How to Make: Korean Seafood Pancake (Haemul Pajun/Pajeon) (해물파전)(파煎)

Seafood Green Onion Pancake is a popular Korean side dish.  It is always available as a popular appetiser at Korean Restaurants, because of it's savoury and comforting taste.  Whenever I go to a Korean restaurant, I always order this because it's so good.  It's sort of similar to the Chinese pancake, except much easier because it does not require kneading the dough. Today, I made this Korean Green Onion Pancake with my mum.  It's actually very easy to make, and it's tonne cheaper than ordering in a restaurant.  The sharp taste of the green onion becomes mild after it has cooked.  The pancake becomes crispy on the outside, but very soft and slightly mushy in the centre.  It contrasts really well with the taste of the seafood.  If you don't like seafood, leave it out, and just add in more vegetables like carrot or more green onion.  I like to have a lot of squid in the pancake, so I used mostly squid, some octopus, crab and prawns.  Customise the ingredients yourself, it's really fantastic and easy to make!  Be sure to serve the sauce with it, it brings all the flavours together.

How to Make: Jajangmyeon/Jajiangmien/Jajangmyun Black Bean Sauce on Hand Pulled Noodles (자장면)(炸酱面) Koreanised Chinese Food

It's December already, so it's time for some hearty food to warm up from the cold.  Zha jiang mian/Jajangmyeon in Korean, is a traditional Chinese dish, composed of a sweet black bean sauces, meat and other delicious ingredients on top of chewy hand pulled wheat noodles.  It's really good, and sometimes it can be spicy too. But today, this recipe is the Korean version of this classic dish, which tastes completely different, but it is very delicious as well.  Originally, the Chinese version has a combination of fermented bean sauces like, sweet bean sauce, yellow soybean paste (similar to miso), and/or broad bean sauce.  The Korean version uses Jajang, a black bean sauce combined with caramel which gives it a charcoal like taste.  It's slightly sweet, and it's very interesting.  There is an instant ramen variety of this dish by Nongshim, ''Chapaghetti'' because this Chinese dish is so popular in Korea.  Usually it's ordered with Tangsooyuk or Sweet and Sour Pork, another popular Korean-Chinese Dish.  Make sure you get Korean style Black bean paste, it's completely different from the original Chinese one.  It's super easy and satisfying!

How to Make: Easy Cabbage Kimchi/Gimchee/Kimchee (김치) (沈菜)

Kimchi/Kimchee/Gimchee/Gimchi is a Korean side dish and most of the time, it's the first thing you think of when you hear about Korean food. It is served with almost every meal along with other side dishes. It is full of complexity and it is spicy, salty, crunchy and as time passes, sour. For this recipe, I learned this way of making Kimchi from my Korean host family when I was travelling a couple months back. She showed me how easy it was. One thing to watch out is that, make sure you use KOREAN chillies, not just any chili powder, it has to be KOREAN type. I've made it with the common hot pepper flakes,- it was beyond spicy, and the colour was not as bright too. You can get it (usually in big 500gm-1 kg bags) at Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese- almost any Asian market.

How to Make: Jjapchae: Korean Stir Fried Sweet Potato Starch Glass Noodles 잡채(雜 菜)

Recently, I've been trying out some Korean food that my mother used to make for fun.  Here's the first one: Jjapchae. Jjapchae or Chapchae is a delicious noodle side-dish loaded with healthy vegetables and flavour.  The colours of this dish makes it so appetizing.  It is slightly sweet and salty with a strong sesame taste to it.  The toasted sesame oil is the real key to this dish.  It adds a unique flavour to the entire dish, so be sure you use it!  The best thing of all though, it is extremely easy to make and it is quite a fast dish to make. The noodles are made out of sweet potato starch and are labelled sometimes as ''Sweet Potato Starch Noodles,'' ''Oriental Noodles'' or just ''Starch Noodles.''  It shouldn't be very difficult to find them in an Asian Supermarket.  But if you can't find them, you can use rice noodles which are a bit thinner.  This dish is so versatile, you can just use whatever vegetables you have in the fridge.  This dish is wheat free! Enjoy this recipe!

How to Make: Chinese Sweet Taro Paste (芋泥餡) ''Or Nee'' Dim Sum/Yum Cha Filling

Taro Paste is a common and relatively a new filling to see in Chinese pastries, steamed buns and desserts.  Chinese pastries are usually filled with some kind of paste whether it be red bean paste, lotus seed paste, black bean paste, black sesame paste, chestnut paste... the list goes on.  The taro paste however, is my favourite and the easiest, quickest one to make.  Taro (芋头 yù tou) is a starchy root vegetable that originated from Hawaii.  It is used in various cuisines such as Hawaiian, African Japanese, Chinese, and almost all Southeast Asian cuisine.  The flesh of the root has a murky grey-ish tint to it with specks of purple.  When it is cooked, the purple specks tints the entire vegetable giving it a beautiful cloudy-purplish colour.  The texture of a taro is like a potato, with a little less moisture and has a distinct taste to it.  It has a mildly-sweet, coconut-like flavour which complements many Chinese dishes.  It served at Dim sum/Yum Cha  restaurants as a filling in the Coconut Pudding Jelly (椰汁糕), Pineapple buns, Steamed buns, baked buns, etc.  Taro paste is very exciting to see and taste whenever it is inside a bun because it fits so well, texturally, visually and flavour-wise.  Plus, when do you ever get to eat something purple that isn't food coloured?

