Crêpes from a French guy & Koja

Ok, so he's not French, but he lived in France for a bit and speaks fluent French -- I present to you:  my boyfriend SP (in the process of rolling a crêpe)!

Our shopping adventure was fun too! As we walked towards Trader Joe's, SP saw a falafel food cart driving into the city. "No! You're driving the wrong way! I want food to come towards me, not away from me!", he said. We bought eggs, milk, and flour, but not Nutella, because Trader Joe's doesn't sell any (they sell cocoa almond spread, though). On the way back, though, we walked past a Rite-Aid, and they had exactly ONE JAR left! Coincidence! I'm not a huge fan of Nutella (in early 2007, I had an obsession with it and ate it every day. That may be why I haven't loved Nutella since). Nutella has many uses, one of which is lathering it onto a homemade crêpe.

On the way back, we stopped by Koja (THEY WERE OPEN!) to get dinner, even though I had been under the impression that crêpes were going to be dinner. Koja sells Korean food, and I realised that I'm never going to be able to have bulgogi :( It turns out that every Friday after 3pm, meals are $4.50 instead of the usual $5 or $6. This makes sense because Koja isn't open over the weekend, and they have to sell off all that steamed rice and marinated cow and pig chunks.

SP got beef bulgogi and kimchi, and I got tofu rice noodles. Although I have have pickled cabbage before, I'm not sure I've ever had official "kimchi". I don't think I like it tremendously -- I prefer cucumber pickles, pickled bak choi, or zha[4] cai[4] (榨菜), a pickled Chinese mustard stem (this is my favourite).

I tried some of the vegetables in the bulgogi, and they had a really strong beef flavour. The tofu and rice noodles were really spicy but still delicious and had a great texture, and there was also some white sesame!

SP told me that he'd never actually made crêpes by himself before. Apparently he'd just lounge around and "prepare the Nutella", which instantly reminded me of whenever my mum makes fa[2] gao[1] (steamed cake), my sister just lounges around and "prepares the chocolate syrup" by taking it out of the fridge.

SP used the recipe that he and his mum use for crêpes, which calls for 1 cup of milk (we used a bit more than that), 1 egg, 1 teaspoon of oil (we used peanut, which .wasn't the best idea), 1 tablespoon of sugar (we used 2), and 1 cup of plain flour (we used a bit less). Basically you just mix the wet stuff, add sugar, and then sift in the flour. We ran into a bunch of problems though, because I'm a college student with no kitchen.

1. No big bowl --> borrowed one from TJ.

2. No sifting capability --> some lumps (but SP got rid of them!)

3. Square pan --> squarish crêpes.

4. When the first crêpe was done, SP exclaimed "No one prepared the Nutella!!" I guess it is important to have an official Nutella-jar-opener, hm?

 

Above: SP cooking. The first crêpe was a little thick, about the same thickness as these ones I made before.

Below: thin crepe!

We made 5 in total, although if we had made thinner (read: better) ones, we would've ended up with 6.

Marinade

Since I'm pretty much doing half the cooking in the family now (to give my mum less housework and more rest time), I figured I should learn how to cook animals. So, I've been browsing through the Costco cookbook since I figured, hey, let's just get the gist of cooking animals, right? I personally find cookbooks more useful than the internet when I'm a complete neophyte at cooking something (in this case, animal flesh). They're not for me to follow, though. They're just kinda... there. As a guideline. Something for me to manipulate.

I've never made any marinades before. Today, however, I made dinner and I made some sort of stove-top grilled tofu with this sweet and sour fruity marinade. To appease the rest of the family, I also made stove-top grilled pig flesh (pork chops) with the same marinade. Apparently, 1 cm-thick pork chops cook pretty quickly, and I overcooked the first three chunks (I mean, how was I supposed to know whether they were cooked or not? I can't taste test them...), but they were still edible. The rest of the chops turned out fine, though.

My mum and brother definitely liked the marinade. Although my brother didn't comment much (he did say they were "juicy" though, and he couldn't figure out what sort of marinade it was), I felt really pleased because his fork kept transporting chunks of pork chop to his bowl. My sister responded to this new dish by saying "Eww", which is the norm. The only comment from my dad was that it needed more salt. Meh. I wonder how it's like when I'm not at home. *Here comes the bitter snide comment* I wonder if my dad would cook dinner if I hadn't been home today. My mum had to take my sister to a party today, and didn't get back until 8 pm (which is literally when I finished stir frying the bak choi - I started making dinner around 7), and my dad was just watching TV, and he'd been home for half an hour. I mean, would everyone wait until 9 for dinner?

Anyway. To get the general gist of a marinade, I read the recipe from page 105 of Favorite Recipes The Costco Way 2007. It's a recipe by Paula Deen called "Pork Chops with Ragout" which isn't that great of a title in my opinion because in translation it's "Pork Chops in Sauce". My marinade is extremely loosely based off of Paula Deen's recipe, there is no butter in it. At all. Funny, huh?

INGREDIENTS

A.

Small clove of garlic

60 g onion

100 g (~1.5 stalks) of celery

4 leaves fresh basil!

B.

1 tbsp oregano

1 tbsp coriander

5 cut dried juniper berries

1 tsp nutmeg

Salt

Pepper

C.

150 ml apple juice

70 ml balsamic vinegar

2 tbsp vinegar

2-3 tbsp olive oil

Juice of one lime

D.

1 kg marinade-able objects (in this case, half tofu and half boneless pork chops in two separate containers)

E.

1 tbsp all purpose flour

METHOD

1. Finely chop stuff in Group A.

2. Mix stuff in Group A, B, and C together, in a container with a lid. It will be liquidy.

3. Cut marinade-able objects into pieces that are about 1 cm thick. For tofu, a thickness of 0.5 cm is better. Stick objects into marinade.

4. Leave container in a fridge for at least 4 hours.

5. FOR TOFU: Cook marinaded tofu in a frying pan on medium heat, uncovered, for 3-4 minutes on each side. If you like crunchy, burned exteriors, 5 minutes on each side is pretty nice too.

FOR PORK: Plop pieces onto the frying pan on medium heat, and cover for 1-2 minutes. Flip. Cover for 2-4 minutes. Keep uncovered and check frequently for doneness. This is quite difficult if one doesn't actually eat pork...

Remember: Sizzling is good.

6. Promptly remove marinated objects from frying pan, and scrape all the leftover marinade into the frying pan.

7. Stir (with the same spatula you've been using) on medium heat. When the marinade starts to bubble, add in E. (1 tbsp flour). Continue stirring until you end up with a thick sauce.

8. Pour sauce onto marinated objects and eat!!

I didn't take a picture of the pork chops but if I would say that they had neat grilled-ish exteriors and were squishy. They looked pretty fantastic on the inside too.

The marinated tofu tasted pretty good...it wasn't sweet enough for my liking, though. Still, I had leftover marinade so I marinated more tofu! :)