Wednesday Night: What's for Dinner?

Frozen pork and chive dumplings from Prosperity Dumpling

soy sauce, rice vinegar, some sugar, and chives

Spicy Cucumber Salad first made by a Bap Story now made super spicy and my own way (third time in two weeks)

My (vegan) Bap Story

Bap is Korean for rice (and apparently meal).  Bap, not like nap, but like pop.  Bahp!

I think I found A Bap Story though Bon Appetempt, and both are really great food blogs.  Eating Korean has been sitting on my living room table for the past three months from my local library.  I liked it so much the first time I took it out, that I took it out again assuming I'd run through the whole book.  Negative.  What's funny is I made the Spicy Cucumber Salad and Soy Seasoned Tofu from A Bap Story and thumbed through the posts on my iPhone when I probably had the recipes in the book.   I also could have called my mom, but she always sounds so suspicious when I make Korean food using any kind of recipe.  We didn't even own measuring cups or spoons until I made her buy some when I started making garlic bread sticks in the sixth grade.

Note to self: return the book this weekend and let others bask in the glory of Korean cooking.  Because not everyone has a nagging, but loveable Korean mother to call.

The smell of garlic, soy, scallions, sugar and sesame oil stirred together makes me think of my grandmother and my mother, being little and the smells of the kitchen.  It is nostalgic and magical.  Adam said our apartment smelled like hibachi when I was cooking.  Homeboy loves hibachi.

 This is so distinctly Korean to me, and so light and crisp and delicious.  I am eating some right now as I type this blog entry.  I thought I would save time and use the mandolin and I sliced my finger and nail even worse than I did with the knife did when I made those Zucchini Keftedes.  It's throbbing as I type.

Steam!

The tofu burned a little bit after the soy sauce mixture hit the pan.  It was too high, and I didn't have enough liquid.  Fine with me though, because I can eat almost everything burned.

I'd eat this entire meal again tomorrow.  If only my mom had brought me more rice the last time she visited.  I can never get it in a pot like the rice cooker, and the last thing my kitchen needs is another piece of equipment.

Paper Tigers

So this blog is "about my experiences with food and all the things that make me think about it" and I try to stay within those guidelines, for a lot of reasons - mostly because you don't want to see me fucking lose it.  New York Magazine's Paper Tigers really got to me and I read it in its entirety on my way to work, and I kept hoping it would coincide with this blog, and it did.

What I've learned is that America is about money, and if you can make your culture commodifiable, then you're relevant," [Eddie Huang of BaoHaus] says.  "I don't believe anybody agrees with what I say or supports what I do because they truly want to love Asian people.  They like my fucking porn buns, and I don't get it twisted."

The article is written by Wesley Yang, "a child of Asian immigrants born into the suburbs of New Jersey and educated at Rutgers... who move[d] into a decaying mansion in Jersey City" and uses a James Baldwin line to describe what he "sought as a writer - a power which outlasts kingdoms."  

While I did not go to Rutgers, my brother did.  While I don't live in a mansion in Jersey City, I have still lived in this city for a minute now, less than 15 miles from the house I grew up in, where my parents live, and even closer to the hospital where I was born.  And James Baldwin, really?  Just on Sunday, some random stranger on the subway asked to see the tattoo.

All of this is creepy, right?  It should be.  We don't have everything in common though - I am only 27, but have worked at the same company for five years in some capacity, lived in the same apartment for four years and committed myself to working at a relationship for almost five - all proudly by my choice.  I did not and am not planning on spending my 20's turning away from Adulthood, or what I like to think comes with becoming/being an adult and growing up.  Stability.  I wanted it, worked hard at fucking getting it, and have it.  I could have more money, more stuff, a bigger apartment, but this is what is what I wanted.  This life.

And I still like to think that I exhibit some sort of defiance from what is expected of me, as a female and as a Korean American, make some noise, seduced men (RIP), made mistakes (still do) and dare to be interesting.  I sure as hell did not pursue 'paper emblems attesting to my worthiness' and have been lucky enough to make these life choices on my own terms without ever sacrificing my dignity or integrity, neither of which have any monetary worth to me, both of which have been tested and priced.  You cannot buy this.

As Yang said, Fuck all y'all.  Relevant.  I got deficiencies, I can admit them, but I don't try and live my life in a box that anyone designed for me.  I had choices or forced myself into being able to choose, and that's what this is about, right?

Regardless, the article really spoke to me and I came into work feeling invigorated and kicked in the ass.  The Asian Playboy though?  So, one of the ways my men of color can alter and break the "perceptions of Asian Men" is by paying, trying and learning how to fuck white women/reinforcing the white standard of beauty?  Ill.   And not like Nas' Illmatic.

p.s. Eddie Huang's blog is fucking HILARIOUS.  While he may hate Top Chef, as a chef himself, I still love it, and I love even more that Suvir Saran commented on one of his posts, about his recapping Top Chef Masters.

The more boring original: http://kimsunee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Suvirinapron.jpg

Tamales

I had my first tamale tonight (pork!), and my god it would have been even more amazing had it been a tad less spicy.  And if I wasn't also eating a fish taco with a side of rice and beans.

Pizza is disgusting.

Regular pizza is fucking atrocious.  It may satisfy some desperate need the moment you stuff your face, but it is disgusting and you feel even worse after eating it.  To say I feel the same after eating a bag of potato chips would be a monumental lie because I would never feel this way after downing half a family-sized bag of Herr's sour cream and onion potato chips.

And if this blog could ever really sway from food related topics, I would want to touch upon how deeply I feel about the racism and ignorance, and the difference between the two and how they can tie very closely to one another and have terrible consequences on people of color and minorities - but perhaps I could always tie that into ethnic food which is very widely accepted today (oh wow, which one of my white friends can say Korean BBQ?) and wasn't so much when I was in middle school, and then tie that into which of my white friends would get oh so touchy when I would address this subject with them.

Welcome to food and culture, everyone.