What's so incredible? Why is she so awesome? How does she do it?

I have a slight obsession with Korean food. Ever since I fell in love with the jjajangmyun joint next to the KCCLA in Los Angeles have I harboured a special compartment in my heart for the stuff. That tender spot was made ever more permanent by the restaurant’s 47″ flat screen televisions, all of which played K-Dramas. I went religiously for a weekly appointment with sticky black noodles and My Lovely Sam Soon. Hey now, you didn’t think I became an Asian-phile by accident, did you?

I like to think I manage my obsession in healthy ways. I’m an avid food blogger, a manic noodle reviewer, and one of those obnoxious people who photographs everything they eat so you know I’m serious about all the gastronomic delights the internet offers. Entrenched as I am, I still have a hard time finding good resources on Korean cooking.

Oh there are some good cookbooks, some translated into English some written by the proud children of immigrants. There are some awesome Korean ladies making thorough cooking demos online. There are amazing appreciation sites out there, my favourite even run by South Korea’s Tourism Organization. They’re wonderful resources, but that doesn’t change the fact that all my friends are afraid to cook Korean food.

Some of them are even afraid to try Korean food. Part of me died inside when I found out.

Self, I thought, This has to change. So on aforementioned appreciation site, KoreaTaste.org, I’ve started making some videos that (hopefully) demonstrate how easy Korean food is to cook. I’m making these videos for you, guy who only owns one pot and is afraid of spices. I’m making them for you, lady who’s sick of Thursday night meatloaf every week. For you, person trying to eat healthier, and for you, student on a budget. I encourage everyone seek out more authentic Korean food and Korean recipes, but the truth is, Korean food doesn’t have to be something you gear up for or something requiring a special shopping trip. It’s an everyday cuisine, so with a few adaptations, hopefully these videos will help Korean food find its way into your home.

I know it’s a regular staple in mine. Last night I made soondubu jjigae with the leftovers in my fridge and ate it as I got hooked on yet another drama, this time First Shop of the Coffee Prince. Full recipe information for the video can be found here and I’d appreciate your comments. Give it a big thumbs up if you like what you see!

It seems strange that I’d find fault with Los Angeles and yet fall in love with Irvine. Orange County is generally considered yuppie and culturally devoid by die-hard angelinos. I couldn’t disagree more.

Irvine is certainly a different beast than LA, in some ways more like Southern California than its neighbour. At times quiet and introspective with sprawling beaches of Newport, at times identity confused by Asian influence and fusion cuisine, Irvine kept me curious. Before I hopped the pond yet again to East Asia, I spent some time helping a friend close house in a beautiful neighbourhood. As I rooted around my bag for long-unused sunglasses and soaked up the sunshine, I wondered why he was leaving the place at all. Surprisingly, he hated it.

After we had taped the last box closed around 2am, we headed to BCD Tofu House for some late night soondubu jjigae. The street corner was hopping with young UCIrvine students and a few old men sipping beer. It seemed fitting to me that in this same shopping centre should I spy 85ºC Bakery and Cafe, a gem from Taiwan I’d heard about but never been close enough to sample. Well, my last night stateside would be incomplete without a lovely pastry (and trust me here, once you get used to it, the Asians do European pastries better than anyone else) so I decided to wait it out. When the sun broke, we were ready to roll, taro roll and pineapple melon bread in hand. You can see for yourself in the video above.

When I die, I hope I can find Chanpon in heaven because that noodle soup was plate-lickin’ good. Full review over at my foodblog, Up for Dessert.

Tokyo has an older part and a newer part. Asakusa is what you’d expect Tokyo to look like, with its crowded streets and dingy establishments, but truthfully it’s a rarity in the city that boasts the new and shiny everywhere you look. Asakusa has some of my favorite little hidey-holes too, including that tiny little Sento I spent every night at for a week, including my favourite okonomiyaki seller, including the best spot to get ceramics, and until recently, I hadn’t ever had noodles there. Seemed fitting to get traditional noodles in traditional Tokyo (well, if there is such a thing), just a stone’s throw from Senso-ji, the largest and most famous Buddhist temple in the city.

