Category: Japanese/Korean

Desserts, Japanese/Korean
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Pretty isn’t it?

So my friends are K-Drama fans and apparently there’s this Korean strawberry milk that’s very popular because of a Korean drama series. I didn’t watch that series but was intrigued by the milk! 🤣

So this is how it’s made. Firstly, make the strawberry purée of sorts. But up 8-10 strawberries and add that to a pot with 1 cup of sugar and let it reduce.

Then in a glass pour some of this strawberry mixture, then full cream fresh milk (the best you can find), add ice and then top it up with fresh strawberry slices.

Making the ‘ jam’.
I topped mine with a sprig of fresh mint too.

Something different to enjoy on a hot hot hot day!

Asian Dishes, Japanese/Korean

Easy Japanese Bowl

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Even though it finally rained here today, it’s still super hot immediately after the rain is over. It’s been so so hot so I have no energy to cook.

But the family needs lunch. And so the easiest thing to cook is really a Japanese bowl.

Pretty, no?

All I needed to do was:

1. Make the tamago from scratch

2. Use bottled teriyaki sauce on the salmon belly

3. Use leftover ingredients like pickled carrots from when I made banh mi and freshly cut cucumbers

4. Make an easy miso soup using packaged dashi soup stock and dried seaweed with leftover fishballs/mushroom balls from when I made yong tau foo (Singapore/Malaysian dish. I’ll share this one day)

5. Tomago. Bottled purchased from a supermarket

The rest is all about assembling.

Those dumplings were frozen bought from a supermarket and just fried and steamed.

A simple Japanese affair on a weekend. Enjoy the weekend, everyone!

Bread and Batter, Cakes and Cookies, Japanese/Korean

Matcha Mille Crepe

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I’ve been wanting to make this for the longest time after watching it on YouTube by JOC – Just One Cookbook. I just love the easy way she presents recipes.

And so I did. A few problems though for the novice-ish cook.

1. I couldn’t flip the crepes. They would tend to tear so in the end I decided to cook just one side of it

2. I did the paper cross thing she did to life the entire cake. Excel that…once you lift and place it into the cling film bowl, I couldn’t seem to take out the paper underneath! It was a two person job lifting and manipulating the cake so the papers would come off

3. Our heat and humidity. By the time I finished assembling the cake, the cream has melted and they all kind of slipped off. And the more I tried to remove the paper underneath, the messier it got!

But all went well after I managed to put it in the fridge for two hours. After that, the shape held well and the cut was beautiful. And I could cover slight tears with the powdered matcha!

Here is the recipe I followed: Matcha Mille Crepe Recipe: JOC

Can you see that huge tear? That came about as I was trying to remove the Crepe from the pan . That’s the paper which I had difficulty removing afterwards!
This picture has a filter because I realise I didn’t take several good photos of the whole cake. Notice the lopsided shape? This happened because of our hot and humid weather which made the entire cake drop as I was trying to get it into shape in the cling film
But all’s well that ends well and I love this cake! Not sweet, just the way I like my desserts, actually.
Best eaten chilled! Yummy!
Asian Dishes, Japanese/Korean, Meat, Rice, Snack

Gimbap

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Today’s light lunch of Korean gimbap. Easy to make and easy to eat!

First, prepare short grain Japanese rice. Pickled daikon strips, carrot strips and fried beef slices that had been marinated with soy sauce.

Place seaweed onto a rolling bamboo mat with rice and all the other ingredients. Then roll tight.

Once rolled, brush with a light layer of sesame oil.

With a sharp knife, cut into slices and enjoy! This was really good on a hot weekend. I’ll be making this for work lunches soon!

Asian Dishes, Japanese/Korean, Noodles and Pasta

Japchae

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A few years ago I posted a very lazy version of japchae: just using the noodles but stir frying it like how SE Asians fry noodles.

Yesterday I tried doing it the traditional Korean way ie to cook each ingredient individually and mix them into the noodles instead of stir frying them.

For the noodles, after boiling them, season with 6 tbsp of light soy sauce, 1 tbsp is sesame oil and 1 tbsp of yondu sauce. This yondu sauce can only be found in Korean grocery stores. And because I can’t read Korean, until today I do not know what it is. My BIL who married a Korean said that it is simply ‘magic sauce’ 😂

For the beef, I marinated with light soy sauce and erm worschestershire sauce. Not so authentically Korean here but that’s my liberty as a cook! Lol

For the carrots, stir fry till soft but there’s still a nice bite to it with chopped garlic, light soy sauce and the yondu sauce. I seasoned the sliced white button mushrooms the same way.

Mix the cooked ingredients into the noodles gently and sprinkle lots of sesame seeds. And voila! Japchae.