Decolonizing Your Kitchen

[seoulbrotherno1]

Even revolutionaries have to eat. But instead of making food and eating a respite from the struggle, we need to make our kitchens part of the revolution. Here are some tips to "take back" your kitchen from the clutches of the evil White man:

1. Throw away all measuring equipment. That's right, get rid of it all. Cooking can't be reduced to some cold mathmatical formula. It takes skill finess, and knowledge. Measuring is for White people.

2. Use your hands. Yep, forget your mixer. Chuck your food processor. Roll up your sleeves and get in there with your hands and mix your food around. In Corea, they say that a good chef imparts his or her ki into the food by touching it. Therefore, the more you touch it, the more of your ki you can impart into your food. Soul Kitchens call this process "adding a little bit of love" to your food. Don't be so anaseptic and anal about cooking! If you don't wanna get your hands dirty, stay outta the kitchen!

3. Taste. I know too many mutherfuckers who measure, follow the recipe, refernece the cookbook, and then look puzzled when their food doesn't come out right. It should come as no surprise that these fools NEVER taste their food while cooking it. You gotta check the flavor from the get go. Keep tasting throughout the process as cooking will change the flavor of your food. Don't be afraid to dip your finger in there and try it out. If the food is hot, just use that same old wooden spoon you are stirring things around with. Don't get uptight about making sure that everything is anaseptic. Licking the spoon and then tossing it back into the spagetti sauce will not only add your ki to the dish, it'll add a certain special flavor called "jjim" to your meal. The addition of "jjim" to a dish makes it more tastey, which brings us to point number 4:

4. Don't be afraid to eat off of someone's plate. Actually, ideally, you should all be eating off of one big communal plate in the middle. The melding and mixing of everyone's saliva into a dish imparts a special flavor that cannot be reproduced in individual servings.

5. Use those chopsticks. While there are ocassions when a fork and knife get the job done better, chopsticks, by far, are a superior utensil. Nothing seemed more nonsensical than people rolling their pasta up with a fork and spoon. Use those chopsticks for your spagetti -that is what it was designed for!

6. Slurp Eating food without making noise is as natural as exercising without sweating. Suck those hot noodles down. Blow on that scalding soup. Do what you gotta do, but don't diminish your eating pleasure by rigidly adhering to a set of unnatural rules. Besides the sounds of eating should stimulate the appetites of others and inspire your comrades to eat.

Feel free to post your own eating suggestions below. Like the Chairman said, "we need to be in a constant state of revolution!" Let's bring the struggle to the kitchen.

sb1

[kalbi]

Measuring is for White people.



:lol:

[vsoy]

7. Improvise If you are short on something, use a logical replacement instead of running to the supermarket, a White establishment with its long rows of processed, bland foods, yet full of nothing to eat. If you think a recipe could use some soy sauce, use it! The cookbook is not the boss of you!

[cattygurl]

I have a colonial kitchen. :oops:

[kalbi]

Everything I own is colonial - tainted by the hands of whites. My toothbrush, my mug, my desk, my car, my house, my keyboard, my garden hose, my blender, my whisk, my fork, my cereal bowl... everything! :P

[ellencho]

You know, the slurping has always been an issue for me. I haven't figured out how to slurp noodles without having them fly smack into my face and without having the soup spatter my face too. How do people fricking do that without making ungodly messes?

[DijabutiA]

Measuring is for White people.



:lol:

Putting barbeque sauce on tofu to make it "edible" is for white people.


And yes, I DID see this on TV.

[maogirl]

You know, the slurping has always been an issue for me. I haven't figured out how to slurp noodles without having them fly smack into my face and without having the soup spatter my face too. How do people fricking do that without making ungodly messes?


hope i'm describing this properly, but the "ladylike" way i was taught was to cup the ends of the noodles in your asian soup spoon, then slurp away.

[cattygurl]

I can't slurp right, either. I always end up making a mess, with spots all over my shirt! GAH. I almost always end up with slurping dishes when I'm wearing white or light colors, too.

Anyone have any tips on slurping without splatter?

[seoulbrotherno1]

It's all technique ladies. You gotta work in "slurp bursts." Secure the food in your mouth. (Use your lips.) Release your chopsticks, grab lower on your seized noodle mass and bring it up to your mouth. There should be a "fold" because your noodles are no longer a tight dangling mass -this is what you slurp up. As you slurp, repeat the process until you have a mouthful of noodles. Then bite off the end and chew what you've got.