Read the full review over at my foodblog, Up for Dessert.

I live across the street from a fabulous Thai restaurant in Arlington, and I drag most of my mates to it on a regular basis. What I’m trying to say here is that I’m a bit of a Thai snob. I don’t do mediocre Thai. So when I was invited out to T.H.A.I. in Shirlington, I got a little nervous. Don’t get me wrong, I adore Thai food, but I also deplore bad Thai food. I decided to roll the dice of culinary fate and let the chips fall where they may.

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Turns out, I worried over nothing. T.H.A.I. in Shirlington was good Thai. Their lunch specials made my eyes pop out; at least a dozen options of noodle bowls and curry sets priced in the single digits and served with heaping portions of meat or tofu. I got the “Poor Man’s Noodles,” which were a stripped down version of a Pad Thai, consisting of peanuts, bean sprouts, scallions, egg, and fried tofu. The tofu was awesome: crispy on the outside but still spongey and flavourful on the inside. I was pleasantly surprised.

I made some pasta. It isn’t anything special, just your garden-variety pasta sauce. Just tomatoes, onions, garlic, white wine, seasonings. Just a little goats cheese and basil on top. Nothing crazy. And yet, it’s unlike anything I could find in a restaurant. The tomatoes are from my garden (some yellow, some red, some heirloom, some tiger-striped) and they’re just itching to burst in your mouth. The wine is an unbelievable Chardonnay from California (and I hate Chardonnay) I found in Charlottesville for under ten dollars.

I eat a lot of noodles. More than I let on. But most of the noodles I make are of the Italian variety simply because that’s what I know how to cook. It’s so commonplace to me that I never talk about the sauces I make at home, even though I’ve made some wild stuff. You can do anything with a pasta sauce, and I’ll make a tomato and butter sauce one week, then a mushroom sauce the next, and a spring veggie sauce the week after. Sometimes it’ll be just beans, sometimes just pesto, sometimes a hodgepodge of everything in my icebox, and while I think of zucchini lemon pasta as a totally normal fixture of anyone’s dinner rotation, I forget to tell people that’s what I ate.

So here it is, the pasta sauce I made. It seems run of the mill, but at the same time, it’s not, because every sauce I make is a little bit special.

Okay, so you’ve put up with my countless tirades about diet, sustainability, and vegetarianism. Maybe you’re finding these issues have entered the public consciousness, and debates are raging on every platform imaginable. The information is out there. I’m always talking about getting informed, but how? And once you are informed, what then? The more you know, the harder it actually becomes. Sometimes even I wish for the blissfully ignorant days of boxed macaroni and 2-litre pop.

You could be a vegetarian, or a vegan, or considering walking that path. You could just as easily be an omnivore. Doesn’t matter. You need to do your research the same in either case and make your choices from there. And when you do, you’ll run into a major setback: after you take into account health, politics, morality, economics, and preference, what the hell can you eat? The problem goes something like this:

Step 1 - Yikes! The meat industry is doing some shady stuff
Yes it is. A quick rundown: massive deforestation, huge greenhouse gas contributions, irresponsible use of antibiotics, mistreatment of animals, flouting of biology (animals aren’t able to eat grains biologically), spread of disease, mistreatment of employees, monopoly of the market, control of legislation, and mislabeling of products just to name a few. I recommend Michael Pollan’s An Omnivore’s Dilemma if you want a quick primer. You now re-examine your meat consumption and get really nervous about your choices in restaurants for whatever — ecological, economic, moral, religious, personal — reasons.

Step 2 - Crikey! The agro industry isn’t much better
Okay then, most meat is out. Only most folks, vegans especially, stop there. But that isn’t the whole story, because it turns out the agriculture industry isn’t doing much better. Among their sins: massive deforestation, unsustainable water practices, wasteful crop farming, no market regulation, destructive pesticide usage, genetic homogeny (this is a very serious issue, read up on the banana problem), harmful chemical usage, maltreatment of outsourced workers and the like. She angers me, but Lierre Keith does make some excellent points in her book The Vegetarian Myth. For a less obnoxious account, I recommend the documentary King Corn, which is as informative as it is entertaining. You now take a closer look at your supermarket basket, and become afraid of words like organic and all natural.

