Jambalaya!

Today, I decided to jambalaya Jambalaya, because I had jambalayaed some Jambalaya during jambalaya week and it was very jambalayay.

Ahahahahaha just kidding. Today, I decided to make Jambalaya because I had some from Restaurant Week. The version I had used edamame instead of… beans? I’m not sure if beans are usually used in Jambalaya, actually. Also it had a giant tempura shrimp on top as decoration, which I skipped.

Ingredients: bacon, sausages (I was told it is very important to get the Andouille kind, thankfully I had some from the time when I had a sausagefest because they were on sale, mmm I sure love sausage!), long grain rice, can of tomatoes and tomate paste, stock, trinity, garlic, shrimp, chicken, cayenne peppers, bay, sage, oregano, and edamame.

I forgot to defrost my shrimp. That’s why it’s in a frozen block XD. But that’s ok, they go in last so I knew that if I just put them in water they’d be fine by the time I needed them.

I began by browning my sausage, because I wasn’t sure how much fat they were going to render, and so I wanted to reserve my bacon so I could see how much bacon grease I wanted to use. As it turned out, they didn’t render shit. I ended up with maybe a tablespoon.

So it is time to call in the specialists. Yeah!

:Cooking101: Trinity in Cajun/Creole cooking is a blend of onion, celery, and bell peppers. In French cuisine it is called mirepoix and replaces bell peppers with carrots. I guess nowadays they are called aromatics. I like to think of them as “basic deliciousness”, on top of which you can add other deliciousnesses depending on where you want to go. It’s kind of like putting down a wash to start a drawing.

Stock, tomatoes, and herbs and spices (I used about 1 tablespoon salt + cayenne). I think the fact that I’m using tomatoes makes this a Creole style Jambalaya.

Add the rice and close the lid and some time later also add the beans. I think it takes about half an hour for the rice to get ready.

Meanwhile! I put on my robe and wizard hat brown my chicken with the garlic and some cumin.

I had used up all the bacon grease for the trinity but don’t worry because I have reserve troops XD

Also meanwhile! I peel the shrimp, taking out even the tail shell piece.

I was afraid at the beginning that I’d added too much liquid, but by this time the liquid is completely gone. It is all dry. Which means it’s time to turn off the heat or burn the bottom. I think you can just add the shrimp and it will cook completely even with the stove off, but I gave it an extra minute or so, then turned it off and added the meat.

There was entirely too much food, so I had to transfer to a bigger vessel to mix so that the stuff would be distributed evenly. Geez this monster will feed me for like a week.

I attempt to be fancy in my plating but oh gosh I am just not good with this stuff. I think it’s a little plain without the decorative tempura shrimp but, whatever, it’s quite good.

Gook Gook Soup

So today I decided to gook Gook Gook Soup, with gooks gooked in the gook of gook, then let gook until gooky, about 20 minutes.

The gooks: gook, gook, gook, brown gook, gook, green gook, gook, various gooks, chicken gook, and of course, gook, which is what makes this gook so gooky.

Start with the gooks in a gook. Bring to a boil, then add gook, gook, and gooks.

Render the gook from the gooks for gooking.

Gook the gooked gooks to the gook, while gooking the gooks.

As usual, my gook is that there’s too much gook in the gook. But that is gookay.

Gooky!

I Immediately Regret This Decision! Chicken Tenders (with Parmesan Cheese)

I have some chicken tenders from a while ago. I looked up some recipes online and most of them looked pedestrian so I was like, alright Giada, I’ll trust you on this one.

Ingredients: chicken tenders, bread crumbs, parmesan cheese, milk, and stuff. The recipe called for some buttermilk, to which I responded “wtf is a buttermilk?” My first instinct was to mix some butter with milk, but according to wikipedia it actually has less fat content than milk, and also is kind of sour. Well, I just happen to have some skim milk that’s starting to go sour…

Soak chicken in milk. Mix bread crumbs with parmesan cheese.

