Korean Red Ginseng Candy

I hate ginseng. A lot. I hate it almost as much as I hate echinacea, although both herbs taste like dirt about equally. How much do I hate echinacea? It's part of why I hate hippies, because hippies love echinacea. 

I've never had red ginseng before. It'd never occurred to me that someone might take this hateful little root and try to make it into candy.

Unlike a lot of hard candies, this one actually has a noticeable scent. You can smell them as soon as you open the container, you don't even have to unwrap them. I think it smells like top soil. My room mate think it smells like her mom's bedroom...

But how does it taste?

Like a fusion of mint, honey, and dirt. No, seriously. It's like a cough drop that was made with dirt and they tried to hide it by making it too sweet. God, it's just as awful as I remember. Marketing this as candy is criminal. This is medicine. That's fine, just CALL IT THAT. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go cleanse my palate. Stay queer!

Wasabi Kit Kat

One of my apt mates was kind enough to get me one of those wasabi flavored Japanese Kit Kat bars for Christmas. Apparently the Japanese took Kit Kat bars and just ran with the concept. Just ran with it with more balls than anyone in the States ever will.

 "Oh snap, now we have super big Kit Kats AND Kit Kats with peanut butter! Hope your brains don't blow up from that reality bomb I just set off in your skull!", cried Nestle's US marketing department.

Across the pond, Nestle's Japanese marketing department looked up from the sales figures for blueberry cheesecake, strawberry, green tea, watermelon, purple sweet potato, and soy sauce Kit Kats and said "That's cute, bro" while trembling with barely concealed laughter.

I didn't make those flavors up and there's like 200 more. Kit Kat similar to the Japanese phrase "Kitto Katsu" which, according to wikipedia, roughly means "surely win". Apparently it's like a little good luck treat. Apparently, they take their good luck treats seriously over there. Really, this just shows how fucking lazy and timid food companies are over here.

US Kit Kats are Simple Plan, Japanese Kit Kats are Gang Green.

US Kit Kats are System of A Down, Japanese Kit Kats are Celtic Frost.

US Kit Kats are Hawthorn Heights, Japanese Kit Kats are Fugazi.

US Kit Kats are Brokencyde, Japanese Kit Kats are Good Clean Fun.

US Kit Kats are Lady Gaga, Japanese Kit Kats are Emily Autumn.

Awwwww, that's cute! It's really good too! It's coated in white chocolate and you really can taste wasabi. The thing is, and this is probably for the better, it has the flavor of wasabi but not the heat. That's really cool. Your move, US Kit Kats. Maybe you could just make them bigger again and bundle them with a 24 of Miller Light.

Stay Queer!

Kachori

I was in a Pakistani/Indian grocery store at one point during my jaunt to Philly. Besty and I stopped in so she could get some stuff to make kombucha, which may get its own post in the future. I noticed that the majority of the products were vegetarian and flour-based. I hadn’t really expected that but I don’t know much about Indian food and almost nothing about Pakistani food. Naturally, I had to try at least one thing there. I had a hard time picking a snack food because it seemed like all of them were essentially flour in a variety of different shapes. Flour twists, flour wheels, flour wads, etc. They were actually kind of cool looking but they didn't seem very distinct from one another. It wasn’t like there were barbecue flour wads and sour cream and onion flour wads and buffalo flour wads.  When I found one that advertised itself as made of flour and spicy I went for it. The real clincher is that the packaging reads “Nutritious & Hygienic!!!” on the top, with “SPICY STUFFED BALLS” across the front, which made me think fondly on my first post.

Cost: $1 - $10

I was kind of expecting it to be crunchy but it’s actually soft. The outside is flakey layer of pastry. It’s spicy in that it tastes like someone mixed together the contents of an entire spice rack with some water and molded it into a wad. The most prominent flavor is fennel, which is generally not a flavor I like to be prominent. Not that it’s bad, it’s just kind of bland and disappointingly fattening. The bag is about the size of a small bag of chips, the bag has 10 servings, and each serving is 110 calories. Damn. If you though I was exaggerating the “wad o’ spices” aspect, the ingredients are: refined wheat flour, gram pulse flour, vegetable oil, sugar, salt, tamarind, red chili powder, fennel, coriander, sesame seeds, cumin, ginger, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, cardamom, and asafetida. Eating it reminds me of potpourri or a shop in one of those stupid colonial recreation towns where every place that sells anything has a bunch of dried herbs on the walls. I guess the take away message is that hippies, hipsters, and sad bastards who pretend to be worldly to get tail should take note. Stay queer!

