Seoul Food

I was in Seoul, Korea, this week, and a group of us went to this traditional Korean restaurant called Hanwoori, in a district in Seoul known for the young, hip, up and coming crowd.   Initially I thought it was going to be all spicy and I was going to end up with a tummy ache, but much to my surprise, the food was really good and yummy and not as spicy as I thought it would be.

We officially had a 14-course meal (which actually turned out to be 16 courses by my count), and I nearly collapsed at the end of the meal, being so stuffed with food.  In traditional Korean dining, the main course comes last - right before dessert- and it is usually a rice dish with another 3-4 side dishes.  On top of the main dish, we were served 4 different kinds of soup, 4 different kinds of cold dishes, 4 kinds of hot dishes, 3 kinds of desserts.  There were no small kimchi dishes that you normally get when you visit "main stream" Korean restaurants, so it was rather unexpected.

The middle top soup is Fresh Water Kimchi (Mul-kimchi), a cold dish that acts similar to the western sorbet.  It is to be taken throughout the course of the meal and serves to cleanse your pallet.  The bottom right soup is Pumpkin Porridge (Hobak-juk).  It is very similar to cream of pumpkin soup but this is lighter and has a slight hint of spice (which I suspect is ginger).

This is Chilli Fried Mushrooms (Maeun Beoseot-bokkeum) mixed with 3 kinds of bell peppers.  The mushrooms look like deep fried fish and when I ate into it, it had this surprisingly soft texture, unlike mushroom nor fish. 

This is the traditional Korean pancake dish (Guejol-pan) which you are to wrap yourself combining all the ingredients presented here plus a tangy-sweet wasabi sauce.  It contains egg and rice noodles, mushrooms, seaweed, carrots, radish, beansprouts, scallions.  Really nice, refreshing dish.



This is a tofu dish (dubu-yori), something like a fried tofu sandwich, served with chili soy-sauce.  The middle of the sandwich looks like an eel, but it actually is some kind of mushroom.  The dish is deep fried, really nice and crispy as you bite into it, but soft when you eat it. 



Korean grilled beef ribs is my all time favorite. Called Sootbul-galbi & yachae, the ribs are grilled on a charcoal with garlic and soy sauce, cut to bite size pieces and eaten with Korean mushrooms.  The beef is very tender and the mushrooms can only be found in Korea.  It has the texture like an eggplant and a potato-like taste.

Main Dish: Jinji & Denjang-guk.  This is part of the main course to be eaten together with a bowl of sticky Korean rice and soy bean paste stew (similar to Japanese miso soup).  The dish contains all vegetables and the intent is to mix each portion with a portion of rice.  Really yummy but since it came last, I was too full to finish it up. 

This tea is the drink for the dessert.  It is a Korean cinnamon tea, drank cold, and it is truly very refreshing after such a heavy meal. 

Maximizing Space in the Study

We never have enough space.  No matter how large our home is, we always feel we have no space. 

We have a 3-bedroom apartment in Singapore and given the boys does not want to sleep in separate bedrooms, we have a spare bedroom that we can use for guests.  However, we have tons of books and so having a dedicated study space seem ideal.  But what if we have guests over, what shall we do?  The spare bedroom is way too small to accomodate bookshelves and a bed.  So what I did was instead of having a bed, I got a sofa bed instead.  We fitted shelves into the spare bedroom and now it actually functions as a study.  We don't have guests every day (or week) anyway, so the sofa bed can nicely function as a couch for reading and when we have people over, it can be converted as a bed.  Yes, it does get a bit cramped when the sofa bed is opened, but hey, it is only temporary. 

What I always love about this study is that all our books are organized here, there is a small desk to do your work (or for me when I work from home), I got a cabinet (against the window) that functions to store files, a fax machine, printer and phone.  The boys can come and read on the sofa, or we can play games on the carpet.  It is not a big space, but cozy indeed.



We have more than books on the shelf.  We keep some momentos from conferences and appreciation items on a separate shelf and also have some pictures on it.  We also put a stereo and arrange our CDs near by.  With open-bookshelves, the key is to treat is as a decorative item versus a storage space, because it very well can look messy.



I get a lot of criticism with the corner desk that I have.  People think it takes up too much space.  On the contrary, I actually like it because I think it saves space and fits nicely in the corner.  I also have a good view out the window as well as if someone walks in the door. 

Good Friday

We invited a few of our friends and their children for lunch yesterday and it turned out to be a great day!  We had potluck lunch, with the main course not coming from the host, but brought in by the guests.  The kids had fun playing in the pool and the moms had a great time catching up and chatting :-).  It was a fun-filled day, with great food and wondeful friends.  Thanks, Refine Lubis and Dyah Sari for coming over!  Looking forward to our next gathering in June!

Photos courtesy of Refine Lubis: http://refinelubis.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/good-friday-and-good-friends/



Our dining table fits 6 people comfortably, but additional adjustments can be made when we have more guests.  Thankfully kids eats in a hurry, so we managed to squeeze all 7 of us in.  The rice dish is called nasi uduk, an Indonesian rice dish cooked with coconut milk and bay leaves.  We would eat it together with fried chicken and fried anchovies with peanuts.  You can also have thinly-sliced omellette (not shown) and corn patties called perkedel jagung (top) as sides.

Nasi uduk is also usually served with lalap (assortment of green vegetables), eaten with sambal (chili paste) shown in the bottom photo.

These are the condiments (clockwise from top left): abon sapi (beef floss) and teri kacang (fried anchovies with peanuts)  courtesy of Refine Lubis, and sambal (chili paste) courtesy of Dyah Sari. 

I made a fruit basket with the all-time favorite banana and had longans (known as 'lengkeng' in Indonesian), apples and red grapes.  The inspiration from the arrangement of the fruit basket is from my grandaunt.  We also included some strawberries which Dyah brought in later.



I wanted to do something unique with the plain Ikea paper napkins we had, so I went on this website and got my inspiration for this Crown Napkin Fold: bumblebeelinens.com/napkinFolding.php

These are 'klepon', round little desserts made of rice flour, coconut milk with grated coconut on top.  The texture is very similar to the Japanese mochi.  When you bite in to it, you will get a burst of a lovely thick, sweet brown Javanese sugar (called gula Jawa).  The color of klepon is supposedly green, but this one is made orange by Dyah.

This is another dessert called bubur sumsum.  Again, made with rice flour and coconut milk, but the gula Jawa is made into caramel and drizzled on top of it.  Really yummy and taste wonderful when eaten warm.