Homemade Vegetarian Dumplings + Announcement!

I have some news to formally announce to you since I have just looked back through my recent posts and realized I have not mentioned it previously.

As of September this blog will be on tentative hiatus for an entire academic year because I am moving to Beijing to study abroad at Tsinghua University.  My apartment in China will have a fully decked-out kitchen but because I’m unsure of the availability of certain ingredients and also myself (school + trying to explore the city and go to concerts and parks and museums and such = probable mess), I don’t know how frequently I’ll be able to update.

That being said, I have a blog dedicated to my China experience, which will be found here and will also have links to some of the other things I do across the Internet.

Before September, though, I have a nice long month that will be filled with posts beginning with this insanely simple and delicious dumpling recipe!

You can fill dumplings with pretty much anything, but I made half of the dumplings kimchi-filled and the other half filled with an egg + spring onion mixture that I found in Fuchsia Dunlop‘s Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking.  Fuchsia Dunlop’s book has a lot of really great filling options, and also is just plain excellent so I highly recommend getting it.  I’ll probably hunt down a copy whilst in China so I have things to cook.

 

Ingredients:

• Package of dumpling skins.  You can make your own, but why bother?  These are really cheap and it’s hard to make good skins.
• 2 eggs
• ~4 spring onions, white and green parts
• 1/4 cup kimchi
• Ground Sichuan peppercorns (optional)

Recipe:

For the first set of dumplings, scramble two eggs.  When just cooked, transfer to cutting board and chop finely.  Also chop the spring onions finely.

 

For the other set of dumplings, drain 1/4 cup kimchi.  I salted the kimchi and put it in a wire strainer to draw out the moisture and let it sit over the sink for a few minutes.

In a small bowl, mix the eggs and onions.  Chop the drained kimchi finely and place in another small bowl.

 

Now, the fun part!  Folding dumplings is monotonous on its own, so put on a podcast or a show or something while you make these.  I think I was watching Orphan Black…

For folding directions with pictures, I highly recommend this step-by-step from Appetite for China.  Once you start folding it totally makes sense, but it seems very confusing at first.

Hold a dumpling skin in one hand and drop a spoonful of filling in the middle.  Wet the tip of your finger with water and run it along the upper half so the skin will stick to itself.

Fold the skin like a taco.  Starting from the right of the dumpling taco, pinch the end and fold the dough over.  So you’ll be pinching on the right and folding the dough over from your left, progressively working leftwards.

Does this make sense?

Sorry.

I would follow the link if I were you.

I was going to make my own pictorial, but I was learning while folding and didn’t want to try to make an instructional thing on top of that.

Maybe next time?

So do this until you run out of filling.  I had about two dozen by the end.  You can boil them all at once, pan fry them, or freeze them for later.  If you boil them, heat a pot of water to a rolling boil and drop in the dumplings.  You should cook them for 4-5 minutes, dropping in a cup of cold water every time the water starts to boil rapidly (according to Fuchsia Dunlop’s book) so they don’t fall apart.

 

You know, it really thrills me to make things that you most often buy pre-made.  Like dumplings or ravioli, pumpkin purée, etc.  It feels self-sufficient, I think.  Like you’re putting effort into your life instead of being a passive consumer and accepting what is given to you without question or curiosity.  Perhaps this is too heavy for a blog post about dumplings.  Perhaps it is just heavy enough.

In any case, we have 26 days together until I leave, and many recipes to cover!

 

But before I go, a recommendation.  I have been giving more and more consideration to joining the Peace Corps, and my consideration recently turned much more committed after reading Rajeev Goyal’s A Spring in Namje.  Goyal was a PC volunteer in Nepal about 10 years ago teaching English.  However, the town in which Goyal was stationed (Namje, way up in the mountains) and the surrounding area was experiencing a crippling water shortage by dint of being way up in the mountains, far above the river.  All day people would have to trek down to the river and then trek back up hauling containers of water.

Goyal proposed building a water pump.  The water pump ended up being 21 feet taller than the Empire State Building, assembled by the people of Namje, engineered by a few men from the town who didn’t even have a complete high school education, and financed by serious lobbying of the Nepalese ex-pat community in New York as well as some other sources by Goyal.  The pump was successful and the town has since prospered (for a given definition; you’ll have to read the book).

