November is…kimchi making season

Kimchi is a dish which is served with every meal in Korea. Whether it’s for breakfast, lunch or dinner, the meal will not be complete without some sort of kimchi.

There are many types of kimchi and it is made by fermenting and pickling various types of vegetables with seasoning.

In Korea, November is the  month where they make Paechu kimchi- cabbage kimchi. All over Korea, families gather together to make this kimchi.

According to Wikipedia, kimchi can be traced back to ancient times. References to kimchi can be found as early as 2600–3000 years ago.

The pictures below are taken not far from where I live. These ladies were making Kimchi for the restaurant that they were working in.

As you can see for yourself, they are making A LOT of kimchi.

Buckets full on kimchi!

First they soak it in salt water or brine for a few hours and then drained.

Next, they rub it with spicy paste made of garlic, ground dried chilies, anchovy sauce, scallion and oysters or small shrimps.

(The ingredients varies depending on the region, season and availability )

Then, they just keep in these big bins ( traditionally, kimchi were stored in jars)

Compressing and packing it all in.

Finally, they are left for days, weeks or months to ferment. The longer the kimchi ferments, the stronger the taste and aroma.

After fermenting it, kimchi can be stored in the refrigerator. In Korea, Kimchi plays such an important role for every Korean, that they even have a special refrigerator just for storing kimchi.

Autumn in Korea is not only beautiful, it is also interesting with ‘kimchi- making ‘ stumbles like above.

If you happen to be in Korea around this time, don’t forget to look out for ‘Kimchi making events’ and  ladies (like the above) making kimchi.

Autumn Colours in Seoul

You know autumn is here when the nights starts to get chilly and the leaves are slowly changing colour.

These are just some pictures I took a few days ago.

Just a quick update on what is going on, my brother and his girlfriend is coming this weekend and I’m super excited.

I’ve been baking cookies and all sort of other goodies for them the whole day and I will showing them around Seoul and will be bringing them around to all these nice places where I took these pictures.

In the meantime, I hope you will enjoy the pictures of the changing colours of the trees around Seoul.

This is the view from the Cafe which I was sitting in. What a lovely view. I won’t mind looking at this every morning from my window.

Hello autumn, goodbye summer and see you next year…

Chocolate, Almond and Black Cherry Cookies

Are you a chewy-cookie-person or a crunchy-cookie-person? When the mood strikes I crave for a chewy cookie but most of the time, I am a crunchy cookie person.

I don’t know if this has anything to do with the fact that I am Malaysian and someone once remarked that Malaysians don’t like soft cookies. Well, … does anyone have another explanation for this?

I love cookies and bake them all the time but I don’t know why I never thought of doing a post about cookies. Perhaps most of the time they are devoured before I could even take pictures of it!

Like many things I may be know for, eating a whole batch of cookies in one sitting is not something uncommon. I am not proud of admitting I’ve done it but sometimes I get carried away doing it…

Growing up I had to help my mother to make Chinese New Year cookies and I had to make A LOT!

Mum had to make a lot because her cookies were so famous that everyone in the family wanted some! Not forgetting her friends too, the neighbours, the postman. And in order to meet such high demand, the children were cheap substitute for expensive backing machinery.

Hours after hours we sat at the table rolling various types of little marble-sized balls cookies of an array of flavors. I was never very good at getting it REALLY round. Something my younger brother is better at. But I was good at testing it.

Yup! I represent the Department of Quality Assurance and Cookie Standards.

By the time the cookies were ready for Chinese New Year, I was so sick of it I don’t even want to see it – until next year when the ordeal starts all over again. Sigh.

The cookies we made were not the big, American style cookies. They are small, dainty little things sometimes decorated with little flower petals and leaves made from pastry. So dainty you need tweezers just to get on the jam tart!

Now, all grown up-ish and making my own cookies, I prefer big-ass chunky cookies that you can just…munch and crumble all over your shirt

I don’t know why but I have never made those small cookies again. Maybe it will take me some time before I miss them and appreciate them. But for now, only these cookies will do.

Recipe:

Makes about 24 medium size cookies.

80g dark chocolate or milk chocolate roughly chopped into chunks

1 1/3- cup flour

½ tsp bicarbonate soda

1/3 cup chopped dried dark cherries. (I used Bing Cherries by Stoneridge Orchards)

1/3 cup chopped toasted almonds

1 drop almond extract

1-cup sugar (you can use brown sugar if you want. I used half brown sugar and half white sugar)

70g butter soft and slightly melted. (I used less butter than normal cookie recipes but it’s still yummy)

1 egg

Method:

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius.

