Welcome to TigerSalad
I built this website for sharing pictures, sounds and writing about travel, cooking, music or anything else I think is worth documenting. I wanted to have somewhere to do this without the distraction and noise of popular social media. Please take your time here: read, look at the pictures and listen to the sounds.
I have been a professional chef for most of my life and for the last decade I have been studying Korean food, language and culture. I have traveled to Korea many times to eat, explore and practice language. Cooking posts will mostly focus here.
There are a lot of pictures in these articles. Good photos are important to me so I have sacrificed some loading speed in order to post the highest quality photos my host site will allow. Please be patient while things load up. This site will work on your phone but, I recommend looking at it on a bigger screen. This is especially true for travel and photography posts. The site will look better and operate faster on a laptop or desktop.
I am always happy to hear from you so please leave comments, ask questions or start discussions if you like. It is the only way that I know you have been here. If you like what you see, please subscribe. I promise to never share your email with anyone and only send updates occasionally about new posts.
p.s. to leave comments, click on the title of specific posts and scroll to the bottom
Expensive Pencil
I like to write with a pencil.
I like the way a pencil feels warm between your finger tips and resting in the crook of your thumb. When I write with a pencil, I feel resistance. Pencils push back a little. They let you know that you are not alone in your writing or sketching. They are right there with you.
In contrast, ball point pens feel slippery to me, like walking on wet ice. My writing is naturally sloppy so a pencil slows me down enough to keep the letters a little more legible. I also think pencils smell good and I enjoy sharpening them to a fine point.
There is a lot to like about a pencil.
Stationary Shops
I find it hard to walk by stores that sell writing tools without going in to have a quick look around. Even though the feature displays of high end fountain pens are beautiful, I immediately gravitate towards the pencils. And sharpeners. And erasers with all their different materials and colours and stickinesses. White polymer is my favourite. It cleans up my messes the best and it has a chewy texture that I like, softer than the raspy pink ones.
Today I found myself in the Junction area of Toronto where I was surprised to find 3 well stocked stationary and art supply stores within 2 blocks. They all had a great selection of writing tools and very little overlap between them.
In the last shop I visited, I found a pencil that I had to bring home. It’s this one:
There wasn’t a price on it so I brought it up to the cash register to see. I found out that it cost around 2 dollars. TWO DOLLARS!! This is a Tombow brand pencil, made in Japan by a small factory. The barrel is cedar, the graphite core is the highest quality, and it is finished with more than a few coats of rich black lacquer. There is even a cute silver dragonfly embossed onto the barrel (Tombow means dragonfly in Japanese). This pencil is a skillfully made tool and it is a pleasure to write with. It makes rich, dark and consistent lines without excessive pressure. It is perfect. And it costs 2 dollars!
Think about what else you can buy for 2 dollars…
Nothing…you can’t buy anything for 2 dollars. Not even a bag of chips. Not even at the “dollar” store.
I left the stationary shop with my brand new shiny black-lacquered Japanese-made super-high quality cedar-barrelled premium graphite-stuffed cute dragonfly-embossed pencil feeling pretty good about myself. I knew that I got an amazing deal.
What can you do with a 2 dollar premium-grade pencil?
- draw a picture of your cat.
- write down something that you know you will forget (make a memory out of paper, as an elementary school teacher once told me).
- write a poem about something that took your breath away.
- write a love letter to a person you have been thinking about non-stop to the point that the rest of your life has ground to a complete halt.
- take out a pad of paper and write a message to the person sitting next to you on the subway…you KNOW that they are reading over your shoulder. Make them smile.
- leave a note to your partner (or your parents!) before you leave the house telling them how important they are to you.
- write a paper letter to someone. Nothing in the digital world can touch the intimacy of pencil (or ink) on paper. Instant gratification in nearly every aspect of our lives has all but erased the joy of discovery, the excitement of anticipation. Imagine the thrill and surprise of finding a handwritten letter addressed to you in your mailbox.
- make a list of things that you want to do…things that will make your life richer.
- make of list of things you never want to do…this kind of list is also surprisingly helpful.
- you could write a long letter to someone explaining why you have to leave them. A pencil can break somebody’s heart too.
- the list goes on and on
That seems like a lot of joy, a lot of potential, a lot of power for 2 dollars…
Yes, of course, you can do a lot of these things on your computer or phone BUT…they will soon get lost and forgotten among all the other junk on there.
A warning I found on the Tombow Pencil website:
I think this is a direct translation from Japanese:
In elementary school I seem to remember more than one kid that got stabbed in the hand with a pencil by a pissed off classmate. Maybe it was just my school… maybe Tombow knows something about this too. Anyways…boys will be boys etc…
Tombow Pencil Company Limited seems to recognize the power of their product…. here is a link to their website if you want to check out their super-pencils.
A scientific case for pencil use
I recently read a study that looked at dementia in very old people. Specifically it looked for commonalities among very very old people who have managed to maintain perfect brain function even though they are well on their way to 100 years of age. Across all cultures, across all socio-economic backgrounds, looking at everything from education to physical fitness to diet, there was only one thing that all of these sharp minded ancient people had in common: Every single one of them wrote by hand, everyday. Diaries, letters, notes…whatever. Pencil or pen on paper. Thoughts and ideas…flow through complex muscle movements in the arms and hands coordinated with vision to make written language on paper. Powerful.
Happy writing!
If you would like to visit the shop where I got this pencil, check them out here: Articulations.
If you enjoy reading this stuff or find the recipes useful and would like to contribute towards website maintenance and development, you can make a donation here. Thank you for reading TigerSalad.
Farewell JW
This morning I received a message telling me that a person I worked with a long time ago had taken his own life. I had not seen this person in many years but I actually thought about him quite often. JW was one of the most unique people I had ever met. He was at least as tall as me and skinny as a rail. He had some of the biggest and wildest hair I have ever seen. And an unforgettable face. A movie star face…a face that always looked handsome in photos. Like Adrian Brody, or Daniel Day-Lewis. A face that would have looked perfect on the back cover of a best selling novel. A face that would have made sense in a visual dictionary next to the word “poet”.
