many mandu

i usually have to shop at the korean grocery store if i want mandu, korean dumplings. while perusing the local grocery stores, i tried to find any kind of dumpling, but sadly none of the stores sell dumplins, not even the chinese kind. so the last time i was at the korean grocery store, i bought some mandu skins to try and make them at home.

last weekend, i spent my saturday afternoon making 85 mandu (korean dumplings). i guess i had a lot of skins. i used a mandu recipe from my favorite korean cooking lady, maangchi. i did skip a few ingredients like mushrooms and korean chives because i couldn't get them. also i added thin vermicelli which i had in my cupboard. i made some shaped for frying and some made for soups.

what's nice is that they freeze very nicely. just lay them out on a baking sheet but make sure they're not touching each other. after they are frozen, you can store them in a ziploc bag. i fried a few mandu and i made dukk mandu gook (rice cake dumpling soup) afterwards. yum! great for those cold nights.

katsudon

my former roommate, bombelly, might not be a chef in the kitchen but surprisingly her brother is! he came to visit and stayed at our place for awhile. he made the best katsudon (pork cutlet with egg and rice).

i was going to try and make it following his recipe, but it was a bit more complicated and time consuming so i found another recipe for katusudon instead.

i adjusted the broth since i didn't have dashi. instead i used anchovy broth made from dried anchovy.
also i increased it from 100ml to about 400ml of anchovy broth.

comfort food

one of my comfort foods is nooroongji, burned rice. i know it probably doesn't sound appetizing. it's not completely burned.

before the age of the nonstick rice cooker, rice was made in simple pots. there was always a layer of rice stuck the bottom of the pot. koreans never waste anything, so by adding some hot water to the pot, you can have nooroongji bop (burned rice porridge).

some restaurants serve nooroongji bop with soft tofo spicy soup. the rice is brought in a stone bowl. after you scoop out the rice, they'll add hot water to the bowl.

growing up i never really had nooroongji because in our home we had a non stick rice cooker. one day my dad made it for me.

just take any leftover rice and spread it evenly on a frying pan. heat it until it turns a nice golden brown color. when it's done, add it to a pot of boiling water. let it simmer for about 5-10 minutes for the rice to soften. and then enjoy! great with kimchi.

kimbap with egg

there are those occasions where i might have leftover kimbap. what do you do with leftover kimbap? it doesn't taste great if you re-heat it in the microwave.

i learned a trick from my friend, juicy, when we used to live together in california. she actually learned this from her aunt.

crack an egg into a bowl and scramble it. then dip the kimbap in the egg coating all sides and then fry on a pan with a little bit of oil.

simple and easy!

spider web apple muffins

i still have a plethora of cooking apples in our garden. recently i found a recipe for apple muffins on my friend's facebook page. however, rather than just topping it with brown sugar as instructed i decided to do something for halloween.

so i made spider web apple muffins. the recipe for the apple muffins is below. i tried making a cream cheese frosting, but it turned out very runny. i think the cream cheese here must be different because usually it has a nice frosting consistency. well, it made the spider web look nice. i also added orange food coloring. to make the spider web, first frost the muffins. then i used a black gel cake decoration to make 3 concentric circles. with a toothpick starting from the center, make a line going towards the edge. keep doing this until you get the spider web pattern. then you have a pretty spider web.

i made so many muffins that i decided to take them to church. well i found out that children in the UK are not used to cream cheese frosting (or philadelphia as they call it here). when they see a muffin/cupcake, they expect a sugary surprise. well, one taste and they rejected the muffins. oh well... at least the adults enjoyed it!

Cream together:
2 cups sugar (I use 1 1/2 cups)
2 eggs (I added another egg)
1 cup oil
1 Tablespoon vanilla

Sift:
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon

3 cups peeled, cored, diced apples (around 3 apples)
Brown sugar for topping (around 1/2 cup)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees (gas mark 4) and line muffin pan with paper liners.

Cream together sugar, eggs, oil, and vanilla. Sift flour, baking soda, salt, and ground cinnamon (I never sift and they turn out fine). Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture and mix until combined. The batter will be very thick. Add the diced apples.

Fill paper liners almost to the top, about 3/4 of the way full. Sprinkle with brown sugar.

Bake at 350 degrees for 20-24 minutes. Makes 18 muffins.

pumpkin season

autumn has arrived which means that winter squash vegetables are now in season. generally i post about foods i've eaten or made, but this time this post is about something i've carved. my housemate and i decided to carve our own jack 'o lanterns, something we've actually never done before. so it was a first for the both of us.

this site, zombie pumpkins, has a pdf instructions on how to carve your pumpkin. i was amazed at some of the patterns people have carved. i was going to do something simple and easy, but then i had an epiphany! what if i carve the philadelphia eagles' logo? could i do it? it was tough to find a pattern, but i found a photo of a pumpkin that someone had done, and i decided to use that photo as a guideline.

i first drew the design onto my pumpkin. then i slowly started carving it out piece by piece starting from the middle and working my way out. overall, i think it turned out pretty neat! my housemate created a very happy jack 'o lantern. so now we have our two pumpkins sitting outside in the garden.

as i research pumpkin patterns, i also looked into what you can do with fresh pumpkin. unfortunately, pumpkins used for carving are not the right type of cooking pumpkins. however, i did find some recipes on roasting pumpkin seeds. so i first cleaned, rinsed and dried the pumpkin seeds. then i turned on the oven to 350 degrees (180 C/gas mark 4). i found a recipe on allrecipes.com for spiced maple pumpkin seeds. i altered it by using olive oil instead of butter to make it healthier. with the pumpkin seeds from my housemate's pumkin, i made a savory batch of seeds tossed in olive oil and salt sprinkled with paprika. i roasted them for about 40 minutes.

next time i might add some brown sugar to the sweet batch and maybe a dash of salt to make it sweet and savory. i preferred the savory batch better.

but definitely a nice little snack to enjoy!

kimbap at work

at work i organized a kimbap day. i wanted to give a lesson on how to make kimbap (korean rice wrapped in seaweed). i had about 10 people sign up to learn. i asked each person to bring seaweed, a bamboo mat, a cutting board, and a knife. you can easily find seaweed and a bamboo mat at most local stores around here. i also had each person prepare a component for the filling of the kimbap. i used videos and recipe from maangchi and aeri's kitchen so that they knew how to prepare the component. the only component unavailable locally was the danmunji (pickled radish) which i bought at the korean grocery store in new malden.

since each person pre-cooked and prepped their component beforehand, it was easy to heat up and set up one of our conference rooms for the lesson. first i demonstrated how to make one roll while everyone watched. then everyone started rolling their kimbap. it took some practice to get the kimbap to roll. some rolls were big. some rolls were small. overall, everyone loved it and enjoyed it.

for the recipe for kimbap, you can look at my earlier post for kimbap.