culinary projects

Today marks the beginning of a three-day weekend for me. My boss was lenient enough to let me start using my 66 hours' worth of comp time this week; he allowed me this Friday off, and I'll be taking off on December 23, the week between Christmas and New Year's, and January 2. Having now plotted out my work calendar, I've got a schedule that I'll be following through the Ides of March. The schedule takes my comp-time break into consideration, so everything works out nicely. Am still not sure what I'm going to do with myself during break.

Today, then, I'm planning to make some tangsuyuk, which is Korea's version of sweet-and-sour pork. For the fruity sauce, I'll be combining dragonfruit and pineapple juice: the dragonfruit will provide the robust texture and the funky visuals thanks to all those peppery-looking black seeds; the pineapple juice will provide the acidic tang and the much-needed taste that the dragonfruit utterly lacks.

That's Friday's project. Saturday's project is another big-ass batch of chili. Sunday's project—which I'm very much looking forward to—is hush puppies. I had two leftover bags of corn chips from our post-election get-together a couple weekends ago; since there was no way I was going to eat nachos for two weeks straight, I took the corn chips and pulverized them with my food processor, essentially turning them into a lovely cornmeal that has already been pre-infused with plenty of salt and oil. I have all the other ingredients I need to make the 'puppies, so that's what I'll be doing on Sunday. (It'll also be a chance for me to apply the harsh lessons I learned about deep-frying this past Thanksgiving.)

To sum up:

• Friday tangsuyuk
• Saturday chili
• Sunday hush puppies

Of course, you can't eat just a bowl of hush puppies (well, you can, but where's the fun in that?). Hush puppies are sides, so what's the main dish? I've elected to use salmon instead of cod to make beer-batter salmon chunks. That ought to be fun.