Sometime last week I had a sudden craving for Bulgogi beef. I literally ran outside to get beef and cooked it the very same day. Because when I crave for something, I will have to satisfy it no matter what it takes. lol. 

Bulgogi is a kind of korean recipe whereby meat-usually beef- is marinated with a sauce mix. The main ingredient in the mix is sesame. Once you taste it, you will notice that the beef is packed with heat and savoury flavours with a hint of sweetness . You can spice it up with some fresh chillies if you like. But for me, this recipe is perfectly fine as it is. So these are the ingredients I used, followed by the full recipe:

NOTE: I did not have sesame seeds at the time but if you have them, you can add them to create a more authentic korean taste. 

2 green onions

2 cloves garlic

3 tbs soy sauce

2 tbs sesame oil

1 tsp black pepper

A pinch of salt

2 tsp brown sugar

350g diced beef

1. Mix all ingredients and refrigerate for at least an hour.

2. Use a girdle or a pan to grill the bulgogi beef after marination. You may grease the pan or girdle surface otherwise, if you find the beef to be oily enough, like how I found mine, there's no need to grease it.

3. Be sure to cook the beef until you get your preferred level of doneness. I like my beef medium rare so that's how I cooked it.

4. Bulgogi beef dishes are best served with soft boiled eggs or even sunny side ups, with rice and fresh vegetables like cucumber and bean sprouts.

5. Garnish the beef with more green onions and even sesame seeds if you like.

Enjoy your meal!

Yours truly,

A.T.

I love pies. My mother makes the best chicken and apple pies. I love that show 'Pushing Daisies' because the main character is a pie-maker and it features a lot of pies in every episode. 

You get the idea ,right?

Sometime in February, Tasty by Buzzfeed uploaded a shot video on how to do mini pot pies. I instantly fell in love with the idea and on the very next day, I bought ready-to-roll pastry sheets and then made my version of their recipe. So here is the full recipe. Have fun trying and most importantly, enjoy it!

For the filling, 

500g sirloin beef; diced

1 1/2 cups cauliflower florets

1 carrot; diced

1 cup of green peas

1 big onion; diced

2 tbs corn flour

2 tbs HP sauce/ soy sauce/ worcestershire sauce

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp dried parsely

1 bay leaf

2 cloves garlic

2 cups of beef stock/  2 cup of water with 1/2 cube of beef stock

S&P

1 tbs butter


1. Use butter to grease a pot.

2. Simmer onion and garlic with bay leaf.

3. Add in the carrots and cauliflower.

4. Add in beef and stir until carrots slightly change in colour.

5. Add in the HP sauce.

6. Once beef begins to tender, add in the stock. Let it simmer and bubble for a while.

7. Then as the mixture begins to reduce, thicken it with corn flour. Remember to mix the corn flour with water before adding it into the pot.

8. Let it continue to bubble for 1 minute and it will be ready to be added in the cooked pastry.



For the pastry,

1. Simply roll out a ready-to-roll pastry sheet.

2. Make small circles about the size of the mouth of a mug.

3. One pie needs two pieces. So for each pie, you get two circle pastry sheets. One is the base, while the other one goes directly on top of it.

4. Before you place the second sheet on top, trace a slightly smaller circle on it. By tracing, you're not supposed to cut it out. And then just place it on top of the base sheet.

5. Brush melted butter or egg wash on each pastry and sprinkle some dried parsley as well. Bake them all for about 10-15 minutes at 175 degree centigrade. You may remove the pie pastries once they begin to have a golden brown colour.

6. Simply cut through the inner circle that you traced earlier. Simply fill in the pastries with the pie mix you made earlier.

Yours truly,

A.T.

There are times that you just want a good plate of steak right on the table. I like my steak medium rare as always. Honestly, I can't remember how long it'd take to cook a medium rare steak. Usually, after searing the steak I'd finish it off in the oven for 10-15 minutes. During that time I would check on the doneness from time to time. The trick is to compare the firmness of the steak with your palm. The palm can have different firmness depending on the number of fingers that you bend. I have been relying on that for a couple of years now. I will demonstrate you a simple steak recipe with gravy and mash.

  Here is the recipe for one serving ;

A

1 beef sirloin portion

1/2 tsp oregano

S&P

Olive oil

B

1 shallot –sliced

1 clove garlic –sliced

1 tbs butter

3/4 water

1 tbs corn flour

1 thyme

S&P to taste

C

1/2 cup broccoli florets

french beans

1/2 shallot -sliced



D

2 clove garlic

2 tsp parsley

2 potatoes

1 tbs milk

2 tbs cream

S&P 

1. Use items in A to prepare the sirloin and over medium heat, sear it for 3-4 minutes on each side for a medium rare steak with the garlic in D (unpeeled).
2. Now that you have made the steak, put it aside and let it rest. 
3. In the same pan, add the shallot and garlic from B with butter and stir until slightly golden.
4. Add thyme and water. As water begins to bubble, take some of it and mix with corn flour and add the mixture in the pan. Season well and your sauce is done. 
5. Boil your veges in C and the potatoes in D together. As the florets turn deep green, take the florets and beans out and let the potatoes continue to boil until tender. 
6. Sauté the greens in step 5 with the shallot in C. Season to taste and your veges are done. 
7. Once the potatoes are soft, strain and mash them in a bowl. Mix in the garlic you have seared the beef with -this time peeled- with the parsley and milk. If the mash is already so creamy, add 1/2 to 1 tbs of cream. Otherwise, go ahead and put 2 tbs of cream. Season mash with salt and pepper.  
8. Now put the beef, veges, mash and gravy together!