JW was outwardly sarcastic and funny and sometimes a little mean in a harmless big-brotherly way. But, he was also tender and sensitive and deeply caring. I always liked him and I always enjoyed his company when we worked together. I remember that he liked bicycles and umbrellas and had a tattoo of at least one of those. He liked Edward Hopper paintings, especially the ones depicting night windows from outside.
Rabelais and Don Quixote
A few days ago, I unknowingly read his last instagram post…the one he wrote on the day he died. He talked about how many times he had tried and failed to get through reading Rabelais. I was surprised because, other than myself, he is the only person in my whole life that I had ever heard mention that book.
We already had some kind of literary thread between us. I knew that Don Quixote was his favourite book and I loved it too. I had read that book in my 20s, the same age JW was when we worked together. And, in this case too, he was the only other person I knew who had read it.
When I think about JW and Don Quixote now, it makes so much sense. He was an idealist. I think he always had poetic and romantic notions of how the world should be. I think he believed that people were capable of kindness, of courtesy to strangers, of chivalrous acts. That they should strive towards that ideal and had a responsibility to do so. JW was quixotic, through and through.
I bring up his last instagram post about Rabelais for this reason: I think I saw it very early in the morning, right when I woke up. I remember smiling to myself and thinking “Only you JW…would try so many times to read and understand that impossible book”. I wanted to write to him in the comments about how I had also struggled so many times to read it and always met with failure. I think he would have laughed. Instead…I slid out of bed and started my day. I thought that I would get back to it later but..I didn’t.
If I had left him that comment, would it have made any difference? Probably not…but possibly. It may have given him the idea that some distant friend still thought about him. He may have been surprised and smiled at that. It may have gotten him through that one day. And in that one day…something else might have happened to get him through the next day…and so on. Who can say? All I know for sure is that my words had zero impact because I didn’t say them. Maybe it was already too late.
Thank you JW. I feel fortunate to have known you while I did. I was happy to work with you at such a special place and time. When I first read your Rabelais post..i paused for some reason..and I felt…something…maybe it was already your absence. Knowing what I know now, I feel your absence all the more. Even though we had not talked in a long time, I thought about you often.. especially when I was out walking at night peering into the lit windows of houses I passed by. I promise I will keep doing so. I wish I had told you these things when you were around to hear them.
This is yet another reminder for me that tomorrow is not promised. If you are thinking about someone, tell them. If you care about someone, let them know. If you are worried about someone, get in touch. No harm can come of this…it costs you nothing. But it may make all the difference to someone else…maybe just for one hour or one day…but maybe for a lifetime. Don’t wait too long.
February 17th, 2026
Today was JWs funeral. I won’t say much about the service itself. It was sad..and more difficult than I thought it would be. Not so much at the service itself where I was surrounded by other people.. but more so when I was walking home alone through the city, and later that night as I lay in bed reflecting on what I had seen, unwilling to close my eyes.
It took around two and a half hours to walk home from the cemetery. The route was familiar but the weather was strange. The entire city was obscured by a weird yellowish fog, the air was thick with humidity and the sun was a weak halo of light buried in layers of cloud. I have never really seen that kind of weather here before. I thought that JW would be happy to know that on the day of his funeral, the weather was so gloomy and dramatic. I think he would like that.
Simple Kombucha Recipe
What is kombucha?
In it’s simplest form kombucha is black tea fermented by a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY) in the presence of sugar. There are probably thousands of good articles out there that explain this process in great detail…so I won’t add to the pile. In this article, I only want to provide a simple recipe with a clear process for myself and anyone else who might want to try making kombucha.
Why kombucha?
In addition to having a long and mythical history, kombucha is purported to have many health benefits (the final ferment contains live probiotic bacteria). I make it because it is fun, it makes my kitchen smell interesting and funky and it is delicious and refreshing. It is a terrific substitute for soda when you are eating anything heavy or greasy. It’s great with pizza and burgers but even works with more delicate flavours like sushi and sashimi.
Ingredients:
- 1 SCOBY
- 6 black tea bags (I am using orange pekoe)
- 1 cup regular white sugar
- 12 cups of water
You can’t really “make” a SCOBY. You will have to buy one online or get one from someone who is brewing. Once you have one, it will grow with every batch and you can peel off layers to share with fellow brewers. I got mine from my lovely downstairs neighbour.
You can just use cheap everyday tea bags. I am using orange pekoe bags from the grocery store. Use black tea and avoid anything flavoured (for now). I like these round Tetley brand ones…they are very strong and brew up to a nice colour and aroma.
Process
Time to bottle
Additional Ingredients / Second Ferment
You can bottle your fermented tea just as it is. It will be delicious. Or, if you like, you can also add some aromatics as you bottle. I almost always add fresh ginger and dry hibiscus flowers to mine. The ginger adds a little sweet snap to the brew and the hibiscus add a little tang and a beautiful rosey colour.
Over the years I have tried citrus peels, cinnamon sticks, all kinds of herbs and spices and I always come back to ginger and hibiscus. It is a winning combination with the fermented tea. You can usually find whole dried hibiscus flowers in any spice shop, asian grocery store or Mexican grocery (where it is called Jamaica). It may also be under the name Rose of Sharon. It is all the same thing and definitely worth seeking out.
Scoby Storage
3 days later…
After 3 days in the bottle at room temperature, place the bottles in the fridge. The brew is done.
The finished brew is perfect as is but, feel free to add a squeeze of lemon or a few drops of honey or anything else you might want to try. If the flavour is too intense, you can cut it with bubbly water. I often do this if I am drinking this with more subtle flavoured foods.
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please leave them below. I always look forward to hearing from you. If you enjoy the content and would like to contribute towards website maintenance and development, you can make a donation here. Thank you for reading TigerSalad.
2 a.m. Cortisol Cloud
Insomnia
I am normally a pretty good sleeper. Most nights I get in bed, I read until my eyes will no longer stay open and then get a decent rest. If I do wake up, it is just for a few moments and then I shift my body and fall back asleep. But sometimes I go through cycles where I wake up around 2 or 3 a.m. and can’t get back to sleep easily. This wakefulness can last an hour or more and I usually end up pretty exhausted by the next morning. This can happen everyday for a week or so and then suddenly stop.