Tyson Bees Food Truck - Kimchi Dog

Last week I took a much needed trip to Philadelphia to visit my best friend. Ample opportunities for queerness awaited me there. The day after I arrived, my friend introduced me to the glory that is Tyson Bees Food Truck. It’s nestled lovingly between several of U Penn’s buildings in University City. According the internet, the official address is 33^rd and Spruce Street. It’s a popular Korean food truck and there's usually a small crowd of students around it. To keep track of orders, they hand you a playing card after you order your food and call out the card when it’s done. I thought that was charming. I was 9 of clubs. I ordered a kimchi dog on the suggestion of my friend, who has rarely steered me wrong when it comes to books, food, and internet silliness. I expected a regular hot dog with kimchi on it. What I got was this:

This was 3 dollars. Yes, that’s red cabbage, and what I think is spicy mayonnaise. The hot dog is cut in half lengthwise, which seemed odd at first, but I soon realized that this just meant there was more surface area exposed to the wonderful, wonderful toppings. I was afraid that the kimchi would be overpowering, (for those of you who are unfamiliar, kimchi is really spicy pickled cabbage) but Tyson Bees hit some marvelous sweet spot! The red cabbage may seem like a weird choice but the texture and color are a really nice touch. The bun is gigantic and soft, and not a millimeter is wasted because they really cram those toppings on there. It’s filling, spicy, reasonably priced and delicious. I wholly recommend it to anyone who’s going to be in University City for any length of time. The only downside is that this food truck is only open on weekdays. Hopefully I’ll get to review more of their food in the future. Stay queer!  

Fish Cake Scramble

You can apparently buy Asian fish cakes in the form of a long, thin loaf, kind of like a pepperoni.

 

 Truth be told, I probably wouldn’t have bought this if I hadn’t seen Suicide Club for the first time recently.  (There’s a scene where a woman is chopping up something that looks similar to this.)

"Mommy's funny."

It’s precooked so you can eat it cold. It tastes a bit like imitation crab, which makes sense because they’re both made from pollock.  (Isn’t it weird that I think that Pollock tastes like imitation crab and not the other way around?  That’s weird to me.)  The texture is dry and kinda grainy.  Nothing special on its own, but whatever.

As with almost all of my other posts, I don’t really know what to do with it.  I do, however, know that I could go for a tofu scramble, so some scrambled fish cake surely wouldn’t be amiss.

You need:

Fish cake

Cooking oil

Barbecue sauce

Whatever veggies you like

Optional: cheyenne pepper:

Total cost: $10 - $20

Heat some oil in  skillet at medium temperature.  Cut up about 7 oz of the fish cake and remove the casing, if need be.   

Then you can just knead it with your hands a bit to break it up.  

Chop up whatever veggies you want.  

Pictured: 2 mushrooms, a brussel sprout and about an ounce of onion.

Mix the veggies and fish cake together and add cheyenne pepper to your taste.  Transfer the mixture to the pan and saute until the veggies are tender.  Add barbecue sauce to your taste during frying.  Basically it’s done when the veggies are.

Weird but good.  It’s got the soft texture of lox, but the barbecue sauce and onion sort of interact with the fish flavor to make it taste a bit like pickled herring. The brussel sprouts have a very subtle flavor that works surprisingly well with the dish and the mushrooms add a nice bit of texture to it.  Not bad for a first try.I’d also like to thank my girlfriend for doing the photography for this post (even if she did voice her disgust every step of the way and initially reacted to my blog with shock and horror).  Stay queer!

Prawn Chips

This post is actually due to a happy accident because when I bought this...

