12Jul / 2019

Mixed Plate

MEAT LOAF. I know this is considered whatever kine food for people but I really enjoy it and find it comforting. I also like the making of the meat loaf. I love putting all the ingredients together in the bowl in a pretty way and then mixing it. Looks good ah? Well not delicious good, just good good.

Meat Loaf, Rice and…can you guess what the yellow and red thing is? It’s a bit shameful actually…

I found a recipe online for a quick elote corn. Um, don’t do that. First off, I didn’t have lime, only lemon so that was a big mistake on my part. And crushed up flaming hot cheetos on top? What was I thinking? Don’t follow any kine recipe okay? Next time I will leave out the cheetos, find some limes…and make it GOOD.

Okay let’s move to something I am proud of. Look at this refreshing and absolutely delicious watermelon dessert I made! I drew inspiration from this video, he made it look so good. I had to improvise. I found mini seedless watermelons from Costco. Bought some strawberry popping boba from Don Q and the scene was set! Balled up some melon, crushed up the leftover flesh to create watermelon juice. Poured the juice back into the melon shell, added the balled melon on top…topped it with condensed milk and then the popping boba. Sugar bomb? Yes. Worth it? Absolutely yes!

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23Aug / 2017

Recipe: Soon Dubu with Pork Belly

Do you folks follow Maangchi on YouTube? I have been following her channel for years and have made a few recipes which have all been successes! My biggest challenge to come…homemade kimchee. It’s time to up my game and make some good kimchee myself. I’m stressed just thinking about it! But excited as well.

I learned from her how to make some of the BEST Korean soups. The golden base of Korean soups are pretty basic: daikon, seaweed, and dried anchovies. Sounds simple but it makes all the difference in the world. Here are some pictures of a soon dubu I made before, recipe can be found here.

GOLDEN BROTH!!!!!

Did you know there is a special tofu to use to make the best soon dubu? Yes, it comes in this packaging at the Korean supermarkets! Yummmm…

Frying up some pork belly. So this recipe was a play on her recipe, I had some old kimchee that goes really well with pork belly so I made a soup out of it.

Ooooh…that looks sooo good.

Just get me a bowl of that purple rice they serve up and I’ll just be in heaven…

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04Aug / 2017

Mochi Experiment: Cupcake and Mini Cupcake Pans

I got a super good question last week about how mochi would come out in different pans. Once that question was posted, I knew I had to do an experiment of my own! Baking mochi in a cupcake pan would yield single servings of mochi…and with that…plenty massive crust pieces. A lot of my coworkers enjoy the edge pieces so I had to give this a try.

I made a butter recipe that is made for a 13 x 9 pan. I followed this recipe from ‘Ono Kine Grindz: Butter Mochi!

Mini Cupcake Pan – I tried to not fill each too full in case the mochi rises.

Finished Product – Mini Cupcake Pan
350 Degree Oven – 35 Minutes (this was with a cupcake pan and a 9 x 9 pan as well)

Look at how brown and crusty each piece was! I made it the night before and served it up to the office guinea pigs…and guess what? All the crust loving folks loved the mini cupcake version of the mochi! To me…it’s like all crust but still has a bit of softness inside.

Caveats: Even though it’s butter mochi, the mochi pieces definitely stuck onto the pan. I had to really scrape each piece out…and then I had to let the pan soak before I could get out all the crust residue. Was it worth the trouble? I wouldn’t say so….

Cupcake Pan – I filled this one up a bit more than the mini cupcake pan. It worked out okay!

Finished Product – Cupcake Pan
350 Degree Oven – 43 Minutes (this was with a mini cupcake pan and a 9 x 9 pan as well)

I enjoyed this version a bit more. It has the nice brown edges but still remains nice and soft inside…and it’s a bigger piece! The mini cupcake pan has too small servings…haha

9 x 9 Pan: Leftover Mochi Batter after Cupcake and Mini Cupcake Pan

Finished Product – 9 x 9 Pan
350 Degree Oven – 43 Minutes (this was with a mini cupcake pan and a cupcake pan as well)

That’s another caveat to this recipe, I had leftover batter so I had to use another pan. Thankfully I have this smaller pan, the pieces came out good but a bit thin for my taste.

