There may be hundreds of restaurants I’ve yet to try in Philadelphia, but sometimes, I just want to be lazy and stay a bit closer to home. So we drove up the street for a nice and easy dinner at Tiffin in Wynnewood. I really like the feel of this place. It’s completely casual and free of pretension. And considering it’s on the main line, that can sometimes be very hard to come by. And it’s a BYOB people. Score! We got one of the monthly appetizer specials, the Tandoori Broccoli. It is broccoli marinated with herbs and spices and cooked in the traditional clay oven. It wasn’t anything great, just smoky broccoli. But we both love broccoli so we enjoyed it.

I think my whole reason for ever eating indian food is for the naan. It’s just some of the best bread you could ever eat. Some onion and garlic naan that we housed. I think I prefer the garlic naan here a little bit more than the onion one, because the garlic one is slightly more crispy. The onion one is a bit more soggy.

We went smart and just split the Chicken Korma as our entree. For anyone new to indian food, this is an extremely safe dish to try. It is big hunks of chicken breast cubes in a creamy cashew sauce. The sauce is incredibly rich and creamy, after all, it’s made with ground cashews. It has a nice and mild flavor, and won’t offend anyone, especially if you have an aversion to flavors you may traditionally associate with indian food, such as curry or cumin. It’s a perfect dish for dipping your naan into. It’s as if they created it as a vehicle for the naan to enter into my gullet. Yeah, I’ll say it, the chicken korma was my naan delivery device. And it was an excellent naan delivery device.

Here we have a two-for-one recipe special, a first ever on foodzings. Both of these dishes are so easy, that even I could make them. So we’ll start first with a cucumber side dish. It’s a tangy little banchan of freshly pickled cucumbers, with a bit of spice.

We start off with a few pickling cucumbers. Half them lengthwise, then slice them.

Throw them in a bowl along with some thinly sliced onion.

Throw a little salt over this and mix it around a little bit.

Chop up a sprig or two of green onion.

Throw these into the bowl, along with a bit of sugar. Mix again.

Then we only have two more things to add – kochukaru (korean chili powder) and white vinegar.

The more kochukaru you add, the spicier it will be. The more vinegar you add, the tangier it will be. Put in however much you like! That’s it!

Ok, moving right along to our second dish, sweet red bean buns. Correction, the easiest sweet red bean buns you will ever make. These are super tasty and super easy to make. Seriously, they don’t get easier than this. So if you like pastries, and if you like sweet red bean, then keep on reading. If not, then click away.

Here are the ingredients – crescent roll mix and a can of sweet red beans. Seriously that’s it. This is a two ingredient dish. I told you it was easy.

So you take a piece of the crescent, and spoon some sweet red bean in there.

You close it up so that it forms a little bun.

Place the buns seam-side down on a cookie sheet. How long to cook these? At what temperature? I have no idea. Just follow the crescent instructions and don’t burn them. The bottom has a tendency to burn, so keep an eye on them.

Eat them when they’re fresh out of the oven! Ok, so I don’t know if these buns are really korean, but since my mom is korean, and she made them, I’m going to call them korean. Or at least korean-esque. All I know is that they’re good and beyond easy!

I was in Columbus for quite a long time, but we were all well fed by my mom’s cooking the whole time. Here are some of the highlights. Her famous spring rolls! As usual, they kicked ass. We accidentally bought the wrong noodles (cellophane noodles instead of rice noodles), but they were still darn good.

Spam fried rice! This happens to be a favorite of my brother. I’m not nearly as into it as he is, and he is also a SPAM freak, but I like it. With egg on top and ketchup. It totally takes us back to our childhoods.

Some spicy kimchi soba noodles. A ridiculously easy dish of soba noodles, chopped up kimchi and maybe some cucumber, and some kochujang. Maybe a little sesame oil, soy, sugar too. It’s great for a hot day, which most of the days in Columbus were.

A big bowl of kalguksu. Kalguksu literally translates to knife noodles (kal is knife, guksu is noodles). The noodles are thick wheat noodles that were traditionally hand-cut with knives. They don’t exactly do that these days. The dish isn’t the most flavorful, so we eat it with kimchi. Everything tastes better with kimchi!

My mom also made another big batch of dumplings, or as we call them, mandu. Here are some of the little half-moon beauties after being steamed.

We also ate some on another day in soup. Manduguk literally means dumpling soup. Mandu is dumpling, guk is soup. See, you’re all getting a free korean lesson.

A little bowl of spicy dubu jjigae. That’s tofu stew to you. Can you figure out what means tofu and what means stew? Congrats! You’re well on your way to be fluent in food korean.

And a random smattering of banchan and other dishes. Some galbi or bulgogi, I don’t even remember which it was anymore. Some of the japchae, whose recipe I shared with you earlier. Some marinated cucumbers, whose recipe I will soon share. And some marinated file fish. The file fish, or juipo, was languishing in my brother’s freezer for who knows how long. So my mom freed them from their frozen cell and promptly led them into our bellies.