Lack of sunshine = sulk = don’t wanna eat out = Chap Jae

As daylight becomes harder and harder to come by (ie when I go to work it’s dark, when I come back from work it’s dark), all the pictures I take of when I’m out will pretty much mostly be quite rubbish. I know there’s all sort of things you could do with ISO adjustment, aperture, shutter speed, etc. but I’m so rubbish at that, thus the pictures will be rubbish too. 

On that note, however, I came up with an excellent idea yesterday, while trying to digest the large amounts of Korean food I had for dinner. Here it is. Since it’s so cold (some places in the UK were –17 Celcius yesterday. Erm, what?) I’m beginning to dread the whole going-out-in-10-layers-of-clothing thingamajig. It’s seriously tiring, and that’s even before I’ve left the flat. By the time I’ve put all those layers of clothes on, and tried to waddle out the door, the thought of having to remove all of it once I get indoors is just not very exhilarating. Anyhow, this means that I won’t be eating out that much (yes, even less than I have been doing recently, which is quite a feat for a supposed food blogger).

Since I still have to eat, and since the food has to come from somewhere, I thought, why not feature a post each week about where the food comes from? It’s not that exciting really, most of the food comes from supermarkets. Thing is, it’s better than a blank page with just the banner of good food previously eaten, so why not.

Also, if I do enough features of stuff I’ve bought from supermarkets, and then what I’ve made with it, Sainsbury’s / Tesco / M&S / Asda might decide to sponsor my weekly groceries and that would be the main objective of this blog fulfilled. Yes, the main aim of this blog is to one day, enable me to get free food. I’m not fussed which supermarket / mini mart / reduced to clear aisle wants to give that free food to me, so sponsors, if you’re reading this, please feel free to e-mail me.

Sainsbury – if you’re reading, this one’s for you.

I’ve tried to hide the frozen products behind the fresh(er) ones, but because I have so many frozen products, it wasn’t very successful.

Because we had Korean for dinner, and because the smell of kimchi is still lingering on my hair and coat, I had cravings for more Korean food again today. Since we weren’t going out for food, and since the M&S ‘Dine for £10’ range wasn’t too inspiring, we decided to try our hands at making ChapJae, or the Korean version of yam noodles stir fried with meat and vegetables. I Googled for a recipe, found nothing quite believable, and decided to make something up. This is what I made up earlier.

Ingredients – please know that I don’t like measuring things, so every item here should be added as you go along, to the amounts you feel are sufficient (this is why I eat out so much)

• Chicken (something like 300g or something) cut into bite-sized pieces and then marinated in Korean hot pepper sauce, sesame oil, sugar and Maggi seasoning (good for most things)

(the red pepper sauce)

• Courgette (zucchini), red pepper, onions and carrots (all julienned)

And, not pictured because I forgot about them until I’d kept the camera away:

• Garlic
• Yam noodles (possibly found in most good Oriental supermarkets, ask someone for the Korean version)
• Some concept of how it should taste like

Because I did the prep and all that during the day(light) (ie before 4.30pm), and the cooking later on during dinner time, the pictures below look quite different. I told you I don’t know how to do that whole light / aperture thing.

Cooking method – or this is how I did it anyway.

First, I threw the onions into the frying pan. While that was frying away, I chucked in the chicken pieces and that created a sort of sizzle in the pan which made me look for the anti-bacterial spray to wipe it off the hob. A bit of degreasing later, and I was set to then throw in the rest of the vegetables. Little tip here, you might wanna throw the vegetables in maybe only when you’re about to serve the dish, depending on how soft you like the vegetables to be.

While all this throwing and wiping of hob was going on, I was also multi-tasking by soaking the yam noodles in a bowl of hot water. As they get soft quite easily, I wasn’t gonna cook them before throwing them into the pan with the chicken as that would have made them go all mushy.

When everything has been effectively chucked or thrown into the pan, and some frying has been done, it should look something like this.

The transferring of the noodles from the pan to the bowl is another skilful matter. I suggest the use of chopsticks and frying spatula thing.

It tasted surprisingly good, and I’ll be making this again, but without carrots I reckon because that lent a weird taste to it.