Mochi Brownie

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I was thinking of what to bake this weekend and had a few ingredients including glutenous rice flour to make a mochi brownie. I had never tried it before though photos on the internet seemed to be pretty easy to make. I will give it a go! and there was…easy peasy:)

I mixed glutenous rice flour, pinch of salt and boiled water to make a mochi mixture.
Then brownie mixture consisted of melted chocolate, brown sugar, flour and coconut oil.
All you have to do is to layer up and bake in the preheated oven (180) for 30 minutes.
A mochi filling was soft and gooey, and cuts down the sweetness from the chocolate brownie.
Half of the brownie was gone in the blink of the eye – a good sign! I must have done it a good job 🙂

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Posted in: Baking, My recipes, Snack \ Tagged:

Making Sauerkraut

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Just like Kimchi in Korea, sauerkraut is a fermented cabbage side dish which took root mostly in Eastern Europe and Germanic cuisines. I try to incorporate fermented foods in my diet such as Kimchi, sauerkraut, yogurt or kefir for my digestion.

As per my previous post on Kimchi, sauerkraut as a fermented food has many health benefits.

– easier to digest and absorb compared to eaten raw
– high in Vit B, C and K, calcium, potassium and magnesium
– low in calories
– lactobacilli and enzymes improve digestion and the growth of healthy bowel flora
– soothing the digestive tract, good for stomach ulcer
– high in antioxidants (lutein and zeaxanthin)

You can buy a jar of sauerkraut from the store though it is expensive, has preservatives and is very high in sodium. So why not making at home since it is extremely cheap and easy to make? It is also very rewarding when you make your own:)

All you need is sea salt and cabbage (I’ve chosen a red cabbage, but any cabbage would do). You need to massage and knead the shredded cabbage and sea salt with clean hands in a mixing bowl until it gets wet and excess water comes out of the mixture. Pack the moist cabbage mixture and liquid into a jar and close the lid tightly. Leave the jar in a cool dark place for a few days to allow the bacteria to start fermentation. Check everyday to see if it is soft and tangy. Then you can keep it in fridge to slower down the fermentation process. It goes well with any meat dishes as well as in salads – beautiful purple colour and intense flavour!

Posted in: Dinner, Gluten Free, Lunch, My recipes, salads, Vegetarian

GF Cinnamon Cookies

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I’m not really into sweet foods and never order cakes or cookies at the cafe. Having said that, I do have a morning/ afternoon slump when I don’t eat snacks. So I tend to make some muffins and bars and keep them in the freezer so that I can easily grab when I feel like one.

These cookies are gluten free and sugar free. I used…

4 eggs
75g coconut flour
one heap spoon of cinnamon powder
one teaspoon of ground nutmeg
one teaspoon of fennel seeds
one teaspoon of coconut oil
pinch of salt
pinch of chai tea ground
You can add honey or coconut sugar or maple syrup or whatever you have in your pantry for sweetness (optional)

I mixed all ingredients in a mixing bowl, adding a teaspoon of brewed chai tea a little at a time until I get a right consistency to make a cookie dough. Roll them up and bake for about 25 minutes in the preheated oven (180). It turned out to be perfect 10 lovely balls.

Cinnamon is one of my favourite spices. I sprinkle ground cinnamon pretty much everywhere both in savoury and sweets. I mix cinnamon, ginger and honey to make a nice warm tea. Definitely love using cinnamon when making home-made muffins and bars. For savoury use, it is also great in curries, sauté vegetables, tagines, braising meat and so on. You can create Moroccan/ Middle Eastern inspired dishes at home. Apparently you can use as a room spray as well, which I haven’t tried yet. Ah, we have a cool cinnamon drink in Korea, too. Boil water, cinnamon sticks, slices of ginger and brown sugar in a pot until all flavours come together for about 30 minutes. Cool it down and keep it in the fridge. It is so refreshing and hydrating when drunk cool.