Another picture of the mochi pieces. Do you see how the mini cupcake mochi is separated? I feel like it gets a bit dry so as I tried to take the mochi pieces out of the pan, the top crust separated from the bottom piece. If I had to make this mini cupcake version again, I would start checking the doneness earlier. I would probably start checking at 20 minutes with a toothpick.

So what do you think? Do you think you would try any of these options? I wish I had more than one cupcake pan, then I would make this recipe again. I don’t want to wait 40 minutes each batch to make it then have to wash the pan and start it over again!

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18May / 2017

Recipe: Lemon Pudding Mochi with Fresh Blueberries

Earlier this week, I had this sudden craving for something lemon-y. Then I thought, gotta make something lemon with blueberry because they complement each other so well! I found a recipe for Lemon Pudding Mochi from the Honolulu Advertiser and it got started from there! The recipe by itself sounds and looks great already but I just had to play around with it to include the in-season blueberries (and Times had ’em on sale)! So I made adjustments to the recipe and created my own, no coconut (not a fan of shredded coconut) and pile on the blueberries! I was a bit scared of how it would turn out, baking is such a science and you just never know what will come out of the oven. Well, I made ’em, brought ’em to work, and everyone loved them! Including me. 🙂 The original recipe calls for lemon extract which I didn’t have so I used lemon zest…which I think actually makes the recipe better! First some pics…then the recipe!

Check it out guys…the mochi texture was PERFECT. Smooth and soft…with a wonderful brown crust on the sides. Wish I could have had this right out of the oven! The lemon flavor comes through perfectly.

Plump blueberries ready to eat! Much better than the canned kine, this recipe is already so sweet…it’s good to use fresh blueberries so you don’t make it sickly sweet.

I actually mixed the blueberries into the batter and was a bit afraid they would sink to the bottom. To my surprise, the blueberries floated all to the top! The batter of this is pretty thick so I think that’s why the blueberries went up to the top. Ahh…this recipe worked out so well! I almost wanted to keep it all to myself. 🙂

Lemon Pudding Mochi with Fresh Blueberries

Ingredients
16 ounces mochiko sweet rice flour (1 box)
2 ¼ cups sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 (3 ounce) box instant lemon pudding
2 cups coconut milk
1 cup 2% milk
1 (1/2 cup) package unsalted butter, melted
5 eggs, lightly beaten
3 lemons worth of finely grated lemon zest
9 oz. fresh blueberries (I used 1 ½ of those 6 oz. blueberry clamshells from the supermarket)

Directions
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Get a 13 x 9 glass pan.
In a large bowl, stir together sweet rice flour, sugar, baking powder, grated lemon and pudding.
With a balloon whisk, gradually whisk in coconut milk and dairy milk to beat out lumps.
One at a time, stir in melted butter, then the beaten eggs.
Gently stir in the blueberries.
Pour into baking dish.
Bake 1 hour or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

No real notes on this recipes, I put my ingredients and instructions as is! I hope you folks get to make it, let me know how it comes out if you do! Enjoy!

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27Jul / 2016

Recipe: Cheese Meatballs

Do you folks follow those recipe video pages on Facebook? They make the recipes look so easy and the videos are so short! I follow Cookat and I know it’s a Korean based video company and they make some yummy looking food. Koreans have been into cheesy everything lately and this recipe is no different. I want to get bigger skewers like the video has but I can’t find any in person…and I’m just going to eat it anyway so I did away with the skewers. Here are some pictures, link to their recipe and video follows below.

Meatball mixture ready to be mixed, rounded and cooked!

Here are the meatballs ready to go. I bought a fresh mozzarella ball and cut them into squares for these meatballs.

Sizzling away…look at the cheese coming through the cracks! That’s a mistake but isn’t it a lovely mistake to look at?

They use bleu cheese dressing on the balls in the video. I used some ranch but really dressing is not needed. The sauce you make for the meatballs is good seasoning enough.

