I Need To Tell : The World From My Perspective: February 2019

Wednesday, February 6, 2019

I Made Kimchi!

My colleague M had been making kimchi and bragging about how easy it was to make it. She'd encouraged me to make my own .... and even given me a cup of Korean red pepper flakes and 1 Tbsp of fermented shrimp.

I used Maangchi's recipe and well, it turned out pretty good. Everyone who'd tried it had liked it.

Red pepper paste

Cabbage - salted and washed

Bottled

I left the bottled kimchi to ferment for about 24 hours .... and then transferred them to the fridge.

Dried oyster porridge and kimchi

Kimchi, egg omelette and Korean fire noodles

Cooking kimchi jjigae

I think my kimchi jjigae was yummier and more elaborate than the ones served at Seoul Garden here in Kuching ....

After I made this batch of kimchi, I liked it so much that I went to the supermarket to buy myself a big packet of Korean red pepper flakes .... so now I would be able to make my own kimchi whenever I feel like it!

Tuesday, February 5, 2019

CNY 2019

This CNY, I did not really have the inclination to bake, until school closed on Friday. That afternoon, I baked cranberry cheese cookies, but it was only because I wanted to use up the mascarpone cheese I had in the freezer ...

Pineapple Nastar and Cranberry cheese cookies

I used this recipe from Little Duck. The cookies turned out alright, but they didn't really taste spectacular ... heh. I did help Mom to bake some Nastar Pineapple Rolls using my go-to recipe from Nasilemaklover.

Since Saturday, however, I tried to help Mom out in the kitchen so that she wouldn't be overburdened with the cooking over the festive period. I drew out a meal plan so that Mom wouldn't have a headache thinking about what to cook for every meal. With some planning, we even managed to cook laksa for the whole family during this busy period .....

Laksa feast

Yummy homecooked laksa

I was glad that cooking for our reunion dinner seemed breezy. I had everything written down so that we would be more organised. All meats were prepared at one go, and only after that did we prep all the veggies. I also controlled the portions so that we would only be cooking enough .... if it was up to Mom, she tended to go overboard and we'd always end up with a lot of leftovers.

Reunion dinner 2019

Gado gado

This was my contribution to the reunion dinner this year. I cooked the peanut gravy from scratch 2 days prior .... I used this recipe, and it turned out very yummy. The vegetables and other ingredients were easy to prepare. This dish was pretty well-received. Everyone enjoyed it!

Basket of Deepfried Goodies ..

Our favourite was the deep fried prawn. Mom made the meat rolls while I made Gai Tod Nam Pla using the recipe from Hot Thai Kitchen. By itself, the chicken wings were a bit salty, but they were really good when paired with cold beer.