Choi dreams of food

Choi dreams of roast pork on steroids

Yum….

The best way to finish a weekend is with a delicious roast. The base recipe is here.

To get the crackling right, you must pour hot water over the scored skin (Get the butcher to score the skin for you to save you some time) and open it up. Then you need to put adequate amount of seasoning, salt in particular. Roasted ground fennel seeds go very well with the crackling. 

It is delicious with beetroot dip, dutch carrots cooked in butter, roasted fennel, lemon and prunes. 

Celebrate this weekend with some roast pork!

Choi dreams of afternoon tea at Foodrinkery

Café experience in crowded CBD locations could be a bit of a hit and miss. To me, when I go for a coffee, some morning tea, lunch or afternoon tea, I would like the venue to be somewhere relaxing and drool worthy at the same time. 

After many months of exploring various cafés, I think I have found my favourite, thanks to the Age Good Café Guide.

Tucked away just off Warrigal Rd, the café offers a quiet and homely environment with the most delicious coffee and food. What more could you ask for? It also comes with beautiful front and backyards full of sun.

The address is below and you should really try this place.

Choi dreams of seafood paella

Seafood Paella has become the crowd favourite. The photos are from my first attempt but I am getting better each time. I get all my ingredients from my favourite grocery store (I reckon the quality of produce is better and definitely cheaper here) and the fish monger next door. 

How can it not taste good when ingredients like chorizo, pork belly, red and green capsicum, onions, tomato, mussels and squid come together? It is an absolute textural and flavour heaven.

The base recipe I use is here. When many ingredients meet and you want to bring out the true flavours of each ingredient in a simple way and also make a generous proportion, it has to be Jamie Oliver. The key to this dish is to get good quality ingredients. I normally get the chorizo from the Barossa Valley, king prawns and fresh and live mussels from Tasmania. Also, paella rice can be hard to find. The best place I know is here but if you can’t find it, just use Arborio rice. It works fine.

It takes well under an hour to prepare and cook so I recommend you try this at home. It is so delicious and you can take the left over to Uni or work for lunch or have it the day after for dinner. Enjoy.

Choi dreams of okonomiyaki

Okonomiyaki has become a regular on my menu. It is quick and easy to make and it is simply super delicious. Without bacon, it is also a great vegetarian dish. 

The base recipe I follow is here and you can buy all the Japanese ingredients here.

The Okonomi Flour, Okonomi sauce, Kewpie mayonnaise, Bonito flakes and Aonori (Seaweed flakes) are must have items for this dish and the tempura flakes add extra crunchy texture to the dish. 

The size of the okonomiyaki that the provided recipe makes is quite large so if you prefer to make a smaller size okonomiyaki, reduce the amount of ingredients, especially the cabbage.

Have a go. It takes less than 30mins to make if you have all the ingredients. Archi friends out there, take an hour break during your thesis and make yourself a nice okonomiyaki to keep you going! This recipe makes a better okonomiyaki than most shops in Melbourne.

Choi dreams of a dinner at Ayame

Ayame in Malvern is my favourite Japanese restaurant in Melbourne introduced to me by my friend, Mond Qu. Since the first time, Jannette and I have become regulars and it even became the venue where I asked Jannette’s parents for the permission to get engaged. For entrée, it doesn’t get much better than the Gyu Niku Tataki and the Sashimi Carpaccio with chef Gary’s special miso sauce. 

The chicken teriyaki sushi roll with crunchy tempura flakes and the special rolls are perfect for main. I normally just ask Gary to make sushi with whichever fish that is good on the day or to provide me with whichever sushi that he recommends on the day. He will take care of you from the start to the end. 

He also makes some really delicious desserts with green tea and sesame ice cream. The cooked dishes such as the black cod or salmon confit are also amazing. I really recommend you check this place out. Visit the Urbanspoon link for the address and phone number.

Choi dreams of a fusion Korean meal

One of my favourite moments on my recent trip to Korea was this particular lunch with my mum. The cuisine was a fusion Korean and it was served progressively taking the flavours into account. If I were to ever start a restaurant, this would be the sort of food I would love to serve and I would definitely adopt the processional serving with a set menu. 

The lunch certainly made my day.

Choi dreams of a Heston Feast

Heston Blumenthal continues to amaze me with his constant questioning of the norm in cookery, the reinterpretation of traditional ingredients and techniques and taking the guess work away from cooking with his methods justified through science. 

Although his recipes can be cumbersome for home cooking if followed and modified slightly to suit, the outcomes become absolutely mind blowing.

The first one of his signature recipes is his triple cooked chips. It works by selecting potatoes such as king edwards, washing away the starch, simmering, drying in the fridge to extract the moisture, low temperature frying to cook and high temperature frying to crisp up the chips. It takes about 3+ hrs to get the final outcome but you can prepare during the weekend, keep it in the freezer after the low temperature frying and cook later in the week. Spraying some malt vinegar adds another dimension to the flavour mainly through the olfactory sense. Base Recipe is here.

