Seoul Train

It was a good ride today. After yesterday’s shop ride – three hours, average power 215, NP 298, IF of .92 (told you it was a tough day at the office...) I was looking forward to 3-4 hours of L2. I did that solo, riding south toward Deale. There was a big headwind the whole way down there and my legs and back were stiff from the efforts. It was one of those rides where, after 90 minutes, I was profoundly uncomfortable on the bike. A quick stop at the 7-11 in Deale, a 24 ounce fountain Coke and a couple breakfast bars, and I was right as rain, and trucking home at 22 MPH with a stiff tailwind at my back. Final numbers – 3:30, average power 198, NP 245, IF of .74. Perfect.

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Our media culture is, for the most part, completely full of shit.

There is an assumption in our culture that men are jackasses, and kind of helpless domestically without women. Y’know, unless the men are gay or metrosexual acting foodies and interior design buffs. Ads, sitcoms, and yes, food and interior design shows all work on this premise.

And that is an enormous pile of bullshit.

One of the other lines of bullshit that most of the food shows sell is that you have to fetishize your food and its preparation to eat healthy. Sure, there’s better and worse choices – it’s always better to eat beef, for instance, that comes from a free range, grass fed cow that had its own massage therapist, psychologist, and a mortgage-free condo in Aspen. Trust me if you haven’t tried it – naturally raised beef with a minimal amount of antibiotics and steroids tastes way better that most of the stuff you’ll get in the supermarket.

But it’s also $15 a pound, which puts it way beyond most people’s budget. So we make do.

The main challenge is to take ordinary ingredients that are for the most part healthy – throwing in the nice premium quality stuff when it can be had reasonably – and to combine ingredients while spicing things up so that the food is healthy, and truly pleasing to eat.

I’m putting this principle into practice while wife & son are off in the UK at the marriage of Nephew #3.

The other night, for instance, I wanted something spicy and relatively healthy, with a high carb and protein count. I’m trying to stick to Fitzgerald’s “Racing Weight” plan, and I was willing to take a hit or two but didn’t want anything greasy or heavy that would undo the good eating I did earlier in the day.

Mexican sounded ideal from a taste standpoint, but that’s usually pretty fatty, unless you go with chicken or turkey for meat, skip chips in favor of non-fat tortillas… you go that route, seńor, and I assure you that you will wind at the intersection of La Raza Ave and Blandsville Boulevard wondering why your 1974 Peppermobile decided to stop working right here. You can *make* it work, but if you are really hankering for rich spiciness, it’s a no go from the outset.

What would work, I figured, was Korean food. Specifically, my favorite soup in the world, Kimchi Jigae (gee-gay). But I didn’t feel like driving to the nearest Korean joint to get it, which I believe is a place up near Fort Meade. So how’s a white boy gonna make that crazy down home Korean dish?

It was pretty easy, actually.

Like a lot of fancy crap that I cook, it started with a little help from the prepared food aisles at the store. I started with one of those kimchi-flavored bowl soups and a jar of kimchi from the produce section. The kimchi was next to the salsa, which is appropriate when you think about it.

I know those ramen-type soups are pretty high in sodium, but y’know, when you’re me, and riding 3-4 hours per day, and sweating an hour’s worth of flow down the Susquehanna on a 90 degree day, odds are good the body could use that 2x daily allowance of sodium, and the 350 calories of noodles. So I took the soup bowl, put the soup flavor & veggie packets into about two or three cups of water in a two quart sauce pan, and started it boiling.

I threw in two chicken boullion cubes. You want to know a secret? With a handful of exceptions (gazpacho, cold cucumber soup, tomato soup) every soup in the world can be started with chicken stock, including beef soups. I usually make my chili using chicken stock. Yes, that’s right – even my chili Eats More Chikken. Kimchi jigae has pork in it, and chicken stock is definitely complimentary with pork, and for a soup that isn’t straight pork (i.e. with veggies and stuff mixed in) chicken stock is the perfect starting point.

As the water came to a boil I sliced up about a quarter of a big yellow onion, thick slices, and dropped that in. Then I sliced up a pork chop really thin and browned the meat in a frying pan with about a tablespoon of canola oil. When that was done, the pork went straight into the sauce pan, which I dropped down to a simmer. I then used the accumulated juices and canola oil to brown up a half cup of cubed extra firm tofu. Yep, I eat tofu. Don’t tell anybody, ‘kay? The normal Korean way is to just throw the tofu into the soup but I like it to be a bit chewier so I brown it up. In addition to being a traditional ingredient of this soup, tofu has a ton of protein and very low fat, so it’s good for rebuilding hill-ravaged leg muscles. The firm tofu also has a reasonably edible texture; it isn’t as cottage chees-y as regular tofu, it takes up the pepper spices really nicely. One other thing to think about if you’re throwing a dish together, the change of texture is nice in this soup, which has meat, heavy vegetable (onion), light leafy vegetables (cabbage), and pasta textures already.

After the tofu was browned I tossed that into the soup, and I dropped in about a half a cup of Kimchi out of a that jar of Kimchi - a respectable medium hot kimchi I got from Giant or Shoppers, though the local Asian supermarkets have kickass versions of the same. I may have added a little juice out of the jar, and a pinch of sea salt, as well as a little bit of crushed red pepper paste that I had in the fridge – it seemed like it needed to be just a touch hotter and to sport a little more of the Essence of Kimchi, and that did the trick.

I let that simmer for about five minutes, then brought it up to a boil, and dropped the dried noodles in. They were soft after about three minutes, and it was done.

I then served it up in this great big bowl, pouring the mixture into the bowl as it boiled. The noodles weren’t exactly traditional in kimchi jigae, but like I said I needed to pack in some carbs to keep the body fueled for these daily 3 hour rides.

How’d it taste? Wonderful. Not the best I’ve ever had, but pretty darned close, and it took about 7-10 minutes of working time to knock it out.

As I said, there’s no need to be Mr. Incompetent Bachelor Dude, or likewise to be super technical or super effete in your cooking style. If you think about what kind of ingredients are generally included in a particular dish, and then flavor it by considering the question, “what is this missing”?