   It is so easy to make, you can start filling your cakes, puddings, buns, and even savoury foods with it.   You can serve by itself as a dessert which is called ''Or Nee'' which is a bowl of taro paste, topped with a little bit of sugary syrup, and peanuts.  You can get taro at all Asian grocery markets.  Pandan is the Southeast Asian version of vanilla, but has a completely different profile in taste.  You can find the extract in bottles or the leaves frozen in the freezer section, or if you're really lucky, the fresh leaves.  But you can use vanilla if you can't find it at your Asian grocery store.

How to make: The Best Banana Chocolate Chunk Loaf/Cake Recipe

Having bananas that have too many brown spots is not the most appetising thing to eat, but they're super for making banana cake or bread! I had 3 bananas that had would not be so pleasant if eaten as is, so I used them to make a cake! The addition of chocolate and nuts make this really stand out! This recipe is one that I made up right on the spot too, and it better than all the other recipes I've tried out before.  Give it a go and you'll be happy you did.

How to Make: Emperor Pork 皇帝豬肉- Father's recipe-Traditional Chinese Recipe

Today, I didn't cook.  My dad did, and he made his signature, "Emperor Pork."  He would always cook this dish whenever we demanded.  It's a traditional Chinese dish that he grew up with, but has a slight Malaysian twist to it with the Kecap Manis (Sweet Soy Sauce).  Kecap Manis is soysauce that has been boiled down and sweetened with palm sugar. You can get this at most Asian markets nowadays, or you can find it on amazon.com Find Kecap Manis on Amazon.com.  If you don't want to go through the trouble of doing this you can just use 50 mL of dark soysauce with 30 gm of brown sugar.
It is a fairly simple dish to make, and it is sooo delicious on some white rice!  It's sweet, salty, sour and very delicious!  The preserved mustard is a very common sight at Asian markets, just be sure to ask the local storekeeper, because most probably, it won't be translated into English.  The preserved mustard are the leaf of the mustard plants, that have been drenched in salt in the packaging process to preserve it, giving it a unique sour and salty taste.  Be sure that you rinse it very well before adding it to your dish otherwise your dish will come out very salty!

Here is what my dad calls, "Emperor Pork"!

Tutorial:How to make Instant Ramen Noodles

Rainy Philly, PA, USA

Being in my apartment in Philadelphia, USA, I had no food.  I arrived late because of a delayed bus, missing the train from Newark to Philadelphia.  All I had was a packet of Neoguri noodles and some dumplings in the freezer.  Since I haven't written on here for a while, I thought I might as well just write a tutorial on how to make the easiest thing in the world.  It's not the healthiest thing in the world.  That's because the deep fry the noodles before the package them to extend their shelf life.  Then you add a flavouring packet which is full of sodium, MSG, dead fish (not that it's that bad).

But heck, whatever, It's only once in a blue moon.  So here is....

 How to make Instant Ramen Noodles from a packet.  I had the Neoguri Udon Spicy Seafood flavour (the best).  

Instant Homemade Microwave Southeast Asian-Chinese Dinner

Easy Southeast Asian Flavoured Dumplings- In the Microwave!

Right now, I'm in Ottawa staying at the dormitories of the University of Ottawa and unfortunately, there are no appliances in the dorm's kitchen except a microwave, a sink, and a fridge/freezer.  It's sort of like in a hotel situation where I sort of have to eat out practically because the kitchen is quite incomplete.  But I was hungry and it was late, and had only a few things in the fridge and freezer which were frozen chinese dumplings, cilantro, one egg, a packet of white vinegar, a packet of toasted sesame oil, a packet of chili sauce and a small packet of Kikkoman's soy sauce.  But I ended up making a delicious dinner.
Click the ''Read More'' on the right to see how I made it without a stove.

How to make: Japanese Chicken Curry Rice カレーライス- Shortcut Version

My Easy Japanese Curry In a Hurry on Rice

Japanese Curry
I love all types of curry.  Who doesn't?  But there are so many different types of curries, you've got the curries of different regions  of India, Thai, Indonesian, Malay, Singapore, Japanese, Chinese, United Kingdom.... the list goes on!  Each one of these curries are so varied and so different, and yet, when you taste each curry from a different country, you will still know that you're eating some form of curry.  I find that really amazing.