Recently I saw a video where a sleep specialist was discussing the hormone cortisol. Cortisol is produced by the body in reaction to stress. The very common 3 a.m. sleep disturbance is often caused by a high level of cortisol at a time when it should be at its lowest point in the day. The result: a person under stress awakens and becomes mentally active when they should be in deep sleep. Stress is a major factor in this cloud of cortisol but there are many other factors too…like lack of exercise. I won’t go into them all here. I will only say that, of all these influences, stress levels are probably the most difficult to control.
The photos…
I am going to insert a few pictures into this post. They may or may not be related to what you are about to read but I like them and want to share them here anyways. Think of them as images from dreams.
These days…
…I am past the end of a kind of planned sabbatical period. Sometime ago, I decided to take a year off and pursue a new path. I had saved enough money to make this possible so I didn’t have to stress too much about it. It was simply a decision I had made and one I was following through with. But, as the end came around, the money started to run out and I am now forced to figure out a way to make some more. I either have to get a new job or create my own stream of income. Without going into details, I will just say that this is very stressful and it occupies most of my thoughts.
About last night
Not surprisingly, this stress is affecting my sleep in exactly the way I described above. Yesterday was a day that, for all my hard work and good intentions, was completely unproductive and exhausting. I got in bed early just to escape the day. I wrote a little bit and then read a book until I fell into a sound sleep.
At 2 a.m., I woke up suddenly and I knew that I was at the start of a cycle of stress induced awakenings. Sometimes I fight this by just laying awake and trying to calm my racing thoughts…this is least effective solution. Other times, I flick on the light and read until I fall asleep. This is like a “start over from the beginning”. The success of this method really depends on just how wound up I am. The third method (which I used last night) is to try to get whatever thoughts are swirling around in my skull OUT. I do this by writing them down on paper or, like last night, typing them into the notes app on my phone.
Usually, these writings read like a kind of garbage dump of thoughts and feelings. But this morning, when I read over what I had typed half-consciously in the middle of the night, I thought it might be worth preserving. At least for myself. Below is the unedited late night mind-emptying transcript:
2 a.m. Cortisol Cloud
“I just woke up at 2 am and these are my mostly unfiltered thoughts about starting a business and/or getting a job….the thoughts that woke me up in the first place:
The main thing is…the thing that has kept me from getting started…is that I don’t think that I am worth investing in. At least not right now.
People around me tell me that I am smart. They tell me that I have talent. That I am creative. That I am organized. That I can do anything. But I don’t or I can’t believe them. And when I try to avoid “negative self-talk” and prop myself up, I don’t believe myself either. It all just feels like a lie.
I like this life that I am living right now. Cooking for myself, exercising, reading, studying, playing with my cat, taking pictures, going for long walks, meeting friends, playing music, writing my stupid blog. I am taking good care of my body and my mind. And I don’t waste time. It’s enough for me, really. I wish it didn’t cost so much.
I don’t want to be rich. I don’t need anything more than what I have. I don’t want to own anything. I just want to be able to choose how I spend my time. This is freedom and peace to me. But I know that this dream that I am living at the moment is impossible to sustain. And that is hard to swallow.
This feeling will subside…. In the depths of my heart, I am an optimistic person and I am happy to be alive.
These February mornings, sunlight, diffused by the icy glass of my tall window, casts soft shadows of houseplants on the chipped and crooked old walls of my room…and that is enough to raise an honest smile…that sun penetrates my heart and happiness warms me from the inside out. I try my hardest to capture the light in a photograph (almost impossible!) But, if I get it just right, I can trap that warm feeling in an image and return to it whenever i want to. It works.
If you read this, please don’t worry about me too much. I am not depressed…I just don’t like myself that much right now. It is not the same thing.
In the meantime, I will look at my hands and move my fingers one by one like Kim Sae-Byuk in “House of Hummingbird”. I know that it is ok to hate myself for a time, and I will try to focus on the small things that I can control.
When is someone going to invent a cigarette that doesn’t kill you?”
Afterward
After I finished writing that in bed last night, after I had emptied my mind, I slept pretty well. What I wrote is accurate. It is all true. Although, awake during the day, I would have a hard time expressing thoughts like that. In the twilight between sleep and wakefulness, I think that we enter a kind of drunk state. We think and say what we mean without filtering, without inhibition. I think there is truth and value in recording dark thoughts in dark hours.
When someone gets drunk and tells you something like “I have always really been attracted to you” and the next day apologizes and says “I was really drunk. I didn’t really mean it”…the truth is more like: “What I said was true, I just shouldn’t have said it”. To me, your nighttime thoughts are kind of like the drunk’s confession. You can learn something about yourself here. Something true and honest.
How to get to sleep
Probably very few people know this, but when I was in University, I studied and wrote my thesis on sleep. The University I attended had one of the most famous sleep labs in the world and I wrote a paper on a tiny electrical impulse that can be stimulated during sleep: “the P1 evoked potential”. If you are not studying neuro-psychology, this paper would bore you to death. In fact, reading my paper itself would probably be a pretty good sleep inducer for anyone!
I am not a sleep expert in any way but over the years I have learned a few tricks that work for me, your average occasional insomniac without any serious mental conditions. Here are my two favourites:
1- Controlled deep breathing. This might be a 4/8 breathing method, “square breathing” or any number of other breathe-to-relax methods . It is basically learning to control your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems through intentional slow breathing. It is incredibly effective in controlling stress anytime day or night but it takes practice and focus. It is not easy. Kind of like meditation…you need to apply it consistently and practice it often. There are hundreds of videos online about this and some good books too. I recommend “Breath” by James Nestor. This is a simply written and well researched book on the way we breathe and how it effects everything in our lives.