...I was under the impression that the box contained potato chips or kernels flavored like shrimp.  I assumed that the choice of packaging was just a little marketing quirk.  Instead, I got this:

 

That’ll teach me no not read food packaging properly.  A brief scan of the back of the box reveals that you have to fry them. I’ve seen loads of weird flavored snacks in Asian grocery stores before, but never something like this.  Don’t you buy chips so you don’t have to cook?  That’s half the reason why people tend to stock up on chips before they get drunk.  If you rolled these out in the middle of a party it’d probably result in brns.  Although I suppose you could always relegate the actual frying to that one shirtless, drunk guy who tends to show up at gatherings of twenty-somethings and won’t stop yelling “WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” and that no one actually invited; he just thinks all parties are open and the beer is always free cuz that’s how it works in college movies and who will invariable sulk off, muttering insults under his breath like the naïve, entitled, little mommy’s boy shit he is when told to leave, despite the fact that there was absolutely no way he was going to hook up with any of the women there without the aid of rohypnol.  Then again, those guys tend to be terrible cooks, so you run the risk of a grease fire breaking out.

You need

Prawn chips

Oil

Total cost: $1 - $10

Heat some oil over medium heat. The chips are really thin but you want to be sure that they’ll be covered since the box says that you’re supposed to deep fry them. The actual frying is surprisingly cool. In a few seconds they puffed up, became opaque and lost some color.   

Transfer them to some paper towels to let them drain. 

Cool!  It’s like a puffed potato chip or a soft rice cake.  Don’t worry if a chip hasn’t puffed completely.  Any spots that look uncooked are just a bit crunchier, that’s all.  They have a buttery taste with a slight hint of prawn.  It can be a bit hard to notice at first but the more you eat the stronger it is. I approve. At first I was slightly annoyed that I’d have to fry them myself but I really like how they’re warm and kind of oily.  It's kind of cool that I have freshly fried chips too. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to market chips that you have to fry up yourself, but I guess that why I’m not rubbing shoulders with the snack food barons.  Stay queer!

Durian Fruit: Raw and Fried

Sorry for the hiatus.  I moved and started grad school so I was a bit busy with getting settled and all that.  I've decided that the break is over, and now I'm ready to really knuckle down and eat weird things for the entertainment of myself and others! (Mostly myself.)

Yes, a durian fruit.  It's called the King of Fruit by some.  I'm not sure how one determines fruit hierarchy, but I'm pretty sure that if all of the fruit in the world became self aware, sprouted limbs and engaged in some sort of battle royale, the durian fruit would win without too much resistance.  Why?

Go on, guess.

The fruit in that picture weights about 5 pounds and I can't pick it up with my bare hands because the spikes are so sharp.  These things grow on trees by the way...TALL trees.  They're also notorious for their smell, which is VERY strong and generally disliked.

A tad pricy and difficult to find but I don’t mind because a) first post in two weeks, so I’ll suck it up b) my girlfriend and room mate are both in different states and won’t be subjected to the smell and c) I actually found one so yay. 

You need:

A durian fruit: I got mine for 2.09 a pound, so about 10 bucks.  Ripe durians weight between 4 and 7 lbs if I recall correctly.

Total cost: $10 - $20

I’ve actually had durian once before, about 2 or 3 years ago.  It was like vanilla pudding with a strong undertone of red onion and it smelled like rotting garbage, particularly celery.  According to a friend of mine who refused to let us eat it in her apartment, it smelled of “garbage, cat piss and bad weed.”  Pungency and flavor varies based on how ripe it is though.  There are a bunch of different kinds of durian, but only one of them is sold internationally.  Let’s see how it tastes raw first.

It smells like slightly rotted almonds.  I haven’t cracked the husk yet.  Yes, the smell permeates the husk.

The husk may look hard but it has natural seams and the spikes, while very sharp, are actually somewhat bendable. If you’re careful, you can pull the sections apart with your hands.

