Hearty Ma La (Spicy) Soup with Korean Chili Paste

Eating never seemed so hard to me in my life.

I have to carefully open my mouth half wide,

Slowly grinding the food with my left side of teeth, and then painfully swallowing half-chewed food down.

What happened?

My bottom right wisdom tooth is popping out of my flesh,

Well, I have no problem if my tiny tooth wants to come out and say hi to me,

But its surrounding gum is swollen,

I guess the little guy was too excited to see the world and hurt my gum...

In order to make myself feel better,

I made some soup so that I don't have to exhaust myself chewing on things-

Ingredients?

12 pork belly slice
15 medium sized shrimps (deveined and peeled)
1 onion (chopped into long strips)
3 stalks of scallion (chopped into approximately 2 inches in length)
10 dry chili
1 small chunk of fresh ginger (about the size of your thumb)
2 cups of bean sprouts
2 small bundles of enoki mushroom
1 box of medium firm tofu (diced into bite size pieces)
4 tablespoons of Korean chili paste 韓式辣醬
2 tablespoons of Chinese bean paste 豆瓣醬
2 tablespoon of Japanese spicy miso paste
2 tablespoons of soy sauce
Extra virgin olive oil (regular olive oil is fine too)
Salt
6 cups of water
4 cups of unsalted chicken stock

How?

Drizzle some olive oil in a soup pot and toss in one whole chopped onion,
Sprinkle about 1 tablespoon of salt, stir and cook for about 1 minute.
After that, add the dry chili, ginger, and chopped scallions and cook for another 2 minutes.

Add the Korean chili paste, Chinese bean paste, and Japanese spicy miso paste into the pot,
Cook till the aroma comes out, about 2 minutes.
Remember to stir constantly, otherwise the sauce will get burned on the bottom of the pot.

Pour in 4 cups of chicken stock and 6 cups of water,
Bring to a boil and turn to medium heat.
Scoop out the excess red chili oil and the foamy bubbles before adding more ingredients.

After that step is done, add the tofu, bean sprouts, and enoki mushroom into the pot.
Let it simmer for about 20 minutes.
Remember to constantly check on the soup, scoop out all the excess oil and foam.
Be careful here, don't keep the soup boiling after adding the ingredients,
Just let it simmer.

Add the pork belly slices into the soup,
When the pork is cooked through, toss in the shrimps,
The soup is ready when the shrimps turned red.

Noodles or rice can be a good option that goes along with this soup.
I personally prefer making it into a soup noodles dish,
Udon, ramen, or glass noodle are all good candidates,
Please enjoy!

So how do I feel now?

Let's put it this way,

Everything just got better after few doses of antibiotics.

But tomorrow is the real deal though,

My dentist is going to pull that naughty little guy out,

Wish me luck..

*As a result, I gonna have my early Thanksgiving dinner tonight.

I'll post the pictures after recovering from wisdom tooth trauma!

Cindy's Rating: 7

Classic Chinese Dish - Mapo Tofu 麻婆豆腐

I was surprised that after more than one year of writing this blog,

There is no single recipe about mapo tofu!

What a shame for me (well, cz I eat like at least twice a month),

So here you go,

Cindy's homemade mapo tofu!-

Ingredients?

1 box of organic soft tofu (or silken)

1 lb of ground pork

2 stalks of scallion (chopped)

5 garlic cloves (minced)

1 teaspoon of grounded Sichuan peppercorn

(I used 2 teaspoons cz I love that numbness sensation when it touches my tongue)

1 tablespoon of chili paste (any kind of Chinese chili paste will do)

3 tablespoons of spicy bean paste 豆瓣醬

3 tablespoons of soy sauce

Some freshly grounded black pepper

Corn starch

Water

Olive oil

How?

Drizzle some olive oil in the pan, toss in about 3/4 of the chopped scallion,

Let it cook for a little bit, about 20 seconds, toss in the Sichuan peppercorn and garlic.

Careful don't let the garlic get burned,

Before the tragedy happens, let's add the spicy bean paste, chili sauce, and soy sauce.

Give it a quick stir then toss in the meat.

Stir it once a while and let it cook till at least 2/3 of the sauce is absorbed by the pork.

Meanwhile, take the tofu out and cut into 1 cm cubes,

Sometimes I get lazy then I'll just cut them during the cooking process,

Kind of fun to break them apart with my spatula!

Transfer the cubed tofu (if you decided not to perform the spatula massacre) into the mixture,

Add hot water till all the ingredients are submerged under the liquid.

Bring to a boil then turn to medium/low heat.

Have a small bowl ready, pour some corn starch in it.

Add some water, I only added about 3 tablespoons of water for lots of corn starch.

Mix it well so no lumps are present.

Slowly pour the corn starch mixture into your almost finished mapo tofu,

Keep stirring there,

If you get lazy and stop stirring, you gonna get mapo tofu lumps for dinner!

Everything looks good now,

Sprinkle some black pepper and chopped scallion before serving.

Some people also add some sesame oil, I'm not a big fan of that though.

Cindy's Rating: 7