2- Psychotherapist Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy uses “paradoxical intention”, where a patient consciously intends to do exactly that which he fears in order to overcome the fear itself. In terms of sleep….someone who lays in bed worried about falling asleep will probably not fall asleep very easily. Hyper-intention to fall asleep keeps the person awake. Frankl recommends trying the opposite. Get in bed and forget about falling asleep. Instead, make it your intention to stay awake as long as you can. Decide now that you will NOT sleep and fight the urge as hard as you can. If you do this, you will most likely find yourself in deep sleep pretty quickly…just by removing the intention. Try it. Grab a book or start a movie and think to yourself: “There is no way I am falling asleep until I finish this”. ZZZZzzzzzzz…
p.s. If you haven’t seen the film “House of Hummingbird”, I highly recommend checking it out. It is one of my favourites. I think you can stream it almost anywhere.
If you want to learn more about Viktor Frankl, pick up his book “Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy”. It documents his experiences as a prisoner at Auschwitz and how the experience shaped his approach to psychotherapy. It is a very short and fantastic read, not nearly as heavy as the title would make you think.
If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. I always look forward to hearing from you. If you enjoy the content and would like to contribute towards website maintenance and development, you can make a donation here. Thanks for reading TigerSalad!
Post Post-Script
A day after posting this I got a few private messages from friends doing a subtle mental-health check-in. To those who got in touch: a sincere thank you. I am actually doing ok but I truly appreciate the contact. It is always a warm feeling when you realize that people care about and think about you. I wish more people would check in with friends who might need some support…sometimes lives hang in the balance.
When I wrote this, I didn’t mean for it to come across as something too heavy. All I meant to get across is that sometimes your subconscious is sending you messages that are worth listening to. They may come in dreams (harder to interpret) or they may come more directly in that twilight between wakefulness and sleep. For me in this case, here is what I understand as the message from me to myself:
“Although during the day you seem to enjoy the quiet contemplative time that you have no shortage of…in reality you are unsatisfied with your life and you don’t like (or maybe you are bored with) the person you have become. Find the courage to take a step forward.”
In other words…time to wake the fuck up and do something : )
That’s my best one line summary.
I think it is quite normal be be unsatisfied with yourself, even to hate yourself on some level sometimes. It can be a catalyst for positive change and, in my case, erase a false sense of well being. You just have to recognize it for what it is, accept it, accept that it is not permanent, and keep passing the open windows.
Pay attention to messages from your subconscious…even if they are dark. They are a part of you and you can learn something from them.
Roasted Peanut and Anchovy Banchan
Roasted Peanut and Anchovies:
This is one of my all time favourite Korean side dishes. It is much more common to see it called Fried Anchovy and Peanut / 멸차땅콩볶음 but this version has far more peanuts than fish so I reversed the name to Peanut and Anchovy / 땅콩멸치볶음. There are a few different grocery stores around me that sell ready made versions and I have tried all of them. Some are spicy, some are not and the ratio of anchovy to peanut is all over the place. Some are mostly anchovy, some half and half and some (in the cheaper places) are mostly nuts with just a few fish. Peanuts are cheaper than dry anchovies by far. This recipe is a mostly peanut version..which is really the one I love most. I also have an anchovy only recipe here.
Ingredients:
- 250 grams (about 1.5 cups) dry non-roasted peanuts
- 25 grams (1/2 cup) medium small dried anchovies
- 45 grams (3 tablespoons) brown sugar
- 50-60 ml (4 tablespoons) water
- 4-5 cloves of garlic
- pinch of korean chili flakes (gochugaru)
- sesame oil and sesame seeds (optional but tasty)
- olive oil for frying
Feel free to change the ratio of peanuts to anchovies. You can even make this without anchovies for a vegan side dish.
The peanuts should be non-roasted and unsalted. I found these red skin dry (but not roasted) peanuts at a local asian grocery store. If you can’t find raw peanuts…you can substitute roasted peanuts and skip the oven step.
I am using medium small dried anchovies. They are roughly twice the length of a peanut and probably the biggest anchovy I would use without gutting them. I found these at a Korean grocery store in the freezer section.
You can use white sugar instead of brown.
Process:
How to eat them
These are delicious to eat straight out of the container with a beer, like a bar snack while you watch a movie. You can, of course, serve them as a side dish to any food. Probably my favourite way to eat these is to use them as a crunchy topping on fresh salad. The deep savoury and nutty sweetness can really make a pretty plain salad extraordinary.
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please leave them below. If you enjoy the content and would like to contribute towards website maintenance and development, you can make a donation here. Look forward to hearing from you and thank you for reading TigerSalad!
Kimchi Jjigae with Tuna
Kimchi jjigae with tuna (참치김치찌개) is a hot and satisfying dish that you can put together in a few minutes with as little as two or three ingredients. Below is a list of ingredients that I like to use but really, almost anything goes. Feel free to add different vegetables or leave out anything you don’t like. This recipe will make two smaller portions or one very large portion.
Ingredients:
- 1 can of tuna in oil
- 1 cup sour kimchi
- 1/2 cup kimchi juice
- 1 cup anchovy broth (or water)
- 1/2 zucchini
- 1 korean green chili pepper
- 1 cup diced tofu
- 1/2 onion
- 3 cloves garlic
- 2 green onions
- sesame oil
- salt
- sugar
The ingredients in bold are essential. Everything else is optional. I am using veggies I have in the fridge. You can add or subtract anything you like. As long as you have some fermented kimchi and a can of tuna, you can make this. I like it with extra veggies and especially with tofu.
Use canned not fresh tuna. It is not the same. I am using Korean tuna in oil but any canned tuna is fine.
There is a link in the ingredients to a recipe for anchovy broth. You don’t need it but, it adds a lot of depth to dishes like these if you use it in place of water.
Process
Variations
As I mentioned at the start, you can put just about anything you want into this dish. There is no definitive recipe for kimchi jjigae. Aged sour kimchi and a can of tuna are the only must haves. Experiment with all kinds of veggies. I also love smoky bacon in this dish. Fry it up with your veggies at the start.
If you are using water instead of kimchi juice, you can stir in a little gochujang for extra colour, flavour and spice if you like.