I can't believe I am teaching Asian women how to slurp noodles...

Despite my distain for Western pretense while eating, people can go too far in the opposite direction. While in College, there was this beautiful Chinese teaching assistant named Kong Mei. She was lovely, but one day she was eating salad and talking. I looked up to she her rapping with a mouthful of partially chewed salad, ranch dressing smeared on her lips, and lettuce projectiles threatening anyone nearby.

Maybe I am just not Asian enough...

sb1

[.vhg//ALITA]

I'd marinate with my hands but I have eczema =( marinading with my hands is just asking for an outbreak (the oil + cornstarch mix tends to suffocate my skin, thus making it itch 5784075840 times more than it normally does).

Does it count to use chopsticks instead for marinating? =D

[Taliesin Stormheller]

1. To decolonize your kitchen, eat really hot and spicy food with lots of cumin!!!!

[.vhg//ALITA]

Measuring is for White people.



:lol:

Putting barbeque sauce on tofu to make it "edible" is for white people.


And yes, I DID see this on TV.

.....

For some reason this reminded me of "Farewell to Manzanar", where the chefs at the internment camps thought rice was some sort of a dessert and put canned apricots on it -_-;

[ellencho]

It's all technique ladies. You gotta work in "slurp bursts." Secure the food in your mouth. (Use your lips.) Release your chopsticks, grab lower on your seized noodle mass and bring it up to your mouth. There should be a "fold" because your noodles are no longer a tight dangling mass -this is what you slurp up. As you slurp, repeat the process until you have a mouthful of noodles. Then bite off the end and chew what you've got.

I can't believe I am teaching Asian women how to slurp noodles...
So I tried this the other day and it really works. Eee! On Saturday the family is going out for Korean-Chinese so I'll see if I'm brave enough to try it out on jja jang myun.

[kimtae]

Ellen, you may want to rethink that. I'm betting you get brown stains everywhere. SB1's technique might work for relatively calm noodles like bibim guksu or cchormyun but when it comes to jjajangmyun, that's a whole different concept.
I know two non-slurping techniques that both work for jjajangmyun.
#1 the Twirl: Like winding spaghetti on a fork, this is pretty simple. The key is to start with a small amount as the ball on the end of your sticks will grow exponentially. Go either clockwise or counter-clockwise, no matter, and remember to make contact with the tips of your sticks and the bowl on the inside of your circle. This will tidy up any stray pieces. The noodles will wrap themselves nicely.
#2 the Cross-cut: This works really well on softer noodles and with those cheap throw-away sticks. Just start at opposite ends of the bowl and cross the sticks together as they pass each other like scissors. You will have nicely cut small noodles that are easy to manage.
Slurping jjajangmyun is a dangerous prospect unless you're wearing a leopard spot print. Will you be wearing a leopard spot print?

[ellencho]

Slurping jjajangmyun is a dangerous prospect unless you're wearing a leopard spot print. Will you be wearing a leopard spot print?
Me probably not, my mom, possibly maybe :)

Good advice then. Perhaps I will eat jjajangmyun like a gringo or I will get something like jjambbong that doesn't have as thick and as brown a sauce. Maybe I need to make some jjajangmyun at home one of these days and practice first?

[seoulbrotherno1]

Nuthin' wrong with slurpin' down some jjajangmyeon. Everyone could use a little danger in their lives...

sb1

[blockthebox]

I use a modified version of sb1's slurp bursts. My way isn't slurping really - once you've got the noodles secured in your mouth and use your chopsticks to get that fold of noodles, you can just raise it to your mouth without actually slurping. I use this method for all noodles dishes without incident. It should work pretty well with jjajjamyun.

By the way, is the jjajjamyun sauce the same type of dipping sauce they give you with the raw onions in Korean-Chinese restaurants? I can't tell for some reason.

[ellencho]

I think the onion dipping sauce is the base for jjajangmyun so I think the jjajangmyun sauce is a bit more involved. IIRC, there's oil involved in good jjajangmyun sauce.

[kimtae]

Basic jjajangmyun sauce is the black bean sauce (chun jang) added to a pot of browned pork and veggies (usually onions, scallions, diced carrots and zucchini). Cut with water and sweeten with sugar then thicken with starch water. You can add garlic and ginger if you like. I prefer seafood in mine like shrimp and squid. Some people garnish with julienned cucumbers, but I don't like it when there's peas and corn on top.

