Korean Sweet Potatoes

It has been truly crazy on my end. My full time, no over-time, job, school has been dictating my life. I hardly had time to take out my camera and do anything. I love school. Don’t get me wrong. But it was just slightly over-whelming this month.

But I’m back and I am justifying myself that I am taking a study break, writing this post. I just wanted to show you what I ate for breakfast two days in a row: Korean Sweet Potatoes!

They are different from the orange-coloured sweet potatoes or yams you can get in grocery stores. These have golden yellow flesh, denser, and sweeter. I love them and I used to eat them a lot when I was living in Korea.  Now that I am here in Canada, and in school away from home, they are very hard to come by. Um…I get to eat them like 3-4 times a year, at best!

When I went back home for Thanksgiving, my mom bought some for me and I brought them to school. Iroasted them in the oven for 40 min this morning and they were divine. I wish I had more of them as I only have one left in my pantry. Sadness. I will make up when I go on exchange to Korea next semester:)

I guess my study break is over now. Back to studying but before I go, here is one more picture of my sweet potatoes.

I am going to try my best to post up more. So stay tuned:)

Yellow Golden

Many have tendency to think that salads are boring. But I dare defy them. Salad is not by definition a flimsy bowl of mixed greens, but rather, as Dictionary.com graciously puts in,

any of various dishes consisting of foods, as meat, seafood, eggs, pasta, or fruit, prepared singly or combined, usually cut up, mixed with a dressing, and served cold

with a small addition of “or hot” at the end. I would toss many different my favourite foods together in one bowl and there I have it, my salad. Even though my normal salads consist of simple mixed greens, beans/tofu/chicken with many glugs of balsamic vinegar, I have had sliced up some cute red grapes, sweet potatoes, warm roasted veggies, and all kinds of nuts into my salad when I felt like it. And they have never disappointed me.

And what better dish to eat than fresh, cool salads in summer? Salads are definitely most welcomed menu on my dinner table when high temperature frustrates my appetite.

Here in Ottawa, the weather today is just gorgeous. It hasn’t been this way for the last month or two to be honest. It seems like Ottawa has switched its weather with Vancouver! In other words, it has been constanly raining.  Then it got very humid and hot and rainy. But not today. The breeze is cool and sun is shining in the clear blue sky. It is truly a happy day in its finest sense.

And this jolly weather inspired me to create this beautiful salad: Quinoa Salad with Roasted Vegetables on a bed of spinach.

I got the recipe from Closet Cooking

Pretty salad with lots of colours:)

Quinoa Salad with Roasted Vegetables
Ingredients

• 1 cup zucchini (cut into bite sized pieces)
• 1 cup eggplant (cut into bite sized pieces)
• 1 cup butternut squash (cut into bite sized pieces)
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 cup quinoa
• 1 roasted red pepper (cut into bite sized pieces)
• 1 cup marinated artichoke hearts
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon oregano
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 cups baby spinach
• 1 handful feta (crumbled)

Directions

1. Toss the zucchini and eggplant in the olive oil salt and pepper.
2. Place onto a baking sheet in a single layer and bake in a preheated 400F over for 30 minutes flipping once in the middle.
   
3. Cook the quinoa as directed on the package.
4. Mix the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, oregano, salt and pepper in a small bowl.
5. Toss the dressing into the salad.

Need I say more? I think not. Check it.

image via delicious days

Ingredients

• 3 Packages Cups of Brussels Sprouts (approximately 2-2 1/2 lbs)
• Olive Oil
• Salt
• Pepper

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Wash Brussels sprouts, cut off their stems, and shed their outer most layer.

2. Place the prepared Brussels Sprouts in a rectangular baking dish Drizzle with Olive oil until all pieces have been gently covered. Do not go crazy with the Olive Oil!

3. Lightly sprinkle the Brussels Sprouts with Salt & Pepper and bake for approximately 20-25 minutes or until brown and crispy.

*This recipe was contributed by Jana Lewis, another NYC resident who is originally from Syosset, New York. Jana is currently studying medicine and is an up-and-coming resident.

For another great Brussels Sprouts recipe visit Delicious Days and Eat, Think, & Be Merry.

Jana's Brussels Sprouts

Pumpkin Soup Indian Style

Hello World!

Oh, I can still blog! Who would have thought, after (I have to go check) – wait, what, 2 months??? No way! How did that happen? I promise, dear readers (if there are any of you still out there!), that I won’t let my business (which, by the way, is becoming a huge success, thank you for asking) get in the way anymore. I have been cooking and eating delicious food, so blogging will continue.

Delicious food like above, from delicious days, the book. Now, I do have a love affair going on with pumpkins (or squash, or gourds) as you might remember, so this recipe from Nicky’s book (I am friends with a real cookbook author, how cool is that?) was one of the first I tried – aside from the recipes I was lucky enough to receive months earlier to test and have been going back to all summer long. I made a lot of diners here in Rome very happy, I might add.

