Korean Peach Season? Cake for Breakfast.

...because friends make mimosas and cake sound like a pretty good idea at any goddamned hour.

Peach and Almond Upside Down Cake
with Lemony Topping

Cake:
-3-4 peaches
(whatever it takes to cover your baking dish)
-1/2 cup almond meal
-1/2 cup + 2 tbsp flour
-1/2 tsp baking powder
-1 tsp cinnamon
-1/4 tsp salt
-1/2 cup sugar
-6 tbsp butter
(at room temperature)
-1 tsp vanilla
-2 eggs
-1/3 cup plain yogurt

Syrup:
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
2-3 tbsp water

Lemony topping:
-1 cup cream cheese
-3 tbsp milk
-2 tbsp lemon juice
-1 tbsp lemon zest
-3 tbsp sugar

This is a pretty quick one, so start by liberally greasing a 9 inch cake pan with butter and preheating your oven to 350 degrees. Peel and slice your peaches into wedges, and arrange them however you like to mostly cover the bottom of the pan. Now we've just got to get the batter and the syrup sorted out.

Batter:
Sift the flour, salt, cinnamon, and baking powder together into a bowl. Mix the sifted stuff in with the almond meal, and set it aside while you get the wet stuff ready.

In another larger bowl, cream the sugar, butter and vanilla together until smooth. Mix in the eggs one by one, and then stir in the yogurt. Dump in all the dry stuff and mix the lot just enough to get it all sludgy. Don't try to get it perfectly smooth, it'll always look a little weird thanks to the almond meal. Set the batter aside for a few minutes while you make the syrup.

Syrup:
Put both the sugars in a small pot over high heat with about 2 tbsp of water. You don't need to stir it or anything - just allow the sugar to melt down into a syrup. It'll only take about 3 minutes, at which point  you can turn off the heat and spoon it all over the peach slices in the cake pan.

Spread the batter on top of the syrupy peaches and bang the pan on the counter to settle the batter between all the slices. Stick it in a hot oven for about 30 minutes (or until a toothpick inserted to the cakey-part comes out clean). Once baked, allow the cake to cool in the pan for around 10 minutes before trying to invert anything.

While the cake is cooling, zest a lemon by using a grater or carefully cutting the peel off the fruit (NO WHITE PITH!) and mincing it finely. Whisk that together with the cream cheese, milk, lemon juice and sugar until smooth. If you want the topping thinner, just add a little more milk until it reaches your desired consistency. If it's not quite lemony enough, add more lemony things. If it isn't sweet enough, add more sugar. You get the idea.

By now the cake should still be warm but not scalding hot, so place a large plate over the pan, and carefully flip the entire thing over so that the cake splops out onto the plate.

Serve warm with a generous dollop of lemony cream cheese and eat it for breakfast like the shameless fat kid you are.

Compensatory Duck Fat and Brandy

Sigh, requisite apologies are in order for being such a terribly negligent gastroslut. I moved to a magical land where one can fritter their time away in public saunas, and the excessive consumption of alcohol is accepted - nay, encouraged! So really, my absence should come as a surprise to nobody. 

Sorry pals, here's a little something to tide us all over until I morph back into a responsible adult:

...aahahhahah, GOOD ONE ALI!!!

Good Greasy Greens:
Duck, Mushroom, and Spinach Sauté

-3 cloves garlic

-1 yellow onion

-8 oz smoked duck breast

- 5 cups spinach

- 6 cups mushrooms of your choice 

(I did shitaake, oyster, and button)

-1/3 cup brandy

-pepper+salt to taste
-1/4 tsp hot chili flakes.

Really, all this dish involves is sequentially throwing things in a hot pan to get brown, but I will elaborate for the curious.

start by NOT WASHING THE GODDAMN MUSHROOMS and NOT ADDING IN ANY SALT UNTIL THEY ARE DONE BROWNING. Brush them or wipe them, hold on the salt - doing otherwise ensures that they flood the pan with water and don't brown as quickly.

Mince the garlic, dice the onion, and chop the mushrooms to whatever size you like - same goes for the duck and spinach. You should know that all of my amounts are pretty approximate and very flexible...meaning that I did a shit job of remembering to measure things before I stuck them in a pan.

Now the cookery: put a large pan over high heat, and fry the duck until crisp and brown. Remove the meat and set it aside for now. Also remove most of the rendered fat from the pan - keep about 3 tbsp in, and set the rest aside for other purposes. 

Add the mushrooms to the hot duck fat and fry until nice and dark. You don't need to stir constantly, just shovel it around every couple of minutes and repeat until thoroughly browned. Add the onion + garlic to the mix, and stir often until the onion bits soften and go a bit translucent. Pour in the brandy (cheap is fine, I used the last of an $8 bottle from Christmas) to deglaze the pan. Finally, lump on the spinach and allow it to wilt for a minute or two. Give it all a  quick mix and allow the greens to cook for a couple more minutes. Throw in the chili flakes, and season with salt and a generous amount of pepper  to taste. Boom, you're done.

....Sort of. It's very tasty as a side or as a savory crepe filling, but I like it atop noodles best. Toss some freshly boiled pasta in a tablespoon or two of the rendered smoked duck fat from earlier, liberally dole out some of the sauté, and cream your effin' pants while you down it like a champ. I'm sure this concoction would also work great with thick slab bacon in lieu of the duck. Enjoy until I sober up long enough to post again!

