Kimchi Fried Jambalaya/ 김치 볶음 짬뽕

I know what you're thinking.  I must be out of my mind.  Well, yes.  After this post, it will pretty much confirm it.

Sometimes, I create stuff on accident and like it so much, I keep making it.  This dish is one of those "accidents".  Before we go any further, I should warn you that this isn't Cajun or Creole like at all.  This is purely Kor-Merican.  Or maybe it's more Fat Gurl inspired?  I'd didn't occur to me that this is a recipe somebody would want.  But my colleague and friend Ji Hyun, who gets recruited to eat a lot of my left over recipes from this blog, asked me for the recipe.  Okay!  This is for you Ji!

So this started out as a simple Kimchi fried rice.  You can find my recipe for it here.  The kimchi fried rice with spam recipe is more a standard recipe.  This one you're reading now is a good example of how my crazy mind works while listening to my stomach.  I had intended to do a kimchi fried rice, but wanted to replace the rice with tofu so I would have a lower carb, higher protein version.  I've done it plenty of times before and it's delicious.  But the fat gurl in me just really likes the chewy, yummy rice too and that's what happened here.

I decided I'd add just a little bit of rice to satisfy that part of me that just wanted to chew on some rice.  Did I mention the Indian doesn't really like kimchi?  So while I was making my kimchi fried tofu/rice dish, I happened to be making him some spicy ramen.  Just as I was finishing up both my kimchi fried tofu rice, his ramen was done too and I really wanted a bite of ramen too.  Next thing I knew, I was adding some of his noodles into my kimchi concoction and viola!  A big kimchi mess was born!  But sooooooooooo good.

In Korean, I would call it 김치 볶음 짬뽕 (kimchi bokkeum jjampbong).  짬뽕/jjampbong is this spicy seafood noodle dish that Koreans eat.  It's one of those Korean Chinese dishes I talked about in this post.  Koreans also use the word 짬뽕/jjampbong to indicate that something is a mix up of stuff or a mish mash.  Totally appropriate here.  So in English, I'm calling it jambalaya because according to Wikipedia:

The Oxford English Dictionary indicates that 'jambalaya' comes from the Provençal word 'jambalaia', meaning a mish mash, or mixup, and also meaning a pilau (pilaf) of rice.

 Again, totally appropriate here.  Uh, let's see mish mash or mix up?  Check!  Also meaning a pilaf of rice?  Check!

Are you curious to see what this jumble of mish mash looks like?  It looks like this:

Here's the team:

ripe kimchi (about 2 cups)

sesame oil 

kielbasa sausage

spicy sausage

firm tofu

cooked rice (preferably cold rice, not fresh)

spicy ramen noodles (already cooked)

I start with about 2 cups of nicely ripen kimchi.  Remember, when you buy it from the market, it will most likely be on the less fermented side.  In order for this dish to be super tasty, you'll want to age it before you use it.  A week or so in the fridge or overnight in your sink will help ripen it.

I use my scissors to cut up into bite sized pieces:

Add about 2 tablespoons of sesame oil and cook on medium until kimchi becomes soft and "fried".

While your kimchi is cooking (don't forget to mix it up while cooking) start cooking your noodles.  I like this is brand:

It's nice and spicy.  The Indian loves this brand.  I use HALF the amount of water because I don't want to end up with any broth.  But otherwise, cook as you normally would.

While both the noodles and the kimchi are cooking, I chop up my kielbasa sausage and one extra spicy sausage into cubes.  You could use spam or ham too.  Add to your cooking kimchi:

I use this brand of super spicy sausage:

I usually can find it at Von's or Vallarta Market.  It seriously has changed my life.  I cook with it and it really makes a huge difference in what I make.  If you don't like spicy, this is not the sausage for you.  I eat it fried up with rice and an egg, I chop and add into jambalaya, or spicy fried rice.  It goes on and on.  Sometimes, I'll get 2 of these packages at a time and freeze them in pairs in ziplock baggies.   Because God forbid I ever run out!

I did this once at a Von's.  The cashier was this African American lady and she looked at me and asked, "What you know about them sausages?"

"Only that they are amazing and they changed my life."

To which she gave me a resounding, "MmmmHmmm".  

