Photo Dump: Happy Thanksgiving!

I want to play this so bad

What a ride. Time for the Cyberpunk tabletop games?

Made some 8-hour beef wanton ramen. It was a 4/10. We'll get them next time!

 Photo Dump: Dogs, Gats and Games

Penny

Glock 17 Gen 4 with a Streamlight TLR-1. I love it!

Elden Ring! I like Bloodborne better, but ER was such a wild ride

DnD night

FOOD! What I made at home and ate out these past few months! 

Pizzshaaa

Homemade gyudon!!! WIth egg on top and pickled ginger.

Sushi from Shimogamo 

Homemade Chinese stir fried egg and tomato

Homemade unagi rice bowl

Knives! Knives! Knives! 

As you probably gathered by now, I fucking love cooking and nerding about kitchen tools especially KNIVES.

I have a love hate relationship with knife collecting as its really expensive and there's a point where you get overwhelmed on what knife to use that day. Knives are a pretty important to your kitchen as they must be sharp and maintained at all times to keep yourself safe and make the cooking and prepping experience that the more enjoyable.

If y'all have the chance, head on over to r/Chefknives on reddit to see what the kitchen knife hobbyist community is all about. There's people of all kinds there sharing their kitchen shivs from Chefs, Cooks, Sous, to the humble home cook. I love it there and I hope you enjoy your time there too!

For the next few weeks, I'll be sharing and breaking down all the knives I own from the Cheap amazon knife sets, expensive Japanese knives, to the tried and true French chefs knife. I hope you guys enjoy these knife posts as I am. Hope this will get you into knife collecting or at least window shopping for them. Cheers!

Chinese Chefs Knives

My 240mm hatsukokoro kumokage blue 2 kurouchi damascus gyuto

My friends set of knives for sushi

Some gyutos from the Phoenix Knife House

Steelport Chef's Knife from my other friend with my 10inch French K Sabatier 

THIS IS NOT MINE LMAO, My friend's knife saya

 Photo Dump: I Hope You're Okay and Well, Friend

Shoyu Ramen: Round 2 

Last time I made shoyu ramen it came out bland and it didn't taste as good. Now I tried to follow other recipes methods and techniques and this time It didn't come out as bad, but it's far from perfect.

For the broth it was very chicken forward with some hints of sea ingredients. It consisted of 4 kg of young chicken, 1 kg of chicken feet and 2-3 kg of stewing hens. Lots of kombu, niboshi and bonito flakes at the end. I've managed to extract a lot of chicken fat for the next batch of ramen aroma oil. For this batch of aroma oil, I bought jarred rendered chicken fat and slowly infused it with garlic, green onions and ginger until aromatic and contents golden brown. 

Tare was a complete failure. I wasn't keeping track of it reducing and became a burnt sludge. I had to improvise and strain whatever salvageable liquid there was and water it down with soy sauce. It was exciting to see so many brews of soy sauce to choose from for this ramen. For this 2nd round of shoyu ramen tare I used Chinese dark soy sauce, Hawaiian general purpose soy sauce, and Japanese 500 day aged soy sauce from Kyoto.

Toppings was chashu made from 2 hour seared and braised pork belly, store bought menma/bamboo shoots, narutomaki fish cake, ramen egg, dried nori and lots of green onions.

Lots of room for improvement. Cheers!

Bone apple tea

2 hour chashu

6 hour broth

Tare prior to me burning it :(

 I WIll Miss Moments Like These 

Working in restaurants has been the best and at the same time worse thing that has happened to my life. I've met and lost some friends. Learned a few things about being a better cook. Met some hard working,passionate and interesting people. Acquired a abnormal sleep schedule. Ate so much fucking food. Had heartfelt moments with coworkers at dive bars and regrettable moments with alcohol. Moments of solitude in the walk in freezer. Moments of camaraderie and gossip in the kitchen and outside the back alley for smoke breaks. Moments of frustration and loneliness in the dishpit.

I will miss it all.

I'm slowly moving my way out of this industry towards practicing medicine full time, so for the meantime I'll enjoy the time I have left before I fully commit to other things.

*ANGRY BREAD NOISES

Post shift beer

Post shift whiskey on the rocks ft. Dishes

POKE WITH NO FISH. WAT.

Tuna

Beef Curry Udon 

On tonight's menu (I made this a few weeks back actually), beef curry udon!

This stuff slaps on cold weather days and will make you feel like a newly birthed baby Jesus as you slurp the noodles. I'm kidding, I suck at cooking so it wasn't that good, but here's the low-down about the dish.

So I started off by sautéing a dump truck load of onions, garlic and thin sliced beef. I then deglazed the pot with beef stock, mirin and sake. Later I had it reduced and thickened with S&B hot curry roux and a block of butter or two... or three. I then added soy sauce, worcestershire sauce and hear me the fuck out... instant coffee.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen... INSTANT COFFEE. Trust me dudes, trust.  

For individual servings, I had the portion of curry heated to a boil while I cracked an egg on the noodles. After awhile, I took the super hot curry and poured it over the egg and noodles.

Top it with some green onions and pickled ginger and enjoy.

Making and sharing food is everything to me. It's my way of saying I appreciate your existence, so now be my guinea pig and try it. WIth that in mind, I made some for my coworkers and they all turned out okay in the end.