[seoulbrotherno1]

This thread is too good to die. Let me add one more suggestion (I think MG wrote about this on her blog as well):

Reuse your cooking oil. Yep, that's right, after you get done frying that mandu, don't get rid of that cooking oil! Put it in a container and save it for next time. Believe it or not, the next time you fry, food will actually be tastier -and not just because you have managed to impart the taste of yesterday's fried fish on to today's noodle-cake. Frying creates natural soaps in the oil which, in turn, helps your food fry better. The soaps allow for more food / oil contact (something to do with oil and water not mixing, but I can't remember everything).

Also, according to MG's blog, you can also keep it real by cooking with your shirt off, but I am not sure whether seoulbrother is even ready to take the revolution to that extreme (unless it involves some sort of erotic cooking -but even that sounds dangerous!)

Lastly, another Asian staple is to make sure that you wash your dished in ice-cold water. Why, I dunno, but no one in Corea uses hot water for their dishes.

sb1

[DijabutiA]

Also, according to MG's blog, you can also keep it real by cooking with your shirt off, but I am not sure whether seoulbrother is even ready to take the revolution to that extreme (unless it involves some sort of erotic cooking -but even that sounds dangerous!)

oil + no shirt = BAD IDEA

[BIG_Canon]

Reuse your cooking oil. Yep, that's right, after you get done frying that mandu, don't get rid of that cooking oil! Put it in a container and save it for next time. Believe it or not, the next time you fry, food will actually be tastier -and not just because you have managed to impart the taste of yesterday's fried fish on to today's noodle-cake. Frying creates natural soaps in the oil which, in turn, helps your food fry better. The soaps allow for more food / oil contact (something to do with oil and water not mixing, but I can't remember everything).

Yep, every asian family I know does this. In fact, it saves money! One bottle of oil ends up lasting twice as long. :shock:

[Nordic]

Measuring is for White people.

Hihi, then I measure with good conscience and I am allowed as I am white ;)

The melding and mixing of everyone's saliva into a dish imparts a special flavor that cannot be reproduced in individual servings.


YUCK!! If my friend is having a flu, there's no way I would eat her snot from her place. No thanks!!!

Chopsticks and other Asian things are fine, but some things I do want to measure, and I don't want to eat others' salive and snot.

[MATHABA]

whenever i have fat/grease left over from cooking meats i save it and use it for fuel in outdoor cooking. i got this big iron plate that fits over my grill so NOW ON MY DAYS OFF I CAN COOK MY FOOD OUTSIDE OR WHEN I HAVE FRIENDS COMING OVER.
i love outside cooking because i dont have to think about mess. you can make it as HOT as you want, dont worry about smoke. if some oil or grease catches fire and it spreads, just stamp it out. any mess i leave behind, animals come and clean it up at night.

when i moved into my house i found that my gas space heaters were fed by a simple gas valve sticking out of the wall. heaters are useless for 10 months out of the year where i live so i disconnected them and attached a longer gas line to run out the window to a burner that i got at a garage sale that usually come with a turkey fryer kit. so then i could cook things in a big pot for long hours outside without worrying about making the house too hot.

[ellencho]

I have a collection of animal fats in my freezer that I keep for a little extra flavoring when I cook. Every time I make some sort of stock or fry up some bacon I'll save the fat in a little jar and freeze it for later.

[lycheng]

I love this thread! :lol:

I have two contributions.

1. Replace your puny western made exhaust fan with an Asian one
I'm sick and tired of the poor job my western exhaust hood does with Chinese stir frying. My parents have one of those Asian fans (I think it's made in Taiwan), with two powerful fans and several oil collectors instead of some flimsy filter. That's my next kitchen upgrade.

2. Cook with on a gas stove only
I hate electric stoves. It just doesn't have the btu's. Thank goodness my house came with gas when I bought it.

lycheng

[kimtae]

While I admire SB1's Korean thrift, please do not save and reuse your cooking oils! Oil will indeed go bad and when it does go bad, it will make you sick. Rancid oils contain a lot of carcinogens so go fresh. Second, reusing "healthy" oils, even oils that have a very high flash temperature like peanut oil, will cause them to turn into "unhealthy" oil. The unsaturated fats become saturated fats (SB1's soap analogy). This means more cholesterol and more clogged arteries.
As for cooking without a shirt, is there any other way?

[maogirl]

As for cooking without a shirt, is there any other way?

exactly. i've only ever sustained a 2nd degree burn once.