If you do not have anchovy broth but you do have anchovies and kelp on hand: take a square of kelp and a few dry anchovies and tie them in a little sack of cheesecloth. Add them to the simmering jjigae at the start. This will give you a similar flavour to anchovy broth. Just pull them out and discard after 15-20 minutes.
For a good recipe for homemade kimchi have a look HERE.
If you have any questions or comments or suggestions, please leave them below. I always look forward to hearing from you. If you enjoy the content and would like to contribute towards website maintenance and development, you can make a donation here. Thank you for reading TigerSalad!
Anchovy Broth
Anchovy broth or myeolchi yuksu (멸치육수) is a basic fish stock. It is an essential base for many Korean dishes. It is very easy to make, has endless uses and large batches can be frozen in single use containers to use later on. The recipe can be as simple as just anchovies and water or it can incorporate a number of aromatic vegetables or even seaweed and dried mushrooms. The recipe below uses anchovy, kelp and just a few other ingredients to make a delicious stock. This recipe gives you about 8 litres / 2 gallons of stock. If this seems too big, just half or quarter all of the ingredients.
Ingredients:
- 8 litres / 2 gallons of water
- 40-50 medium large dried anchovies (around 100 grams)
- 8-10 small squares of dashima seaweed aka kombu (around 10-15 grams)
- 500 grams Korean radish
- 1 large onion
- 12 cloves of garlic
Dried anchovies can be found at Asian grocery stores. They come in a few different sizes from very tiny (1 cm) to fairly large (about the length of a finger). The ones I am using are on the larger side.
Dashima is thick, rigid and sometimes powdery looking dark green seaweed. You can find it in the dry goods section of Asian grocery stores in big long strips or a smaller bag of pre-cut squares. Either work fine. I prefer the little squares just because they are easier to work with in smaller recipes. There are lots of different dry seaweeds on the shelf. The one we are using here will say Dashima / 다시마 or Kombu if it is from Japan.
Process:
Remove the guts from the anchovies.
Uses:
This stock is the base for many Korean dishes including sundubu jiggae, kimchi jiggae, noodle soups, etc. In almost any savoury recipe that calls for water, substitute with this stock to make it extra delicious. Dishes like Tteokbokki reach new heights of tastiness when made with a good strong anchovy stock.
In the heat of summer, I will even drink this stock ice cold as is. It is that delicious and refreshing!
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please leave them below. I am always happy to hear from you. If you enjoy the content and would like to contribute towards website maintenance and development, you can make a donation here. Thank you for reading TigerSalad : )
How To Make Vinegar
How does fruit become vinegar?
If you throw a bunch of sweet fruit into a container, natural yeasts already present on the skins will eventually consume the sugar in the fruit and produce alcohol. This alcohol will then get consumed by acetic acid bacteria in the environment and produce vinegar. Nature does all the work.
The problem with letting natural yeast go wild is that it is hard to know what flavours will result (good or bad), how much time it will take, and how much alcohol will result. Because the final acidity of the vinegar depends on the alcohol content, it is worthwhile to use a yeast with a known strength and flavour profile.
As for conversion of the alcohol into acetic acid, we could just leave a jar of fermented fruit juice covered with a cloth and allow naturally occurring acetic acid bacteria in the environment do the work. The problem here is that it takes a long time…several months at least. To shorten this time, we can inoculate our alcoholic fruit juice with a splash of live culture vinegar to get it started and provide it with a steady supply of oxygen via an air pump.
Making pear vinegar at home
In this recipe we will take ripe bosc pears and, over a month or so, ferment them into pear vinegar. I am mostly following a recipe from this excellent book by Rene Redzepi and David Zilber:
Ingredients:
- 4 kilograms ripe pears
- 35 millilitres liquid saison yeast (or another brewers yeast)
- live culture (“contains the mother”) pear or apple cider vinegar for inoculation
Equipment:
- A container large enough to hold your pears and leave at least 25% extra space. For this recipe I will be using two separate 4 litre / 1 gallon glass jars with lids and airlocks.
- A tight lid and a brewers airlock (more on this below) for each container.
- a strainer or fruit/cider press
- a small aquarium air pump, hose and air stone (any pet shop will have these)
- a blender or food processor is helpful but not necessary
Sanitizing Equipment:
Everything that comes in contact with this brew should be sanitized. Wash everything with soap and hot water, then sanitize whichever way you find convenient. Boiling, steaming and weak bleach solutions will work, but for convenience, I use a sanitizer called Star San.
Star San is available at home brew shops or online. You can mix a tiny amount with fresh water in a spray bottle for very effective and easy sanitizing. My local home brew supplier sells tiny bottles. Unless you are brewing huge amounts with massive equipment, a small bottle will last forever. I dilute it at about 2.5 millilitres per litre of water…that’s around 1/4 teaspoon per spray bottle…a tiny amount. This makes more than enough sanitizer for this whole process. It comes in a few different sizes and looks like this:
Process:
This recipe is divided into 2 parts. In part 1, we make alcohol. In part 2, we make vinegar.
Part 1: making alcohol
Once the jars are filled, the lids are on tight, and the airlocks are assembled…move them to a spot that is not in bright light and is at a cool room temperature. Around 20 Celsius or even a little cooler is ideal. Sometimes a basement works, or a garage. I have one or two poorly insulated outside walls which stay at a perfect 18-20 degrees in the winter so that is where I do my fermenting.
First Signs of Life
Fermentation slows down…
For the first 2 days, fermentation was very active with both airlocks bubbling constantly. Towards the end of the second day the fermentation has slowed noticeably. The airlocks will bubble up a couple of times a minute at most. There is less fizzing when stirring and there is a slight taste and smell of alcohol on the spoon. By day 3, fermentation was very slow. Apparently, this very active initial fermentation followed by a very slow and steady period is characteristic of “saison” yeast. If you are using a different brewers yeast, the fermentation may be more consistent over time.
Keep stirring once a day, tasting for sugar and alcohol balance. Monitor activity at the airlocks.
Day 7:
By the 7th day, there is little to no detectable fermentation happening…no bubbling, no sounds, and the pressure in the S-airlock is equalized with both chambers showing the same water level. The mash tastes and smells of alcohol but the sweetness and perfume of pears is still there. This is perfect. It is time to strain the mash and move on to vinegar fermentation.