Persona 

I've been playing this video game series by Studio Atlus called Shin Megami Tensei: Persona. So far the series has 5 main games and I can say without a doubt it's one of the best games I've played in ages in terms of JRPGs. 

At the moment, I've only finished Persona 4: Golden on the PlayStation Vita and have started Persona 5: Royal on the PS4. I plan to play Persona 3 next on the Vita, but each day that passes, it seems I have less and less time to play :( All I can say, the soundtrack for all the games are so good, I time to time add them to my music playlists.

I didn't realize how big the Persona community was until recent and I'm glad to be apart of it now. it's hilarious to see the Persona meme's on reddit and twitter now that I have some familiarity to Persona. 

I feel like 13 year old me again playing these games, just getting lost in the stories and worlds. The game's characters and massages are relatable too, having to deal with themes of acceptance of death, acceptance of self, moving on in life, making and losing friends/loved ones, etc.

There's a few things in life I wish to forget about to experience for the first time again and playing this series would be one of them. 

Thank You, Atlus for making a rad game.

Persona 4: Golden on PSVita

Persona 3 meme lol

Fried Chicken?

Phở - Pretty Good Soup, Huh?

I love soup and noodle dishes, especially when it's cold outside. I wish there was a late night noodle shop around me. I dream sometimes of me flying to Vietnam and the first thing I do is buy a $2 bowl of phở and eat while it's raining.

The broth was made from scratch and took roughly 10 hours for it to be ready. My favorite part was flame charring the aromatics. Something about fire gets me excited (no, I'm not a pyromaniac).
I brought some to my coworkers and it was well received.

I makes me warm and happy to see the people I care about come together and eat the food I make.

 Photo Dump: Go to Work, Go Home, Repeat

10 hour Miso Ramen - Making Mistakes to Get Better 

A few weeks back, I decided to make miso ramen for my coworkers to try and critique so I can be a better ramen maker. As a hobbyist making it for friends with different years of experience and training levels in the food industry, it was an honor to have them taste it.

So like previous ramen recipes I've used before (Tokyo shoyu, tonkotsu, & shio), I used Mike Satinover's reddit recipe for the ramen (click here for recipe!). The hardest part about this ramen was the tare (seasoning sauce). How the pros put it, the tare for miso ramen breaks or makes it. If done wrong, it ends up being a glorified bowl of miso soup. If done right, it becomes a godly bowl of miso ramen (obviously).

Of course being the first time making miso ramen, there were issues such as lack of depth and acidity to the ramen soup when the tare, aroma oil and broth were combined.

After some nights of further researching and having my friends, family and coworkers taste test my ramen, it was eventually remedied, but it could've been done better for future batches. 

In terms of adding more depth, instead of pouring the hot broth over the tare and aroma oil, I've decided to stir fry some ground pork and aromatic vegetables with the tare and aroma oil and deglazed the wok with the broth.

Even then something was still missing. The soup was indeed good, but it didn't hit all the taste buds. It didn't give that taste-smell connection and then it hit me. Yes, the soup had some form of fat and salt in it, but what about acidity? So with that in mind, I added some rice vinegar and titrated it until that connection was made and holy shit, it worked.

One minor issue that my coworker brought up was that, though the soup was very savory and good, the taste of umami and maximum depth of taste was lacking. She recommended I roast the bones and aromatics next time to give that extra "oomph". Salamat po, Esther, for that advice. I will be sure to keep that in mind next time!

Overall, the miso ramen was well received and I wished I had made more to feed all my coworkers. I dream about having a midnight ramen shop, but I'm nowhere near perfect to do so.

Maybe I should stop dreaming about silly things like that.

Prince, I Miss You.

I had a border collie named Prince. My best friend gave him to me a few years back and I loved him ever since.

His favorite thing to do was run in open grass and eat things he wasn't supposed to.

I spoke to him everyday when I got home from school, work or anything really. He was there when no one else was. Before, I felt like I was the loneliest person in the world, but when he came into my life, everything felt okay.

My favorite memory of him was when we were out for a walk one night. A few blocks from home, we encountered a huge stray dog, bigger than Prince. They were nose to nose with each other, tails pointed up and both as stiff as taxidermy.

I didn't know what to do. Animal control was not in service and it seemed like a trivial thing to call 911 about. The best I could do was prepare for the worse. Before I knew it, Prince as fast as a fencer's lunge, bit the dog's nose and it squealed and ran away into the alleyway. He looked at me with the happiest face ever and wagged his tail gleefully, as if nothing happened. 

My biggest regret is that I never took much pictures of him or of our time together.

I had planned to take him to Prescott, Arizona because I heard that month was when the grass fields were as green as ever with mountains and forest trees in the background, like it was a scene from The Sound of Music. I could imagine him running about for hours on end. 

He passed away on November 2nd, 2017, due to medical complications. 

We were suppose to go to Prescott together that week, but it never happened. The following months felt so cold and lonely like it used to be. I don't think I can get another dog for awhile.

Like many other people and things in my life that I care about, when I think of him, I just want to keep moving forward. My time with him is over now, but he will always have a part of my soul tucked away that no else can have.

Prince, I miss you. I hope you're running in green fields forever.

Night Walk 

Photo Dump - Take Care of Yourself

 Late Night Discoveries - Payphone Hunting

I wish these were around more.