That, however, is only half the book.  The other half covers Goyal’s tenure as a UN translator and his current career as a Congressional bird-dogger who lobbies for increased Peace Corps funding.  His book–and career and life and abilities–is incredible and I highly, highly recommend it for everyone.

Crêpes!

Crêpes seem so intimidating to make at home.  How do you make them thin enough?  What if the batter sticks and you end up with an epic disaster of crumpled dough?  What if the batter is lumpy???

These are fears I had before making crêpes a week or so ago and they are all deeply unfounded.  Crêpes are so easy to make.  So easy that you may find yourself making them ALL THE TIME.

Maybe that’s just me.

But look, depending on what you put in a crêpe they’re totally healthy.

Totally.

Look at that!  A healthy crêpe!  You can also make savory ones with spinach, egg, cheese, ham, etc.  I like sweet breakfasts, though, so I’ve only made sweet crêpes.  And I have made so many.  I even made a video of crêpe-making (not a how-to, by the way).  It’s actually a video about my love of breakfast, but crêpes feature heavily.

(Can we talk about how great the etymology of video is?  Just for a second.  Because that is a word that knows no deception.  In Latin it literally means “I see” and it hasn’t been tweaked at all after many centuries except to go from a verb to a noun.  What a great little unassuming word.)

This recipe is from The Kitchn, originally part of a fancy bananas foster crêpe recipe, but I ditched most of the recipe.  I’m sure the original is awesome, but I’m afraid I’ll never know.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup flour
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup milk
• 3/4 cup water
• 1 tbsp sugar (I used brown because that’s all I have)
• copious amounts of nutella, peanut butter, bananas, speculoos, and strawberries

Recipe:

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.

Mix all the ingredients together.  Whisk until no lumps remain.  Pour through a sieve to make sure it’s really smooth and then let rest in the fridge for at least half an hour.  You don’t have to wait, but waiting gets rid of any bubbles that may pop up (sorry not sorry).

In a medium skillet, heat up a pat of butter on medium-high heat and grease well.  Definitely do not cook from a lukewarm skillet – wait until it gets hot.

By the quarter-cup-full spoon batter into the skillet and swirl around until it coats the bottom of the pan.  Cook until the edges barely start to curl up (really right before they curl up), or about a minute and a half.  Flip and cook for another minute/minute and a half.

Stick the crêpes in the oven until you’re done cooking.  The batter will keep overnight but no longer than that.  (I learned this the hard way.)

Serve warm with whatever toppings you want.

 

 

I’ve been pretty underwhelmed by the books I’ve read and the movies I’ve seen lately, but I’m reading J.M. Coetzee’s Summertime right now and it’s pretty good.  Honestly, I can’t stop thinking about Absolution.  That book really snuck up on me, and even though I was very invested while I was reading it, I didn’t understand how deeply it had sunk into my brain until after I’d finished it.

Baked Tofu and Kimchi Sandwiches

This is what summer looks like.  Ideally.  It’s what my summer looks like.

It’s an amazing summer so far.  And it’s only been 2 weeks!  Literally two weeks and two days ago I was in school.  Now I’ve been all up and down the coast of Chicago, way out into the suburbs, around more neighborhoods than I can remember right now, and have shot so much video it pains me to think of editing it all.  I’m off to NY soon, then upstate, then RI, then NY, then China…  These months just get crazier and crazier.

We’ve also been having the most stunning weather in Chicago.  Constant back and forth between storms and hot sunlight.  Yesterday at the beach we got rained on and sat on the rocks through the whole storm, jumping into the lake when it got too cold.  And afterwards, a double rainbow and the most stunning sky.

Now, these sandwiches.

I got the idea from Appetite for China, which is also where I got the instruction for baking tofu.  Other than that, I used none of the same ingredients as her, so this is quite a different recipe.  Also, this makes enough for about 2 servings, but it’s easily increasable.

Ingredients:

• One demi-baguette
• 8 oz tofu (1/2 block)
• 1/3 cup kimchi, chopped
• some sliced cucumber

Recipe:

You may want to add sauce of some kind.  I don’t know.  I don’t really do sauce on my sandwiches.