I won't lie.  I felt totally validated.  

I should add that I happened to have a already cooked potato from another dish I made yesterday.  So on a whim, I chopped it up and it went into the skillet along with the sausages:

See what I mean about being jjampbong or a mish mash?

By now my spicy ramen noodles are cooked and the broth has evaporated.  I like mine to be slightly underdone or al dente.  You can decide how you like them, but just remember they will kind of bloat or get softer in the finished dish.  Turn off the heat on your noodles.  We'll come back to these.

When your kimchi sausage (potato) mix is cooked nicely, I add my tofu.  I use this kind:

Ignore everything else in the pic.  This pic is from my Korean Mapo Tofu recipe.  This container of tofu will have 4 rectangular pieces.  I used two of them.    Add tofu directly into your kimchi mixture by squishing the heck out of them in your hands.

I like to crumble it.  You could cube it. It's up to you.  There are no rules here.  Mix around until your tofu is nicely incorporated into your kimchi mixture....You COULD stop right here.  Basically, this is my kimchi tofu recipe (but without the potato).  OR you could keep going....Are you with me?  Lessa Go!

To this, I add about a cup of cold rice.  You can use fresh cooked, but I think cold rice keeps the texture from becoming too mushy.  But you can use fresh if that's all you have.

I like to put a lid on it right now and let it steam a bit before I mix in the rice. 

You could stop here too.  This would be kimchi fried tofu and rice....OR we could keep going!  

Remember our spicy noodles?  I use scissors to cut them but not too much.  I don't want them long, but I don't want them really short either.  Like 2 cuts.  Boom. Boom.  Done.

Add them into your mish mash mixture and mix up.

Here we have it.  Officially, this is what I'd call a Big Hot Mess.  

Did I mention it's overcast and cold today?  I take a big bowl of this and get back into bed.  Turn on my favorite TV show or put on a movie and I'm set.

(By the way, the potato in here was soooo good!  The chunks of potato soaked up all that yummy kimchi flavor.)

Italian Bolognese Sauce/Gravy

Badda Bing.  Badda Boom.

Sometimes you just want a big bowl of comforting pasta with meat sauce.  

When I was a kid growing up, I didn't know any better and I used to think Ragu or Prego out of the jar was pretty good.  I even used to like Chef Boyardee Spaghetti O's.  But now that I'm a grown up, it doesn't do anything for me except make me kind of wonder how I used to love them so....but then again, I used to think Campbell's canned soups were the shiz.  You can read about it here.

In the 90's, I worked at a place called Santo Pietro's.  It was known for being the local hangouts for celebrities who lived in the area and for their garlic knots.  I learned a lot about Italian food. I never knew there were different kind of sauces.  No really.  I just thought spaghetti sauce was spaghetti sauce.  While I like a good marinara or pomodoro sauce, and occasionally I might kill for a good putanesca sauce, I always come back to craving a nice big bowl of spaghetti with meat sauce.

Last year, I had dinner at my friend Kim's house and her tia brought this killer sauce.  As soon as I ate it, I wanted to rush home with a giant bowl of it, put on stretchy pants, climb into bed and devour it while watching TV.  I never got the recipe so I went on a quest to find the Holy Grail, uh, I mean make my own amazing meat sauce.  Her Tia Nani's had black olives in it, but the Indian guy I live with doesn't like them so I didn't add them.  Feel free if you want to.  

Have you ever heard anybody call it a gravy?  Well, that's because in Italy, bolognese sauce is called Sugo alla Bolognese.  Sugo means gravy.  So some Italian Americans will refer to meat sauce as gravy.  I like to think of it like a tomato gravy.

My mouth is watering.  So without further ado, here it is...my pasta gravy.

You'll need:

1/2 - 1 pound of lean ground pork

1/2 - 1 pound ground beef

olive oil

1 large onion

2 cups of chopped carrots

2 tbsp of chopped garlic

Worcester sauce

oregano

1  12 oz can of tomato paste

heavy whipping cream

Give your large onion a course chop.  You can do a fine chop or you can chop them larger.  Either way, your onions will soften up and melt into your sauce.  I use baby carrots, you can use regular if you want, and just chop them into bite sized pieces.  Add your chopped onions and chopped carrots into a heavier type of pot like a dutch oven.  Saute on medium with some olive oil with salt and pepper.  Why do I add carrots?  Carrots have a lot of natural sugar and flavor and when browned add a nice sweet flavor to your sauce.  Plus the sugars in the carrots helps to neutralize the tomato acid.  I think.  Maybe I just made that up in my head and eventually believed it?

