Sequestration Meal #538

 

I'm eating a lot of gochujang lately. Must be that whole business with spicy foods and endorphins. In any case, here we have variations on themes you've definitely seen before: Steamed rice, Thai cucumber salad (recipe from Curious Cuisinaire), Korean-style carrot salad (recipe from Lavender and Macrons), pickled red cabbage, and buldak-style TVP (recipe from Monson Made This).

Buldak (불닭) literally translates to "fire chicken;" it's a spicy dish that is only similar to this TVP in a few ways, but as I've never had it, it didn't matter! You'd probably get something closer to the traditional dish if you used soy curls and topped it with some non-dairy cheese (which is an idea...). I left out the additional dried chilis and only used gochujang, as that was spicy enough for me.

I really enjoyed this meal. I took care not to have too-spicy sides to go with my spicy protein and it worked out really well. I did probably spend way too much time making my banchan, but for some reason--anxiety, maybe--I just didn't want to leave the kitchen when I found chopping veggies so soothing. Plus I knew I'd have these sides prepped for all sorts of applications throughout the week. Meal prep isn't always my thing, and when it is it does tend to be haphazard like this, but oh, well, that's me!

This TVP is not that easy to handle with chopsticks, so I used a spoon for my rice and buldak TVP (erm...bulsikmulssong danbaekjjil? I suspect they'd shorten that somehow). I had initially been skeptical of using that much garlic but it wasn't too much garlic. There may not really be a such thing as too much garlic, after all.