I distinctly remember my thought process went like this: “oh, I have some herbs. I’ll just add some herbs. What doesn’t taste better with more herbs?” As soon as I put it into the mix, though, I immediately regretted my decision. For one, there was too much of it. I was worried the breading mixture wasn’t going to adhere properly to the chicken. I was also worried the herbs were just going to be burnt to a crisp.

I am so incredibly bad at drizzling oil.

Into the oven!

I didn’t want to waste the extra breading mix I had, so I just put it into the oven and hoped that something delicious would come out… and it did!

The dipping sauce is basically balsamic vinegar.

Moneyshot. It’s not as golden as I thought it would be. I’m not sure if that’s because of my terrible oil drizzling, or if I just didn’t leave it in there long enough.

Steamed Chicken with Ginger & Scallion Sauce

I’ve tried to replicate this dish from JJR restaurant several times, and have been met with nothing but abject failure. I don’t know how the restaurant does it, but it’s not at all like when I make it. Le sigh. In any case.

Ingredients: chicken, ginger, onion.

I don’t have a steamer so this is my set up, lol.

Meanwhile, ginger & onion, with some salt.

This is the cool part. Heat up some oil until it’s hot enough to fry (I used some peanut oil), and pour it over the dry ingredients. Tzzzzzzzzzzz

November to December is Chicken (Breast) Month

Finally and for a limited time only, the chicken breasts at Ralph’s is $2 per pound again. Oh, how I have waited for this glorious day!

About $30's worth of chicken breasts... plus Justin's TV dinners

As a certain idiot I know is fond of saying, “Oh! You are definitely the Chicken Monster!”

Since I have all of this lovely breast at my disposal now, I am declaring the time from now until I go on Winter Break National Chicken (Breast) Month. I’ve had this idea to do themed months for a while now. Basically, I’ll pick one ingredient, or form of food (such as sammeches), as the theme, and for one month I will play out all its variations. During this month I will make, amongst other things, Chicken Marsala, Chicken Kiev, Chicken Parmasan, Chicken Cutlet Curry… You get the idea.

I play with the ingredients I have, so today, I made this… I guess if it had a name it would be something like Tea Fried Chicken… with Mushroom. This is something I noticed on my trip to the motherland, that they would use tea in their dishes as herbs, like we would use basil. I tried looking up the recipe online, but couldn’t find it. All the tea chicken recipes I found would use tea, the beverage, for the sauce. The dish I had in mind is very dry, and uses the tea leaves as herb.

So, I winged it (I have got to remember this one for National Wing Month). It was kind of scary going solo, but it worked out okay, I think.

Ingredients: chicken, oil for frying, (green) tea leaves, and mushroom

These are apparently mushrooms that grow on tea trees? I am not sure.

Rinse & soak in warm water. I think I should have cut the mushrooms in half; they’re kind of long.

Cut the chicken into bite size cubes, dry, and rub with some salt. Fry.

When chicken is done, add–dried chili, tea leaves, and I used a bit of garlic. I have long learned that if you put the spices in first, they will get burnt because it takes so much longer to cook the meat. So what I do is fry the meat spiceless until it’s basically done, then push the meat to the side of the wok so that the bottom can heat up to sufficient frying temperature, then add the spices. Or you can take the meat out if you’re making a sauce.

Add mushroom and sauces (I used a dash of soy sauce–chicken broth might also be good, or the water from soaking the mushroom); salt again.

Moneyshot

Scallops with Bacon & Kale

(Click for large.)

I finally got some time last night to cook, after a busy (but lucrative) week. I decide to do something out of

(Thanks, Plebbie! XD)

Usually when I buy bacon it’s whatever brand is on sale at Ralph’s, but this time I decided to splurge on Whole Foods bacon (because that’s where I went to get the scallops). This is like, double the usual price of bacon!

That is… about 30$ of scallops… Bacon (obviously–very important), coconut milk (optional), black sesame, sesame oil, chicken stock, yellow pepper (forgot to picture the onion), kale, cilantro, and ginger.