So, preheat the oven to 350 and slice the tofu in half and then into strips (about 1 in x 1 1/2 in).  They should fit comfortable in a sandwich.  Oil a baking pan (I really do not recommend using Pam here) and turn the tofu pieces until coated.  Bake for about 30 minutes, or until lightly browned.

Meanwhile, chop the kimchi and heat it up over medium-high heat until warmed through.  Slice the cucumbers.

Slice the baguette open and put down a layer of tofu topped with kimchi.  Then add another layer of tofu and then the cucumbers (or whatever; you can layer how you like).

I’m really excited about this recipe.  I have to pick up another baguette tomorrow because I went grocery shopping too late today and they were out.

So I’m actually just going to re-iterate my recommendation from last time since I’ve gotten further into Absolution.  I really highly recommend this book.  It’s amazing.  It’s so complex and it pulls you in so slowly and gently.  It doesn’t make you tear through the pages like Gone Girl or 1Q84, but you sit down to read it and when you next look up the sun’s in a completely different place and your coffee is cold and you feel like you’re slowly surfacing from the bottom of a lake.  It doesn’t even matter what it’s about.  I have no idea.  I didn’t read the jacket, I just picked it up.  As should you.

Pasta with Spinach, Feta, and Mushrooms

I always feel vaguely lazy/guilty for writing up posts like this involving simple pasta dishes because… do you really need a recipe for this?  I literally just threw things into a bowl of pasta.  And then drowned it in feta cheese.

And yet, I go looking for recipes when I want to make pasta, so I suppose there’s some merit to this?  I think the problem is that I’ve been running this thing as a baking blog for so long.

Baking is a science, you know?  Of course you do, because a) duh, and b) I make science posts sometimes. It’s pretty exact and you need to follow the damn instructions if you want to make something really good.

Cooking definitely requires the same level of love and care, but it’s more of an art, less of an exact science like baking.  Depending on the dish, of course.  Cooking is more forgiving.  So I always feel like I don’t really need to write up a cooking recipe because hey, you can figure it out.

But that’s a stupid viewpoint because I run a blog dedicated to recipes.  So get on with it, right?  I would say that this is so different that it’s not even adapted anymore, but I went to the grocery store intending to get things for this recipe at The Kitchn, so credit where credit is due.

Ingredients:

• some olive oil
• 1/2 small yellow onion, chopped
• 5 large handfuls of spinach (or more if you really like spinach)
• 6 oz white button mushrooms
• 1 lb short pasta
• 1/2 lb/a fuck ton of feta cheese

Recipe:

Boil water for the pasta.  Slice the mushrooms and onion while you wait.  Once you’ve started cooking the pasta, heat the olive oil in a medium skillet until simmering and cook the onions until starting to brown.  Then, add the mushrooms and cook until they also brown a little and begin to smell awesome.

 

Throw in the spinach.  Cook until wilted.

 

In a large bowl, toss together all the cooked ingredients with the pasta.  If you’re serving it all at once, sprinkle the feta on top just before serving (unless you like your feta a bit more melted, in which case… ew).  If not, add the feta to the individual portion you’re about to eat.

 

Ta-da!

 

So I am reading this novel about South Africa that was mentioned on the Sinica podcast… sometime in the past year, maybe.  It’s called Absolution, by Patrick Flanery, and it comes very highly recommended.  I’m not too far in, but I’m enjoying it and will make that my book recommendation of the day!

Spinach and Cheddar Quiche

I don’t know if you head, but this weekend there was a super moon.  Of course, I saw some news about it during the week and started planning and getting excited to go and take pictures and then I completely forgot about it until last night when I was driving with a friend back into the city and happened to see it in all its ginormous glory floating over the highway.

 

By the time I got to it it was looking less super, but whatever, I had a lovely night by the lake admiring the city and the moon.

Speaking of lovely, this quiche?  Tremendously so.