Step 3 - Sheesh! Everything I know about food is wrong
It should be taking you way too long to do your grocery shopping at this point. To make matters worse, a bunch of your friends are diagnosed with celiacs disease and suddenly develop lactose intolerance. They regale the primal/paleo diet. You’re not interested in the 18 eggs they eat per week or the butter-only dishes they cook, but you are disturbed to find research like The China Study exists and other papers that prove grains, legumes, and dairy are actually poisonous to human beings. Grains especially like to: irritate your gut and often puncture it, allow you to go septic, create autoimmune diseases, exacerbate pre-existing medical conditions, cause weight gain and weight retention, lower your insulin sensitivity, injure your organs, prevent nutrient absorption, and all manner of biological ills often undiagnosed. For more details on the evils of refined sugar and grains, read Robb Wolf’s The Paleo Solution. You are getting a little frustrated, but maybe you try Robb’s recommended 30-day trial and feel worlds better than you have in years without grains and dairy. So now you have to ignore the rice and pasta aisle as well as the meat counter and certain produce sections.

Step 4 - Mother of pearl! What’s left for me to eat?
You see the problem here. If you believe all of it, you have stumbled upon one of the biggest concerns no one likes to talk about: our food system is broken in more than one way. In fact, it’s so broken, that you can’t seem to go to the supermarket now without spending fifteen minutes pondering the repercussions of every item you put it your basket. Here’s where the grains of salt come in. There’s a very small subset of foods that are sustainable and also nutritious. There are some ways you can safely shop, usually at farmers markets or anything you can grow in your own back yard, but by and large you’re going to have to make some concessions. It sucks but it’s the truth. Luckily, things are changing, and there’s hope yet. I recommend Mel Bartholomew’s manual to The Square Foot Garden to grow your own vegetables, and this excellent TED Talk by Dan Barber about the future of sustainable fish “farming.” The catch is, you don’t have all that much say, and many companies aren’t all that transparent. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pick your battles, though.

I still won’t eat meat. I try it probably once a year, and decide it isn’t for me on an annual basis. I know grains are terrible for you, but I haven’t given them up completely because sometimes I’d rather irritate my gut than be that annoying picky person at the restaurant. I get my protein from tree nuts and nut butters, farm fresh eggs, beans soaked overnight, fresh (not pre-formed fake meat) tofu, and a small selection of more sustainable fish. I’m snobbish about my vegetables and I pay more for brands and farms that have better agricultural practices (like a CSA from a local farm or tomatoes from my own back yard). Sadly, cultural awareness of the problem is only half the battle. I look forward to the day when we’re offered more choices. As one of the farmers in the documentary Food, Inc. so blatantly states, “If y’all were asking for grass-fed beef, believe me, we’d give you grass-fed beef.” Small steps to big change start wherever and whenever you take them.

Pho is an unsung breakfast food. That’s right, I said breakfast food. While a hot bowl of noodles says cheap lunch to the average westerner, it says good morning to millions of Asian from all over the Pacific.

Have you had pho before? It’s fresh, light, and mild in flavor. It’s chock full of fresh veggies and comes with a plate covered in bean sprouts, jalapeños, cilantro, and purple basil. It’s filling without being greasy, and it’s easy to make. Unfortunately though, most Pho places aren’t exactly open for breakfast. So I had to settle for brunch on a sunny Saturday when I took the long walk down Mt. Vernon to Pho King.

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My love of pho was not disappointed. In a complex known for great food — Bombay Curry, Del Merei Grill, and Pizzaiolo neighbour Pho King — Pho King is right at home. A big bowl of Pho Chay will run you about $8, steep for pho but of course pretty reasonable by Arlington standards. It’s fresh and tasty though, and comes out piping hot. I personally appreciate how they don’t skimp on the limes, my favourite part of pho for the splash of brightness it adds.