One of the best aspects of Nicky’s recipes is that they are suitable for seasoned cooks and absolute beginners alike. If you have been in a kitchen for more than just a couple of times, these recipes deliver a great base, a new idea that you can build around and vary according to what you have on hand and still get great results. And if you don’t feel adventurous or this is the first time you are using your kitchen (this book is definitely a good one to start cooking with) just follow the recipe and surprise yourself.

Pumpkin soup Indian style
slightly altered from original recipe in delicious days, the book
serves 4

prep: 10 mins
cook: 20 mins

hokkaido pumpkin, a smallish sized one around 1000g
onion, 1
garlic, 1 clove
ginger, fresh, a 2cm piece
ghee, 2 tbsp
yellow curry paste, 1 tbsp
garam masala spice mix, 1 tbsp
coconut milk, 1 can (400ml)
vegetable broth, 600ml
brown mustard seeds, 2 tbsp

Wash and cut up the pumpkin. Get rid of the seeds and the fibers. If you are using a hokkaido, no need to peel. Cut the pumpkin into chunks. Dice the onion and the garlic, finely mince the ginger.

In a big pot, heat up the ghee. Roast the onion and the garlic, add the ginger, curry paste and the garam masala mix, wait till the aromas are released. Add the chunks of pumpkin, roast for a couple of minutes. Add the coconut milk and the broth. Cook for about 15 minutes, till the pumpkin pieces have become soft. Mash finely with a stick blender, till no chunks are left.

Dry roast the mustards seeds in a pan and decorate the soup in individual bowls with them. Definitely eat with good, heavy, country bread (or naan, if you can lay your hands on some) and drink a full bodied and aromatic white wine with it.

delicious days, das Foodblog der Münchnerin Nicole Stich war dem Times Magazin schon 2006 die Aufnahme in die Liste der 50 coolsten Websites weltweit wert. Und tatsächlich besticht delicious days durch brillante, reduzierte Photographie, appetitliche Rezepturen, ein freundlich-luftiges Layout, Stilsicherheit und Funktionalität.
Das wünschte man sich von so manchem Kochbuch vergeblich.

Der Gräfe & Unzer Verlag hat jetzt, in sehr enger Zusammenarbeit mit Nicole Stich, das Kochbuch zum Blog herausgebracht. Eine gelungene Übersetzung. Für nicht weniger als Gestaltung, Layout, Cover und Fotos zeichnet Nicole Stich im Impressum verantwortlich.

Die blog-spezifische Nähe zur Autorin wird gleich zu Beginn des Buches hergestellt, auf den ersten Seiten lernen wir Nicole Stich und ihre kulinarische Weltsicht näher kennen. Es folgen, auf knapp 200 Seiten wunderbar einfache, jedoch keinesfalls schlichte, Rezepte. Gewohnt luftig fotografiert, mit vielen, mundwässernden, close-up-Aufnahmen.

Immer wieder werden die Rezeptstrecken durch kleine Geschichten und Erinnerungen der Autorin unterbrochen, das Kochbuch als Lesebuch, ebenfalls eine Reminiszenz an den Blog-Ursprung.

Positiv aufgefallen ist mir auch, dass Nicole Stich weitestgehend auf Fleisch verzichtet, ohne Fleischeslust dogmatisch zu verbannen. So ist ihr Buch auch für Vegetarier ein echter Gewinn. Sehr schön auch die Register-Einteilung der Rezepte, nach alphabetisch geordneten Zutaten.

Während das Blog der Autorin in englischer Sprache verfasst ist, wird ihr Kochbuch in einer deutschen- und englischsprachigen Version angeboten. Jetzt im Buchhandel.

Nicole Stich
delicious days
2008 Gräfe und Unzer Verlag GmbH, München
Deutsche Ausgabe: ISBN 97838338-1222-4
215 Seiten
19,90 Euro

(and you can’t eat them the easy way out)… MAKE APPLE CRUMBLE!!!

so i was craving apples badly but because i can’t chew solid food yet (just had my wisdom tooth extracted), ….i made apple crumble. and also because i was feeling a little stressed from studying, and what better thing to do than to channel my inner domestic-goddess! haha!

surprisingly it was easy enough, i followed the steps in the video (videojug is a godsend!) and ta-da! warm golden brown apple crumble in less than two hours everyone should have a go at it because it’s sooo idiot-proof. although i suggest getting canned apples because dicing apples can be so tedious… if you’re of the lazy sort, like me. anyway i can’t wait to bake some more goodies! baking is so very addictive. maybe i’ll try to make some molten chocolate souffles if i can get my hands on some ramekins, or a banoffee pie perhaps

Combining her passion for cooking, eating and the Internet, delicious:days is the brainchild of Nicky and Oliver, a German couple recording their cooking experiences in their Munich home. This blog is full of wonderful recipes–Nicky is working on publishing her first cookbook–and a beautifully photographed food gallery. Nicky and her partner’s culinary adventures include dishes from all over the world, from tamales, to curries to German favorites such as Käsespätzle (the picture is from her website). I think I might try to make it one day. I’ve made Käsespätzle before, but never dared making the pasta from scratch. At some point, I even got myself a Käsespätzle maker, but I think the contraption was left in Seattle during our move.