(And that was definitely a smooth transition…)

I combined two recipes, taking the crust and substance from one and the flavor from another.  So the crust and the egg-milk mixture came from Mehan’s Kitchen because her recipe didn’t call for a dozen damn dairy products (dairy is expensive!) while the flavoring and the whole idea for making quiche came from the really lovely blog, A Cozy Kitchen.  Don’t ask me why I used two recipes when I could have just tweaked one.  I wasn’t employing basic reasoning at the time.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 cups flour
• 1 stick of butter, cold and cubed
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 tsp salt
• a few teaspoons of olive oil
• 3 handfuls (or more) of spinach
• 1/2 cup cubed cheese (I used cheddar because it was cheap, but gruyère melts better; you could use any sharp cheese though)
• 5 eggs
• 1/3 cup milk

Recipe:

In a medium-sized bowl, combine the butter and flour, mashing them together with your fingers until small crumbs form.

Pour in the water and knead until everything comes together.  I had to dump a couple of extra tablespoons of flour so the dough wasn’t too wet.  It should be tacky but shouldn’t stick to everything and get scummy.  Form the dough into a disc, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil until simmering and throw in the spinach, cooking until wilted.

 

Is anyone else amazed by how much spinach shrinks when you cook it?  I kept adding spinach because I didn’t think I would have enough…

Drain and set aside.

Roll out the dough until it’s a bit bigger than your pie tin and lay it in, pressing it into the pan so it’s snug.

 

Throw in the spinach…

 

 

and the cheese.

 

Then, whisk together the milk and eggs and pour that in, too.

 

Bake at 350 for 40 minutes to an hour, or until the top is golden-brown and crispy and a tester comes out clean.

 

I don’t why I ended up with a giant blob of egg white.  Oh well.  This thing is so, so delicious that I don’t even care.  Also, this keeps for at least a week if you wrap it in tin foil and refrigerate it, and it tastes just as good microwaved as hot out of the oven.

Coconut Rice

So I have a confession about this recipe, and it’s sort of awful.

It’s a great recipe.  It’s adapted from Joy the Baker, so of course it’s great.  The woman can do no wrong.

 

(These pictures have nothing to do with anything, I’m just quite proud of them.)

This rice is just too rich for me.  The first bowl I had was awesome and now the thought of it makes me nauseous.  I know objectively that it’s really delicious, but I think the coconut milk is too much for me.  So, lesson learned.  But I still recommend this recipe!  Hence this post.

I’ve been trying to eat all of this rice (it makes a lot!) by frying it with a fuck ton of soy sauce and kimchi, but you shouldn’t need to do that because it is actually quite delicious.

Ingredients:

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 small yellow onion, chopped finely
• 1/4 tsp chili pepper powder (or a chili pepper, finely chopped)
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1 cup coconut milk
• 6 cups rice, cooked (I used brown jasmine)
• 1 cup toasted coconut (I used those coconut chips you can get at TJ’s)
• 1/2 cup bok choy, chopped
• zest and juice from a lime

Recipe:

In a large-ish saucepan, heat the oil until simmering and then toss in the onions.  Cook them until they begin to brown.  Add the spices and cook for another 2 minutes.  Pour in the coconut milk and stir until everything’s well-coated.

 

Reduce heat and stir in the rice, mixing until everything comes together.  Add the bok choy, lime zest and juice, and toasted coconut.

Toss together and cook until the coconut milk is absorbed.

 

So the original recipe is actually for coconut crab rice, but I can’t afford crab, so this particular incarnation would work well as a side or with some fried tofu or steamed broccoli on top.

 

(gratuitous pictures of my vacation thus far; you should probably be jealous)

I haven’t read anything for days (it feels like weeks; I’ve only been out of school for one week) and am not really feeling any of the books I picked up, so I’m just going to go ahead and recommend the TV show Suits.  It’s on network TV (when did network TV start doing amazing shows??  Seriously, I am impressed.)  Suits is a lawyer show, but it’s less about legal drama than about the characters.  The dynamic between all the characters is really well done, and the whole show is very well written in a subtle kind of way.  It’s not flashy and suave and impressive like Sherlock, Hannibal or Game of Thrones, but it’s just damn good.  Also, hello, it’s called Suits, so at least half the reason to watch it is the eyecandy.  Also also, one of the main characters is smoking hot and his characters owns it.  (I care about the plot.  I do.  I love lawyer shows.)  There is, in summation, no reason you should not watch this.

Scallion Pancakes and Sort of Pad See Ew

You may have noticed, in the many months now that I’ve been running this blog, that I’ve been spending a lot of time talking about sustainable architecture in China and all the research I’m doing on that subject.  I spent a long time hammering out a paper on SA and then presented that paper at a conference and now I am here to tell you that shit just got even more real.