Yours truly,

A.T

I love fish. Lately, I have been buying only fish in the supermarkets. I can't fathom why I no longer tolerate the aftertaste of chicken. And since I am aiming for a healthier lifestyle, I'm trying to restrain my urge to eat red meats. So I'd like to share a really simple fish recipe that I always have. It is quick, simple and scrumptious of course!

 The method of cooking used is grilling or pan-frying. Here is the recipe for one serving ;

A

1 salmon portion

1/2 lemon

1/2 tsp dill

S&P

Olive oil

B

1 shallot –sliced

1 clove garlic –sliced

1/3 cup double cream

1 tbs butter

2 tbs water

S&P to taste

C

1/2 cup broccoli florets

1/2 carrot - sliced

1 potato - halved

S&P 

1. Use items in A to prepare the salmon except the olive oil.
2. Heat up a non-stick pan on medium heat and grease it with olive oil.
3. Pan-grill the fish skin on for a minute and then on the other side for another minute.
4. If the fish is not cooked through, you may repeat step 3 for less than a  minute on each side. Otherwise, in a pre-heated oven, cook the fish at 170 for about 7 minutes. Always check on your fish in the oven to prevent over-cooking. 
5. With the same pan, grease it with butter and then add garlic and shallot from B .As the condiments begin to change in colour just slightly, add water. 
6. As water begins to bubble quickly stir in cream and stir well. Season with salt and pepper. Your cream sauce is done.
7. Sauté pre-boiled veges in C in the same pan. You could add some garlic or shallots. Sometimes I would just boil the veges and not pan-fry them later. Season veges with S&P.

Voila! Your pan-grilled salmon is ready!

 

Yours truly,

A.T

I love being at home mostly because I get to cook. And cooking ,as always, is a therapeutic routine. In most occasions,  I would cook pasta because it's quick , healthy and tasty.My family loves pasta and Fettucine Alfredo is one of our favourites. And so on a fine and sunny Sunday, I prepared the recipe together with home-made croutons and dried chili condiment. It is a simple, easy and quick recipe. It's something you can do as you roll out of bed- kid you not!

The recipe is as below:

A

500g chicken carcass

5 stalks of celery (remove and put leaves aside)

4 tbs of olive oil

3 tsp of salt

1 medium sized pot of water

B

3 NOS chicken breasts

750ml of heavy cream

1 NOS big onion - chopped

2 stalks of celery - sliced thinly

1 can of button mushroom - chopped

4 cloves of garlic - coarsely chopped

1/2 tsp italian herbs

1/2 tsp oregano

1 NOS bay leaf

S&P to taste

1. Start by making a chicken stock. Over medium heat, boil water with all ingredients in A. Once boiled, turn the heat off and put it aside.

2. To make the sauce, firstly,over low heat sauté the onions, celery and garlic with the bay leaf.

3. Until the onions turn slightly golden, add the mushroom in.

4. While sautéing, take the carcasses out of the stock's pot and add in the chicken breasts. Over medium heat boil it until cooked.

5. Add a few ladles of stock into the sauce mixture and leave it to simmer for about a minute then add in the heavy cream little by little. Stir continuously.

6. Once cooked, remove the chicken breasts from the stock and shred the flesh in strands. Add them all into the cream sauce.

7. Stir the sauce continuously while adding oregano and italian herbs. You may need to add more stock to get a nice consistency for the sauce ; not too thick that when you raise your spatula, it would take 4 seconds for sauce to drip. Add in parmesan cheese to replace salt ,if you like, then season well with pepper.

You may refer to my recipe 'Perfect Salad' for croutons and as for the chilli below, simply chop dried chilis and toast them on a pan for a minute or so. And then put them in a small bowl, with about 3 tbs of olive oil.

Serve fettuccine with this sauce as well as the croutons and chilli, and you will love your creamy indulgence!

Yours truly,

A.T.

I have a never ending romance with seafood. It’s so intense that I sometime wish I could build a home by the sea just so I could have endless –and not to mention fresh and affordable- supplies of seafood products. I yearn a good piece of lean white fish meat and pack it up with some fresh off the sea squids and prawns. I really don’t mind going through the tedious and messy shelling and veining processes .Although not quite enjoyable, flashing visions of what the end bit will look and taste like indisputably entice me to go through it like a real cook. So in this entry, I have decided to share with you one of the best seafood recipes I have ever delivered. I recall having seen a similar version on TV sometime ago but I cannot remember which channel ,but most importantly which celebrity chef shared it. All I remember are some ingredients- shrimps, pineapple, ginger, corn starch, soy sauce and peppers.  So this is my rendition of the aired recipe–a creation based on faint memories of that one particular episode of a cook show. I figured, what else could you do with those ingredients combined?

 The method of cooking used is sauteeing and and pan-frying. And the number of ingredients used is surprisingly small but they are intense in flavours. Here are the ingredients and steps ;

A

500gm of shrimps

2 tbs of corn starch

3 table spoon of light soy sauce

½ tsp of mashed ginger

1 garlic clove- mashed

B

1 red onion -sliced

3 shallots –sliced

3 cloves of garlic –sliced

¾ cup of light soy sauce

2 tbs of fish sauce

1 tbs of sesame oil

½ pineapple –chunks

2 bell peppers –yellow and red , small slices

1 tbs chili flakes

S&P to taste

1. After preparing the shrimp, combine all ingredients in A and refrigerate it for 45 minutes to an hour.
2. The next step is to pan-fry the coated shrimp about a minute on each side until you get a golden crispy exterior on each side. Put the shrimp aside once cooked.
3. Heat up the oil and then sautee the onion and shallots until translucent and add in the garlic.
4. Add in the peppers and sautee through for about a minute. Then add the sauces, coating the ingredients thouroughly before adding the pineapple chunks.
5. At the very last minute, add in the shrimp and season to taste

 

Yours truly,

A.T