Context

For the past few years, I’ve had the enormous pleasure of being roommates with Allen, who truthfully is one of my favorite people in the world.

Allen and I have many things in common – for example, we both work way too hard and collectively suffer from impostor syndrome and TikTok brainrot. It’s made for a special living situation, and I’m really grateful for it.

I’ll be moving out of our apartment to go to grad school in a few months. One of the things he’s been mentioning here and there is that he’ll miss my cooking (hopefully as much as I’ll miss him), so I’ve decided to compile a list of overworked, quick college recipes that I’ve made over the years.

I don’t think these are particularly good, but they’re easy to make and I’d like to have a place to document them.

This is a work in progress.

Recipe 1: Vaguely Chinese Hot Pot-like Thing

Good for people that have trouble eating vegetables.

Ingredients

Really, anything you want. I usually use:

  • Thinly sliced pork belly
  • Napa cabbage
  • Tofu skin (the fried kind)
  • Bok choy
  • Daikon
  • Kabocha
  • White Onion
  • Chicken broth
  • Soy sauce and other Asian sauces

Instructions

  1. Queue up Bluey episode. Cook rice. Cut veggies.

  2. In the pot where the soup will come together, start sautéeing like half a white onion. Throw some garlic in there as well. This is typically when Allen comes out of the room and says “that smells divine,” and “can I have some?”. Of course you can, Allen.

  3. Once the aromatics are fragrant, put in the bulky veggies like daikon and kabocha. Make sure to stir everything so the onions don’t burn on the bottom. Season with salt, white pepper, soy sauce, oyster sauce, etc. My friend Thia wants me to tell you to add an order of magnitude more salt than you think you’ll need.

  4. Once stuff is “done” then add in chicken stock to cover veggies. Add like 2 slices of ginger and some shaoxing cooking wine.

  5. Once that’s “done” then you’re going to want to add boiling water. Now, add your leafy veggies in. Bring to boil.

  6. Upon boil for a while - taste now. Add salt, chicken bouillon, soy sauce, a splash of dark soy sauce, MSG, to taste. Lower heat to simmer.

  7. Add in your pork belly and tofu skin. Cook until pork is done. It takes less time than you think. You can also add frozen dumplings. If you didn’t make rice, you can add noodles here.

  8. Serve with rice. Garnish with green onions, sesame oil, chili oil, seaweed, basically anything you want.

Recipe 2: Tomato Egg

Quintessential comfort food. Very hard to mess up, which I also like.

Everyone’s got their own spin on this – here’s mine, which I basically stole from this TikTok.

What’s awesome about this recipe is that it’s really easy to make in conjunction with other dishes; once everything’s cut, you can basically just leave it on the stove and forget about it.

Ingredients

  • Eggs
  • Tomatoes, probably Roma
  • Green onions
  • Garlic
  • Laoganma
  • MSG/Cornstarch/really any seasoning you want within reason.

Instructions

  1. Queue up Hell’s Kitchen. Cook rice well in advance so that stuff finishes at the same time.

  2. Cut stuff – cube tomatoes and chop green onions and garlic.

  3. Heat up some oil in a pan, and add the white parts of the green onions and your garlic. It is gonna smell really good. Then, once your garlic’s fragrant and got some more color, add a scoop of chili crisp.

  4. At some point, the ancestors will tell you to add your tomatoes. Do so, and season with salt, white pepper, and hoisin sauce. You can also add some sugar, which helps cut down the acidity of the tomatoes.

  5. Cover and let it cook for a bit. You want the tomatoes to break down and release their juices. If it’s too watery, you can add cornstarch to thicken it up. Probably a good time to throw in some MSG, as well.

  6. Eggs! Beat them and pour em in. them in, but you can also just crack them directly into the pan. Probably a good time to stir them around a bit, to make sure they don’t stick. You can cover them for a minute, but I personally find that they cook very quickly.

  7. Yum! Serve with rice, over sesame oil and some bibigo seaweed. Oh, and you can also add the green parts of the green onions.