I know.

How could it?  What could possibly even mean?

This little paper of mine about some buildings I like is getting published!  It was selected as the PSC department’s choice, beating out a whole bunch of probably tremendously excellent papers by my very talented peers, to be published in the school’s undergrad research journal.

I was beyond excited to get the news and am still in awe that my paper made it, and I am greatly looking forward to getting a copy of the journal sometime later this summer and seeing something I labored very hard over on fancy printed pages!  Talk about a rewarding experience, my god!

So that’s my news, and also I have been cooking and baking up a storm, so as the quarter ends in the coming week I will have many, many recipes to share.  To begin with: some bastardized pad see ew.

I say bastardized.  Really I just used a different kind of noodle because it’s what I happened to have on hand.

Also, I’ve got scallion pancakes to share with you all, which makes me very, very happy because I have the fondest feelings for scallion pancakes.  They were THE thing my family always got with our food when we went to this fantastic Chinese restaurant in New York called Ollie’s, which sadly closed for good recently.  I’ve never had scallion pancakes even approaching the quality of the ones at Ollie’s, but it makes me very happy that I can make them on my own now.

The scallion pancakes recipe is from my new favorite blog, Appetite for China, and the pad see ew recipe is from Chow Hound.

Ingredients:

For the pad see ew:

• 14 oz dried noodles.  I used chow fun noodles, which I don’t actually like, but you should probably use  wide rice noodles
• 14 oz (1 block) firm tofu, pressed and diced
• 2/3 cup soy sauce
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 lb broccoli, sliced into bite-size pieces
• 1/4 vegetable oil
• 2-3 garlic cloves, minced

For the pancakes:

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 3 tbsp oil, plus more if need be (for frying)
• 3 scallions
• a pinch of salt

To make the pad see ew:

In a large bowl, soak the noodles in hot water until soft, about 30 minutes.

Stir together the soy sauce, 1/4 cup of the water, and sugar in a small bowl.  Take the rest of the water and heat it in a large frying pan until it starts to simmer.  Add the broccoli and steam for about 2 minutes.

 

Stop steaming and just cook the broccoli for another two minutes, or until the water has evaporated and the broccoli is piercable by fork but still crunchy.  Move to a plate and set aside.

Back in the frying pan, add the oil and heat on medium-high until simmering.  Throw in the tofu and sear for 8-10 minutes or until golden brown on all sides.

Turn down the heat a bit and add the garlic, then the soy sauce mixture and the noodles.  Toss until well-coated in the sauce and cook until everything has blended together and warmed through.

 

Now, for the pancakes.  These were fun to make, and I hope to make more soon if only because they make excellent egg sandwich material.  Also, if you want more detailed instructions then I highly recommend the video on Appetite for China, which I found really helpful.

Oil a mixing bowl and set aside.

In another bowl, mix the flour and water together.  Dump the dough on your working surface and knead for about five minutes, until the ingredients are well-combined.  Put the dough in the oiled mixing bowl and toss it around until lightly coated in oil.  Cover that with a dish towel and let it rest for half an hour.

Once the dough has rested, roll it out into a cylinder and chop up the cylinder into 2-in.-long segments.  Roll out each segment into a circle about 1/8 in. thick.

 

Brush the top of each circle with oil.  Chop up the scallions very finely.

 

Sprinkle the scallions on top of the circle and roll it up like you would a poster.  Coil the roll like a cinnamon bun.

 

This is where her video really helped, because those instructions are hella vague, sorry.  Now, smash the little dough snail with a rolling pin until you form another circle.  Things will get greasy as the scallions pop out of the dough.

Lay them out separately or stack them with paper towels between each pancake.  In a large skillet, heat a tablespoon of oil and pan fry each pancake until golden-brown and crispy, for about 2-3 minutes on each side.  Press down on the pancake with the back of a spatula to ensure the whole thing cooks evenly, and be careful of burning them.

 

Eat with soy sauce or piled high with eggs, scallions, and kimchi as I did the next day.