Yup, as I remember it!  More like custard actually.  The flesh is soft and gooey and very easy to chew.  The consistency is nice and the flavor is good, if a bit weird.  This would be a bit cloying if you eat it too fast though.  Still, it's very tasty.  Smells more strongly now but I’d actually call it aromatic and pungent, rather than saying it stinks.  It scent carries a whiff of slight over ripeness but is strongly fruity, a tad like banana actually.  Now, those chunks of flesh naturally section off into wads, each of which has a pretty big seed in them.  Remove them, it’s not hard.

Now to fry it up.  Nothing special about this recipe.  Just heat some oil over medium heat and fry until both sides are partially browned, like how you would fry a banana.

Wow, this is really good.  The outside gets firm and crunchy and the inside stays creamy.  It loses a little bit of it sweetness and some of the oniony taste is gone.  Actually, once again I’m reminded of a banana, even though this is less sweet than that.  By the way, durian is like catnip to vegans and fruitarians. They eat it by the crate-load and, if you give a group of them enough, they start to act a little it high. I've seen it happen. It's adorable. Stay queer!

Bagoong Alamang Guisado

Ah, bagoong alamang.  Utter the words “Summer fun” and it stands just below fireworks and beach parties in the minds of Americans, both young and old.   

(SPOILER: Bagoong alamang is salted shrimp fry)

“But, Allison!”, you protest, picking under ripe green mango and baby shrimp from your teeth while adjusting your cowboy hat as Bon Jovi plays in the background. “What could be more mundane?  I not only consume bagoong alamang regularly, I make it myself!”  Well, rest easy, friends!  I wouldn’t just blog about bagoong alamang!  No, this is about bagoong alamang guisado! (By the by, this just goes to show exactly how much a filthy commie my friend Lauren is because, when I told her that I made some, she accused me of making up words.)   

You need:

A sweet yellow onion

Tomatoes

Garlic

Sugar

Vinegar

Bagoong alamang (The Filipino kind if you want specifics)

Olive oil

Total cost: $10 - $20

The recipe itself is pretty simple.  If you know how to stir fry (and assuming that you’ve ever cooked anything, you probably do) you can make this.  Bagoong alamang is very salty…very, very, very salty.  I could not possibly overstate how salty it is.  I had to make it twice because I the first time around I didn't have the tomatoes or enough vinegar and I think I almost desiccated myself.

Finely chop a half cup of onion and a half cup of tomatoes and mince three cloves of garlic.  Sautee the veggies in oil over medium heat until the tomatoes are soft, the garlic is browned and the onions are slightly translucent.  Add a cup of the bagoong alamang and three table spoons of sugar.  Add vinegar to your taste and simmer for about 10 minutes.  You want this stuff essentially reduced.  Taste it periodically and add more vinegar as necessary. Serve it over rice.

It’s a plesant sweet and salty sauce.  The tomatoes absorb the vinegar and sugar, releasing a nice burst of flavor if you get a chunk.  The bagoong alamang guisado itself has very little substance, which the rice makes up for.  This is tasty but should be used sparingly because the flavor is a bit too strong in large amounts.  I can’t quite describe the flavor beyond sweet and salty.  You know that hint of almost sweetness you get from a fresh, properly cooked shrimp?  Sort of that, kind of.  Sorry, that’s the best way I can think to describe it. Stay queer!

Canned Grass Jelly?

You know, there comes a time when you have to face your own prejudices and ethnocentrism and either admit that you were wrong or scramble to let everyone in the room know that you have friends belonging to the group you just derided, thereby absolving yourself of all blame and accusations of racism, or at least that's what your racist brain will convince you, you racist, racist. 

You know that you did something wrong.  You’re just too defensive and confused to admit it…and everyone knows. 

Where was I going with that?  Anyway, call me a stupid American, but I just never thought of grass being a dessert food, with the exception of the mint grass from Charlie and The Chocolate Factory.  Apparently I was wrong.  Behold!

You need:

One can on Deluxe Grass Jelly Dessert

What’s in this?  The ingredients are listed as “water, grass jelly, sugar, mung bean, coconut sap and extracts, konjac, chickpeas and algae extracts.”

Huh.

