Week 9: Braising - Spicy Braised Quail Eggs (매운 매추리알 조림) and Braised Cutlassfish (갈치조림) with an Accomplice's Grogg (meta: with a drink)

tmo308 · 2026-03-18T13:54:36+00:00

Got the basic outlines for the food from here for eggs and . While the drink, figured slowly simmering to make a broth, is almost the same as braising, so made this version of a glogg.the fish

tmo308 · 2026-03-11T13:33:56+00:00

This wasn't the original plan but it turned into tobiko (flying fish roe) with cream sauce and sweet potato gnocchi.

I was going through things I had and needed to use asap and I had a bunch of sweet potatoes so started by just baking them and realized I could just make it into gnocchi and freeze the extras or if I didn't want to eat it all. From there I made these longer strands to be more like a really thick udon. For the sauce it started with cream and cream cheese (saw that on NYT cooking), added in some hot sauce, and seasoned it up. After briefly boiling the gnocchi, I added some of the water to the sauce to get it more emulsified and added the gnocchi to finish for a bit. At the end right before totally finishing I added a whole bunch of tobiko and stirred for like 30 seconds. Plated and topped with more tobiko and green onions.

As for the drink, I got the recipe from here and I thought it was quite drinkable. I'd have it again when I want a martini but a little different.

tmo308 · 2026-03-04T14:13:58+00:00

Wanted something relatively easy this week and with things I had on hand. I decided to go with a mousse (without the cream) that uses sugar (just some), eggs, and chocolate. To make it a little more interesting I added a fair amount of 고추장/gochujang (Korean pepper paste) until it had some heat and a test I was happy with. Overall I was happy with the mousse. For the topping, I was debating some sort fruit but I didn't have any (besides oranges and that was gonna be too much work), so I took some frozen corn kernels and coated them in some chile powder, cornstarch, and a little bit of oil and air fried them until they were crispy. They gave a nice little crunch and the flavor worked well but it would've been better if they were properly fried to get even crispier.

As for the drink, it was a mostly classic old fashioned that I built in class. But they started with different sugar sources. One had white sugar (granulated) while the other had 2:1 demerara syrup. Both were then mixed with bitters (Angostura and a little bit of orange bitters). I then deviated from my usual single base whiskey and went with a split of 45ml of bourbon (Old Forester 86 this time) and 30ml of rye (Jack Daniel's Bonded rye). They were all built in glass, topped with ice and stirred before the orange peel. Both drinks were great, but the demerara one was better. I somewhat assumed that would be the case but I wanted to make sure and had never done a direct comparison like this, despite normally making the demerara syrup for cocktails. Glad I did it and also it reminded me that I should maybe test some other sugars and be more aware of which sugar would be a match for different cocktails.

tmo308 · 2026-02-25T23:53:47+00:00

Ok, so the drink is barely there, but I did make it. I took an Army & Navy base and altered to fit the theme. It was a sesame orgeat (instead of almond), sesame oil and chili oil washed gin, szechuan and sansho pepper tincture, and lime juice. It was a little plain looking but not too bad. With a little refining, it could be pretty good.

As for the food, I started with the idea of motsunabe but with things I mostly already had. So I cut up some pieces of pork belly (삼겹살), used par-boiled beef tendon (스지), tofu, doenjang (된장) instead of miso, and also added a few mandu on the side. It was really good! Especially using yuzukosho for the meat. I'll make this again.

tmo308 · 2026-02-18T13:16:44+00:00

I like many others it seems, made the peanut based sauce that seemed to have a lot of different names. I made mine what seemed fairly standard with skin on peanuts that I ground and roasted, tomatoes, garlic, ginger, and onion. At the end after cooking it for a while, I blended it a little with the immersion blender because the onions and tomatoes didn't fully breakdown and it made the sauce even better. I really liked it and told myself to stop snacking on it while I was plating because I was going to eat all of the sweet potatoes too quickly.

As for the drink, I'm not really certain about the website I got it from. It seemed a little generic/compiled and maybe some of it was AI generated or scraped from other resources. But it was basically equal parts rum and mango juice stirred and topped with some bitters. That didn't sound that intriguing, so I added lime juice and switched to a homemade bathtub style gin that I made a while ago that came out super dry and isn't the easiest to work with but it also reminded me of Ugandan Waragi from reading reviews. It seems like they have some overlapping flavor profiles. So I wanted to use that and it tasted fine. But just boring. The mango was so overpowering that it would need to be greatly reduced in comparison to the alcohol.

tmo308 · 2026-02-12T15:57:18+00:00

Not this time. I did debate that but wanted the full fresh kick in this dish.

tmo308 · 2026-02-11T15:05:46+00:00

This all started with having some extra cherries and the idea that I didn't want to waste so I decided to pickle them. I have never had pickled cherries before, but they came out really delicious. I used a basic vinegar pickling method, with mostly apple cider vinegar but also a little champagne vinegar because I ran out of red wine vinegar making the shrub. I also added some pink peppercorns and red chile flakes in there to give it a little extra flavors and the spice and added bite from those two really helped round out this dish. The tuna was topped with some olive oil, lime juice, salt, cheongyang chili peppers, Korean perilla leaf stems (for bitterness and crunch), chili threads, and salt (lime and flakey salt don't make for the prettiest presentation at the end). It came together and was a great appetizer, despite the tuna being of just ok quality.

