Category: Food (Page 19 of 22)

Korean food and recipes

Making Toast

2013/01/03 / Nic / 10 Comments

I’ve talked about how he doesn’t like me eating dried seaweed without rice before. But what about things I don’t like him eating in a certain way? Or things I find strange? A reader asked this on twitter 🙂

This was when he was working a job that started quite early in the morning. To cut time he thought it would be better to prepare his breakfast in advance. Unfortunately I don’t think toast that has been cooked and then put in the fridge for a few days is that tasty! Gross.

I think he realised quite soon that it was not the best way to have toast. These days because he starts work in the evening, we have breakfast together. He gets me to make him toast now because he says I make toast better than he does. I don’t know how you can mess up toast but I guess I do have a lifetime of making toast whereas he only started eating it in recent years. I actually always get him to put the rice on because when I make rice it’s never as good… even in a proper rice cooker! And he is like “How can you mess up rice?!” I guess sometimes it’s best to stick with what you know best.

Like and Dislike

2012/12/17 / Nic / 14 Comments

I was asked if there was any food from my country that I dislike, but my husband likes, and if there any Korean food that I like but he dislikes.

First up, let’s talk about Korean food. The answer is:

EVERYTHING! I’m much more picky about Korean food. I eat most of it but there are still things I won’t eat, like intestines, and I can be picky about how I eat things with bones. His mother makes amazing fried chicken but she knows I don’t like eating chicken right off the bones, so she’ll make sure I get all the boneless or near boneless bits. It’s really sweet, she puts all the good pieces directly on my plate.

So what about Australian/Western food? What does he like that I dislike? The major thing I can think of is steak.

I’m not a big meat eater (and slip in and out of vegetarianism) and prefer my portion of meat to be small with lots of vegetables. What I love about Korean food is the smaller and thinner meat portions and the way it’s integrated into the food, instead of just a slab of meat as in a lot of Australian cooking.

However, because Koreans in general are used to smaller portions of meat in Korea, they can get quite excited about the large and cheap cuts of meat in Australia. Australia has a big meat industry and has the space to pasture feed livestock. So my husband really enjoys a big steak but I cannot eat that much meat at once. And it’s pretty boring to me.

I have been disappointed a few times before, when invited to dinner by other Koreans who are living in Australia because I’ve expected to eat Korean food. Instead dinner will be just big chunks of meat barbequed or fried. While they think it’s great to be able to eat this much meat at once, for me, because I’ve grown up with Australian barbeques and an excess of meat, it’s not that great. I’d much prefer to be eating a variety of Korean dishes and have the meat much more marinated or seasoned and with vegetables. But I understand why they focus on the meat when in Australia.

In order to answer this question I was going through some of my favourite Korean foods/drinks to see if my husband dislikes any of them.

Me: “Banana Milk!”

Him: “Everyone likes that!”

Me: “The potato pancake your mother makes?”

Him: “Everyone likes that!”

And it went on…. I just like the popular food and he likes everything anyway.

Dried Seaweed

2012/12/05 / Nic / 19 Comments

The tables have turned! I’ve talked about how I criticize the way my husband eats certain things sometimes, but this is something he doesn’t like me doing.

Every time I eat dried roasted seaweed by itself he gets annoyed at me, telling me, “It’s not a snack! It’s a side dish! You have to eat it with other stuff!” Seems like a perfect snack food to me. Comes in little packs, has a nice savory salty taste.

He has explained that the reason why he says that is because as a child in Korea he wasn’t allowed to eat it as a snack. That was because instead of serving store bought dried seaweed, his mother would make it herself. So this involved a lot of work because it’s roasted with sesame oil and salt. So his mother (and other mothers it seems) didn’t like their kids just grabbing it for a snack.

BUT, I pointed out to him that we just buy it very cheaply from the Korean grocery store. He exclaimed, “It’s not cheap!” But then did some quick maths in his head and said, “Ah yeah… it is cheap.”

That doesn’t stop him from sighing in frustration every time I grab a packet from the cupboard to eat though.

Raisin Toast

2012/11/30 / Nic / 18 Comments

We both love sweet things but different sweet things. My tastes are more for things like chocolate and cake. My husband’s is for honey, honey, honey. In the morning if I make him breakfast he insists on toast with honey and a cup of tea with honey. I’m usually health conscious and only buy healthy bread full of grains and stuff. But I got some raisin toast bread the other day which he loved (and still slathered with honey). I’m not sure how raisin bread would taste with a chicken and avocado sandwich but I don’t doubt that he would try it. I’ve made him sandwiches before that had egg, cheese, and tomato sauce…. and he still added honey.

