Simple Egg Kimbap (Seaweed Rice Rolls)

I often see kimbap made and eaten on Korean dramas.  I found the recipe for it at Breakfast for One.  There is a video to show how it is made.

It is a great way to clear leftover rice that you have cooked with too much water in it.  If your rice is too dry, you can add water to it and microwave it for a minute or 2.  The total number of ingredients required to make it is 12.

You can also fold the seaweed sheet up if you do not have a mat to roll it up.

Pickled Vegetables

Have you tried the acar served with Nasi Lemak at Madam Kwan's.  I like it so much that I have an urge to make my own.

I found this video instruction from The Meatmen Channel.

These are the ingredients required to make it:

2 cucumbers
2 carrots
1/2 chinese cabbage
1/2 cauliflower
5 Long Beans
4 chillies
1L water
650ml white vinegar
10 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp salt
120g shallots
4 cloves garlic
15g tumeric
4 candlenuts
1 stalk lemongrass
100g fresh chillies
50g soaked dried chillies
20g belacan
4 tbsp oil
250g ground peaunts
50g fried shallots
40g toasted white sesame seeds

After checking out the amount of ingredients I will have to prepare to make it, I have decided to go for the simpler Japanese version.  I found the recipes at Japanese Cooking Channel. 

These are recipes I picked out from the video that do not require mirin to make since I do not stock it in my pantry:

The good news is that I can replace mirin with rice vinegar on a 1:1 ratio as substitute.  According to All Recipes, since mirin is much sweeter than rice vinegar, I will have to add about a 1/2 teaspoon of sugar per tablespoon of rice vinegar. 

Here is another recipe I found on Daily Cooking Quest that I would like to try making:

I am glad to read from a comment posted by Anita, the cook, that though kombu will give the pickle a bit of umami, it will still be delicious without it. 

Cooking with Cucumbers

I managed to grow cucumbers in our garden.

Since our harvest is good, I am able to give some to my friends and relatives. Other than eating them raw, I have to figure out how to use them in my dishes.

I discovered that the Thai are making soup out of cucumbers. I found Thai Stuffed Cucumber Soup (Gaeng Jued Taeng Kwa Yad Sai) recipe from Siam Sizzles. I modified the marinating sauces for my minced pork.

Since I prepared too much minced pork for my cucumber soup, I decided to use the leftover to cook Braised Minced Pork with Potato and Carrot.

I love the way it turned out, cooked with the finely chopped carrot mixed in the minced pork.