Beat the butter and sugar together until well incorporated. Then add in the egg, almond extract, nuts, chocolate and dry cherries.

Fold in the dry ingredients and don’t over mix it.

Scoop it with a teaspoon and arrange it on a baking tray. Bake at for 13-16 minutes.

Cool in on a wire rack and keep well in an airtight container for 7 days.

The cookies never made it to day 7 in my household. Usually they are gone on the same day.

Midweek treat! Lemon, poppy seed & yogurt cake.

The last few weeks have been a blast. Catching up with friends, going shopping and hanging out with my friend Ute from Germany.

It’s nice sometimes when I have moments like this in between work and I get to relax and catch up with all the things I need to do- like household chores for example. It also gives me more time to muck around in the kitchen.

Last week we had home made pasta with Bolognese sauce that took half the day to slow brew.

My friend Ute has kindly brought me some poppy seeds (among other goodies that I can’t get here) from Germany with her.  I used to make poppy seeds and lemon muffins when we were still living in Germany. If you never tried it, you got to.

Here, I used it to make a lemon yogurt cake tastes even better.

I added plums on the top of the cake (trying to sneak in more fruits to our daily intake) but you can omit it if you don’t want it.

Recipe:

2tbsp butter, soften

1 large egg

1/3-cup yogurt

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp baking powder

1 ½-cup flour sifted

5 tablespoon sugar

1/3- cup poppy seeds

Juice and zest of 1 lemon

3 plums thinly sliced (optional)

Method:

First, preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Beat the sugar and the butter until it’s well mixed and add the egg and yogurt.

Next, add the zest and juice and fold in the dry ingredients.

If you choose to add the plums, just lay the slices on top of the cake batter and bake it for 25-30 minutes until it is done.

If you want to glaze the cake, dilute 1 tablespoon of apricot jam with a bit of hot water and brush it over the cake.

Last night’s dinner- Crispy Mustard Chicken with buttered Haricot Verts

It has been a wonderful weekend. I finally decided which camera to get a new camera and I settled with a Nikon D80 DSLR. It is my first DSLR and I am really excited. Now I have to find the time to read the manual (Yes, yes, I know, how boring but I am one of those people who actually read the manual… )

I had a chance to just give it a go and took few shots on Sunday when we walked up Namsan Mountain in the centre of Seoul.

Here is a picture of the Namsan tower from a far.

And the view from above.

Gorgeous day. Nice walk up the mountain and then we met some friends for a cuppa coffee and to catch up.

On the way back, Frank was already asking me what we are having for dinner. Hehe…hungry already I see… “I don’t know yet” I replied. “I know what we have in the fridge but I have not decided what to do or how to cook it yet” “Oh…okay” he replied.

So once we got home, I knew I had to get dinner out quickly because we were both getting very hungry.

Staring at the chicken fillets, half a squash that needed to be eaten, some haricot verts and cold potatoes, out came this dish.

Chicken fillets, coated with white wine mustard and black pepper and coated in Panko or breadcrumbs. You can use any mustard that you like and if you don’t want a too strong mustard flavor, add a bit of Greek yogurt or crème fraiche to tone it down a little.

I lay it on top of my diced squash and popped it into the oven.

There are 3 advantages by doing this:

1) Chicken stays crispy and I don’t have to turn it over

2) Less to wash up (trays, etc.)

3) And you can save the space in the oven for other things that you might want to pop in there, like I did, some pre-cooked but cold potatoes for instance!

Bake this:

at 190-200 degree Celsius for 20 minutes or until the chicken is slightly browned. This is a healthy way to cook crispy chicken with a crunchy without using any oil or frying.

While waiting for the chicken and the squash to be ready, you can prepare the beans.

Blanch the beans in salted boiling water for about 2 minutes and cool it immediately in ice-cold water to stop the beans from cooking further.

Then fry some chopped garlic in a bit of butter and olive oil until it starts to color just a bit. Add the beans and fry until the garlic turns caramel color and the beans are done. Season with salt to taste and it’s ready to be served.

Fish out the rest from the oven, add some butter shavings to the squash and potatoes, grind some black pepper and YAY! dinner is ready. A healthy dinner ready under 30 minutes.

Hungry as we were, we wolfed it all down in 15 minutes!

Wanna know how I ate my chicken? Hehehe… Don’t judge me but I must admit that I LOVE eating the chicken with a bit of ketchup. Give it a try