I departed from the recipe in several ways. The recipe doesn’t call for marinating the scallops, but I did it anyway. Usually I do it with cornstarch and olive oil, but the recipe wants me to fry the bacon with some sesame oil. I figured that would be too much oil, so I marinated with the sesame oil and just fried the bacon by itself.

Having never worked with kale before, I actually had to look up how you’re supposed to cut it. I’m pretty sure this part I did right (removing the stems) but after that, I couldn’t figure out what “crosswise” meant (just use longitudinal and transversal, people!), so I just said whatever and rolled everything up.

I also added some garlic even though the recipe doesn’t call for it, because what doesn’t taste more delicious with more garlic?

The recipe calls for frying the bacon and searing the scallops in a wok, but that would have made for terrible clean up as everything would have stuck to the wok, so I just fried with my non-stick pan. Which, actually, I think the non-stick coating has mostly come off…

I also think the directions call for searing the scallops with the bacon. However, the bacon need to be stirred to prevent charring/burning, whereas the scallops need to just sit there and be seared, so I just took the bacon out. There is also not enough room for everything, a dozen jumbo sized scallops barely fits on this… well I guess it’s a medium sized skillet.

After some time. Mmm, delicious seared scallops!

At this point I poured the bacon grease into the wok and fried the vegetables. Unfortunately, this… hurts. But then, genius struck. I am designating this glove as my special frying glove. You have no idea, being able to stir without being attacked by flying bits of burning oil is an amazing feeling.

Add back the bacon. (The technical term is return… The more you know!) Then I pushed everything to the side and let the bottom of the wok heat up so that i can fry the ginger+garlic for a bit (not pictured).

Add the wet (soy sauce, chicken stock). Interestingly, my coconut milk is solid from being in the fridge… It looks like sour cream or something from the picture.

After that I had no more time to take pictures. Return the scallops, add the kale, then at the end add the cilantro, and sprinkle some sesame seeds on there.

More porn:

Protip: if you’re going to fry in bacon grease, there is no need to add salt.

Shrimp… with Cluuuub Tomato Sauce

终於又开始烧菜了YEAH!

I had shrimp, and I had a can of tomatos, so… Shrimp with Tomato Sauce it is. I was missing some of the ingredients (and forgot to add sugar…), but this came out pretty well anyway.

I was lamenting my lack of ginger and chili bean paste. But then I remembered I had a chili. Why do I have a chili? It went something like this.

At Ralph’s.
Justin: Oh man! Whadaheck! What is this “yellow chili”! That’s crazy! This chili is all yellow!
Me: I’m gonna get one.
Justin: Yeah, do it. Yeah, fuck you.

I cut off a small piece to taste. It wasn’t spicy at all. Then I ate one seed. It attempted to be spicy but is too much of a pansy. Like Justin.

Fry aromatics.

Reduce the sauce.

Fry the shrimp.

Add the shrimp back to the sauce, garnish with green onions (busting out the fancy place), and…

I wasn’t sure if this was going to be delicious. But then I sat down and took a bite and thought to myself, man, why am I so awesome. Mmm mmm mmm.

Forced into Vegetarianism

So we finally bought a fridge. In celebration I went to Ralph’s. I wanted to get some chicken breast so I can try making Pad See Eww again, but it wasn’t on sale, and I wasn’t about to pay $4 per pound for chicken. Pork was expensive as usual, and beef… Well, actually, there was a buy one get one free deal going on, but it was for gigantic roasts that I have no idea what to do with. So, I just… bought some tofu. At $1.25 per pound, it’s actually cheaper than meat! So I’ve been forced into vegetarianism by… I suppose, my jewwiness. It’s not that I can’t afford it at the current prices, or even think them unreasonable. I just know that I can get it cheaper if I wait.