The aged grass fed scotch fillet from the Victoria Market was further aged in the fridge then cooked to 50 degrees in the middle on a very hot pan flipping every 15-20 seconds. The outcome was beautifully a crisp outer layer and a perfect medium rare in the middle with all the delicious juice contained within. The chopped cos lettuce added a nice crunchy texture, the parmesan added a bit of saltiness and the lemon, rosemary and garlic combo really brought out the taste of the beef with a refreshing after taste. Base recipe is here.

The lemon tart… drool…. The thermometer measurements took the guesswork away and the fantastic lemons from my lemon tree really made the tart particularly tasty. The whole tart was very popular amongst the family and friends and I may have found my favourite dessert. Base recipe is here.

I learnt so many great techniques through this experience and it was fantastic to learn why certain ingredients need to be treated and cooked in a certain way to respect them and bring out all their potential.

Choi dreams of beef and guinness pie

Jannette’s dad / soon to be my father in law recently requested that I make the beef and guinness pie Gary Mehigan from Masterchef made at home.

It was very well received with just a couple of things to improve on. 

1. I should have cooled down the filling a bit more before putting it into the pastry. Since it was quite hot, I didn’t have much time to fold the edges properly etc before the pastry started melting. That is why it looks quite homely… :)

2. I should have put a little more sauce into each pie to make the filling more moist. The pot pie version though was much more moist and tasty.

I put a little bit less beef stock than what was specified (1L) to make sure that it is nice and thick. I just put enough to cover the chuck steak pieces and vegetables which ended up being only about 500ml. It is also quite important to use a nice heavy cast iron pot or if you want to speed it up, a pressure cooker would help. Now I have one that I brought back from Korea, I can start experimenting with it.

It is essential that the pastry gets rolled out to 3-5mm and the sour cream is well mixed into the pastry mixture. This great simple recipe by Maggie Beer really adds so much to the pie. I think I will be using this pastry recipe quite often in the future.

The link to the recipe is here.

As a side, I wanted to put together a light refreshing salad with chopped cos lettuce, sliced carrots, sliced cucumbers and avocado dressed with Neil Perry’s Sesame Soy Dressing. It worked well with the pie and the dressing also will be regularly remade at home in the future. The dressing recipe is here.

Overall, it made my day off very enjoyable and managed to earn a few extra points from the family. 

Choi dreams of a Korean Feast

Pajeon - Entrée for the dinner party

Japchae and Galbijjim with rice - Main for the dinner party

Finally, I get to update my blog again. I have been away in South Korea to get my health checkup done for the army. Before I left, I cooked some Korean dishes that I enjoy for a family gathering and a dinner party.

The dishes are Pajeon (Spring Onion Pancake), Japchae (Stir-fried Sweet Potato Noodles with Vegetables) and Galbijjim (Braised Beef Short Ribs). 

The base recipes can be found here:

Pajeon

Japchae

Galbijjim

Some extra tips that I can give are:

Make sure the pan is hot when cooking Pajeon and the spread the mixture relatively thin to make sure that it is not too doughy and becomes a little crunchy.

You can make it without soybean paste for cleaner and simpler taste but I think the addition of soybean paste gives it a bit more character and taste.

The sauce for the Pajeon is essential.

Japchae is a good healthy side for a meal. Make sure you keep tasting as you go. Depending on the quantity, the soy sauce and sesame oil required to get the right taste may not be proportional.

Galbijjim takes a little bit of time. If you have one, I suggest that you use a pressure cooker. If you don’t, I would use a cast iron pot. I like adding grated pear and ginger to enhance the flavour and chestnuts are really fantastic when they are incorporated into the dish. 

At the butcher’s, ask them to cut up the beef spare ribs into 3rds.

Galbijjim is great with beer.

I will be developing these dishes further in the future since mine is not quite there yet compared to the taste of my grandma, aunties and my mum’s galbijjim. I will let you know when I finally get there.

Japchae - for the family gathering

Makgalbijjim (simplified version of galbijjim) - for the family gathering

Choi dreams of some tea with friends at Cha’t

I must have grown old. My post exam celebration this year involved eating some Korean BBQ then drinking tea at Cha’t in Box Hill (right outside the Box Hill station) for 2 hours with Jannette Le, Barbara Chung and Michael Collins. 

The setup here is simply amazing with tables and seats made from solid timber and they offer aged Puer tea and other varieties with snacks. 

It certainly is perfect if you are up for a nice relaxing time and a chat with close friends, I definitely recommend it. It also will provide you with an interesting experience and you will be educated about tea too.