Author: JIN

A home cook and a foodie with a healthy appetite celebrating everything delicious, sweet and spicy in life
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Soba noodle salad with Korean chili paste “gochujang” sauce

korean platter noodles

I miss good authentic Korean food all year round, but there are a few cold dishes that I miss even more when summer hits Hong Kong hard. One of those dishes that I’ve been missing a lot lately is “Jaengban Guksu”, literally means noodles on a plate. It is cold soba served with lots of fresh vegetables and spicy Gochujang (fermented red chili paste) sauce and boiled eggs. Although called noodles, I think what it really highlights is the crunch vegetables. This dish is sweet, spicy, refreshing and quite healthy. The recipe doesn’t require any specific kind of vegetables, you can use whatever you like as long as they bring crunchiness to the dish. Cucumber and carrots are commonly used in Korea, and sometimes we add fruits like Asian pear. Apple will work great as well. I personally love adding as many rainbow color veggies as I can, not only for nutrition purpose but for making things more fun and pretty as well.

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The best Hong Kong restaurant foods “I love” in 2019 – Part 2

tokyolima hk brunch

The standard of pizza in Hong Kong has come a long way in the past 10 years. I remember having only a few decent pizzerias when I first moved here, but now there are countless options for good pizza in HK. Kytaly is one of the best examples. They serve both traditional and reinvented Neapolitan pizza by Franco Pepe, whose pizzeria was voted as the best in Italy by 50 Top Pizza. They also have a lovely terrace, which was one of the hottest spots last fall/winter (October – March). I had first visited Kytaly for drinks after a huge dinner, and saw a large group of very well dressed Italian men (they sort of had a modern Godfather vibe :-)) having seriously good looking pizza margherita, and ended up ordering one for myself. And that was a right thing to do. Continue reading The best Hong Kong restaurant foods “I love” in 2019 – Part 2

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The best Hong Kong restaurant foods “I love” in 2019 – Part 1

Budu_hk dessert

As much as I enjoy cooking at home, I equally love to eat out. I am one of those who constantly researches and reads about new restaurants, menus, bars and pop-up dining events. I guess (actually am pretty sure) the food scene is one of the main reasons my husband and I have lived in Hong Kong for so long.

Hong Kong has an amazing dining scene. It is a cosmopolitan city with a Chinese root, which results in offering a great diversity of food. Continue reading The best Hong Kong restaurant foods “I love” in 2019 – Part 1

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Authentic Thai coconut soup with chicken “Tom Kha Gai”

authentic Thai coconut soup

This post is long overdue. I made this dish during the Thai cooking class I took in Koh Samui early last year. And after I decided to start posting on my blog again, I planned on sharing the recipe I got from my cooking instructor Jul…which I soon realized that had gone missing! I misplace a lot of things, but recipe isn’t one them. Long story short, it had been a frustrating couple of months but as you can see now, I found it in the end 😊. Continue reading Authentic Thai coconut soup with chicken “Tom Kha Gai”

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Turmeric coated Tofu and Asian pear salad with Kimchi dressing

Superfood Tofu kimchi salad

Like our neighboring countries in East Asia, Tofu is one of the most essential ingredients in Korean diet. Koreans eat it steamed, boiled, cooked in soup, lightly fried, braised or even raw. I too have eaten countless tofu in my lifetime, and it had been a kind of food I was so used to eating that it almost became too insignificant to have an opinion about. But things changed a little when tofu started gaining a reputation not only as a healthy food but also as a bland and tasteless food that gives almost no pleasure of eating.

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Vietnamese Cooking Class in Nha Trang

Vietnamese homecooked meal

Vietnam has a special place in my heart. It was the first foreign country that I had lived for a few months, guess you could say it was my first home away from home. I had a few family members living in Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City in early 2000s, and I spent about 6 months there and traveled around the country before I went to college in London.

I also went back a few times afterwards, and the country has been changing like nowhere else I’ve ever seen. My recent trip to Nha Trang was yet another proof. Nha trang is a coastal resort city near Saigon probably best known for its gorgeous white sandy beaches. The beaches really are stunning, but the city has so much more to offer in terms of hustling and bustling markets, local eateries, stylish restaurants, and nightlife. Continue reading Vietnamese Cooking Class in Nha Trang

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Basil, mint and Pecorino Romano pesto

Growing up in South Korea, basil was not an ingredient that I was ever familiar with. I ate dishes with basil at Italian restaurants, but I had never seen the fresh basil until I went to study in London. First thing about fresh basil that hit me before anything else was its fragrance. The unique and intoxicating aroma of basil blew my mind instantly. Like Marcella Hazan wrote in her book Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, “The less basil cooks, the better it is, and that its fragrance is never more seductive than when it is raw.” …What a beautiful thing to say. Continue reading Basil, mint and Pecorino Romano pesto

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How to use old sour kimchi – Kimchi fried rice

As kimchi started gaining its superfood status, my friends started asking me all sorts of kimchi related questions. And two of the most common questions among them were 1. Does kimchi ever go bad if you keep it too long? 2. What do you do with a few weeks or months old sour tasting kimchi? Continue reading How to use old sour kimchi – Kimchi fried rice

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20 minute meal – Squid ink spaghetti with crab and green chilis

crab chili squid ink pasta

I came down with a terrible flu last week. So terrible that I didn’t even have much appetite (that rarely happens to me), and couldn’t think of what to have for dinner. Fortunately my appetite came back after a couple of days, which I figured as a sign of recovery, and one of the first things I wanted to eat was pasta. In fact, I could eat pasta pretty much everyday, not a problem for me at all. Continue reading 20 minute meal – Squid ink spaghetti with crab and green chilis

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Fig Salad inspired by Yotam Ottolenghi

If you are a vegetarian or a lover of vegetarian cookery you must have heard of Yotam Ottolenghi. Earlier this year I bought one of his cookbooks called “Plenty More”, follow-up to his bestseller “Plenty”, and I love love love it. Not only this book has a plenty of fresh, healthy and delicious recipes, it is also full of visually stunning dishes that immediately say “Eat me!” or more like “Make me, then eat me!” :-). Continue reading Fig Salad inspired by Yotam Ottolenghi