[BIG_Canon]

2. Cook with on a gas stove only
I hate electric stoves. It just doesn't have the btu's. Thank goodness my house came with gas when I bought it.

lycheng

Yea, the "burn" flavor does some foods justice! It's good with cho chow mein, shanghai noodles, and Japanese udon. Mmm, mmm, good!

8-) 8-)

[Scowl]

Here's one that I found out recently - a coconut brush scrubber or even a piece of coconut is better than any kind of commercial scrubber out there. It soaks up oil like nobody's business, and it won't scratch your pots and pans. And plus, coconut is just plain awesome.

There's also this kind of vegetable, I don't know the English name (si gua, I think) but it's kind of like cucumber, when the skin is peeled and the insides sun dried it makes an excellent scrubbing pad.

[poisenedrice]

Measuring is for White people.

Hahaha, you would get along with one of my hapa buddies. This happened last night when we stopped by the grocery store to get beer and chips:

Me: "Oooh, they have Cape Cod chips!"
Friend: "You like that shit?!"
Me: "Hell yah man. Love the salt 'n' vinegar"
Friend: "God that shit is nasty. Those chips are for white people."

[Makulita]

Vinegar is for sosawan and salt is for adjusting your seasoning. In no way should these two things ever be combined in the form of a legitimate chip flavor. Ever.

Keep your containers precise, practical and non-tacky. Only white people feel the need to store their salts, peppers and other spices in pig-shaped, cow-shaped, farmer-shaped, fat-ass-little-cherub-mooning-your-face-shaped containers because they want to add "personality" to their kitchens. Bitch, the personality of your kitchen is in the smells and aromas left behind by previous meals that give others happy memories of the time spent during shared meals with you. A kitchen should never be odorless because that either means you've been so conditioned by The Man that even your food has become bland and soulless, or you're too much of a dumb motherfucker to figure out how to feed yourself.

Or maybe you're just a germophobe and you scrub down everything furiously. Which is forgivable.

[cattygurl]

^^ gotta admit, I love salt and vinegar chips by cape cod. That shit is da bomb.

I also have matching kitty salt and pepper shakers, and all kinds of awesome cute kitchen accessories. It's a Japanese thing- we started off with netsukes, and now, we even have cute tissue paper holders.

[seoulbrotherno1]

Only white people feel the need to store their salts, peppers and other spices in pig-shaped, cow-shaped, farmer-shaped, fat-ass-little-cherub-mooning-your-face-shaped containers because they want to add "personality" to their kitchens.

Right on!

A kitchen should never be odorless because that either means you've been so conditioned by The Man that even your food has become bland and soulless, or you're too much of a dumb motherfucker to figure out how to feed yourself.

I agree 100%.


sb1

[Makulita]

^^ gotta admit, I love salt and vinegar chips by cape cod. That shit is da bomb.

Ewwwwwwww! C'mon now!

I also have matching kitty salt and pepper shakers, and all kinds of awesome cute kitchen accessories. It's a Japanese thing- we started off with netsukes, and now, we even have cute tissue paper holders.

Well... those kind of things by Sanrio, San-X, Morning Glory, Ibis and other such character logo companies are exempt because that shit is too frickin' cute to not use. Everything else is ugly and tacky.

[poisenedrice]

Y'all are some serious haters. Well guess what, I'm going to keep eating salt 'n' vinegar chips AND I'm going to enjoy them.

Then I'm going to watch Rachael Ray all day every day, marry a white girl, and make burgers and fries all day every day using salt and pepper shakers purchased from IKEA precisely measured with measuring spoons also purchased from IKEA. Of course, I will occasionally make Chinese stir fry that I learned to make from watching Rachael Ray for my gweipo trophy wife. Afterwards, we will deodorize the kitchen with Febreze and make sweet, sweet love.

[Infectious]

Y'all are some serious haters. Well guess what, I'm going to keep eating salt 'n' vinegar chips AND I'm going to enjoy them.

Then I'm going to watch Rachael Ray all day every day, marry a white girl, and make burgers and fries all day every day using salt and pepper shakers purchased from IKEA precisely measured with measuring spoons also purchased from IKEA. Of course, I will occasionally make Chinese stir fry that I learned to make from watching Rachael Ray for my gweipo trophy wife. Afterwards, we will deodorize the kitchen with Febreze and make sweet, sweet love.

Not good enough. You're going to have to watch her talk show too.

(I had no idea who she was so I had to wikipedia her.)