Not chilled spring pea soup, the brainchild of laziness

Accidents and laziness can bring great things. Today D and I reached a new low: we were too lazy to cook so we decided to go out and eat, only to decide to stay home and cook 15 minutes later because we were too lazy to get dressed to go out. Figured.

Anyway, because we were lazy, we pretty much threw everything in the fridge together in the quickest, simplest, most delicious combination (ok, this last part is made up. We didn’t know it’d be delicious until later). Soup. The most beautiful thing/brainchild of laziness on a rainy day. Also, no chilled soup. Chilled soup gives me the heebie jeebies.

Ingredients (sounds fancy; really just leftovers from the fridge) 

The way basic Vietnamese soups go (cách nấu canh căn bản) and um, growing green onions

The other day I brought my Vietnamese watercress soup (canh xà lách xoong) to the lab, and my lab manager was so surprised that it was so simple: handful of ground pork + watercress + water + salt/fish sauce = AWESOME soup. I think the real treasure of Vietnamese cuisine is our many different soups – at least 10 different types of noodles made from different starch, and many many kinds of greens that withstand the heat of soup well. And with the exception of some kinds of broth, Vietnamese soup is So.Darn.Simple.

Canh nghêu xào mồng tơi (Big clam soup with Vietnamese spinach)

After endless days of meat and potatoes, seafood just becomes THAT more attractive. Hot clam soup for the cold winter days – you’re welcome, it’s only my genius idea hahahaha. On a more serious (?) note: long holidays become so boring and useless if you don’t have work to catch up or an overseas place to go. Never thought I was the type who would look forward to going back to being busy

Ingredients

1 bunch Vietnamese spinach (normal spinach works fine)

Thịt kho nước dừa & canh nấm – Coconut pork belly stew & mushroom soup

If this is what it’s like to be old…GIVE ME THE YOUTH POTION PLEASE! My body is sore all over from gardening & farming. Always good on days like this to come back to a pot full of meat, specifically PORK BELLY!

My thinking is that, since we won’t be able to eat a lot of pork belly when we’re older (all the artery blocking and such), better to eat it now than later, right?

Ingredients

1 strip of pork belly (about 1 pound), cut into small 1/2 inch pieces (or bigger if you prefer, it’ll just cook longer)

Kimchi jigae, the way they made it in kdramas (!)

It’s 2am – I just finished watching a crazy good Korean drama, am staying up to wait for the recap of said drama, listening to a Korea-based (in English) radio channel, and writing a blog post for a classic Korean recipe.

I am NOT, repeat, NOT creepy. Ok, so, once I was rattling off all the kpop songs I knew to this AMERICAN guy who studied Korean and was in the Korean Student Association. He sort of gave me this…look, I don’t know, like I was a weirdo, an Asiaphile. …Yes, an Asian Asiaphile. Beats me.

Anyway, watching that much Korean TV at least does me some good: I learn a lot about Korean food. On this fake-celebrity-dating-show, every time a guest visits one of the couples’homes, they always, and I’m serious, always request the host to make either dukbokki or kimchi jigae. One reason is these things are quite easy & fast; the other is that these 2 seem to be classic Korean dishes: comfortable, spicy, familiar, and everyone likes it (if you don’t like it it’s your problem). So I watched them make it, and filled in the blanks myself. So, here you go, kimchi jigae like kpop idols would make it…maybe?

Kimchi jigae (kimchi stew)

Cooking time: 15 minutes  + 30 mins waiting

Ingredients