Straining the Mash
This is probably the most difficult part of this whole process. After doing this a few times, what you see below is the method I prefer but, it is not the only way. The goal is to separate the fibrous parts of the mash from the liquid so as long as you accomplish this, any method is fine.
The Fruit Press
If you don’t have a fruit press, don’t worry. Take your strained juice and skip down to “Neutralizing the Brewers Yeast”. If you have a fruit press or if you are interested in how one works , please read on…
Neutralizing the brewers yeast
Part 2: Making Vinegar
In this second part of the recipe, the pear alcohol will ferment into vinegar with the help of acetic acid bacteria (AAB). We will kick start the fermentation with some live culture vinegar and then aerate it with a pump and air stone until it reaches a pleasant level of acidity.
The alcohol should turn to vinegar within 2 weeks. I will leave this bubbling away for a full week before I taste it. In the meantime, I will give it a good sniff everyday to see how the acidity is developing. Once it begins to smell like mild vinegar, I will open it up once a day for a taste.
Now what?
Compared to most store bought vinegars, homemade vinegar is surprisingly delicious. Use it on salads, spritz it over cooked veggies, use it in sauces…it will brighten up almost any dish. You can even drink it straight up or put a few splashes into soda water for a refreshing and healthy drink.
This is a truly fun and fairly easy fermentation project. There is a small initial investment for a little bit of specialized gear but once you have it, it can be used over and over. Just about any sweet fruit can be made into vinegar using this process. In the past I have made vinegar out of ripe persimmons and it was also delicious. I think I will try plum vinegar next, berries in the summer.
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions please leave them below. I am always happy to hear from you. If you enjoy the content and would like to contribute towards website maintenance and development, you can make a donation here. Thanks for reading TigerSalad!
Makgeolli
What is Makgeolli / 막걸리 ?
Makgeolli is a Korean alcohol (or sool 술) made by fermenting rice with a natural starter called nuruk (누룩, sounds like noo-rook). I have heard it called “rice wine”, “rice beer” and “Korean sake” but it has very little in common with any of those. Makgeolli is its own thing. A few good ingredients and a complex, multi-layered, simultaneous fermentation by a large variety of bacteria and yeasts make this a uniquely Korean sool. It has its own distinct flavours, textures and history. It is unlike any other rice ferment.
The recipe below is not the most simple but the preparation and process are fairly straightforward. My goal was to make the recipe easy to follow so I have included lots of pictures and even some sounds.
Important considerations before you start
There are 2 stages to this recipe and, from start to finish, this brew can take anywhere from 3 weeks to a month. In Stage 1, during the first three days or so you will need to stir it up a few times. In Stage 2, you will need to stir it again for a few days after which it is mostly just waiting and tasting occasionally.
Each stage of this recipe takes several hours to prepare. In Stage 2, you will spend 5 hours just washing, soaking and steaming rice. It’s best to plan ahead so you have enough time to get through the process in one shot.
Temperature is important. You will need to find a spot that is room temperature or a bit cooler for fermenting this brew (20-25C). Higher temperatures can cause your brew to ferment too quickly and may cause some off-flavours. Cooler is always better.
Equipment
You will need a glass or pottery container to hold your brew. 8-10 litres is a good size.
I think most people use glass. I have ceramic onggi jars around the house so that is what you will see in the pictures but either will get the job done. You will also need a piece of fabric or cheesecloth and an elastic band to cover the top of your jar. This ferment needs to breathe and will release a lot of gas. A fabric cover will let it vent and keep insects and dust out.
You will need a steamer of some kind. Bamboo steamers are cheap and very useful. I have a medium size one with two decks that I will use to steam rice for this recipe. If you have a pot with a stainless steel steamer insert, that will also work. Lastly, you will need a piece of cheesecloth or other fabric big enough to wrap the rice in the steamer.
Ingredients:
There are only 3 ingredients here: rice, water and nuruk.
Nuruk is made by forming moist cakes of grain (usually some combination of wheat and barley and rice) and hanging them in open air to attract wild yeasts, bacteria and mold as they dry. These are then pounded into rough granules to use as a fermenting starter. Bags of this powder can be found at Korean grocers under the english name “Enzyme powder” or just look for the Korean name “누룩” on the bag. There is a picture of a bag of nuruk in the ingredients below.
You can make makgeolli with many different kinds of rice. For this recipe I am using a short grain sweet rice called chapssal (찹쌀). I think that this rice is most likely to make a successful and easy drinking first brew.
Here is what we need:
- 500 grams sweet rice flour (this is just rice milled into a fine powder)
- 2 kg sweet rice (chappsal)
- 2.5 litres filtered or spring water
- 250 grams nuruk plus another 250ml filtered or spring water to hydrate it
Process:
The recipe is broken into 2 parts. In Stage 1, we will ferment the rice flour for a number of days (around 3). In Stage 2, we will add steamed sweet rice and finish the ferment over the next few weeks. A two stage recipe like this is called “Iyangju”.
Stage 1
Stage 2:
In this stage we will wash, soak, drain, steam and cool our 2kg of sweet rice. And, afterwards, we will add it to our fermenting container.
Stage 2, Day 1
Stage 2, Day 2
Stage 2, Day 3
Now we wait
For the next 2 to 3 weeks or so, open up the jar every few days and listen for activity and monitor any changes on the surface. Smell it and taste it for alcohol strength by sticking a spoon or chopstick into the mix.
The Match Test
By lowering a lit match into your container, you can get a visual cue for how much fermentation is going on. An actively fermenting brew will give off carbon dioxide. This will snuff a match quickly. The brew below is around 10 days into Stage 2. The match test shows that it is still actively producing CO2. The match goes out as soon as it gets past the rim of the jar. Eventually, as fermentation slows, you should be able to lower a match right to the surface without it going out.
This is just a fun measure of how active the fermentation is.
Stage 2: 2 weeks after adding rice
The brew is starting to have a nice boozy sweet smell. There is a thin shiny layer of liquid forming on top of the rice mash.
