One of my favorite ways to make it is to include soft tofu, fresh cabbage, kimchi, carrots, fish tofu and berkshire pork sausages ❤ We usually have fish tofu, fish balls, and the berkshire pork sausages in our freezer to cook with instant noodles or for hotpot night, so it's a great addition to kimchi stews and soups as well! It is so perfect and so spicy delicious for when it's cold out! Warms you right up from the inside out 🥵❤

A trick to make your broth have more depth of flavor is to add a spoon of white miso, or to make a dashi broth base. You can boil dried kelp and anchovies to achieve this from scratch, or a spoonful of instant dashi also works in a pinch. It adds an extra bit of umami to the soup that is deeper and more delicious than just adding salt!

It only took about 10-15 minutes or so for it to be ready to eat, super easy one pot meal, and can be easily made vegetarian if you take out the sausage/fish tofu I added.

KIMCHI TOFU STEW
Makes 2 servings.

INGREDIENTS:
-1 tbsp gochujang
- 1 tbsp miso
- 1/2 tbsp sugar
- Gochugaru (1-2 tbsp) depending on how spicy you like it
- 1 cup kimchi
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1-2 cups chopped cabbage
- 1 chopped carrot
- fish tofu (optional)
- berkshire sausages (optional)
- 1 box soft tofu
- 2 cups vegetable broth or chicken broth

DIRECTIONS:
Just throw it all into a pot and boil together until the veggies are soft (to your liking). Would be awesome to eat with rice or if you are doing low carb, just eat it as is!

Hope you enjoy!

Until next time, 
​Jenny

This chewy Korean rice cake dish is spicy, savory and sweet 😋 you can add anything you really want to it, but for this recipe I added some bean curd sticks, marinated chicken thigh and king oyster mushrooms 🍄The alarmingly red spicy gochujang sauce keeps you warm for sure, and I particularly love eating this dish on cold, rainy or wintery days. This dish goes well with Japanese or Korean Berkshire Pork Sausages, enoki mushrooms, shimeji mushrooms, spam, and more! Some folks also like to add ramen to it, making it a "rabokki" instead of "tteokbokki". It can get pretty spicy, but you can adjust the amount of gochugaru and gochujang and add more agave nectar or sugar for sweetness to balance it out for something more mild. I absolutely love the chewiness of the rice cake, and the fiery spicy sauce definitely wakes up the senses!

The Chinese equivalent of the Korean rice cake is usually more flat, oval shaped and is often eaten during holidays. I personally like the Korean rice cake more though, because the cylindrical shape gives it more of a delightful chew 😊

Here is my recipe (I also added a little bit of prickly ash oil for that spicy mala flavor ❤)

SPICY TTEOKBOKKI KOREAN RICE CAKE​

INGREDIENTS
• Korean Tteokbokki rice cake 1/4-1/3 bag
• 1 tbsp Gochugaru (Korean red pepper flakes/powder)
• 2 oz chicken thigh
• 1/2 cup julienned king oyster mushroom
• 1 oz bean curd sticks
• 2 tbsp gochujang
• 1 tbsp oyster sauce
• 2 tbsp agave nectar
• 1 tsp mala prickly ash oil
• 1/2 tbsp minced garlic
• 1/2 cup water

DIRECTIONS
1. Cook garlic and chicken until cooked through. Add julienned king oyster mushrooms and bean curd sticks and mix.
2. Add rice cakes, 1/2 cup water, gochujang, oyster sauce. Add agave nectar and gochugaru to desired sweetness and spice level.
3. Mix well and let cook on medium high heat until sauce becomes thick and sticky, and the rice cakes are cooked to desired softness. Serve with some scallions on top. Enjoy!

Until next time,
Jenny

After mixing the sauce, I place a dollop of it in the bottom of my serving bowl, add noodles and then add the toppings. Lastly, I garnish with sesame seeds and drizzle more chili oil and prickly ash oil on top! Honestly, it doesn't matter how you layer your ingredients, since you'll be mixing it all up to eat anyhow. To each their own!

INGREDIENTS:
​
Toppings

• 1/2 pound ground pork
• 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tbsp lite soy sauce
• 1/2 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1 tbsp ground ginger
• 1 tbsp shaoxing wine or rice wine
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp white pepper
• 1 tbsp corn starch
• Chinese sweet preserved radish, minced (optional)

Other toppings

• Chinese broccoli or bok choy
• Kimchi (optional)

Dan dan noodle sauce

• 2 tbsp peanut butter or 2 tbsp sesame paste
• 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 1.5 tbsp lite soy sauce
• 1 tbsp shaoxing wine or rice wine
• 1 tbsp black vinegar, rice vinegar or white vinegar
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 1/4-1/2 cup water
• 1 tsp white pepper
• 1 tbsp spicy Chinese chili bean paste or just Chinese bean paste if you don't do spicy.
• 1 tbsp crushed red pepper
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp prickly ash oil
• 2 teaspoon sriracha sauce

Handmade noodles (2-3 servings)​ or store bought noodles of your preference

This is a great dish to assemble and enjoy, and I love that it can be prepared relatively quickly (unless you are making the handmade noodles, which takes a little more waiting time). For me, I always have soy sauce, sesame oil, rice wine and assorted spices in stock since they are staples in our home, which makes this dish that much easier to make. Plus they are versatile and used in many other Asian dishes, so it's a win win for us! We hope you enjoy this noodle dish!