I’m not entirely sure what country grass jelly is from.  My extensive study of Asian characters (which consists entirely of watching the occasional dubbed anime and the opening quotes from Sun Tzu in the beginning of Romance of The Three Kingdoms 8) fails me, so I’m going to turn to the internet for assistance.  Ok, according to Wikipedia, grass jelly hails from Taiwan, China, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.  It comes with its own spoon too. Let’s get this bitch into a bowl and see how it is.

Oh my God.

I’ve never had a dessert remind me of a festering wound before.  First time for everything, I guess.  I’m feeling…hesitant.  I think it's the color that's putting me off. It smells kinda like wheat grass.

OOOOOOH WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIRD.

The gelatin itself has a strange, sweetish, almost tea-like flavor.  There’s almost a hint of…honey?  The chickpeas taste as you would expect them too.  I think these cubes in here are konjac and they’re like really chewy gelatin.  The mung beans just sort of…sit there tasting like mung beans.  I don’t understand.  A bunch of bland stuff in a weirdly sweet gelatin.  I’m sure it’s good for you but it feels like I’m eating a bowl of condiment.  Like this is supposed to go on something else.  I can’t finish this.  It’s not “bad” per se, it’s just really strange to my pallet. I'm sure that properly prepared grass jelly is better though. I'm not soured to the dish, but I don't think I'll be having it from a can again any time soon. Stay queer!

Instant jellyfish with all of the trimmings!

I was in an Asian grocery store this weekend and this caught my eye.

It’s super cheap and I’ve never had jellyfish before, so why not?  The directions amount to, “Put it in a dish and stir in the seasoning”.  

For the advanced chef, the package recommends putting the jellyfish in 60-70c boiled water for 5 to 10 seconds to make it “better tasty”. 

For the super advanced chef: The bag recommends adding shredded carrot, green peppers or shredded pork to make it even more better tasty.  I appreciate that the bag doesn't want me to burn myself out but I'ma  grown woman and I know my limits. Fuck better tasty, better tasty is for quitters. I’m going for BEST tasty.  I’m gonna squeeze as much better tasty out of this stuff as possible by USING ALL THREE EXTRA INGREDIENTS.  Yeah, sorry 'bout all the computer screens that just got damaged by legions of spit takes across the world. By the way, here’s a link to the nutrition info: http://www.asiangrocerystore.com.au/feng-zheng-instant-natural-jellyfish-sesame-oil-flavour-clone.html

I can think of a ton of reasons why you might have an aversion to instant jellyfish but at least it isn’t fattening.  In the end, isn't that what really matters? 

No, no it isn't and if you think it is then you're wrong.

You need:

Feng Zheng Instant Natural Jellyfish Sesame Chilli Flavour (at time of writing it was $1.19, but it may have taken off with weeaboos and be more pricy now)

Shredded carrot to your taste
Chopped green bell pepper to your taste
 Shredded or chopped pork to your taste

Price range: $1 - $10 (unless you're completely insane and decided to buy a ham for the purpose of gussying up instant jellyfish)

This is the most enticing package of instant jellyfish I've ever seen.

After submerging the bag of jellyfish in boiling water for 8 seconds:

Ah, virgin jellyfish, unsullied and pristine... or rather it was before it was packaged but that's not the point here.

Ok, that's way better.

The jellyfish itself has pretty much no flavor, but what did I expect from something that’s mostly water?  The seasoning makes up for it though, it’s pleasantly spicy.  I assume that if you prepare it properly it absorbs flavor but I dunno. I kinda like the texture.  It’s got a nice crunch to it, a little bit like raw squid.  My friend Deidra said it reminded her a bit too much of cartilage for her taste.  I think it reminded me too little of cartilage for my taste. It goes well with the pork but spicy + pork + nothing = spicy pork so I can't give the jellyfish too much credit here.  The carrots and pepper add an extra crunch to it that I’m enjoying.  All in all I’d say this isn’t half bad, especially for the price.  


Also, I wrote this like a week ago and didn't throw up or die so there's another point in its favor. (UPDATE: I wrote this like 3 years ago and I'm still not dead.I have thrown up in that time, but I think it was mostly related to bad asparagus and copious amounts of alcohol)

Stay queer!