Recipe: Cookat: Cheese Meatball Skewer

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09Jan / 2016

Recipe: Almond Cookies

One day, I was feeling like some almond cookies. Since I was in a cooking mood, I decided to make the almond cookies myself. To my surprise, the cookies were very easy to make and delicious! I have never used Crisco before this and was pleasantly pleased with how the cookies came out. You definitely need to use Crisco or the cookies won’t have the same crunchy texture.

Doesn’t this look yummy??

Cookies from scratch. I sifted all the ingredients together.

Wish I had round edges on my chopsticks, the red dot would have been more like a circle…

Here is how the cookie will look if you try to move it right after taking it out of the oven. You need to let the cookies cool on the pan for at least 5 minutes before you can move them. The cooling will allow the cookies to harden, fresh out of the oven will be too soft in texture.

Perfect Almond Cookie!

I followed the recipe exactly from House of Annie: Chinese Almond Cookie Recipe.

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01Oct / 2015

Recipe: Harako-Meshi

Two posts in a week?! Wow. I stayed after work today and did a few hours of studying, I’m pretty proud of myself. Next week is the last big event and then I’ll still be consistently busy but not as crazy busy. Fingers crossed. So I made this dish last week! Check out this picture…

Looks professional yeah? Salmon rice with ikura and shiso leaf. Yum…shiso leaf goes so well with salmon!

I don’t have an earthen-ware pot so I used my rice cooker. I seared the salmon in a pan really quick and then added it to the raw rice. The raw rice is filled to the right water line which I then added two tablespoons each of shoyu and mirin. I think I could have added at least 3 tablespoons of each.

Here is the rice all ready! I made a slight mistake on this recipe, I didn’t debone it completely so I didn’t share it with anyone. Leftovers store well! I used a rice paddle and flaked the salmon right into the rice.

Mmm the ikura makes such a difference. I went to Nijiya last week so I got the salmon, ikura and shiso leaf from there. This dish was ono! I got the recipe from here. If you don’t follow him on YouTube, you must! He is crazy great at cooking and if he makes like an udon dish, he will make the noodles from scratch. I admire him so much. I didn’t have time to make the shoyu marinated ikura but it tasted great anyhow. I also left the skin on my salmon while he removed the skin on his. I like the skin so I didn’t mind keeping it on!

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28Sep / 2015

Recipe: Creamy Shrimp and Mushroom Pasta

I made a new recipe today and made it my absolute goal to share it with you folks. I was very excited to try this recipe and realized only when I started cooking what it called for. 10 TABLESPOONS OF BUTTER. TEN. And umm…then I looked at the amount of pasta. 6 OUNCES. What? That’s insane. I don’t know about you folks but I prefer recipes that go by the box because I just rather use it all then save it for later and remember how many ounces are left. I’m lazy that way. So I made many adjustments, wrong adjustments but I can kind of share what I did. I definitely did not add more butter even though I used more pasta…is this how Italian restaurants cook??

How does this look? This was before I made a few adjustments because…bugga was RICH. Looks pretty right?

You can never have enough garlic. Never.

Crimini Mushrooms

Does it help that two of the ten tablespoons of butter is used to saute the mushrooms? I didn’t think so.

Don’t these shrimp look great? Sorry, I just feel so proud at how I cooked them. I got them from Don Quijote on sale.

Chiffonade of Basil (yes, I had to look up that word)

What makes this sauce creamy? Cream cheese. All cream cheese. Oh yeah, there’s the butter in this pan. Along with garlic and basil, smelled so ono.

It will be super lumpy until you throw in the pasta water, then it smoothes out real quick!

Here is everything mixed together….mmm….

So what did I do after I ate this and didn’t like it? I added chicken broth. A LOT of chicken broth to thin out the sauce. I also added more cracked black pepper and squeezed a lemon in there. Cream sauces are so tricky, especially for reheating. I packed a couple of containers for lunch this week and poured in more chicken broth to help it not be a clumpy mess when I reheat them.

I got the recipe here. I know I didn’t sell it too well in this post but if you want to make the recipe, please do! I think I messed it up by adding my own quantities. If any of you do want to know the quantities I used, let me know and I can share it. Have a great week folks!

