Bibimbap literally translates to “mixed rice” in English. It consists of a bowl of steamed rice topped with various seasoned or pickled vegetables, often meat, a fried egg, and a sauce made with spicy red pepper paste “gochujang”. The vegetables used in bibimbap can vary, but common options include carrots, spinach, bean sprouts, mushrooms, and zucchini. Continue reading Bibimbap with Ssamjang sauce
I love smoothies. Not only are they so colorful and pretty but they also taught me the joy of eating and making breakfast. I was not a breakfast person for a very long time. When I was a teenager in Korea, I wanted to sleep more rather than to have breakfast, and the fact that I had to spend the entire day from 7:30am until 10pm at school and a cram school Continue reading My favorite smoothie bowls
Anyone love to eat pasta for breakfast? I certainly do; probably one of my favorite things to eat in the morning. Well, I could eat noodles and pasta any time of the day to be honest, but there’s just something special about eating pasta with an egg as a breakfast. My whole wheat pasta with kale and an olive oil basted fried egg is delicious and healthy. And it only takes 15 minutes to prepare; who wants to spend more time cooking in the morning anyways, right? This is also a great way to use up leftover kale or any green vegetables in your fridge.
Happy New Year! 2021 has been an incredibly hectic year for me. A main reason I have not been active here since April. In May, my husband and I left our beloved Hong Kong, our second home that we had lived for over a decade. I’d always moved a lot, and never lived anywhere longer than 4 years until I moved to our 58th floor flat in the west side of Hong Kong Island. Our flat with a stunning view of Hong Kong’s skyline and harbour was my 23rd home, and I had lived there for over 11 and a half years. Leaving Hong Kong was as hard as I expected but leaving my close friends was much harder than I imagined.
Can you believe it is October? It is so easy to lose the track of time this year. I know fall has started in many parts of the world, but where I live late summer weather, which is a lot more bearable than early and mid summer weather, is here to stay for another few weeks. I promised to post more cold noodle recipes during this summer but I only seem to have shared them on my Instagram. (By the way, please check out my Instagram if you haven’t yet). So I decided to share 3 recipes today. They are all quick and easy, healthy and light with a little kick from spicy sauce. They are perfect for summer but good for any time of the year. Continue reading Vegan and vegetarian noodles, nooddles, noodles
If you ever wanted to visit Hong Kong in the future, you should know that mid October through December and late March through early May are the most beautiful months to be here. There are rainy days in spring of course, (we have subtropical climate after all) but we also have many days of beautiful sun and breeze with relatively low humidity. Well, our spring has just passed by us without most of us even noticing it. Now it is full on summer with scorching heat, rains and unbearable humidity all the way through October, urgh….But at least now I have an excuse to make my favorite noodle salads all the time. Not that I need an excuse, but I really do make cold noodle salad a lot in summer ;-). Continue reading Green tea noodle salad with spicy Asian dressing
Unlike other dishes I posted in the past, this one was made and shot without any planning whatsoever. No brainstorming on recipes, visualizing and sketching the plating or testing the flavor. It was one of those days when my husband couldn’t go to work because whole central business district in Hong Kong was paralyzed due to the protest, and I woke up feeling like making a bunch of things that I wanted him to try. So I made a few things we could snack on here and there, then hit the jackpot. This wholesome vegan pasta was so quick, easy, healthy and beautiful that I had to share it here. And cooking and eating this dish was a distraction that I really needed. Continue reading 15-minute vegan pasta with garlic, chili and capers
One of the challenges I’ve often faced cooking for myself or just two people is having too much leftover vegetables. (That is also one of the most common excuses I hear from my friends who never cook). I started cooking in London where I lived as a student many years ago, simply because it was too expensive to eat out every day. But each time I cooked I had so much leftover vegetables, which all ended up in a bin. I really hated wasting perfectly good food and it didn’t exactly help me save that much money either. So I started to throw all my leftover ingredients in a big pot and make hearty Korean soup or stew like my grandmother used to do. It would keep well in the fridge for at least a few days, and it was a perfect mood booster in one of those rainy chilly gloomy days in London. Continue reading Pickled red onion and dill
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.
Continue reading Turmeric coated Tofu and Asian pear salad with Kimchi dressing
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