Brew is showing signs of being done
We are now 18 days into Stage 2 (3 weeks total fermentation time measured from the start of Stage 1). The bubbling has practically stopped with very little activity (not enough to even get one bubble during a 10 second sound recording). The brew smells and tastes of alcohol. Compared to a few days ago, there is now a very clear layer of liquid on top.
The Match Test Take 2
Filtering the brew
Terminology around nuruk-fermented rice alcohol and how to enjoy your brew:
Depending on a few different factors, there a few different categories of rice alcohol. Without going into a lot of detail, here is a basic list:
- Makgeolli: sedimented brew with less than 10% alcohol
- Takju: sedimented brew with more than 10% alcohol
- Yakju: clarified rice brew (the clear top layer in the above picture)
Our two-stage brew, long-fermented in a cool environment will almost certainly have more than 10% alcohol by volume. This means that it is a “Takju” and I think it is best to drink it as is. Gently turn the bottle over a few times to distribute the sediment and enjoy.
If you leave the bottles to rest, after a week or so, all of the sediment will settle to the bottom and there will be a very clear sediment-free layer on top. This is “Yakju”. You can pour it off slowly so as not to disturb the sediment and enjoy just the clear alcohol on it’s own. You can also pour it off, rebottle only the clear layer and age it indefinitely. It will change and develop new flavours over time.
If you pour off the Yakju, and dilute the sediment with fresh water, you will end up with a weaker drink in the under 10% alcohol range: this is Makgeolli. OR..you can also dilute your Takju with water to lighten it up and bring the alcohol concentration down…this would also be Makgeolli.
If I want something really refreshing and thirst quenching to drink with spicy food, I will often dilute my Takju with sparkling water. The brew is lighter and slightly fizzy and the flavours open up in a little different way…similar to the way an ice cube or a little water affects Scotch whiskey.
Commercial Makgeolli:
You have probably seen plastic bottles of commercial makgeolli at your local liquor store or in convenience stores in Korea. This cheap and tasty drink has it’s own charm but it does not have that much in common with a traditionally fermented brew like we have made. This commercial Makgeolli is usually fizzy, watery, has very low alcohol content and it surprisingly sweet, almost like a soda. It is sweetened with aspartame to make it more palatable and to prevent further fermentation in the bottle (and pressure related accidents while it is transported).
In contrast, our home brew has little to no fizz, a much higher alcohol content and is not especially sweet. In fact, it will lean closer to the dry and tart side with complex rice-y, boozy flavours and a thick creamy mouthfeel. You will taste and feel the alcohol very quickly. It is delicious! And, it is unlike anything else. Korean rice alcohol is entirely it’s own thing and it is next to impossible to compare it to any other brew.
Commercial brewers making traditional Korean sool
Over the last 5 years or so, some commercial brewers of traditional Korean sool have emerged. The first in the US was Hana Makgeolli, founded by Alice Jun. Alice and her team have produced a range of small-batch rice brews ranging from traditional Takju to, most recently, a potent full-strength Soju 60. I have linked a video below of Alice explaining the range of traditional Korean sools as well as Hana Makgeolli’s current offerings.
It was probably close to 10 years ago that I had the pleasure of meeting Alice in New York City when she was still developing recipes in her Brooklyn apartment. I got to sample an early brew “under the table” over Poke-bowls at a Manhattan SunriseMart. To this day, it is still one of my best New York experiences! Alice is one of the loveliest and most generous people I have met and she has a deep understanding of Korean rice alcohol, learning first-hand as a child helping her dad with traditional home brews. I highly recommend having a look at the above video for a comprehensive Sool School and if you are lucky enough to be able to try Alice’s brews in person, don’t hesitate to visit her shop and brewery.
As always, if you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please leave them below. If you try this recipe and like the results, please let me know. I hope you enjoy making your own rice brew as much as I do. Cheers! : )
If you enjoy the content and would like to contribute towards website maintenance and development, you can make a donation here.
Winter Solstice
The shortest day
December 21st is the shortest day of the year. Daylight shrinks to barely 9 hours with sunrise just before 8 am and sunset just before 5 pm. I know I am not the only one who feels the weight of this time of year. Many people I know seem to enter some kind of seasonal depression, sometimes (but not always) tempered by Christmas festivities.
Toronto is a lovely city for the three warmer seasons but not so much in winter. From now until spring the sun rarely shines and the occasional bright morning inevitably turns to gloom by the afternoon. Most years, there is not much snow in the city and winter temperatures tend to fluctuate above and below the freezing point. Snow quickly melts into salty, grimy pools that later freeze into sheer ice. Sometime in the new year, Toronto enters a deep freeze that lasts anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months. These cold days can bring sunlight but it doesn’t last for long and the city soon sinks back into murky grey.
When traveling, sometimes people ask me what Toronto winter is like. I am sure they are imagining crisp cold air and bright blue skies meeting a sparkling white horizon. I am always a little sad to tell them that, at least where I live, it is mostly salt crusted dirty streets, grey days and long dark nights.
Winter Blues (except when it snows)
Even though I live in this colourless city, I can still enjoy winter. The cold doesn’t bother me, and of all the natural phenomenon in the world, I am always deeply moved by the magic of a big snowfall. Every time. I love the way it mutes the city noise and how it transforms the urban landscape into something soft and beautiful. I can’t think of too many things that make me happier. Unfortunately, it doesn’t usually last very long before the next melt cycle.
Deep in the typical gloom of Toronto winter, I have a hard time seeing anything that I want to photograph and writing becomes a lot more difficult. Creativity shrinks back. I tend to retreat into reading books, watching films, listening to and learning music and language studies. A lot of input, not much output.
From spring to fall I was writing on here at least once every two weeks and I had so many pictures that I sometimes had trouble organizing them. Lately I have been doing less creative writing. And I have not wanted to pick up my camera as much but, I have taken a few pictures that I like. I will post them up here with no other purpose than sharing a few good, mostly unrelated, shots.