The rest of the menu is rather lackluster, but the pungent broth and the chewiness of the tiny noodles more than make up for the place’s other shortcomings: minimal decor, ultra-utilitarian service, and a distinct lack of English proficiency. Still, I don’t expect a food like pho to come with pomp and circumstance; pho has always been a food of the masses. So whether you’re a pho connoisseur or looking to try a beloved variety of noodle, Pho King is a decent place to start.

This is news to me.

I was hungry, and it was 5:30 in the morning. So I looked into my coin jar, pulled out five quarters and headed to the minimart across from my apartment complex to buy a snack. Something meal-like but hopefully not terrible. I figured I’d kill about fifteen minutes deciding what to buy.

As it turns out, you can’t by anything with five quarters. I don’t mean the pickings were slim, I mean exactly what i said: you can’t buy anything.

I go down to the minimart from time to time when I’m up late, sometimes just to get out of the house, sometimes to satisfy an instant noodle craving, sometimes because nothing else is open. Maybe I’m going to the wrong convenience store but I was floored that there wasn’t a single thing I could buy with my five quarters.

Not macaroni and cheese. Not cup of noodles. Not an ice cream cone. Not a sandwich. Not a candy bar. Not a piece of pizza. Not a granola bar. Not a bag of pretzels. Not chewing gum. Not a pack of cigarettes. Not even a can of soda or a cup of coffee. Not even a hard, green banana. Nothing in that store totaled under $1.25 with tax.

Uh… what?

I used to think it was just vegetarians and vegans that had a hard time finding food we could eat when convenience called. I was so utterly wrong. Apparently omnivores can’t either because not even spam costs less than $1.25. This is a deeply disturbing discovery. Sure dads today must give their kids two dollars for a snack instead of the one our dads gave us, but that’s not the bit that bothers me. I’m bothered because there was only option left: McDonald’s Dollar Menu.

Call me crazy, but a hamburger — a whole patty of meat, two pieces of bread, and condiments — must cost more than a banana. It has to. Even if it’s just a plastic and corn model of a hamburger, logically it should cost more than a banana. Look at the raw ingredients. And yet, I couldn’t afford a slurpee at the 7eleven but I could afford a hamburger in ten minutes when the fast food joint next door opened.

There is something seriously wrong with this picture. It goes back to that whole real price of food rant I gave a while ago. I get it now, I understand why you’ve got no options when you’re from a low SES bracket. I get it. If I lived next to a 24 hour grocery store, the story might be different. But it might not. My options were already pretty limited at that hour but the choice is overwhelmingly one-sided. It’s math I’m not sure I really understand.

I went home hungry and scrounged up enough ingredients for half a cheese sandwich instead.

It’s that time of year again when the men on the subway do nothing but talk about how hot it is. The rags to mop your sweat start appearing in every woman’s hand instead of her purse. Uniqlo is sold out of quickdry and linen. 　夏です。It’s not a surprise really, since all the classic literature I can drum up bemoans Japan’s hot and muggy summers in great detail, and yet, it always seems to catch the Japanese off guard, like the heat wave is rolling in earlier and earlier each year.

So how does one deal with the oppressive heat of such a summer? With seasonal drinks at the kombini? With unagi-don on the Day of the Ox? Or with ice cold somen noodles in front of a fan on full blast?

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The Japanese will not give up their noodles, and I must say, I agree with their priorities. So even in the dead of summer, they’ve devised a way to eat ramen without getting a face full of steam. It’s called the tskumen set. In one bowl will be a pile of chilled noodles. In another bowl will be tepid broth. On a plate will be all the usual accouterments. This brilliant invention can be applied to any noodle of choice: ramen, soba, udon, and even somen.

Somen. These thin, soft, very chewy noodles can be tricky to eat, but if you keep at it, you’ll be rewarded with a satiation in summer that doesn’t leave you heavy and uncomfortable. After a day of sweaty sightseeing, I needed some relief, and when you’re in Nara, you eat the Miwa Somen. So I ate the miwa somen. It was delicious, by all means, and when it was followed by shaved ice, this cold luncheon was nothing short of pure bliss. I’d highly recommend giving miwa somen a try if you get the chance.