Cooking Attempts 33~40: Wow, I had a lot of food pictures on my camera. ^_^;;

짜장면 (Black bean noodles with pork)
This is Korean-style Chinese food. It's probably the most popular comfort food for Koreans, cheap and filling. Whenever I have these noodles, I think about this "Chinese" restaurant I used to go with my family back in Korea. There was a ginormous painting of a tiger on their wall and I used to stare at it while slurping down a bowl of noodles. Ahhhh~ memories. Anyway, it's usually got chunks of pork, onion and potato. For a little extra, you can get seafood in it too.




Tuna pasta salad
Um...it's tuna pasta salad! With onion and red peppers for colour. Nothing really special, but it was really nice to take to the hospital for lunch.




Egg salad with curry powder
I was bored of normal egg salad, so I sprinkled a spoonful of curry powder and Korean chili powder. It makes the colour pop, I think. Num.





삼계탕 (Korean chicken porridge)
It's like congee, but thicker. Probably because we use sticky rice. We use sticky rice for everything, even fried rice.

First I made chicken stock with drumsticks, onion and a whole lot of garlic.

When the meat was cooked, I took it out and rubbed pepper and salt all over it. This is while the rice was softening in the stock.

I stuck the meat back in when it was all done. Then a handful of chopped green onions!

Strawberry crumble
I had half a bag of frozen strawberries taking up space in the freezer, so I followed the instructions on the package to make strawberry crumble. I didn't have enough strawberries to make a decent panful of the dessert, so I used my Korean ceramic soupbowl. It was yummy, but probably would have been better if I had completely chilled it first.




Pearsauce
I bought a small basket of Bartlett pears for $2.50 on Tuesday. Knowing that I couldn't possibly finish it all before it started going funky, I decided to follow this recipe and make something that I've always wanted to try.

On the left, you can see the lemon peels I fished out after the pears were done cooking.

I also blended the hell out of it rather than using a potato masher, because I wanted a smoother texture and...I don't have a masher.

오이무침 (Korean cucumber side dish)
Despite the oodles of chili flakes you see there, this dish isn't that spicy. The cool blandness of the cucumbers balance it out nicely. It's really quick to make too. You slice cucumbers and then toss it with salt to take the water out. Wait for 20 minutes, rinse the cucumbers in cold water and then squeeze out the excess water. Then toss in some garlic, green onions, soy sauce, vinegar, chili powder and mix, mix, mix! Eat with rice, as with any Korean food.