Dahl Soup for Dull Days

After a nice long period of wallowing in disposable income, vacationing abroad, and hosting my lovely man-friend in Changwon, I'm back to a far less thrilling reality. Damn.

No money means no meat, so here's a simple recipe for my mom's dahl soup which is tasty, really cost effective, and pretty easy to make.


Dahl soup

-2 cups split red lentils
-1/3 cup chickpea flour
   (aka gram, besan, chana dal flour)
-10 cloves garlic, minced
-3 inches of ginger root, peeled and minced
-2 large onions, diced
-2 tbsp turmeric
-salt to taste
-1 tsp black pepper
-1/2 tsp chili flakes
-3 tbsp butter
-3 tbsp olive oil

This recipe has 3 main steps: brown, boil, and fry. First, we brown; you need to roast both the chickpea flour and the lentils prior to cooking the soup (but not at the same time!). This will give the dish a better, fuller flavour - necessary when something savory lacks tastytasty meat and cruelty. In a dry pan over high heat, stir the chickpea flour constantly until it browns in color - this shouldn't take much more than 5 minutes. Set the flour aside and get your soup pot.

Place the pot over high heat and roast the lentils until they yellow. You might notice a few dark brown or black ones - no biggie. Just keep stirring.

Once the lentils are sufficiently roasted, pour in roughly 6 cups of water to stop the browning. Add in the minced ginger and turmeric, bring it all to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer the concoction covered until the lentils are soft (about 45 minutes).

While your lentils are cooking in the pot, melt the butter into the oil in a pan. Fry the onions, garlic, and chili together over medium-high heat until the garlic is browned and the onions are soft. Once that's done, turn off the heat and set the pan aside for a bit.

Back to the soup pot: when your lentils are soft it's time to add in the toasted flour. Gradually whisk the flour into your lentil goop until well incorporated. Don't worry if there are a few little lumps. Toss in the fried things and all of the fat you fried them in, along with enough water to get the soup to your desired consistency. I usually end up throwing in an extra 6 cups because I like it fairly thick, but you can always add more if you like. Add in the pepper and salt to taste and allow the whole pot to return to a boil. Turn that shit off and leave it to mellow for a few hours - in my experience, it always tastes better the next day.

I think it's particularly nice topped with a bit of freshly chopped cilantro and a quick squeeze of lime. I, however, do not have either readily available; far-less-thrilling-reality, indeed.

Curry

No long introduction - it's cold as tits in Korea, and all I want to do is sit on my ondol in a pile of blankets warming my insides.

It'smotherfuckingcurryseason.

Curry is great because lazy people like me can throw ridiculous quantities of delicious things into a large pot and have meals for a solid week, thus reducing the number of times one must leave their bed to succumb to the tedium of ...uh...not being in bed. Please enjoy my climatic coping strategy:

Pork and Cardamom Curry

-4 cups diced kabocha squash
(butternut or acorn varieties would be ok)

-1 heaped tbsp garam masala

-1.5 tbsp cardamom pods, whole

-1 tbsp black pepper

-2 tbsp chili flakes
(or to taste)

-4 inches ginger root, peeled and minced

-2.5 kg pork shoulder, cut into strips

-15 cloves of garlic, smashed

-5 medium onions, sliced thinly

-2 tbsp oil/fat/whatevs.

-1 can coconut milk

-1 tbsp salt, or to taste

I'm not gonna lie...this recipe involves some pretty annoying (but worthwhile) prep work. The first step is extracting the cardamom from their shells. I've found it best to squish them with the side of a knife, and then rub the pods between your fingers to ease the little rat-poop-esque grains out. I've tried to get around this by using ground cardamom as well as steeping the cardamom pods without husking them - both to less satisfactory results. Having the whole seeds in there really gives your maw strong pops of cardamom gusto. This is particularly great because they will sharply punctuate the other strong flavors in this recipe instead of just blending in with them. Skip this important (albeit crappy) step and you'll be making a very different curry.

10 agonizing minutes later you'll have your little pile of fragrant turds. Now you dump them, the chili, pepper, and masala in a large pot over medium heat with the fat of your choice to toast up a bit. After a minute it should be really fragrant, at which time you can add in your onion, garlic, and ginger. Mix it up well and sweat the whole lot for about 5 minutes over medium heat. Now add in your pork, mix well, cover the pot and continue to cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes.

At this point you'll notice that the ingredients have released a lot of water - that's good. If they haven't, cover it up again and leave it for another 5 minutes. Add your squash and coconut milk into the bubbling mess and cook it for another 45 minutes over medium-low heat (keep it at a low simmer). Be sure to give it a stir every 15 minutes or so to make sure that nothing is sticking to the bottom of the pot.

Uncover the pot, add in the salt, and reduce the lot for another hour (or until desired consistency is reached) over medium-low heat. I like this curry nice and thick, so I tend to boil most of the liquid out. Taste the batch, and only add more salt (if needed) AFTER you have reduced it to your liking.

By this point most of the squash, onions, and garlic will melt together with the coconut milk into a thick delicious sauce, both pungent and sweet. Prepare your mouth for tender, flavorful pork and the worst goddamn breath you've ever had in your life.