Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Spagetti Western

Grocery shopping in Korea is a strange and terrifying thing. Attendants peddling their wares throughout the store shout for your attention like Costco sample ladies on crack. They know I can't understand them but still earnestly encourage me to purchase their sea slugs or frozen cow tail's. However willing I might be to try these 'delicacies' I simply have no idea how to prepare many/most/nearly all of these things; bean paste on toast? Boiled, fried, or raw seaweed? (Answer: all of the above.) The added bonus of being functionally illiterate turns the simple act of buying salt into a 15 minute staring contest with multiple bags of white powder (which is also how I got hooked on coke). So for now I'm going to ease my way into the boiled baby octopods and try to make some familiar things in the meantime. Enter: spaghetti.

My kitchen was lacking a cutting board but that's nothing an old pizza box and a good attitude can't fix.



All garlic comes pre-peeled which is basically the greatest thing on earth.

The other important thing to know about my cooking efforts is that I have only two burners, one frying pan and no oven. However, where there's a will there's a way to make pan fried garlic bread. Not too shabby ifidosaysomyself.



The sauce came from a jar because the spices I once thought were universal are not. Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme are the inventions of western pop duo Simon and Garfunkel, who have not yet gained popularity here. I added zucchini so it wouldn't be completely nutritionally vapid and some milk because the marinara sauce was surprisingly spicy.





Pan Fried Garlic Toast

1. Dice or crush several cloves of garlic, depending on how much you like your breath to smell.

2. Mix into softened butter or, in my case, whatever non-dairy 'buttery' spread you can find.
3. Spread onto bread and fry both sides on low heat until garlic is browned and bread is crunchy.
4. Locate chopsticks, enjoy!

1 comment:

Anne and Christian said...

I think we will use this recipe tonight! Christian has volunteered to wash the dishes (I won't complain) so I can cook. Yay cooking!