lime juice and chopped fresh cilantro at the very because the flavors are delicate. I like a balance of salty, spicy, limey, and cumin
Extra dry spice powders that i might add while cooking are dried onion, dried garlic, or beef stock (beef stock powder is a salt alternative if the flavor is dull)
You’re vegetarian, yeah?
4 Likes
Amazing! Thanks for taking the time to write it up. I am genuinely peak interest for after the holidays. The whiskey seems great, but I will probably use a cheap one to start that isnt yucky sweet.
Ya, I am a veggie but I work with many meat eaters for work, as well as some family members/friends eat meat. so i cook with it a lot still. But I will be cooking vegetarian for sure with this first. As a meat lover that doesnt eat meat, I view meat like a cheat code. if I can make the veggie version taste good, it will be easy to add in meat and add extra flavors for the meat eaters 
Probably do a deer first after I get decent results on the veggie whiskey version I like gamey mammal meats, cooked down, in chili.
1 Like
Don’t need meat in chili, just more beans!
If this weren’t loaded with pork, I’d bring you one of the six bowls i have in the freezer. Need an excuse for a long ride
1 Like
Appreciated! Maybe it will be the reverse, you get gifted some veggie chili Starting tomorrow though, I am off the grid into horrible alcohol and mahjong land…chili will wait til February 
1 Like
Making kung pao chicken, with cashews instead of peanuts. Will marinade the sliced chicken in cornstarch and cooking wine while i slice veggies. Heat and grind the hua jiao first, then fry and set aside the cashews, then fry and set aside the chicken, then fry the aromatics and add sauce ingredients, then add veggies, then return chicken and nuts. Drizzle some sesame oil on at the end
40 minutes later, coffee break time
Pretty good. Good level of heat and ma for me, a bit tangy from the vinegar, could have used a bit more salt and a bit more sauce. Chicken is tender, veggies are crisp, cashews are crunchy. 10/10 for textures, 7.5/10 for flavor. When i heat it up later I might just throw in some more sesame oil and some oyster sauce to up the flavor
7 Likes
I see you have the Chinkiang vinegar, key
1 Like
This looks like me meeting my prospective in laws. The only one that I could relate to was a little bit nuts (2nd from right).
I considered the traditional Taiwanese restaurant ketchup method but then… no I didn’t
1 Like
No sweetener?
Far right is salt, second from the left is chicken broth, followed by soy sauce and sesame oil, then the Chinese vinegar, first glass jar is dried chilis, then dried black beans. The far left jar is hua jiao, a key ingredient
Sometimes I use oyster sauce in a dish like this, but I almost never add refined sugar to food (the odd tomato sauce if it is too tart). I put a squirt of honey in dal, because I overload the tumeric for the health benefits and I find they mix well
The veggies add sweetness to this one, too
Only about a quarter teaspoon of salt in this, most of the salt is from the soy sauce
Salt and sugar are good tricks, but cheap.
2 Likes
Sure, but it works in this dish IMHO and is authentic as I understand. But that’s just me! Less sugar, more good. Looks like it will be great. I planned to make one this week, I’ll try to make fancy photos for comparison