Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, we eat Korean food and really soft cookies. Also we put mayo on everything. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.
Ketchup fried rice bowl with cucumber, avocado and Kewpie mayo
At home, wherever that is for you.
I had this sort of strange experience this week where I found out that someone I knew from school went viral on TikTok. The strange thing wasnât that Emily went viral; sheâs been steadily making content for more than a decade and Iâve always found it to be enjoyable to watch. I think the weird thing was that it made me realize how much our perception of people we donât know is based on how the media writes about them, especially in puff pieces where the person featured isnât actually interviewed (or at least, not quoted). Also, it made me realize that white people donât know about Kewpie mayo, lol. Kewpie mayo makes everything better, especially rice bowls. I especially love it on top of ketchup fried rice, which is my favorite form of fried rice. Ketchup fried rice is most famously encountered inside the embrace of a warm omelette in omurice, but you donât need to bother trying to make a two step recipe like that. Just heat a big chunk of butter in a pan, saute some onions till wilted, and add some chopped leftover chicken (or skip if youâre vegetarian). Add another tab of butter, a cup or two of warm sushi rice, drizzle with a lot of soy sauce, mix well, and then squeeze in a big squirt of ketchup to taste. Scoop it into a rice bowl, add half a sliced avocado, and cross-hatch with drizzles of kewpie mayo and sriracha. Prepare to be addicted.
Gukmul tteokbokki at WoorijipÂ
12 W 32nd St, New York, NY 10001
Long time readers will know about my love for Woorijip, the Korean cafeteria thatâs always there for me, whether Iâm waiting for a train at Penn Station or looking for a pre-karaoke snack. I will admit thereâs a bit of sadness in going to Woorijip for the first time since last winter; the buffet is still not back, and may never be, a little reminder that we are still living in a pandemic. Still, you can get most of the tastiest dishes in takeout containers, which is just as good, if not better, because it cuts down on my gametime buffet indecision. Gukmul tteokbokki is like regular tteokbokki but even better because itâs soupy. Woorijipâs version also has fish balls and stewed cabbage and a hard boiled egg in it, which makes it pretty much the perfect comforting dish to me. I love fish cakes/fish balls so much, because it always reminds me of the Chinese hot pot I had as a kid, so Iâll eat them any opportunity I can. I like to get a plastic container of purple rice to go with it.Â
Kimchi sampler (but mostly we focus on the cucumber) at Woorijip
12 W 32nd St, New York, NY 10001
One of my favorite feelings in the world is working out really hard and then going home and cracking open a beer and eating cold kimchi straight from the fridge. The kimchi sampler at Woorijip contains not just plain olâ spicy cabbage kimchi, but also white kimchi (which doesnât have pepper paste and tastes refreshing and garlicky), radish kimchi (one of my faves), and the best of all, cucumber kimchi. I love cucumber kimchi so much that if I get this sampler platter I eat all of it immediately. The lao beijing in me loves any kind of cucumbers drowned in garlic and cucumber kimchi is all of that plus a lot of red pepper paste. Itâs so good I wish it was as popular as napa cabbage kimchi so I could have a huge tub in my fridge at all times. I sort of refuse to ferment food in my apartment because itâs too small and I canât afford the smell/explosion, but I might just bend the rules for this one, unless I figure out where I can stock up.
Matcha white chocolate chip cookie at Seven Grams Caffé
Apparently you can order these online.
Seven Grams CaffĂ© was out of coffee when I went, which was odd because as a coffee shop it literally Has One Job. Thankfully, that job is to make delicious cookies so I can keep going to get âcoffeeâ and end up with a cookie. The cookies at Seven Grams are amazing. All the flavors are thick (almost as thick as Levain cookies), and great for sharing. The matcha white chocolate chip cookie is shaped like a hockey puck and so perfectly soft all the way through that if you microwave just a tad so that the white chocolate chips melt itâs almost like having a flourless matcha cake at your desk, except buttery-er and better.
Bambino Pizza Formaggio at Trader Joe'sÂ
Available at your local Trader Joeâs.
I know I live in the dollar slice capital of the world, but I really enjoy me some bad freezer pizza. When it comes to a proper slice, I have all sorts of opinions, on the thin-ness of the dough, and the crispiness of the crust, and the ratio of sauce-to-cheese. But when it comes to freezer pizza that doughy crust and the not-quite-real-tasting cheese brings me only joy. This freezer pizza is the perfect size for an office snack or lunch; itâs bigger than a bagel bite but smaller than a personal pizza, sorta like the French bread pizza of my cafeteria youth. Anyways this is absolutely not gourmet pizza, I just like it because I enjoy eating it.
Have a good weekend,
Soph
P.S. Do you have a favorite splurge kitchen gadget? Let me know what it is and why you love it! Five Things I Ate (aka Sophie) is gearing up for holiday gift guides.
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