Kimchi Fried Rice (Bokumbap)

Sorry for the lack of posts! Real life has gotten busy. In the last year I’ve gotten engaged and as of last week, started down the road to buying my first home with my fiance. Between house hunting and wedding planning, food blogging has fallen to the wayside.

But here is an attempt to get back! So I think I wrote about my obsession with Korean dramas recently, and it continues. And because I continue to watch these dramas, every time I see the characters eat Korean food I suddenly crave it. First, it was all about bibimbap, and now my obsession is kimchi fried rice.

Kimchi fried rice is spicy and sour and buttery and oh so good!

I grew up with Chinese fried rice, but never kimchi fried rice, and man, I was missing out! Kimchi fried rice is a good way to use up leftover kimchi, but honestly, I’d buy a fresh batch of it just to make this recipe.

Happy holidays!

This was how my family feasted this Christmas Eve and Christmas day. I hope all of you had a wonderful holiday! And I hope it was full of delicious food and good cheer!

Chocolate Chili Cupcakes

I made chocolate chili cupcakes last night because I had some leftover chocolate ganache (#firstworld problems, am I right?) and this was the result. Not bad. There’s a nice spicy finish that you don’t notice until you’re just finishing it up, but it’s definitely there. Ancho chiles will give you some more depth of flavor, but if you don’t have it, just heap on a little bit more of cayenne pepper and you’re all set.

 

Topped with chocolate ganache, a dusting of cinnamon, and a Hot Tamale.

Want the recipe? It’s below the cut.

Creamy herb linguine with pan-seared scallops

I don’t eat pasta very much (though I eat Asian noodles more often), but it was actually Asian dramas that inspired me to make this dish. How’s that possible, Rice? you might be asking yourself.

Made with fresh herbs from my rooftop garden.

Well, let me tell you.

Holy natural disasters, Batman!

Rice and I had an exciting week in our nation’s capital and nearby John Waters-ville. First we had an earthquake! Then a hurricane came way too close for comfort. When I was a kid, I loved Sim City. I would build up mega cities, the most perfect I could get them. Then I would send Godzilla through. He and his little 16-bit body would terrorize my town and leave a wake of destruction. Then, I’d 3-mile Island the place for good measure, and build it back up again.

Godzilla’s coming next. You heard it here, folks.

My uncle's dog, Angie, looks freaked out against the menacing clouds in South Carolina. (c) RWS

Rabbit Ragù

So a little disclaimer about this post: I’m not really a fan of rabbit. It’s not that I object to the taste of it. It’s just that…there’s history.

Fresh rabbit cooked with farmers' market fresh vegetables.

When I was a little girl–about seven or eight years old–my parents drove down the street from my Wisconsin home to a nearby far. There my father purchased two bunny rabbits and brought them home. In our backyard he built a hutch from two-by-fours and chicken wire and the rabbits moved in. One was a black rabbit with sleek ears, and I named him Checkers. The second rabbit was a brown bunny, her fur almost like a tabby cat’s, save for a puff of white fur that served as her tail. I called her Cottonball.

My siblings and I would go visit the hutch regularly and drop in offerings of carrots and lettuce for them to eat. Eventually, the bunny family expanded and there were a dozen tiny little bunnys–black, white, and brown–hopping around. For my birthday party that winter, I brought in a box of bunnies into the house and let them hop around inside to entertain myself and my friends.

But then one day I went out to the hutch and Checkers and Cottonball were gone. The bunnies were all there, but where where the original two? I ran inside searching for my parents, but the search ended quickly when I walked into the kitchen and saw my grandmother hard at work at making dinner.

One plus one equals two.

Some people don’t eat vension because of Bambi. I didn’t eat meat for weeks after that incident, and for the next twenty-two years, I never had any desire to eat rabbit. But things change, and, the boy (now the fiance) does enjoy rabbit.

So if you survive this story of childhood woe and are still interested in this recipe, continue reading!

Chicken Breasts and Morels

I love morels! I got morels at the farmers’ market this spring, but haven’t gotten a chance to post it until now. They taste woodsy and rich, and they absorb flavors beautifully. They need a sauce that compliments their flavor, yet allows them to stand alone. If you can’t find fresh morels, don’t worry. You can substitute dried with liquid or even sub other mushrooms (not quite as tasty, but still pretty yum).

