Ready Steady Gasp 2

LIZZY (Team Green Pepper)
I am always determined to bend the rules to my whims, and often my whims are a little unfocused. I definitely knew (after several sleepless nights in our ugly sister beds in Nice) that I wanted to avoid simply cooked rice – instead I researched all different kinds of breads cooked with rice – from Gỏi Cuốn to idli. I eventually settled on making Shokupan milk bread which uses a rice flour tangzhong and opted for a classic Korean sandwich filling: gilgeori. Having done so much gaspy mental olympics to try an manipulate the ingredients, I was left with tofu and tomato… so I opted to make (of course) a tomato and tofu kimchi. I shudder to mention it but in a panicked haze I forgot to think of anyway of including squash.. so I cooked a spaghetti squash on the side.

KATE (Team Red Tomato)
I went back and forth a lot with these ingredients trying to find a dish that combined every single one. The closest I got was the Burmese tofu nway with a loophole in what ‘tofu’ meant. Unfortunately, I found this recipe a little too late and so I moved to other sources! The wheel gave me the choice of wildcard we should use this time, and I chose an egg because my initial thought was to do a tomato and egg Chinese dish but again I couldn’t figure out how to combine all the ingredients. Eventually I stuck with the Asian flavours, but went for a Vietnamese dish called  Đậu Sốt Cà Chua and a Thai dish called Faktong Pad Kai.

LIZZY
I cannot explain the horror to you, dear reader, of when I went back to make this recipe and read that I was supposed to ferment the tomatoes for a week.. nonetheless (minus the seven days I was supposed to wait) this recipe was very easy and I loved the chewiness of the tofu.

KATE
The tofu was part of the Đậu Sốt Cà Chua and was one of the easiest components to cook. I airfried it and once the tomatoes were prepared (see below) I added it in to absorb some of the flavour. I liked how the tofu went slightly squishy in the sauce it was very delicious

LIZZY
I would really love to try making this tomato kimchi again, as previously mentioned the tomatoes really should have been left to ferment for a week; I’m sure this would have made them immeasurably tangier and added to my overall frankensandwich.

KATE
Ok in fact all of the components of Đậu Sốt Cà Chua are pretty simple! The sauce ingredients (tomato, fish sauce, tomato paste, salt and sugar) are all added to a saucepan and boiled together for about ten minutes. I loved the tanginess that the fish sauce brought and I wouldn’t normally use tomatoes as a sauce in Asian food I make but it was thoroughly delicious

LIZZY
Even confronting this image is horror to me. Stood in Sainsbury’s, finalising my ready steady gasp dish, I hurriedly googled how to cook spaghetti squash – I was returned a choice of videos in which Americans had swapped out spaghetti for this squash… little did I know their contented gorging of this gourd was a lie! I cooked this simply with olive oil and salt, but this squash was so bitter and acrid I could only manage one bite (I will contend that the fact it looks like spaghetti is pretty cool though)

KATE
I was annoyed at my choice of Faktong Pad Kai because it meant I had to go out on a cold January evening after work to get a Kabocha squash and Thai basil. But it was worth every cold second! I was worried that stirfrying the squash would mean it would take a really long time to cook but it actually was very fast. You then add some soy sauce and let it cook covered for a few minutes before adding the egg – spoiler!

LIZZY
I definitely went ambitious and imaginative with my use of rice – I made a milk bread with a rice flour scald from scratch. This recipe got away from me right at the start: I had brought the wrong type of rice flour… I tried to fix all by adding A LOT of corn starch (the fix for most cooking mistakes) and while it didn’t seem to impact the overall rise of my bread, I would love to go back and try to make this shokupan properly in the future.

KATE
My baby ricecooker was 100% the best purchase I made in 2025. I use it at least once a week so I was very happy to have an excuse to show it off here. I could have gone a little more creative but sometimes all you need is a simple bowl of white rice to accompany your saucy mains

LIZZY
I have seen this gilgeori eaten in lots of social media posts – it’s a very popular street food in Korea, and for good reason: it is hearty and filling with a nice amount of crunch. I would certainly make this again – especially as it seems that it would be a good way to use up leftovers. People also sometimes add sugar on top when eating it in their sandwiches and I would love to try that to understand the appeal!

KATE
Once the squash has cooked a little you push it to the side and then scramble the eggs, stirring them in to the squash and finishing off with Thai basil. I’m currently experiencing a bit of an egg ick so I was worried about this (even though yes… I chose egg as an ingredient…) but it was really nice and added texture much like in a pad thai. I also loved the Thai basil, it gave such a liquoricey punch of flavour that I think is an unskippable part of the dish