Soft spring reverie and soft tofu stew ~
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| Soondubu Jjigae (Korean Soft Tofu Stew) |
Aah~ I love, love, love spring. Love the nascent bird chirps, the grazes of those cool, balmy breezes, the bashful and hasty glint of the dew drops' winks, the smell of the air after a rainshower, gossamer beads of moisture still valsing in a veil of mist...
"Staring at the bottom of your glass
Hoping one day you'll make a dream last
But dreams come slow and they go fast~
You see her when you close your eyes
Maybe one day you'll understand why
Everything you touch surely dies
Hoping one day you'll make a dream last
But dreams come slow and they go fast~
You see her when you close your eyes
Maybe one day you'll understand why
Everything you touch surely dies
[...]
Only know you've been high when you're feeling low
Only hate the road when you're missing home... "
(Let Her Go, Passenger)
Mmhhm~
I've taken on reading this week. I usually don't have the time to linger on literature other than the scientific and academic kind (thank you, clinical course), but I really am a little book critter. It's so therapeutic; and it takes my mind into another world which, really, is my way of travelling until some other Big Bang create parallels dimensions with desert djinns, enchanters' night circuses or guardians of memories of colors.
I have this odd inclining and curiosity towards dépaysement, or changes of scene. I like to think that this everyday life frame that we're so used to? Well, there's always a way to push it a bit further. A bit like people with hemispetial neglect, who have to be constantly reminded of their right or left side that the brain forgets to take into consideration. And so, adventure books that engulfed its readers into special universes held my interest for a long time. Then, as I grew a few millimeters taller (so that's about 5-8 years in my timeframe), I started to be interested in the stories of actual people. Everyone have their own stories, and because they are each so personal, I find every little variation, nuance and contrast fascinating. To the other extreme, there are also those individuals who did something I always thought unreachable, or so difficult to attain that I would not consider the details and implications of it.
This book that I'm currently reading is a biography of a couple of years only, a slice of life, but it contains a mouthful of life in it. It's named "Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal". The title is pretty explicit. Conor's narration is incredibly light and easy to read. It isn't the genre of cold recounting of events, the author's personality is reflected in his tale, and the description of Nepal's current situation and scenary is vivid and very human-centered, which makes it feel as if we were looking through his memory's window. Of course, my wanderlust started throbbing quite a bit.
“Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds' eggs and human hearts and dreams, are also fragile things, made up of nothing stronger or more lasting than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks. Or they are words on the air, composed of sounds and ideas-abstract, invisible, gone once they've been spoken-and what could be more frail than that? But some stories, small, simple ones about setting out on adventures or people doing wonders, tales of miracles and monsters, have outlasted all the people who told them, and some of them have outlasted the lands in which they were created.”
- Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: short fictions and wonders
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I ended my night (yes, night. I've developed this bad habit of dining waaay past the conventional hour. Then again, is there really any conventional timing to a student life?) cradling and savoring a lukewarm mug of Soondubu Jigae, or more latin-ly recognizable as "Korean Soft Tofu Stew".
For the broth:
1 sheet of dried kelp
4 dried shitake mushrooms
½ onion, quartered and roasted
6 cups water
For the sauce:
2 tsp sesame oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp minced ginger
1 tsp red pepper powder (I used this Japanese red pepper powder called Shichimi)
3 Tbsps Gochujang (Korean Hot Pepper Bean Paste) (Adjust spice to taste!)
2 tsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp liquid from kimchi jar
For the stew:
1 Tbsp olive oil
½ cup sliced zucchini or yellow squash
4-5 shitake mushrooms, sliced (stems removed)
½ cup chopped kimchi
1 cup roughly chopped spinach
½ cup leeks, chopped
1/3 lb soft or silken tofu
Salt, to taste
Garnishes:
2 scallions, chopped
½ green chili/asian pepper, sliced
Preparation:
1) Roast the onion halve for 10-15 minutes or until the outer skin starts crisping up in dark golden.
2) Combine all stock ingredients in a large pot and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Mix together all sauce ingredients and set aside.
3) Heat the oil in an earthenware pot or saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the zucchini, the leeks and mushrooms and sauté for a few minutes until the mushrooms release their liquid. Stir in the sauce and sauté for a few seconds until bubbling. Stir in the broth and bring to a boil. Add the kimchi and spinach and boil until the spinach wilts.
4) Drop the tofu into the stew in one block. Gently break up the tofu as you stir it into the sauce (don’t crumble it in because the stew should be chunky and the tofu is very delicate). Continue to boil until the veggies are soft.
5) Taste for salt. Serve with white or brown rice and garnishes.
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