And so, right now, I am eating… a basil sandwich. I heated my garlic bread up in my oven (which, btw, has horrible insulation–is there supposed to be a cover for the vent?) and just threw on a bunch of basil leaves on there. Yup.

The Roommate’s Dilemma

Well hello!

Lobby and Fobby

Creepy hallway

Kitchen

Living room

Slave Bedroom

Slave Bedroom

Master Bedroom

All rooms lead to balcony

All rooms lead to balcony

Another view of the living room. Also, an idiot.

Kitchen again

The reason this place is affordable

It will be totally possible to dive from here

The Roommate’s Dilemma is an instantiation of the Cake Cutting Problem. Basically, n=2 (dashing, handsome, etc.) roommates need to be assigned to n rooms, which are not identical. Since they are not identical, the rent should not be split equally. Each room presents different utility to the roommates, so the assignment and rent split should reflect this and try to maximize everyone’s utility. How to do it “fairly”?

The solution to the cake problem is to let one person cut the cake and let the other choose. Thus, the person has an incentive to cut the cake as equally as possible, lest the other take the bigger. Neglecting physicalities, such as the impossibility of splitting something exactly equal, this algorithm ought to leave both parties satisfied that the outcome is fair. If the chooser is not satisfied, it is his own fault for being a dumbass and picking the inferior cut; if the cutter is not satisfied, he has only himself to blame for not cutting it fairly.

The direct analogue of this solution is to let one person split the rent and let the other choose which room to live in. I started thinking about this, though, and I think this is actually not fair. It is not possible for the cutter to live in a room and pay less than what he thinks it is worth, but it is possible for the chooser.

For example, suppose that roommate 1’s utility is at 1200/800, and 2 is at 1500/500, for rooms A and B, respectively. If 1 is cutting, then he has no choice but to place the rent at 1200/800 (assuming he doesn’t know 2’s utility split). For were he to do otherwise–for example, at 1300/700, then 2 may choose room B, leaving 1 with room A, and having to pay higher than what he thinks room A is worth. Only at 1200/800 would he be neutral about the outcome of 2’s choice–it’s an equilibrium of sorts. Then, 2 will choose room A, and pay 300 less than what he thinks it’s worth. Thus, basically, 2 has benefited $300, while 1 has benefited $0 from this mechanism.

Of course, in real life, 1 can try to guess 2’s utility. If he knew what his utility was, he could place the split at 1499/501. 2 will then pick A (assuming he knows the value of an honest dollar), leaving 1 with a $299 discount.

The system we’ve agreed on is to each write down our utilities by secret ballot, then average the utilities, and assign the rooms “down”. For example, in the example above, the averages are 1350/650. Then, 1 would take B and pay 650, and 2 would take A and pay 1350. Then each has mutually benefited $150 (essentially, wealth is created from the utility differential).

Now to decide what my utilities are and see if I will actually be happy with the outcome of this experiment… Today I measured the sizes of the rooms, using my armspan, which ought to be the same as my height. The smaller room is 2×2.4 Siwei’s, and the larger is about 2×3.5. However, the balcony door to the smaller room is bigger, so it’s brighter. Hmmm…

我也要吃粽子55555555 T____T

L’autre journée, mes enfants ont pris leurs examens finaux. Pendant ceci, un etudiant m’a demandé une question au sujet d’un des problèmes. Sur ce problème, on roule un dé quelque fois, et on doit trouver les probabilités d’obtenir des nombres identiques ou distincts. L’etudiant m’a dit, “que veut dire ‘distinct’?” Je lui ai donne un look(?), comme “are you fucking kidding me?” (How do you say this in French???) Mais il était complètement sérieux. J’ai dit “‘distint’ signifie ‘tous différents’”. Il m’a répondu avec “n’est-ce pas le même que ‘identique’?” Je lui ai donne un autre look de “are you fucking kidding me?” J’ai dit “non… c’est le contraire… ‘Identique’ veut dire ‘tous le même’…”

Mes enfants sont retardés.