2025 in review
For a long time, I had planned to take a year off from work and 2025 was it. Originally I thought I would get right into planning my next career move but, instead, I was flooded by the desire to create and to learn. Not in any organized way…just to follow threads as they appeared and to accept and act on ideas and inspiration without any resistance and with the least amount of judgement possible. The result was a ton of writing.
This website started as a travel diary for an early spring trip to Japan and Korea that I took with my daughter. Sick of all the trash and advertising on social media, I thought this would be a fun alternative. In the end, it became something I loved doing and something I am quite proud of. I still revisit the trip quite often. The photos are good and the articles are fun and pretty well written.
When I got back, I wanted to keep writing and TigerSalad became a place for me to document photo projects, recipes, articles, ideas and sounds…all things I used to dump (in some compromised way) onto social media. On here, I rarely involve my phone and I can write as much or as little as I like. To date, I have written over 70 articles.
Surprisingly, TigerSalad has done ok. I get a decent amount of traffic and I know that the people who are visiting are interested in what I am doing rather than getting directed here by some stupid algorithm . I don’t link ads or pop-ups and so, I make zero income from it. Fine with me! Instead, I have a discreet donation link where people can send me some dollars which I put into website maintenance if they enjoy the articles. Even though I had zero expectations, a few generous amounts came through in the first few days. Thank you!!
On top of those 70 or so website entries, I have been doing other writing on the side. I have started some long form fiction (in other words, a book). Whether or not it ever gets finished or sees the light of day is not so important to me. I just enjoy writing it and learning about the inner lives of my characters as they unfold. I like the people in the story. They make me laugh and I care about them and I want to know what happens next. That is enough for now.
In the last few months, I have also picked up a few paid jobs doing copy writing: captions for social media projects and website copy. I really enjoy this work. I will labour for hours choosing the sharpest word, the most effective sentence, the most concise and economical phrase where necessary. To me it is like solving a puzzle. I love it. And, I do it all facing my big windows with a hot coffee and a sleeping cat on my desk. It is like a dream and I wish I could keep doing it. Let’s see what happens…
Christmas is coming…
I have a few close friends who are sincere Christians with a strong connection to their church and community. Christmas has a deep spiritual meaning for them. It is a time for celebration. The effort and joy that they put into this season is awe inspiring. It is fun to witness and some of their energy definitely rubs off on me.
As for me, I was mostly raised without any religion. Czechs, along with Japanese and Chinese are among the worlds least religious people. My family never went to church and religion was never a topic of conversation. Christmas was important but it centered entirely around family.
When I was very young, my parents (barely 20 years old) were new immigrants to Canada with no family here at all. I don’t remember too much of those days. I think our Christmases were probably more like house parties with lots of music, drinking and smoking with me sleeping in a pile of fur coats on a bed somewhere. But, over the next few years, my family began to grow as my parents began sponsoring their brothers and sisters to move to Canada.
At some point in my early adolescence, our family was suddenly huge. Aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, everyone gathered at our house for the Christmas season. For around a week between Christmas and New Years Day, our house was packed with aunties cooking and baking and uncles smoking and drinking and talking non stop. Food was everywhere. People slept over and stayed for days. One meal would blend into the next. Endless packs of cigarettes would burn to ash over hours and hours of card playing and laughter. To me, it was heaven. I can’t remember a time when I felt more warmth and happiness.
Of course, as years pass, time takes its toll and my once huge family Christmas has all but disappeared. Death, disease, divorce and relocation for work have all played a part in chipping away at the giant celebration of the past. These days, Christmas is always coloured with a little sadness. I miss that huge family made up of the people I have loved the most. I especially miss my uncles who have died, the ones who worked awful jobs and had nothing, but would still manage to tuck a few hundred dollar bills into my pocket every Christmas. XOXOXOXO.
These days, my family is very small. Still… we have our Christmas rituals, we eat our turkey dinner, exchange a few gifts and enjoy the love and warmth of the season. We are lucky to be able to do so. Although Christmas arrives with a little sadness and a little loneliness, I still look forward to it and feel fortunate to spend the hours with people that I love. Merry Christmas!
Best Christmas Song: “The Christmas Song” Nat King Cole (chestnuts roasting on an open fire..)
Best Christmas Food: Turkey (brined)! Stuffing (must have bacon or sausage)! Cranberries!
Best Christmas Movie: “2046” Wong Kar Wai. Not exactly a Christmas movie but a lot of its key moments happen at Christmas. It is really my favourite movie. I watch it once a year at night on the 25th.
Upcoming Projects
Although I haven’t posted up anything lately, I have been busy photographing and documenting a few fermentation projects. My apartment is cool in winter so it is a perfect time for long ferments. I have a batch of 2 stage makgeolli (Korean rice alcohol) that is almost done. A detailed recipe with tons of pictures and sounds will go up soon. I will also be fermenting pears, first into alcohol and then into vinegar. This will take well over a month but it is in the works.
TigerSalad has a fair amount of recipes and I use them all the time. Originally, I had recipes scribbled down all over the place on loose paper and the backs of receipts etc… I started putting the recipes on here because I wanted to make an online cookbook for myself so I can have everything in one place. I really dislike cooking from videos, and most online recipes have too much filler and way too many ads and pop ups. My recipes are designed to be clear and logical, with lots of photos to make even complicated things doable. Try them…they work.
Winter Photos
I hope it snows soon. Big snow. Lots of it. I am looking forward to getting out in the city with my camera and capturing Toronto in some of its handsome winter moments. Like this one in St James Town last year:
Big City Winter Survival Tips:
1-Go outside! It’s not as cold as you think and the more you go out the more you will get used to it. There is lots of oxygen and less pollution in heavy cold winter air. It is energizing.
2-Don’t try to look cool or fashionable in winter. Just dress up in warm layers of clothes. Unless you are very wealthy, it is hard to be warm and look cool at the same time. Just give up!
Happy holidays from TigerSalad! See you soon with a home made booze recipe just in time for New Years!
If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please leave them below. I look forward to hearing from you. It is the only way I know you have been here…other than vague stats from Google : )
If you enjoy the content and would like to contribute towards website maintenance and development, you can make a donation here.