After about 3-5 minutes, I add my package of ground beef and group pork. In this case, I used more pork then beef.  But honestly, it's just the packages I grabbed at the market.  The Korean market I get my meat from packages in convenient almost 1 pound sizes.  So the beef was half a pound and the pork was 3/4 of a pound.   Use as much or as little as you want.  You can chose to use all pork or all beef.

Add your ground beef and pork:

Since I'm working with meat, I like to add a tablespoon or so of Worcester sauce.

I add this much fresh, chopped garlic.  That's probably almost two tablespoons right there.  Use as little or as much as you want to.  Don't forget to add salt and pepper here, too.  I like to season the meat while it's cooking.

Excuse the steamy picture.  I added about a tablespoon of oregano.

Saute and cook your meat and be sure to use your spoon to crush up all the chunks.  I like my meat gravy to not have chunks but for all the meat to be crumbled up.

When the meat is all browned and you've obliterated all the large chunks, it's time to add your tomato paste.  I find it's easiest to use a can opener and open BOTH ends of the can and then push the bottom through like this:

Ta-dah!  Tomato paste without scraping the can.  Unless you enjoy doing that.  Then by all means, go for it! 

Take your spoon and saute the paste until it starts to stick to the bottom.  This helps with developing a rich flavor.  Tomato paste is genius because it is like concentrated flavor in a little can without hours of stewing.  Keep "browning" your tomato paste until it begins to stick to the bottom of the pan like this:

Pour in 3 cups of beef broth or beef stock.  Sometimes I use canned stock, but this time I happened to have homemade beef stock that I made.  Pour it in now.  Don't worry. All the stuck paste will come up during this part.  Take your spoon and scrape off all that flavor that's stuck to the bottom of your pot.

Stir up and cover with a lid.  Turn your heat down to low and let simmer for about 20 minutes.  You can simmer longer if you want, but no less than 20 minutes.  Now it's time to add some cream.  Yes, you read that right.  I find adding just a bit of cream helps take away even more of the tangy acid in the tomato sauce. 

I used about 2-3 tablespoons.  You don't need a lot.  A little goes a long way.

Simmer for just a few minutes longer.

Viola!  Tomato gravy.

Eat this with any kind of pasta you want.   I like spaghetti or linguine for this sauce.  Or I  like to stand in the kitchen and dip crusty pieces of bread in it and stuff my face.

Mangia!

(Hi Kimmerino!!)

This sauce freezes well, too.  Just pour into containers and freeze for later. 

Crispy Bacon and Cheese Potato Pancakes

Sometimes in the wee hours of the morning, my stomach starts talking to my brain.  In this half dream state, somehow my stomach tells my brain what it wants and my subconscious brain starts cataloging what I already have in the kitchen so by the time I woke up this morning, I had a plan and a list of ingredients.

Here's what I cooked up.  Literally.

Grab yourself some:

Bacon (or ham if you want. Or no meat for veggie version)

leftover mashed potatoes (about 2 cups)

4 small pre-cooked potatoes (either baked or microwaved)

sour cream or Salvadorean Crema

1 egg

shredded cheddar cheese

seasoning salt

pepper

I just happened to have some bacon.  Okay.  Let's just be frank.  For me, that's like saying I breath air.

On medium heat in a skillet, I threw down as many slices I could fit.  I let that begin to crisp up and moved on to the potatoes.

Someone gave me these left over garlic cheese mashed potatoes.  They sat in my fridge for a bit because no matter how good mashed potatoes were when you cooked them, cold leftover ones are kind of dry and not very inspiring.  Until NOW!  I would guess this is about 2 cups?  (These were not my recipe.  I have a sour cream garlic mashed potato recipe that I will eventually post.  During Thanksgiving, I use an entire Costco sized bag of potatoes to make a Gi-normo batch.  True story.).