And once again, I’m coming late into the game, as delicious:days has already been discovered by mainstream media: it was named one of the “100 Coolest Wesites” by TIME back in 2006. Whether you like being ahead of the curve or not, this blog is definitely worth drooling over.

these days, time is so very precious to me. a classic case of too little time, too many things to do. actually i think it may merely be a bad case of time management on my part. whatever it is, i want more time! more time to do things like these

like lounging in the sun and licking the icing off the most delicious cupcakes in the world. i want to bake so badly and i have saved so many recipes that i want to try butttt there’s always no time for baking. or doing things that are fun and require little or no thought. so i painted my nails in a creamy pastel pink shade and it made me happy! speaking of nails, the girl in the first picture has a transverse white line across her nails. calcium-deficiency perhaps (?). (sorry i can’t help but notice these things- it’s a med student syndrome, i suppose!) apart from that very random bit of info, i think these pictures are absolutely delightful and if i could live vicariously through snapshots, this would be how i’d like to spend my summer (or what’s left of it) frolicking in the sun.

1. Marchesa

in what was apparently a rather drab NY fashion week, i think Marchesa’s Fall ‘08 collection was probably the saving grace of the entire event. i am enamoured with all things floral and have a particular soft spot for rosettes, hence Marchesa does it for me. i love it that some looks are edgy and some ethereal but all flowery and feminine at the same time. very very desirable and covetable, although i know i won’t be affording a Marchesa piece anytime soon.

2. McDimSim

Suze and I are crazily addicted to the dimsims from the hospital cafe. it all started when we had to stay back for night duty one day and needed something to fill our tummies. so we opted for the little snack-sized dimsims to munch on, and since then we have been eating at least ONE dimsim everyday. (one time we ate 5 each. and that was after lunch. *horrors*) suze calculated that at 80c apiece, we’d have spent 20 dollars on dimsims if we ate one everyday for the duration of our rotation. i don’t even know what a dimsim really is, so i googled it (as with all things that i am unsure of) and found that wikipedia had devoted an entire page to this humble meat dumpling. i never knew it was native in Australia, and that the unidentified meat filling actually is made up of pork and cabbages. for now i can’t decide if i like it steamed or fried. anyway it has been crazy, i literally have to drag Suze out of the cafe before we chalk up enough dimsim purchases to help the cafe owner purchase his next holiday home in Malibu.

Auf die Gefahr hin, daß man mich für einen großen Fresser hält, weil das Essen einen so großen Teil meiner Berichterstattung hier einnimmt, hier die besten Tips für’s kleine Essen in München:

• Die besten fleischlischen und vegetarischen Suppen in München gibt es in der Münchner Suppenküche. Siehe dazu einen wie üblich^(*1) wunderschön bebilderten Beitrag im Blog delicious days. Außer dem Stand am Viktualienmarkt gibt es auch noch eine Filiale in der Albertgasse zwischen Dom und Marienhof.
• Die beste Bouillabaisse Münchens gibt es im Fischgeschäft Poseidon; deren Fischsuppe, die als Ausgangsmaterial dient, ist auch nicht von schlechten Eltern!
• Die beste Bismarcksemmel Münchens gibt es schräg gegenüber bei “Fluß und Seefische Witte”.
• Die beste Matjessemmel Münchens wird als “Matjesbrötchen” bei Gosch in der Schrannenhalle angeboten, der einzige Grund, den ich kenne, diese unsägliche Halle zu betreten (die Halle selber ist sehr schön, aber der Inhalt!). Ab und an hat Gosch auch einen Stand in der Eingangshalle des Hauptbahnhofs.

^(*1) Delicious days kann ich sowieso nur empfehlen, von Inhalt und Aufmachung eines der appetitlichsten Blogs, das ich kenne!Mit ihren eigenen Worten: “food. munich. restaurants. music. delicious.” Delicious indeed!

Nachtrag:
Zur Münchner Suppenküche gibt es einen Beitrag von Sebastian Dickhaut, von dem ich auch das eine oder andere schöne Kochbuch besitze.

Nachtrag zu delicious days und zum Nachtrag:
Sebastian Dickhauts Blog entnehme ich, daß delicious days “für die Bloggies 2006 in den Kategorien „Best Food Weblog” und „Best Designed Weblog”” nominiert ist. Verdient hätten sie es meiner Meinung nach.
Verdient haben sie auf jeden Fall Sebastians Lob in obigem Artikel.