 

So aside from recommending Appetite for China (which I do, highly), I’m going to recommend a new TV show today.  I don’t watch a lot of TV, and certainly not the very popular shows because I have peculiar and specific tastes.  But Hannibal?  I’m all over that.  It’s on NBC, contributing the the mysterious rise of quality shows on network TV.  It’s sort of obvious what it’s about, I think, but what I love about it is that it subverts the overly popular trope of the crime investigator who knows everything and is haughty, arrogant, and aloof like certain Sherlock Holmes portrayals (which I also love!  But enough already!)  The main character goes absolutely batshit over the course of the show because of the things he sees in investigations, and it’s just really great to see a character–a male character!–experiencing really debilitating emotions instead of disowning those emotions as a sign of Strength.

Also, the show really shoots the idea of romanticizing violence in the knee caps–something I very, very strongly object to in popular culture.  There’s a really crazy and intense culture of idealized violence particularly in American media, and I’m well sick of it.

Finally, the art direction is off the charts.  Hot damn.  You should probably go watch this show, because that is what I’m about to do.  Until next time!

Homemade Ravioli

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

 

It looks like it’s finally spring here in Chicago.  I’ve been biking and running more, and it was so nice today that my class managed to convince our professor to have class outside.

 

I’ve also been so busy that I’ve stayed up late enough some nights to see things like this.

 

Now, this recipe.  I actually forgot about this for the longest time, which is silly.  I made these for a potluck I had with some friends… oh, I don’t know, a month or two ago?  I think right after spring break…  So a while.  And I’m sorry to say I haven’t been baking much, but I expect that will change soon enough.

So here we go.  A serious word of caution: get someone to help you roll out the dough for the love of god.  My forearms were in so much pain the next day, as were the palms of my hands.  I have mad respect for Italian grandmothers after this.  Also, this is the most imprecise recipe ever, so don’t feel obliged to follow it exactly.

Ingredients:

• 1 egg for every 3/4 cup of flour
• pinch of salt
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• ricotta cheese (I ended up using 2/3 container)
• pesto (you can use any filling you want, by the way)

Recipe:

I ended up making 5 servings, so I think I must have used 3 cups of flour and four eggs.  So what you want to do is take your flour and dump it on your counter or table, forming a well in the center.  Put the eggs, salt, and olive oil into the well.

Then, get your hands in there.  There’s no way around this; you just have to stick your hands in and knead it.  My roommate was totally grossed out, naturally, because it’s gross, but it’s also awesome.

Knead until the ingredients are well-incorporated.  The dough should be a little bit moist and kind of tacky–it should definitely not break off in clumps.  If it does, add a wee bit more egg.  Making pasta dough is about finding a balance between wet and dry, so experiment a little first if you’re going to make this for other people.  (I learned the hard way, as usual.)

Roll out the dough until it’s super thin–we’re talking 1/8 inch.  It will take forever.  Put on a movie.  Listen to The Ring Cycle.  Recruit your friends.  Embrace the pain.

Yours will probably look nicer than this.  I rolled out little chunks one by one and wrapped the dough I wasn’t working with in plastic wrap so it wouldn’t dry out.

Then, cut out the ravioli.

This part is way more fun.  So you’re going to need a little ravioli stamper.  They make fancier objects with which to make ravioli, but a) those are expensive and b) they’re really not necessary.

For the filling, I mixed ricotta cheese with some spoonfuls of pesto and threw in some slivered almonds for a nice crunch.

Take a spoonful of the filling and plop it on the dough.  Lay another rolled-out sheet on top, pinching around the filling a little bit so it doesn’t spread out.  Then, just stamp through both sheets.

Repeat ad nauseam.

I do highly recommend doing this with friends, which I did not for the most part, because it doesn’t require a whole lot of thinking.  Just rolling and stamping and rolling and stamping and also rolling, rolling, rolling…

But look at the finished product!  Store-bought dry pasta is so prevalent that it’s easy to forget how easy it is to make yourself, and so very rewarding.

Cook these for 4-8 minutes (this is also highly variable) in gently boiling water.