I also used 4 small potatoes that I had microwaved and had cooled down.  I use the skin in this recipe so I made sure to give them a good scrub down to get all the dirt off.

In a large mixing bowl, I added my cold, leftover garlic, cheese mashed potatoes.  To that I added my small microwaved potatoes.  I used my hand to just obliterate them.  I use my hands a lot.  It's easier, faster and more efficient.  Plus its a great stress reliever. Grrrrrr! Smash!

And more Grrrrr! Smash!

Now I add some seasoning salt.

And don't forget black pepper too.

By now, my bacon looks like this and it's almost done.  When they are all crispy, set aside and turn the heat off. 

I used a heaping tablespoon of this Salvadorean Cream.  It's a richer, thicker sour cream.  I adore it.  The ladies at my work showed me how to slather it on Central American bread rolls called bolillos.  It is divine.  You can plop it on top of refried black beans or use it in place of mayo.  I use it for my Green Hulk sauce.  If I didn't have any on hand, I would use sour cream.  I added it to ensure my potato pancakes were creamy and not dry. Well and because I wanted it to taste good too. 

Plop it in there! 

Add one egg to your potato mixture.

I added about half a cup of shredded sharp cheddar cheese.  You could leave the cheese out if you wanted.

I mixed it all up and it looked like this:

Do you know what time it is?????? It's time for BACON!!! I used 4ish slices for this.  I say it's approximate because some of it may or may not have gone missing during this process.  I just used my hands again to crush it all up since my bacon was nice and crispy.  I'm too lazy to pull out the cutting board and knife sometimes. It wouldn't kill me if I didn't have to do extra dishes.  Plus the bacon fat leaves my hands nice and soft.  Just kidding.  I didn't super crush them.  I left them in pretty good sized pieces because I wanted to bite into nice chunks of bacon while I was eating these.  You decide how big or small you want the bacon chunks.  I was thinking slices of ham would go well in here too.  

So while I was making up the potato mixture, I kept looking at the bacon grease sitting there off to the side.  And while I hadn't intended to use it when I first started dreaming this up, I couldn't help but thinking about it.  You don't have to use the bacon grease.  Originally, I thought I was going to use olive oil.  But it kept looking at me so I thought, "What the hell!" and gave in.

I poured my bacon grease into a large non-stick skillet.  Yes.  I did.  I admit it.  I did it.

I turned the heat up to medium and started working on shaping my potato cakes.

I used a HEAPING spoonful.  It was a good handful.  Using your hands, roll into a tight ball and then smash down carefully into a flattened hockey puck like shape.  Use your fingers to seal in the edges.  You don't want your pancake to come undone and lose it's guts while you're frying them up.

It looks sort of like a biscuit.  See how I was careful to press the edges in so they are smooth?

Try to work quickly because they will be easier to work with when cool.  As you roll them and shape them with your hands, they start to warm up and they become harder to keep together.

I was able to get 6 good sized potato pancakes formed.  You can do smaller if you'd like.  They would make yummy party appetizers if you wanted to make them bite-sized.  But I wanted them larger so I could build a breakfast entree with them so I made mine this size so each pancake would be one serving.

By this time, my bacon grease was nice and hot, but not smoking.  If your oil or bacon grease is smoking then it's too hot and you'll burn the outside before the inside gets a chance to cook through.  I carefully laid them into the bacon grease and it looked like this:

You'll be tempted to flip them because they smell realllllly good.  But if you want them to be crispy, be patient and let them really fry up.  I would guess about 6-7 minutes is how long I waited before carefully flipping them over.

Give the other side the same amount of time to crisp up too.

I let them cool just a bit before plating up.  They "firm" up a bit as they cool.  I topped with a poached egg and another slice of bacon.  This one was for the Indian guy I live with because he's nice and I like him.

I ate mine without extra bacon and I was perfectly fine (Don't feel sorry for me.  I ate bacon as I was making this too).  I also drizzled some Green Hulk Sauce on mine, but I ate it before I remembered I should take a pic.  Oops. 

One thing that I wished that I had done was to add finely minced onion into the potato mixture before rolling into pucks and frying up.  I think the finely minced onion would have been divine in this.  So the next time I make this, I will most def use onion.  I guess my awake self doesn't always get the complete memo from asleep, dreaming of food self.