Lately, I've noticed that being in quarantine seems to be making everyone a little bit more creative in the kitchen, which is great! Perhaps out of necessity because we only have certain ingredients at home, or maybe because we're tired of eating the same things over and over. Either way, I am amazed and inspired by so many people posting their creations online. 

Being in quarantine also means craving food that we don't regularly make at home, like fried chicken or like sushi and sashimi, which we normally eat out. But not having had sushi for a while and then going into quarantine, made us crave it big time. After all, we don't know when we will be able to go back to our favorite Japanese sushi restaurants! So while we were picking up groceries and essentials at Costco, we got a pack of farm raised Atlantic salmon for our poke bowl dinner.

And this is what I came up with. Drool worthy goodness. A salmon party in your mouth!

Growing up, my grandmother loved to cook fish, normally steamed as she enjoyed simple, healthy foods. Her dishes were never complicated, and her style of cooking often simply let the main ingredients shine without a fuss. Whether it was dried salted fish or fresh fish from the market, she would skillfully prepare it and steam the whole fish to perfection, topping it with ginger, scallions and my favorite seafood soy sauce.

​Now when I eat Chinese style steamed fish, it brings back memories of my grandmother scooping a steamy bowl of fluffy white rice from her clay pot and spooning the seafood soy sauce from the side of the steamed fish dish onto my bowl of rice before handing it to me. The slightly sweet seafood soy sauce mixed with the freshly steamed juices of the fish was incredibly aromatic and was SO GOOD over rice. Honestly, I enjoyed eating plain white rice with the steamed fish sauce more than eating the fish itself as a kid. It was simple, but delicious.

Another favorite part about steamed fish? Eating the cheek of the fish, right below the eye. It was always the most tender piece of fish meat and something my grandmother and father always dug out for me or my sister to enjoy. It made me feel loved and special to be given the best part of the fish.

Wilson and I recently visited Shan Shan Noodles on Route 46 in Parsippany, NJ and we had ordered a steamed fish dish with chili peppers off their specials menu. Despite how full we were from our usual noodle orders, we somehow were able to try and eat the fish dish, and boy were we glad that we did. Immediately, we fell in love with the authentic, fresh flavors and the ease in eating the smooth, velvety flounder fish fillets without worrying about bones or skin. We loved that every bite was fish, and I especially loved the hint of heat from the chili peppers. The dish itself is not spicy so you could easily remove the chili peppers as well.

This recipe that I am sharing today is my take on the dish from Shan Shan Noodles, with some influence from my grandmother's cooking of steamed fish as well. Topped with chili peppers, ginger, scallion, shiitake mushrooms, fried garlic bits, prickly ash oil, seafood soy sauce and mirin, the steamed marinaded flounder filets are sweet with a slight kick from the chili pepper and mild "numbing" from the prickly ash oil. The shiitake mushrooms then add a bit of earthiness to the dish while the fried garlic bits provide a bit of texture and umami flavor boost.

INGREDIENTS
Serves 2-3
• 2 fillets of flounder, cut into pieces
• 2 teaspoons white pepper
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 2 inch knob of ginger, slices thinly and julienned
• 2 scallions stalks, sliced finely
• 2 teaspoons sesame oil
• 2 teaspoons prickly ash oil
• 1 long chili pepper
• 1 tablespoon mirin
• 1 tablespoon of the seafood soy sauce
 
DIRECTIONS
1. Slice the flounder fillets into sashimi sliced cuts, round 2-3 inches per slice. The should resemble small chicken tenders in size.

2. Place sliced flounder into a mixing bowl and add salt, white pepper, sesame oil, mirin, and cornstarch. Mix well until flounder is well coated.

3. Slice up the ginger and scallion into fine thin strips. Chop up the chili pepper and place half of the sliced ginger and scallion on a plate for the fish to steam on.

4. Place the fish slices onto the steam plate, feel free to sprinkle some ginger, scallion and chili pepper in between layers of fish if you are piling the fish into a smaller steaming plate or bowl. Lastly, place the steam fish plate into the steamer rack and steam for 15 minutes. The fish should be completely white and opaque, and easily forked apart to be cooked through.

5. When the fish is done steaming, remove from the steamer and top the fish with the seafood soy sauce, prickly ash oil and sprinkling of fried garlic bits. And that's it! Enjoy over a bowl of white rice and you're good to go!​​

​I hope you enjoy this dish as much as we do. It's fresh, healthy, and also a great dish to serve to young ones (minus the chili pepper and prickly ash oil) because you don't have to worry about fish bones, and they'll enjoy the fish sauce over rice too!