Here is another batch of the assorted things I have been eating.
Oven-baked camembert..
Just ordinary. It has a long way to go if you are hoping for something at the level of Cheeza..
Cook Do’s Premium Extra Mala Mapo Tofu
This one is genuinely delicious. The kick is strong enough that it is barely any different from a specialty restaurant’s mapo tofu.
Seven-Eleven’s Beni Haruka chips
This was quite tasty too. It looked like a winter-only item, though.
Sungo Chip..
This one is far too mild.. I probably did not need to buy it..
The Ppasae, soy sauce and cheongyang mayo flavor
I like Ppasae, which is why I bought it, but this one just seems ordinary.. cheongyang mayo does not really seem to suit snacks that well.
Hururuk rice noodles, seaweed soup
This one was reasonably edible. It made me think seaweed soup really is not an easy thing to make after all.
Saengsaeng potato chips, kelp salt flavor
They say they cut the salt and added MSG.. I cannot really tell whether the salt was cut, and I cannot really tell whether there is any kelp flavor in there either, but it was decently tasty. I bought it because the supermarket had it on sale, and I was satisfied. If it had not been on sale I probably would not have bothered..
Odeng Sikdang budae jjigae ramyeon
It is not even cheap, and the budae jjigae flavor does not come through all that well.
Yuktongnyeong pork kimchi stew
This one is pretty edible. It has plenty of meat in it too.
NewJeans Coke
I just took a photo of it.
Moist choco chip cookies
These are fine as a small snack.
Yuktongnyeong rustic soybean paste stew
This one was good too.
Potato chips, moktae cheongyang mayo
Cheongyang mayo is just not to my taste..
Paik Jjajang
It is edible. The baseline for every jjajang ramyeon is Chapagetti, and this feels like it is in about the same class. That said, at the same price I think I would end up eating Chapagetti.
Hururuk Papakpak rice-noodle gomtang
This one tasted good too.
Tempura udon and beef curry
I had heard that mixing these two together is delicious, so I tried it that way, and it definitely is. The beef curry tastes good but has so little kick that it is a flavor for all ages, while the tempura udon has the umami of katsuobushi with a bit of heat behind it, so adding the curry goes well with it. It would be good to eat on a cold winter day. For what it is worth, three-minute curry gets an upgrade if you just add the right spices, and it is also good with fish sauce. Something like sriracha would probably work too, but I do not have any sriracha at home so I have not been able to test it.
An adapter made by Samsung
I bought it because it somehow looked good, and everything else works fine, but it will not charge an iPhone.. how can that be.. I use it for charging my laptop and so on..
Lentils
Around this time I bought lentils for the first time, for slow aging, and what a whole new world it turned out to be.. lentils are high in protein, and you can cook them straight away without having to soak them. They keep for a long time, and you can add them to rice or other dishes. To think an ultimate ingredient like this existed..
Tasia curry
It was just ordinary.
Chickpeas
Chickpeas taste good, but to eat them you have to soak them in water for about eight hours. Otherwise the centers do not cook through. Soaked properly and then cooked they taste great, but they feel higher in carbs than lentils.
Sancho powder
After eating Cook Do’s mapo tofu, I wondered whether I could recreate that flavor in Korea, and the first thing I bought was sancho powder. But adding this alone does not produce that distinctive tingling kick.
The sancho powder I bought next
After buying huajiao and majiao and grinding them together in the right proportions in a grinder, I got a flavor close to Cook Do. It is so hot that it can upset your stomach, though, so you have to get the amount right. I heard huajiao oil was hot too, so I bought some, but it made things far too hot and that was a failure. Getting the balance right is a hard thing..
Maggi sauce
One spoonful of this sauce and you get the flavor of proper authentic mapo tofu, simply, with nothing else needed. If I had known from the start I would have just used this instead of trying all sorts of things.. anyway, better late than never.. many thanks to Koala for the tip.
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