spaghetti a la Koreano [김치 spaghetti]

For March 25, Sunday

I thanked the gloomy weather for my straight eight-hour sleep. Glancing at the clock, I couldn’t believe I slept until 10 AM. Hooray! Cheers for a zombie like me.

Even though I felt well-rested, I still lingered in my bedroom lying on my bed. For a person who has an active social life, and usually goes home almost or past midnight, I only have few hours with dear ol’ bed and I was sure it wanted me to just lay there and enjoy our moments together, with me being a lazy home buddy on a beautiful Sunday.

But I was not scheduled to be staying at home the whole day. Brian and I planned to meet today, especially since he wanted to show off his new unit. Just after lunch, he moved from a different room, but of the same condo. He boasted that the new place is better than the old one and that he was very sure that I would definitely like it.

On my way there, I bought green Indian mangoes, a special request by this spoiled person. I arrived there after sunset, though I didn’t see the sun set, what with those dark clouds and endless torture of drizzle. We met at Ministop and I bought two ice cream in cones. It was my first time to taste this new (relative) cheesecake flavored cold treat. I handed him his ice cream while he surprised me by mentioning that we had to go to Walter Mart first to buy toiletries and necessary things for his condo living. Well, I guess there’s no choice but to follow. ^^

We went to W-mart, ice cream melting in our hands. Soon it started to rain and now I am not sure if my opinion to the cheesecake ice cream is due to its taste with the additional ingredient – raindrops. We then rode a jeepney since I was with a gremlin (laughs). He passed our fare directly to the driver saying, “dalawa,” (two) with a cute foreign accent. [Disclaimer: all foreigners who speak Tagalog have cute accents ^^] Very soon we climbed off then entered WalMart Makati. Going straight to the supermarket, he grabbed an empty pushcart, which I was grateful, and dumped my backpack and relieved my shoulders from its weight. We bought his necessities. Since we planned to make spaghetti today, we also bought some ingredients. Gremlin is tired (or just plain lazy? kk) so he didn’t want to buy heavy things like meat or gallons of water so we just settle buying the “necessary” things.

When I entered his unit and had my first glance, I was (and still am) happy that he moved to this new place. It was really far better than the former. He “toured” me in his new home, and we tried to “decorate” it by putting and arranging figurines, shells, and jigsaw puzzle frames to make the unit homey.

Hours dragged by and it seems Gremlin was hungry. We played the dice game in his phone and he won: Oh-oh. Cooking time.

Chef Brian on his first meal for us

He readied his single burner, and started to boil water. That’s the only time that he realized something and voice it out to me, “We don’t have complete materials.” I replied with, “Materials? Aha, ingredients?!” Drat. Oh well, we had to make do with what we have, which were not so many: a 400g del Monte spaghetti pasta and del Monte Italian style Spaghetti sauce — fresh from W-mart shopping bag.

putting on the sauce

then the pasta

But then, Chef Brian (his self-proclaimed title actually) had a light bulb experience and eagerly expressed that we can actually put kimchi in our pasta. Thinking this as a not so bad an idea, I agreed.

cutting the kimchi to bite size

So he was cutting the fermented cabbage when he was struck again with another idea. “We have ham! We can use ham.” I thought we will use our newly bought Spam, but he pointed the Korean ham, saying that it is delicious and made from Korean pigs. Wow, imagine that. LOL.

백설햄

I made these cubes. yay~

So he opened the can then I made cubes out of it. Done, he mixed it along with our not-so-many ingredients.

adding the ham

looks yummy, right?

After few minutes, voila! It was done!

the result 😀

Then it was testing/tasting time! ^___^ The spaghetti made by Chef BB (now he’s new title is Chef Brian Baek kk) delightfully smelled good. We then set off tasting it.

there were two glasses of coke there, right?

Whoa, I couldn’t believe it. T’was his first time to make such a recipe, yet it went out far more than what we have expected. It tasted heavenly. The Italian sauce mixed well with Kimchi and its spicy taste. The ham was also excellent. It was cooked just fine, remaining its juicy taste.