So Galbi (and a feast at the Wong's)

An invitation to the Wong's for a BBQ was always going to be a great feed. And of course it was as good as ever....mmmmm love lazy days of BBQ and hanging out with friends just chilling and eating. Isn't that what it's all about?

My contribution was So Galbi, a Korean dish of BBQ beef short ribs. The first time I had this was at Charcoal Mine BBQ House. So delicious! That was years ago and it's only recently that I thought to try make it myself.


I found 2 recipes to work with - Aeri's Kitchen and Rasa Malaysia

Let's start with the cut of meat. My local Korean butcher suggested this cut of rib rather than the short ribs ($18/kg). I don't even know what this cut is called. Just that it has the rib and a long thin piece of meat still attached. A must for this dish.

I also bought the short ribs as the recipe suggested this cut

Still great with this cut, but the one above is better....obviously because it has more meat. Really tender meat that has soaked up all the flavour

Short ribs $15/kg

Both recipes require you to soak the meat in water. Rasa gives the explaination that because the bone is cut, there is a lot of bone dust on the meat, so therefore you need to soak it to rinse this dust off.

In Aeri's recipe, it says to soak the bones for 2 or 3 hours to get rid of the blood. Now I would have thought the blood is what gives it the flavour. So that's why I did some of my own adjusting - I just soaked the bones for my other cut of meat and left the meat hanging over the side of the bowl

Short ribs all soaked and looking very pale

Time to whizz 1 Asian pear and half an onion. Both recipes say to use an Asian pear. I couldn't find any at the time so changed it to 2 kiwi fruit instead (did some research and this was a good subsitute)

Pour the pear & onion mixture over the meat, mix and leave sit while you make the marinade sauce (Aeri says this will take away the strong meat flavour and sweetens it)

Now to make the marinade sauce

My choice of cooking wine and soy sauce. I didn't know what soup soy sauce was so went with a light soy sauce and added a cup of water as well

Pour the marinade over the meat and leave in the fridge overnight

These are best cooked over a charcoal BBQ

Bren's altered recipe:

1.5kg beef ribs

2 kiwi fruits

1/2 onion

1/2 cup soy sauce

1 cup water

2 tablespoons cooking wine

1 1/2 tablespoons minced garlic

1 teaspoon minced ginger

1 1/2 tablespoon sugar

1 1/2 tablespoon honey

1 tablespoon seasame oil

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

3 tablespoon shallots (extra for serving)

toasted sesame seeds (optional) Also for serving

Method
1. Soak ribs in water for about 2 hours in the fridge. Pour the water out and rinse the ribs with clean water.

2. Whizz the kiwi and onion, mix this into the ribs and set aside while you make the marinade sauce.

3. Place the soy sauce, water, cooking wine, garlic, ginger, sugar, honey, seasame oil, pepper and shallots in another bowl and whisk together till the sugar dissolves. Pour this over the ribs and mix well. Cover with glad wrap and leave it in the fridge overnight or at least an hour (turning the ribs once in a while when you can).

4. Heat grill and cook for around 5mins on each side

NB: I think it would be best cooked over a charcoal BBQ. But the bonus of cooking it in a pan is you could spoon some of sauce into the pan and really give it that extra flavour and it's not as dry either.

So what else did we get to enjoy?

Prem's Lentil, Beetroot and Fetta Salad

Amra's Egg and Potato Salad

Duong's Vegetable Quiche

Prem's Avocado and mixed Greens Salad

Amra's Tomato and Ricotta Pasta

Vin's Fruit Punch

Prem's Chicken Wings

Chhay's Salted Caramel Popcorn Macaron

OMG...

Chhay's Strawberries and Cream Macaron

Not one....but 2 types of macarons!

Amra's sheet cake

Such a fabulous day of eating. And we got to take home food later and have leftovers too. Love it! Thanks guys!

Apple and Walnut Coffee Tea Cake

Here's a recipe from the Woolworths Fresh magazine (Issue 60 February 2011). It's a nice tea cake that I would gladly make again. Tad bit dry the next day but it's a tea cake.....so it's lovely with a cuppa. Ooo and who doesn't love a crumble topping?


Ingredients
125g unsalted buter
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
3 tablespoon instant coffee powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups self-raising flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
300ml sour cream
2 Royal Gala apples
Crumble topping
1/2 cup packed brown sugar, extra
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, extra
30g unsalted butter, softened, extra
1/2 cup plain flour
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Method
1. Prehead oven to 180 degrees. Lightly grease a 24cm round springform cake tin.
2. In a large bowl, beat butter and brown sugar together until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each one. Stir in coffee powder and vanilla. Sift flour, cinnamon and salt together. Add flour mixture in batches, althernating with the sour cream. Spoon into cake tin and smooth top.
3. Peel, corre and slice the apples and arrange on top of cake mixture. Make crumble topping: combine extra brown sugar, cinnamon and butter together with flour and rub together until crumbled. Stir in walnuts. Sprinkle topping over apple. Bake for 45mins or until cooked when tested with a skewer. Cool on a wire rack. Serve with cream or ice-cream.

I highly recommend serving it with ice cream. Too yummy!

Butter, brown sugar, eggs, coffee powder and vanilla

Flour, cinnamon and salt. Then alternating with spooning sour cream.

