Forays into Korean Food

Blame H-mart - the new Korean megastore that has opened up near our home recently. It's a huge store with a great fish/sushi selection, whole area for kimchi, a food court, a posh bakery etc. We go there often at weekends - where you fight with other asians for a parking space. Once in, they are cooking up a storm in food samples - dumplings, fruit, fish, korean bbq etc. Our grocery bills have doubled but food quality of life - definitely have gone up 3 notches! I see odd ingredients, buy them and work out what to do with them on the net. Owning my trusty H-mart calendar (with 12 recipes) plus access to all the correct ingredients means I can now cook jap chae, bibimbap, scallion pancakes, beef bulgogi and the fabulous hot tofu kimchi stew called soondooboo jjiagae.

Cheap strawberries!

Something odd has happened this year - a 1lb punnet of strawberries is going for $1.99 in April! Apparently, there is an abundance of strawberries due to a mass freeze over the winter and now there are too much strawberries ripening. Prices have bottomed out. Some farmers are letting general public raid their strawberry fields free. Others are destroying their stock to preserve the price!! Last night, for dessert, I melted some white chocolate and 100% cacao together and dipped the strawberries in the chocolate. Presented in my new Liberty of London cake tiered plate!

Vanilla Cupcakes - Valentine's and CNY

This year, CNY First day and Valentine's Day fell on the same day - February 14!

For a CNY party, I made "Love or Money" cupcakes. Offer them to people and find out which one they take! Interesting....

I also bought some heart-shaped silicone cupcake containers which made these lovely heart-shaped cupcakes (reuseable too).

CNY - Tiger Year 2010

This year, had our usual Chinese New Year gathering. As always, had to cook up at least 8 dishes - this is one of my favorites - pork-stuffed zucchini with dried scallops. Secret to making the pork stuffing is to make sure your pork is not too lean (pork butt is a great cut for this). Dried shittake mushrooms, scallions, water chestnuts, sesame oil all add to the flavour of the stuffing. And of course, having a food processor makes this very very easy! For the dried scallops in the sauce, you need to soak these and then steam them for 20 mins.