No longer updating, but hope you enjoy the recipes!
Unfortunately, I got too busy to go back to blogging, after I was forced to take a break from it in 2015 because of tendonitis.
But you can still follow my cooking, eating, and travels on instagram: (@spontaneoustomato)
Naengmyon (Cold Korean Noodles)
It’s been HOT in Santa Barbara. Well, not as bad as heat wave across the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, but still pretty toasty. And when it gets summertime-hot, I start to crave things that are either ice-y or spicy. Korean naengmyon satisfies both, and then some.
In restaurants in Korea, you can usually only order the ice cold, slightly chewy, long buckwheat noodles during the summer. But their extreme popularity and addictiveness has nothing to do with a limited-time-only gimmick; it’s just that nothing hits the spot like a big bowl of naengmyon on a hot summer afternoon. Not even my (future blog post &) beloved Japanese zaru-soba…
Naengmyon is served in a partially-frozen tangy (fermented and kimchi-reminiscent) broth, either with a spicy kochuchang (chili paste) sauce (in a variation called Bibim Naengmyon), or with an even spicier mustard sauce or vinegar (plain old Mul Naengmyon). The noodles are then topped with crispy and refreshing thinly sliced cucumbers, Asian pears, and hard-boiled eggs.
(At first glance, this bowl of naengmyon– at a restaurant in Seoul– may look perfectly lovely and harmless:
Goat Cheese, Arugula, and Balsamic Pizza
I’m going to amend my (frequently broken) never-go-to-the-grocery-store-hungry rule with a new additional policy: never talk on the phone while grocery shopping. Yet another rule I’m bound to break. Although in this case it resulted in (some snail-paced shopping and) a surprisingly delicious dinner.
My ill-thought-out plan was to attempt my own version of this gorgeous ratatouille pizza, which I still intend to do at some point! But lacking some of the ingredients, too lazy to stop at more than one store, and completely distracted by a phone call from my sister, I got a little side-tracked… Luckily, from a distance of approximately 2,000 miles away, my sister steered me toward this pizza recipe that was somehow simultaneously very easy and very fancy.
I can’t remember ever having made pizza before, so for my first unambitious attempt, I bought both pre-made dough (Trader Joe’s Garlic & Herb) and pizza sauce (also Trader Joe’s; did I mention I was too lazy to visit more than one store?). This rendered the remaining assembly– it was really more assembling than cooking— so ridiculously easy, that I promised myself I would make both from scratch next time. Or at least the dough from scratch next time. And the pizza sauce from scratch once I use up the rest of that jar… It shouldn’t take me too long, though; this pizza was such a scrumptious success that I’m already eager to repeat it.
Continue Reading: “Goat Cheese, Arugula, and Balsamic Pizza”…
Pad See-Ew and Green Papaya Salad
Sometimes the best meals come about spontaneously.
I’ve been meaning to make Pad See-Ew for a few weeks now, ever since my six-month-iversary with my girlfriend on July 4th (since we had also cooked Pad See-Ew together back on one of our very first dates). The only problem was that most of Santa Barbara’s little Asian markets were closed for the 4th of July, so we couldn’t get the right kind of rice noodles. We even went on something of a wild goose chase trying to track down a good-enough kind of noodle: a guy at Whole Foods (which was open on the 4th!), told me over the phone that they had something close… nope.
I don’t know what that Whole Foods guy was thinking; all they had were Shirataki yam noodles, and the similarly thin and even-more-fragile Tofu Shirataki. What I really wanted were fresh (not dried) wide, flat rice noodles like this. So we ended up making smoked salmon and avocado sushi rolls instead. Still a lovely six-month-iversary dinner, but it left my Thai noodle craving unsatisfied.
Two weeks later– the “heat wave” (i.e., over 80) we’ve been having in Santa Barbara finally broken– I decided on a whim that Pad See-Ew would taste just as good on a weeknight, and wouldn’t actually take up a whole weekend evening of cooking. True! Once you have all the ingredients (the trickiest one is a thick/dark sweet soy sauce– see below), Pad See-Ew is actually pretty speedy to prepare! It requires fewer ingredients than Pad Thai, and is just an all-around easier dish to make… if you have the right kind of noodles.
spontaneous tomato 