Cake batter
Layered with apples

Crumble topping

Oh yeah, crumble topping plus the walnuts

Rub rub...mix mix

Scattered on the top and ready for baking

Fresh out of the oven

Trying out another view with natural sunlight

Hmmmm looks way more rustic

White Chocolate Mudcake (Valentine's Day)

After being together for 10 years, we don't really celebrate Valentines Day anymore. But this year as I was doing the mundane task of grocery shopping, Woolies marketing got me. They had set up a stand with all these Valentine chocolates and this caught my eye



It was cute and I figured I could always make a cake and place the chocolate on top as decoration. It's the best way to express my emotions....through food ; )

I chose a white chocolate mud cake with a white chocolate ganache.....chocolate overload? Nahhhhh!
Ingredients for cake
250g butter
1 cup milk
1 1/2 cups castor sugar
150g white chocolate
2 cups plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 eggs
Ingredients for ganache
100g pouring cream
200g white chocolate

1.Preheat oven to 180 degrees.

Place butter, milk, sugar and chocolate in a bowl and place over a boiling pot of water. Stir until smooth

2. Place flour, baking powder, vanilla and eggs in another bowl. Add the chocolate mixture and beat until smooth

3. Pour the mixture into a greased tin and bake for an hour

Disaster strikes!

Freshly baked
I cut the top of the cake so the chocolate bar would sit ontop nicely

The ganache:

Again with the double boiler method melt the chocolate with the cream, stiring until smooth

Let it cool down for 10mins and you can pour it on the cake like that or whip it to stiffen it a little

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!

Jamie Oliver's Cabonara with Peas

By golly I do love this creamy pasta by Jamie Oliver.
It's a basic pasta sauce, nothing fancy, nothing hard.....which makes it one of my favourites.
You can find the full recipe here on his website. However I altered mine slightly and I also ate it with a massive steak.....no iron deficiency for me! LOL!

The main ingredients

500g pasta

4 rashers of bacon (smoked bacon or pancetta would be better)

Handfull or 2 of Frozen peas

100ml double cream

And loads of parmesan (I love the extra parmesan)

After cooking your pasta, make sure you use around 4 tablespoons of the pasta water to mix in with the parmesan. This will be your sauce

Toss toss

Double cream

Bacon

Served with a side of steak ; )

Because I'm beastie and there is no other word for it

Grilled Garlic Prawns

I don't like prawns, but this is one prawn dish that I will eat and actually enjoy. I think because I'm certain that the poop chute is completely removed and there is no chance of crunching on sand (poop) whilst eating the prawn *gag* just made myself sick.

The recipe that follows is a rough guess because when I asked my dad how much garlic? How much butter? How much prawns? He got fed up of me asking and just said "Go have a look yourself. See there, that's how much". Love home cooked food and recipes...there is no real quantity, just some of this and some of that, but it always comes together and tastes so good.

Ingredients
1kg large prawns
70g butter
10 cloves of crushed garlic
salt and pepper

According to dad this is how much of the butter and garlic I need

1. Place butter, crushed garlic, salt and pepper in a bowl and mix to form a paste

2.Preparing the prawns (butterfly prawns)

Slice down the middle as shown

Remove the poop chute (or intestinal tract)


Open up the prawn

Flatten it with the knife

You can stop at this stage if you want but dad wanted to trim the head and take out the gunk in it

Scrap out the head gunk

And your prawns are now ready

3. Spoon some of the garlic butter onto each prawn and grill for around 5mins on high

Grilled Garlic Prawns

Queensland Flood Appeal

This is a non food related post but an important one none the less.

I'm sure everyone is well aware of the tragic floods in Queensland with 13 deaths and 74 people still missing. The outpour of help and support has been really amazing (and that's just on Facebook would you believe!). There are many pages setting up auctions for handmade items with the money going towards helping the flood victims. You could also donate directly to the Queensland government here.

Or donate by phone 1800 219 028

Or Internet banking
Account name: Premiers Disaster Relief Appeal
BSB: 064 013
Account Number: 1000 6800

But if you are a bit of a Facebook addict like me (and love handmade products), you can go on and check out these wonderful pages who are hosting auctions:
- Jazzy Kids Auction (bidding has already started, ending 11am Wed 19th Jan)
- The Oz Material Girls or TOMG $1 Auction (Auction starts 12 noon Syd time Fri 14th Jan and ends 8.30pm Mon 24th Jan)
Both of which I have donated items from my Facebook page KC's Hairclip Studio (my other passion apart from food) for auction.

Other awsome pages helping out are:
- Handmade Kids & Rudy & The Dodo Flood Appeal (Auction starts 11am EST Fri 14th Jan and ends 12 midnight Mon 17th Jan)
- Wholesale Baby (bidding has already started, ending 5pm EST Fri 16th Jan)
- flickwillfixit.com.au (bidding has already started, ending 7pm Fri 21st Jan)
- Summerblossom Handmade Accessories (bidding has already started, ending 10am Tues 18th Jan)

I'm sure there are a lot more holding auctions but this is all I know of so far.
On behalf of everyone, thank you for doing such a wonderful job at organising these auctions and taking the time to be part of this wonderful wonderful cause! And thank you to the people who are donating their fabulous handmade goodies for the auction!

Please all you fellow Australians take some time to have a look or let others know and we can all help out where we can. Better yet, maybe make a bid or 2 on some items : )

Every little bit counts guys!
Thank you for taking the time to read this post.