I’ve read some pretty good books lately, but actually the film Tampopo, by Juzo Itami is what I really wanted to talk about.  It’s a Japanese movie from the 1980s that is often called a ramen western, because it’s sort of a satire of American spaghetti westerns.  It’s a tremendous movie, and very sweet, and it’s really funny in how it satirizes so many aspects of American and Japanese culture.  Basically, it’s about this truck driver who rolls into town at stops at a noodle stand with this apprentice truck driver (played by Ken Watanabe, who looks like a little baby in this).  The ramen they have is pretty awful, so he gives the owner–a young widow–some tips and starts to head out when she begs him to teach her the ways of ramen-making.  Cue epic quest to make the perfect ramen.  The film is interspersed with vignettes of a western etiquette class gone awry, an old woman who compulsively squeezes food in a grocery store, and, my favorite, a number of scenes about a gangster and his girlfriend.  The gangster, incidentally, is played by Koji Yakusho, who was in Memoirs of a Geisha as one of the only Japanese people along with Ken Watanabe, and is also a total babe.

It’s kind of a hard movie to get a hole of, but if you can find it, I highly recommend it.  I’m doing a presentation on it for my art history class and have also been placed in the esteemed position of “person who works DVD player” to show it in my Japanese politics class.  (My professor let me borrow the DVD, which is from the Japanese consulate, so I feel terribly fancy.)

Chicken, Rice, and Kale Skillet

Well, I don’t know what to tell you.  I’ve had a very busy weekend, but not a particularly eventful one…  I’ll save all of that for next weekend when I go to some gallery openings and see some folks.

 

(i got a new camera!!)

Mostly I’ve just been quietly settling into the quarter, getting acquainted with a new paper on Japanese avant garde fashion and feminism and continuing work on my sustainable architecture piece because it blossomed into a fledgling career path when I wasn’t looking.  Instead of doing a new paper for my Chinese politics class I’m expanding the old one into a writing sample fit for grad school.  Or something.  And discussion of the Federalist Papers abounds.  Bet you’ve never heard anyone say that before.

So enough non-news.  This recipe is insanely good, and actually adapted this time, not just followed to the letter like usual.  The original recipe is from How Sweet It Is and is a bit different in some fundamental ways.

You can make this vegetarian by substituting tofu for chicken or skipping the chicken completely, in which case it will be more of a side than a main dish.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb chicken, breasts or thighs
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1-ish cup rice (basmati works really well) or cooked pasta
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 1 bunch of kale (I don’t actually know how much that is), chopped
• 12 oz mushrooms, quartered
• 3 garlic cloves, minced (I love all of these action verbs)
• 1/3 cup tomato sauce

Recipe:

Heat 2 tbsp of the olive oil in a large skillet at medium-high heat and throw in the chicken after seasoning with salt and pepper.

 

This is me standing on a chair, by the way, trying to avoid being splashed by the oil which was shooting off EVERYWHERE.

Cook until golden brown on both sides, or about 6-7 minutes per side.

 

I am so afraid to cook chicken because I’m paranoid about undercooking it (I do not have this problem with beef, which I like rare), but look how gorgeous that turned out!

Anyway, put the chicken on a plate somewhere, reduce heat a tad, and sauté the onions in the skillet for a few minutes.

Then add the mushrooms and kale for 5-6 minutes.

 

Then add the garlic and cook for another minute.  Add sauce and cook until it gets hot.

 

Stir in the rice and mix until everything is combined.  Then put the chicken back on top, reduce heat a tad, and cover until the chicken is heated through (a couple of minutes).

 

Isn’t it lovely??  I don’t cook as often as I bake, so this is still thrilling for me.

 

So good!

 

 

Okay, so.  There’s a movie that you should absolutely see if it’s playing near you, and it is called Upstream Color.  I will only tell you a little bit about it because it’s sort of a special film that needs to be seen in isolation.

So the guy who did this movie did a stunning sci-fi movie 9 years ago that he wrote/produced/directed/starred in/composed/etc. and that was insanely excellent.  He disappeared for a bit and came out with Upstream Color, releasing teasing tidbits little by little that revealed absolutely nothing but got a certain group of people beyond excited.  He also did just about everything on this movie, which is part of the reason why it’s so good–it’s totally independent, it’s totally in his control, and it’s totally sublime.

The score is my favorite part.  Sometimes I lay down somewhere and just listen to it the whole way through, all 45 minutes of it.  I hesitate to recommend the movie because most people won’t like, but like the director said, the people it’s made for will come to it eventually, and if you’re one of those people… what an experience.

