I love food.

There is nothing more pleasing to the senses than a bite of something extra delicious. :)
Unfortunately, I'm a terrible cook. Ever since I was in elementary school, I've always tried to emulate people on cooking shows. I would make a mess out of the kitchen by pre-measuring all the ingredients and setting them out in little bowls (cooking shows make it seem like the cool thing to do). I would enjoy the process--"let's add a little dash of pepper," "now here we have finely diced tomatoes,"--but I never seemed to get the end product right. And by that, I mean that my food tasted horrible.
Even around holiday season, my friend and I would get together to bake cookies. One batch was supposed to be double chocolate chip, and turned out an odd shade of shiny black. The other batch caught on fire.

But all this hasn't deterred me from my lifelong goal of cooking fabulous food. Ever since my father unexpectedly left my mother and I on June 18th, 2009, I've been cooking just about every night. My mother lost 13 lbs in the span of a month when she found out about my dad's affair. When he left in June, she lost her appetite again and stopped eating, save a few spoonfuls every now and then.

I recalled my disaster days in the kitchen, and how my parents would eat everything that I cooked with smiles on their faces and heaps of praise. Ah Ha! A mother can't turn down her daughter's cooking. I've used this to my advantage, and have been greatly improving my skills ever since. Besides, I have to learn how to cook somehow, otherwise I'll starve to death in my apartment next year.

Enjoy!
-jNN
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Monday, July 20, 2009

so I ate Korean food for the first time this month

And it was so tasty, I went to another Korean restaurant within a week. Dolsot Bibimbap is absolutely wonderful. It comes in a hot stone pot, and the rice sizzles and crackles beautifully as you eat it. Filled with veggies and your choice of protein, Bibimbap is hot, spicy, and yummy to my tummy. I was craving it again a couple days ago and attempted to make something similar. I won't call it Bibimbap, because it will be a disgrace to Korean food...so I'll call it my BippityBob Rice Bowl. :)

I really wanted to get the rice to be crispy, so after I mixed everything together I put it in a frying pan to try to sizzle up the rice a little bit. Fail. (for the most part. I think a couple grains of rice were stuck
together like how I wanted them to).

So I took some cooked brown rice, and steamed it with chicken broth because I like my rice to be fat and squishy like sushi rice. Added some greens (spinach, gai lan, broccoli), tomatoes, tofu, cucumbers and edamame.
And the best part: a fried egg on top, and mix the yolk into the rice. Add some pepper and bean hot sauce, and it was good to go! My mom and I devoured it within 10 minutes.

Unfortunately, I get so excited after cooking something successfully that I forget to take a picture of the final product (with the egg). Will try to do better next time.

Posted by jNN at 6:18 PM

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