Love Spicy!

Life has been good lately. I started reading a lot more, going to yoga classes and even picked up my old racket for some much needed tennis lessons (Thanks!!).

With my mom arriving in less than a month, I have been frantically trying to clean out my apartment (not!). She is coming to the US to attend B's graduation. I am so proud of my baby sister and her achievements. I can't even imagine in a few short months, she will be all grown up and living in Jersey on her own. Although with her moving up to Jersey, it gives me more excuses to visit the lovely NYC and indulge in some serious Asian food. I am going to be a little sad though, because this means I have one less person to cook for!

I have a list of places I visit every time I go to NYC. This list includes Joe's Shanghai's soup dumplings (gotta get the crab roe flavor), Japanese Ramen (My favorite one is Batten Ramen at Ft. Lee, NJ), Taisho ( I love their fries with fish roe mayo), and of course that kabob meat stand at every corner of the city. This time G is going to take me to get some Pommes Frites! Yes, I cannot wait to try the gazillion types of mayo/sauce they have there.

Work has been pretty mind numbing lately. And with all the audits that are going on and the auditors' deadlines approaching, audit requests have been flying off the roof! I needed comfort... spicy, noodlely and most importantly.. quick! First thing that popped in my mind was the spicy baby octopus udon dish from Tofu Lighthouse. My solution of not having to drive to Rockville and eat alone was to make it myself. This dish was pretty easy to make and the best part was that it was a one pot meal (okay, maybe 2)! So here goes...



Ingredients:1 pack of frozen Baby Octopus, 1 Korean squash, 1 carrot, 3 scallions, 1 pack of enoki mushrooms, 1 large onion, 1 pack of udon noodles, and half a pack of these korean fish cakes that are rolled into a tube.




Cut the all the vegetables into bite size pieces.
Clean the baby octopus and cut them into pieces. I love octopus so I kept my pieces decently large.

The sauce:

5 tbsp kochujang (red chili pepper paste)
4 tbsp kochukaru (red chili pepper flakes)
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup + 1 tbsp of sesame oil
1/4 cup of minced garlic
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp sesame seeds

The sauce comes out to be a little pasty. I added half of it to the octopus and marinated for about 15 minutes.



Stir fried the vegetables in the order of onions, white part of the green onions, carrots. I put in the octopus and its marinade along with the squash, mushroom, rest of the green onions and some water to loosen up the sauce. Added the extra sauce to it and stir fry till bubbling. In the mean time, I heated a pot of water and loosened up the udon noodles. Drained the noodles and dumped it into the pot of octopus and vegetables. I added water as needed and extra flavoring. I like the contrast of the sweet and spicy a lot so I might have added a bit more sugar. Stir in the noodles and dinner is ready.