Chinese Chicken Soup

In three weeks I’m presenting my paper on sustainable architecture in China at my first political science conference.  Do you remember that paper?  You must, I think it’s all I talked about from September-November.  A movie I’ve been waiting four years for is also finally coming out but instead of being in Chicago seeing it and the director at the Music Box I will be in Normal, Illinois talking about buildings and the environment and China to people who are probably really confused about why architecture has to do with political science.

Ah well, I’ll see Upstream Color the day after I get back and it’ll be amazing and wonderful, and I won’t get to see the lovely director/writer/composer/co-star, but I can live with that.  I suppose.

I can feel this becoming a career, though.  Green architecture in China.  I’m already thinking about paper topics for next quarter, but I’m leaning heavily towards how contemporary art in China is an invaluable form of resistance against the government, particularly against the central government’s urban planning policies.  HOWEVER, I have to finish this quarter first, and I’m so close to the end now.

This quarter I actually had the foresight to make one dish that I could eat all week long and that didn’t require a lot of effort, and it has really helped sustain me.  I just finished it off a few minutes ago, and so now I bring to you: Chinese chicken soup!

 

How is this different from American chicken soup?  Well the broth, for one thing.  The Chinese version has a lot more flavor, using rice vinegar and soy sauce instead of just chicken stock.  Also, the vegetables, which is the biggest draw for me.  I’m not hugely fond of vegetables, but will always eat them in Chinese food.  They’re just better.  Better variety and better cooking methods.

I got this recipe from a very lovely site called A Spicy Perspective and adapted it out of laziness, taking out some ingredients I didn’t feel like getting.  If you really want the full experience, check out the original recipe.

Ingredients:

• 6 cups chicken stock
• 6 cups water
• 1/2 cup rice vinegar
• 1/3 cup soy sauce
• 3 garlic cloves, cracked
• 1 lb boneless chicken… I used breast, but the recipe calls for thighs.  I don’t know what the difference is.
• 5 oz rice stick/mai fun noodles.  You could use any noodles though.
• 1 large bunch/1 package green onions
• 8 oz. mushrooms
• whatever other vegetables you want to throw in there

 

To do:

In a large pot, bring the chicken stock, water, vinegar, soy sauce, and garlic to a boil.

Throw in the chicken and simmer for 5-7 minutes.  Stir, or the chicken will clump together and it’ll  be weird.  Trust me.  Chicken clumps are weird.

 

Add the noodles and then remove from the heat.  Mai fun don’t need to be cooked so much as soaked.  I actually don’t like these noodles, but it’s what the recipe called for and I was on the phone in the grocery store so I wasn’t really paying attention… Also I went to the local grocery store which only sells mai fun.  I should have gone Uptown to the Asian grocery store… They have an entire aisle of noodles.

 

When you’re getting ready to serve the soup, chop all the vegetables up and put them in little bowls if you’re sharing with a group.  If you’re just keeping it to yourself, chop whatever you need as you need it.

This can be stored… probably indefinitely, but I’ve had it for a week and a half now.  You just have to microwave and then throw some vegetables on top and you’re golden.

 

Ta-daaaa.  (I went to sleep at 7 am, okay, so don’t judge me based on my coherency right now.)

 

 

Now, books.  I’m reading a bunch right now, but what I really want to recommend is this French book.  If you don’t speak French… sorry.  Because I don’t think it’s been translated.  To preface this, I saw a movie a few days ago called Monsieur Lazhar, which is this exceedingly lovely Canadian movie staring a gentleman by the name of Mohamed Fellag.  I really liked him so I looked him up and found out that he was also a comedian and a writer, and my library system happened to have his books.  Luckily I can still read French, and luckier still Fellag is a brilliant writer who is completely readable and very talented.

I’m reading his short stories in C’est à Alger.  They all have to do in some part with Algeria, whether with the Kafka-esque government or the mythology of the area combined with the current political climate.  I would compare it to Persepolis, actually, in the way it shows you this very beautiful portrait of a place in turmoil and its people who are trying to make a life in extreme circumstances.  Anyway, if you can find a translation, hurray, and if you can read French, even better, because the book is great and his writing is even better.