This is a combo of a couple of recipes to make it my own. I did borrow mostly from the Chicken Breasts and Morels recipe from the Mycological Society of San Francisco‘s cookbook. Many people suggest to soak fresh morels to get off all of the grit. Don’t do it! This mutes their flavor. Just give them a good shake and lightly dab them with a moist cloth. MSSF offers other great morel tips, too.

I paired this dish with my homemade pasta, but that's a recipe for another post.

Review: Elizabeth’s Gone Raw-some!

We’ve had a long haiatus here at Matzo and Rice. To kick off a (hopeful) return to posting glory, we have a guest post from one of my friends. Caroline, a long-time vegetarian, provides her R-awesome review of Elizabeth’s Gone Raw!

Caroline: When I first became a vegetarian almost 23 years ago, vegetarians were lucky if a restaurant had a Garden burger on the menu. Nowadays, not only do many places serve their own veggie burgers, but DC has a high-end restaurant serving raw vegan food. I am not a vegan in daily practice, and I am not interested in the raw food diet craze, but I do love to eat vegan whenever I can. And an upscale vegan dining experience? Where do I sign up?!?  The answer, of course, is Elizabeth’s Gone Raw. (Review, pictures, and the word “hooha” after the bump!)

An example of the delights at EGR. (C) Elizabeth's Gone Raw Website

Super Bowl Sunday Menu

My team, the Green Bay Packers, play in today’s Super Bowl.

And I’m a little beside myself with the excitement/nerves. So, what does one do with all that nervous energy? Make ginormous amounts of food, that’s what

Here are some of the recipes I’m preparing today while I watch 12 some hours of football coverage:

• Spicy Vietnamese Chicken Wings
• Blondies
• Pretzel Bites
• Pizza

And I’m going to attempt to fry cheese curds. Wish me luck. Wish the Packers luck (unless you’re a Steeler’s fan, in which case, you are dead to me).

Easy Gnocchi

I think I loved gnocchi the moment I tasted my first little potato pillow. I’d been craving potato dumplings. Back in my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, there was this little restaurant downtown on State Street that sold pelmeni, or Russian dumplings. Some were filled with ground sirloin, and others were filled with potato. Covered with dusting of curry powder and squirts of spicy-sweet Srichara, it was perfect for lunch, dinner, or after a night out at the bars.

But then I moved away to Tucson, Arizona (and sadly, the restaurant eventually closed so when I go home it is no more) and I wasn’t sure where I’d get my fix. Of course I attempted to make pelmeni myself, but I was still growing as a cook then and it turned out pretty disastrous. Before I boiled them the dumplings were about the size of a Superball. Neat little balls of dough filled with mashed potato season and salted. But a few minutes in a boiling water caused them to go supernova. The potato burst out of the dough. The dough quadrupled in size and suddenly I was faced with a pot full of potato bits and doughballs the size of baseballs. I still ate it of course, but needless to say, it wasn’t the same.

This gnocchi is seriously easy to make, especially if you use potato flakes...yes, potato flakes.

Enter Trader Joe’s. Enter gnocchi.

I spotted them in the freezer section (they’ve recently been vacuum-sealed and moved to the past section) and seeing “potato” and “dumpling,” I went in for it. They were pelmeni, but that day another food love affair began. I served them with curry powder and Sriacha. I combined them with kielbasa and vegetables.  Just last night, I cooked them up and served them with a Boursin garlic cheese sauce with grilled portobella mushrooms.

But last night’s dish didn’t involve Trader Joe’s. I’ve gone rogue, you see. I make my own gnocchi now.

In June of 2009 my boyfriend and I went to Rome. On our last night there, my boyfriend’s brother and his girlfriend (who were living in Trastevere at the time) took us for one last great roman meal. We went to the a restaurant in Rome’s Jewish ghetto, a wonderful, dreamy place called Il Giardino Romano where I watched a man peeling crate after crateful of fresh artichokes (we ordered fried artichoke hearts for an appetizer) while we waited for our meal.

I ordered the gnocchi in a fontina sauce, and the first bite I won’t ever forget. Soft. Pillowy. Delicious. Sorry, TJ’s, I love you, but you just don’t compare. Homemade gnocchi, friends, that what I bit into.