Cinnamon has been used since Ancient Egypt as a medical source. Amazing health benefits of cinnamon include regulating blood sugar (thus good for diabetes), reducing LDL (bad) cholesterol levels, fighting against fungal infection, boosting brain function, effective for menstrual pain and infertility and warming effect (good for a cold and flu). It is by far one of the super foods and I swear by it. I just had two of those balls with cinnamon tea for morning snack and it is hard to resist to go for another one. Delicious!

 

Posted in: Baking, Gluten Free, My recipes, Snack, Vegetarian

Caramelised Carrot & Butternut Pumpkin Salad with Sage

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Feeling like a sweet succulent salad? This carrot and pumpkin salad will satisfy you! My body is just calling for vegetables and salads this week probably due to an unhealthy (relatively) holiday last week. Today, I’m injecting beta-carotene into my body.

Yellow vegetables, like carrots and pumpkins, are so high in anti-oxidants, vitamins (especially carotenes and vit-A) and dietary fibre. On top of that, they are low in calories and fat. They do all the wonderful magics to your body – improving your vision, cancer prevention, anti-aging, healthy skin, cleansing, etc. You cannot ask more, can you?

Carrots are a great snack as well as side dishes. You can have it as raw with yummy hummus or soft cheese.  But when it’s cooked, beta-carotene can be absorbed to your body about five times more than when eaten raw. The reason being is a cooking process helps to dissolve a resistant cell wall of the carrots that locks in the beta-carotene. So you can maximise health benefits by cooking them. It is better to cook the whole carrots (e.g. boiling) before cutting or mashing them to preserve nutrients. Another way is like me, I chopped them up with butternut pumpkins and quickly cook in a frying pan with a teaspoon of coconut oil. You can add a drizzle of honey, balsamic vinegar, cumin seeds to enhance the flavour. Sage is one of the herbs that merry very well with carrots. I loved a smell of sage caramelising with carrots in a pan and also the colour – intense orange/ yellow plus beautiful caramelisation on the outside! Yummy lunch served so easy:)

Posted in: Gluten Free, Lunch, My recipes, Vegetarian

Kofoo in Sydney

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Our accommodation was only 5-10 minutes to China town when we stayed in Sydney. I think it might have been New Year’s day when we went to this Korean restaurant for brunch.  The reason why we were looking for Korean food was that we eat a rice cake and dumpling soup on New Year’s day in Korea. Since I cannot cook one myself in hotel, we headed out to China town to find a restaurant that does it for us.

We found a cool looking one called ‘Kofoo’, which is shortened form of ‘Korean food’. I loved a modern pub style interior and friendly staff. Sitting there looking at Korean posters and listening to Korean songs made me feel I was in Korea for a bit. Sydney is definitely more multicultural city and you see so many tourists from all over the world on the streets. So I felt like I was in different country.

By the time we got a table, it was almost 11am..11:30am.. Starving! Menu didn’t have a rice cake soup though other dishes sounded pretty good to us. We ended up ordering 4 dishes between two of us, thinking we were starving, first of all, and dishes would be small. We ordered dumplings for entree, bibimbap for me, soybean soup for Daniel and beef tartar to share. It turned out to be a lot more than we thought it would be, though we managed to finish all. It tasted more westernised Korean food than traditional as I expected. For business, yes – you need to make changes for the locals, though I have to admit it is quite disappointing to me every time I go to Korean restaurants here. Staff was pretty attentive and friendly overall. This restaurant apparently started in Brisbane as a little food stall, then opened up this restaurant in Sydney almost a year ago, and now expanding further to franchise business – good on them.

I read in the Western Australian news paper a couple of weeks ago what Matt Preston, a famous food critic in Australia, said that Korean food would get more attention in 2014. I cannot agree more. Being a healthy tasty cuisine among Asian foods, it offers a variety of fermented vegetable dishes, like Kimchi, using lots of chilli, garlic, ginger and all good stuff. If you struggle with Western diet due to too much gluten, oil, sugar, etc, definitely Korean food is a way to go. I really hope Korean cuisine shines more this year,which means there will be more improvements in the quality of food and service in restaurants as well. And I dream…I could be one of them:)

Posted in: Dining and Wining