damn this is good: stir fry

[Triple Zero]

first of all, you start boiling some water to prepare rice.

my brother got me some good doubly fermented soy sauce for Sinterklaas, which is part of the excuse for making this.

slice some tofu into strips, heat some oil in a low frying pan, soak the strips in some good soy sauce, fish sauce, fivespice sauce, or whatever chinese/asian seasoning you happen to have. also some sticky molasses, for stickyness and sweetness. start frying them on high heat. next time i might dust them a bit with flower, as well. turn them when they get brown and crispy and sprinkle with some more fivespice (powder) halfway.

get your wok hot. i have a big, heavy wok. it's not cast iron, i think, but it's big, heavy and has got a lot of heat capacity, which is what's important.

in a bowl, mix some cut up chunks of napa cabbage, some packet called "crunchy turnip chunks" (which is turnip marinated in some kind of fivespice-ish sour salty lots of MSG and spicy marinade, cheap and good to spice an entire meal), big onion in chunks, garlic, some oil. if i had any, i'd have added mushrooms here.

put a lot of oil in your wok, be sure to spoon it along the sides somewhat, so it coats the entire wok, not just the puddle in the middle.

when you're absolutely sure it's absolutely hot, throw in the vegetables. expect a cloud of steam stir, fry, stir, fry, etc. i put in the vegetables in two parts, cause i was afraid the wok might lose too much heat if i added it all at once, but i'm not really sure if it made a difference.

fry.

at this point i was a bit at a loss as to what to do next, i threw in the rice as well, and stirfried that a littlebit. which turned out to be a good idea i think cause it soaked up all the juice from the napa cabbage nicely, which allowed for some hotter frying, but not too long as the rice crumbles will stick to the wok bottom.

then i turned down the heat and served it with the crunchy tofu strips on top.

[Kai]

That sounds tasty.

[Triple Zero]

i love napa cabbage. it's crunchy and tasty. and it was very cheap last week

[LMNO]

It's good fodder for fake kimchee:

Shred cabbage.
Put in colander.
Toss with 2 tb kosher salt.
Let sit overnight.
Rinse.  Dry.
Combine nam pla, mirin, rice vinegar, oil, and korean chili paste. 
Toss with cabbage and chopped scallions.

[Jenne]

Bella posted a recipe over at syn's site that sounds like the bombdiggidity that's a variation on the above, LMNO.  I'll cross-post it here in a sec...I'm going to make it for our annual New Year's Even partay.

[Jenne]

And here's a recipe for kim chee dip you might enjoy.
It's got all the taste and none of the texture:

Ingredients:

     1/2 cup                  chopped kim chee
     1 tablespoon             kim chee juice
     1 pkg (8 oz)             cream cheese, quartered



Procedure:
Put all ingredients into blender; cover and blend 1 minute. Chill. Serve with crisp vegetables or chips. Makes 1 cup.

[LMNO]

Blender?

Kim Chee Juice?

CREAM CHEESE!?



What the holy fuck?

[Jenne]

It's a dip!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

We were going to make kim chee, and then we forgot and the cabbages went bad.

The end.

[LMNO]

We were going to make kim chee, and then we forgot and the cabbages went bad.

The end.

Isn't that the point of kim chee?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

We were going to make kim chee, and then we forgot and the cabbages went bad.

The end.

Isn't that the point of kim chee?

[Sir Squid Diddimus]

when it goes sour the koreans make a soup out of it.

the koreans?


oh god, i did it, didn't i.