It is weird the difference taste in sweet things. He will complain that the caramel chocolate I’m eating is too sweet… but then goes and puts honey on everything.

(Also the nudity is an accurate representation of him these days. It’s coming into summer and the weather is very warm so he seems to have no use for clothes).

Eat! Eat!

2012/09/29 / Nic / 14 Comments

Sorry, had to draw this one quickly because of traveling. In this incident not only had we already had dinner and were full when we joined others in a Korean restaurant, but the only thing they were eating was was stir fried intestines. I just can’t eat it, but a plate of it was put in front of me and I was urged to eat. Luckily my husband rescues me at times like this because I don’t want to be rude and not eat, but I just couldn’t stomach it. I love most of Korean food and I do try new things, but I do have limits. I’m grateful to him at times like these.

In another post I’ll show what he does to make sure I don’t have to drink too much soju.

Lunch Differences

2012/09/28 / Nic / 27 Comments

When eating lunch at home we often eat something together, whether it be Western style or Asian style or a mix of both, but if we make lunch just for ourselves we can be quite different. I love my sandwiches, particular what we call ‘toasted cheese sandwiches’ here. He loves his Korean noodles and eats them on the floor, straight out of the pot (it’s a Korean thing apparently). I bet that’s what he is eating at home right now while I’m not there because he hates cooking anything more complicated than packet noodles. I’m at my parent’s house for a few days visiting but he has to stay in Sydney for work.

Let’s talk about food! What do you usually eat for lunch?

How to make Chocolate Covered Strawberries

2012/09/23 / Nic / 13 Comments

It’s Sunday! No comic today but I thought I’d show you have easy it is to make chocolate covered strawberries like the ones I made for my husband’s birthday.

What you need:

Strawberries– of course. They are cheap in Australia at the moment so I’m using 2 punnets.

Chocolate– I used a milk chocolate and white chocolate. You could use other kinds like dark chocolate. It doesn’t have to be really high quality, I’m just using the normal supermarket blocks (though it’s always good to try and get ‘fair trade’ ones). It may depend on what the normal quality of chocolate is in your country. Some countries don’t have very good chocolate (um… Korea). However I have made these in Korea and I used the Ghana brand which worked fine – I would not recommend Hershey though. Also, you don’t need to use cooking chocolate or special melting chocolate, normal chocolate is fine.

Non-stick baking paper

Paper kitchen towel– I use 100% recycled because I don’t like killing trees unnecessarily.

The first step is to wash the strawberries. Leave the tops on because you want something to hold onto when you are dipping them later. Put the strawberries out on some paper towel.

Break up the milk chocolate into a bowl.

Okay now we need to melt the chocolate. DON’T PUT IT IN THE MICROWAVE! Chocolate burns really easily and once it’s burnt it’s disgusting. We gotta do this slowly. So we have a smaller bowl right? Get one that’s bigger. The smaller bowl needs to fit inside but there needs to be some space. Then boil some water. Pour some boiling water into the bigger bowl and then place the smaller bowl that contains the chocolate inside it. Don’t let any water splash into the chocolate! Water and chocolate don’t mix. The chocolate will slowly start to melt. Stir it around to help it along.

Stir until it’s a nice smooth consistency.

Eh, close enough. Also tear off a sheet of the baking paper and put on a large plate, you may need a few plates, depending.

Okay remember how I said chocolate and water don’t mix? Well we just washed those strawberries… and they are wet. The chocolate isn’t going to stick on wet strawberries and water will make the chocolate gross. You could wash the strawberries hours before and let them dry. But who has time for that? I’m showing you the quick way.

Grab some paper towel and dry a strawberry gently. So just press the paper towel to the strawberry and let it soak up the water.

Holding the leaves of the strawberry, dip it into the melted chocolate.

Then place it gently on the plate covered with baking paper. Repeat with half the strawberries. Stick the plates in the fridge so the chocolate sets.

Now do the same with the white chocolate. Two bowls with hot water in-between.Dip the remaining strawberries into the white chocolate and put on baking paper lined plates.

So hopefully the milk chocolate ones that we put in the fridge are set enough, so get them out of the fridge and put the white chocolate ones in. I still have some of both chocolates left which I’m going to use for very quick decorations.

Get a chopstick or a knife and dip it into the leftover chocolate.

Drizzle the white chocolate over the strawberries. You can do this really quickly, no need for it to be perfect.