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01Aug / 2015

Recipe: Beef Ddukgalbi

Happy August! Things are moving slowly but surely along…my kitchen has finally progressed and I just purchased a fridge from Lowe’s. Oh gosh, things were stagnant for so long that I almost no can believe I’m going to have a kitchen soon. Life has been busy busy busy and I’m too old to bounce back like I used to. I had to work an extra day last week for a training and I swear, I spent all week recovering. I woke up today at 7:14 am and felt ecstatic because that for me is sleeping in. It’s going to be a good day!

Anyhow, today I am sharing an awesome recipe with you folks. I got it from Foodland but I’ll post my slightly tweaked recipe. The bosc pears add a great crunch, moistness and sweetness to the beef patties. I’ve made it both in the meat jun style and the non-meat jun style and I must recommend the meat jun style. It just tastes so much better that way!

Here they are after cooking. Sorry some parts look a bit black, it’s not burnt but I made a huge batch and didn’t realize how black the oil gets and so quick!

Meat jun style is so easy! Quick flip in the flour and then…

Throw it into some beaten eggs (do not add water to the eggs) and off to the pan!

Hard to hold the camera and the beef patty straight…but look at this thing! Delicious! And no need dipping sauce.

Had to include a picture of the patties on top of my famous kimchee fried rice. Who says it’s famous? Only me.

Mini Beef Ddukgalbi
Recipe Source: Foodland

Ingredients
1 Pound Ground Beef, 80/20 mix
2 Tablespoon shoyu
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 Tablespoon garlic, minced
1⁄2 each Asian or bosc pear, minced (I don’t mince it too small because I like the small chunks when I bite in)
1⁄2 each small onion, minced
1 1⁄2 Teaspoon sesame oil
1 stalk green onion, sliced
1⁄4 Teaspoon Black Pepper
1 Teaspoon Salt
1 1⁄2 Teaspoon Korean rice wine or sake
1 1⁄2 Teaspoon toasted sesame seeds

Meat Jun Style:
1⁄4 Cup flour
2 each eggs, whisked

Canola oil as needed

Instructions:

In a mixing bowl, combine all the ingredients except the oil, flour and eggs. Allow to marinate for at least 30 minutes to allow the flavor to develop (overnight okay).

For the mixture into little 1 inch patties – recipe yields about 24 mini patties.

Heat a grill or a skillet to medium high heat. Add in a thin layer of oil and fry until done. Be careful to watch them as the sugar will make them prone to burning.

Meat Jun Variation: Take the patties and lightly dredge in flour and then dip into the whisked egg. Fry in a pan to make a meat jun version.

Serve with rice and assorted panchan (Korean sides like kimchee, pickled garlic, and cucumber.)

Note: This recipe is different from the Foodland one I linked above…use whichever one you want! 🙂

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23Jun / 2015

Recipe: Black Bean Noodles (Jjajangmyun)

I hope Honolulu Aunty gets a chance to read this post! I know you mentioned liking these noodles so I wanted to show how easy it is to make at home! Recipe credits goes to Maangchi completely! Enjoy the pictures, I tend to put step by step pictures.

Looks good ah? Restaurant style!

Black Bean Paste, no substitutions!

Gotta get the noodles made for jjajang, it makes a difference.

Korean Radish (Daikon), Onion, Zucchini and Pork Belly.

Chop the pork up – I think I used about 4 slices for this recipe.

Korean Radish (daikon)

Zucchini

Onions

Fry up the bacon until they are crispy, then drain most of the oil away. I learned that I don’t care for the hard bits of pork in my jajangmyun so if I make this again, I’ll leave the pork out. That would make this dish vegetarian!

Then you start adding veggies to cook, you should add the vegetables according to how long it takes to cook down. I added the Korean radish first. Stir-fried for about 2 minutes and then added…

Zucchini! Another 2 minutes…

Onions! And yes, there is no garlic in this dish. Shocking right? But if you have had these noodles, you’ll know that the flavor is very mild.

Black Bean Paste!

Add water and let it simmer on medium heat.

After about 10 minutes, make the potato starch slurry and add it to the sauce. Simmer it a few minutes more to cook out the starch, look at how shiny the sauce gets! Once it’s about done, add sesame oil.