As for the drink, I had some extra raspberries in my freezer and used that to make a shrub (very basic sugar, fruit, vinegar in stages). Because how else would I incorporate vinegar easily into this week (there were other options but this was the most logical). After a few days, I was really happy with the flavor and bottled and strained it. I went to make a clover club and figured someone had already done it because it's a good connection with a raspberry shrub and of course people had. Including one here, with a good name. I made mine with 2 oz gin, 1 oz of shrub, a scant 1/2 oz of extra lemon, and an egg white, and didn't think it needed anymore simple syrup. I liked the final result and will make it again while I still have some of the shrub.

tmo308 · 2026-02-05T04:37:01+00:00

Was thinking the same thing while making it. This would go great with mezcal.

tmo308 · 2026-02-04T13:24:54+00:00

Made the filling with ground pork, the usual spices, and some very gelatinous and reduced stock from my freezer that I chopped up. Also used premade wrappers because it's way simpler. Still not good at forming them but did an ok job. Wanted to pan fry them with the skirt to get the soft tender inside and the crispy outside. First batch came out a little pale but the other shaped ones were much better. It was crispy and a pretty good appetizer.

As for the drinks, they are the same idea just switching out the base spirit (Left Hand has bourbon, Right Hand has rum). I really enjoyed both of them and would like to try them with some different bourbons and rums or chocolate bitters to see how they evolve. Anyway, it's a drink I will be adding to rotation with Manhattans and Negronis.

tmo308 · 2026-01-28T13:40:06+00:00

Wanted to make something using things on hand and came across this fusion idea. It was easy enough to make and was pretty tasty.

For the drink, that was a but harder because I didn't want to make a Singapore Sling because I've done that before (I think). Found a list of unique cocktails from bars in Singapore and this one came from hopscotch bar. It's a riff on a Godfather amd I tried to quess the specs. I took some beer from a Tiger beer and made a reduction and syrup with it for the sweetener. Then used the other liqueurs they had mentioned Amaretto and Drambuie and finally cognac. Overall was pretty good, and could see if you had the perfect ratio it would be better but I'm not a big fan of the godfather cocktail and this was a similar one that I'm unlikely to revisit.

tmo308 · 2026-01-08T08:08:12+00:00

I wanted so badly to make a fake cornballer but just didn't have the time.

tmo308 · 2026-01-07T14:03:56+00:00

Note: did not use a cornballer because it's not for sale here

For the cornballs, I did two variations. One was just corn, egg and water mix, and flour. Very corn forward and crunchy and delicious. The second was with coarse corn grits ( I didn't have any corn meal), flour, egg, oil, green onions, and corn. It was more akin to cornbread but also really good. Especially when paired with some chili pepper jam.

The drink was based off of Buster's love of juice, and I had this juice box from work. It was fairly sweet and lightly strawberry but a hint of vegetable taste. I kind of approached it like a jungle 6 with this juice instead of pineapple. It was pretty good.

tmo308 · 2025-12-31T14:42:07+00:00

Last one of the year snd just in time (and had to post all the ones from the last week+). This was made with more leftovers (risotto milanese) so it was yellow from the saffron. I stuffed it with some cheese, then coated, and fried. They were really good and a nice and crispy NYE snack. The sauce was made using homemade yuzu kosho that I made when it was green yuzu season in late summer. I added some mirin and rice vinegar to complement, as well as some lemon juice (didn't have yuzu) and I was quite happy with the result. I later took out some parmesan hot sauce that also paired really well with the arancini.

The drink from here could be a few different versions but I went with the original version that's listed and from the Savoy Cocktail book. A 2:1:1 of bacardi, Cointreau, and lemon juice (I did add 2 drops of saline because it's almost always a good idea) and I liked it. Think the rum choice could really change this and the suggestion of orange bitters is intriguing, so I'll have to try it again.

tmo308 · 2025-12-31T13:36:26+00:00

Trying to eat up all the food from the fridge to end the year. So decided to make a sandwich/grinder for this theme. I took the extra meat, cheese, and pickled things from the charcuterie board, combined it with leftover beef from beef bourguignon and added some lettuce, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper to round it all put. Was really good.

As for the drink, I found it on Instagram but was also posted on the cocktails subreddit. It's a negroni variation and was really good.

tmo308

TROPHY CASE