Kimchi Chicken

Verdict: Win

I bought a jar of kimchi last semester and unfortunately haven't had the chance to use it. I was determined to not let it go to waste, so I found the recipe above. I liked it because it was a little more complex ingredients-wise than other recipes that I found, but was still simple to make. All of the ingredients were mixed together and then put in the fridge for a few hours before dinner. Changes: liberally added the soy sauce and sesame oil, and omitted the sambal (sriracha all the way!). I also added one shaved carrot that easily picked up the taste of the kimchi. Next time I'll shave two carrots, just to be able to eat more vegetables and dilute the kimchi flavor a bit. If you like kimchi, then the flavor is good. Cooking the kimchi toned it down a bit, and after DY's suggestion of lowering the temperature to medium, the chicken came out more tender. I served this over a bed of leftover lo mein noodles, which I think acted as a good canvas for the strong kimchi flavor.

Sichuan-style Chicken Noodle Soup Recipe

Verdict: Win

I've been putting off this recipe for nearly 2 weeks now. I'm not much of a soup baby, but this soup hit the spot. Because I didn't already have roast chicken, I had to divide the recipe into 4 parts and use 3 pots and 1 pan. I substituted roast chicken with home-cooked chicken leg quarters. Instead of leeks, I chopped up a yellow onion. I also added chopped celery and used a little extra Sichuan peppercorns. Below is an adapted version of the recipe, in 4 parts.

Tang Yuan

Verdict: Win

I stopped by Asia Market last week and was pleasantly surprised that a pound of glutinous rice flour only cost a buck, so I picked up 2 1-lb bags with the intent of making sesame balls, tang yuan, mochi, or nian gao.

DY and I made tang yuan tonight just because it was so easy and fast, and we needed something sweet post-dinner. He filled his up with store-bought red bean pasta, whereas I ate mine plain in a homemade ginger-brown sugar syrup. They had a little bit of an adverse rice dough smell/taste, so next time I'm going to use sugar water (with a lot of sugar) instead of plain water, as well as fill more of them with red bean paste. The recipe still did the job and it was rather nostalgic.

***Update 1/29
I stored my leftovers in a container with the syrup, and it looks like not only did the tang yuan double in size after absorbing the syrup, but they also lost that odd dough smell/taste after reheating them in the microwave. Yum!