Homemade Galbi

Made homemade galbi. I replaced the pear in the recipe, which is required to soften the meat, with kiwi instead. Worked the same, and I cut the sugar in the recipe. Too bad it was much too little... *sobs*. Bobo and I fought over the meat. Next time I will buy two bags of ribs. 

BiBimBap (비빔밥) v2

I made this bimbimbap with brown rice, carrots, mushrooms, sunflower sprouts (my latest fav) and a fried sunny side up egg on top. Yumz. Mixed with gochujang, it is a healthy meal which I accompanied with avocado salad.

Kimchi making season again

Spring Onion Pajeon

This spring onion pajeon is made from spring onions that I grew from kitchen scraps.

It was very easy to make. I whisked 1/2 cup of plain flour, 1/2 cup of water, 1 tsp miso and 1 tsp sugar, before frying the spring onions in olive oil. I spread out the spring onions before pouring the batter on it. Unfortunately because the batter was so thick and my spring onions so spindly, they were pushed aside by the batter.

Clockwise from left: Mein Elterns homemade chilli, homemade samgyetang, homemade kimchi, spring onion pajeon, fried cherry tomatoes and egg tofu

I think next time I will use a bigger frying pan. The pajeon will taste nicer if it wasn't so thick.

Korean Dinner of 김치 찌개 (using my own homemade 김치 )

The weather in Singapore is like me, bloody emo. Changes easily so much until it was extremely sunny on Saturday, and raining everyday since Sunday.

My Homemade 김치

Like I said before, I made my own 김치 two Sundays ago, and by last Saturday it was pretty ripe. 김치 is great any day between 7-14 days of "ripening". So it was most excellent for using in a kimchi jijae, 김치 찌개. I like to do mine as a hotpot dish.

김치 찌개

I love Korean cooking. It is healthy (soups and stews don't require oil, and uses loads of fresh veggies), spicy, and dead easy to make. Throw, chuck stuff in, and mix in miso and Gochujang, and you are done! So what I did was rapidly cut silken tofu, golden mushrooms, homemade 김치 and julienned carrots, japanese cucumber. Everything was put into the boiling water according to how fast they could cook, e.g. carrots, and cucumbers first. And then finally I put in rolls of pork belly and konnyaku noodles. It's quite funny, everytime I want to buy konnyaku noodles (Japanese), I can't find them, and end up buying sweet potato noodles (Korean). And the one time I want to use sweet potato noodles, there isn't any in the house and I end up using konnyaku noodles. Sigh.

Served with more kimchi and takuan (pickled daikon)

I wonder if it is possible to make my own takuan. Anyway, I was so preoccupied with making a Korean feast, I overcooked and made spicy rice cakes. As I stared at the two pots bubbling away on the stove, I realized that I made too much. B1 was consulted and he suggested that we have one small serving of rice cakes to top up any empty spaces after the 김치 찌개. 

So I brought the hot pot pipping hotpot to the electric stove to ensure the continued cooking and served everything with takuan and more of my homemade 김치. Seems like I am too adventurous and did not wash off the salt too much, so the 김치 is quite salty this time.

Spicy Korean Rice Cakes 떡볶이

I like Korean rice cakes, even though I did not have a chance to enjoy this delightful street food while I was in South Korean, as B1 has a pathological fear of street food, even though South Korea is really clean.

I thought I would make some, because I had some chilli paste I had to use up and I was burning to try them, after buying a bag of the rice cakes at Giant. 

I adapted beyond kimchee's recipe by dumping julienned oyster mushrooms into the mixture instead. Too bad my gochujang is the aged kind, so my rice cakes looked really dark instead.

My Samgyetang looked more like Chinese version of Ginseng Chicken soup

I questioned the rationale of cooking Samgyetang (which is Korean ginseng chicken soup) on Sunday night, especially when I was trying to force myself to sleep earlier, so that I could work better on Monday. I should have done this on Saturday night, and eat steamboat on Sunday night instead.

Mr Chicken swims in the ginseng soup

I didn't have a soup bowl big enough to hold Mr Chicken

Still I have to admit, dinner was very easy to cook, with Mr Chicken swimming contentedly in the soup for hours, with glutinous rice, dates, and garlic (I forgot pine nuts and added wolfberries *hehe*) inside his belly, until he was easy to tear apart.

We didn't have a big soup bowl, so I ended up using a smaller pot to hold the meat pieces. It came out to two smaller pots, and we drank every drop. B1 was very suspicious of the vegetable dish. He muttered darkly that this was yesterday's leftovers from the steamboat, and was pleasantly surprised to discovered egg tofu (new addition) inside, which he rutted out to eat, leaving behind the sad lettuce leaves.

My first homemade traditional Kimchi

I did a lot of forever alone activities on Saturday. First I soaked my napa cabbage in a salted solution for hours.

this is how they look after 4 hours. Bendable but still crunchy

I was supposed to just go downstairs to buy the missing Korean chilli powder for my kimchi. But the supermarket downstairs only sold ready-made kimchi. So I decided to travel to the next town to buy. Interestingly I realized my location is so friendly I can joy-ride upwards and downwards by one MRT stop just to buy chilli powder. Happiness!

the mixture

So I went upwards, bought some powder at a specialty supermarket then popped over to the arcade to playing Razing Storm. I wanted to play the game by myself to completion. Some polite kiddy came over and asked me if he could play with me. His exact words (looking very anxious yet eager), "Auntie can I play with you, please?"

I supposed I asked for it, dressed in t-shirt, shorts and slippers. But like I said, I had just intended to go to the supermarket downstairs.  So I finished the game (I had to play twice, because the first time I died at the end of stage 3 but ok, since the kid compromised my "finishing the game alone")

I went to the supermarket, bought groceries and hauled them back home. Started working on my kimchi, only to discover that 12ax7 was online. Chucked my kimchi into the fridge to play with him (how is that for loyalty!).

Rubbing the mixture into each leaf

This is how it looks like after I stuffed all the kimchi in

I am not sure why but on the second day I saw water come out of the cabbage. No wonder the mixture was very dry. Anyway, it became wetter and wetter all until 7 days later, when the recipe said it would be edible.

Water came out?

Banchan

I was tired on Saturday so I just dragged some stuff out from the fridge =D. I got to try my kimchi which I made a week ago. It was pretty ok, but B1 said that it does not taste the same. Maybe because I used fish sauce instead of anchovies. =D

B1 was upset though, he said I served him side dishes for lunch. WTF...

BiBimBap (비빔밥)

I was looking through the photos on this blog and I realized that I either did not transfer all the posts (of my cooking at the new house) over from nibblezware, or I forgot to post some of them in the first place.

This was one of the first dishes I cooked at my new kitchen. I saw that the tofu auntie at the wet market was selling those giant bean sprouts, which are a absolute delight in bibimbap. I am quite a fussy eater in that I do not like to eat those tiny bean sprouts unless their tails and heads are removed. For these big headed ones, I don't mind the heads, but will still remove the tails.

This bibimbap contains cucumbers, carrots (both of which I blanched quickly), shredded egg, beef tossed with onions and garlic and my giant bean sprouts. To make the sauce for this is very simple, buy the readymade chilli paste from any decent Korean market and mix it with miso and water. Boil and dump on top (I usually pepper mine for extra kick). Yummz.