Dinner tonight: Korean Calamari

I wanted to make grilled stuffed calamari today but since it has been snowing all day, i decided to make korean calamari instead. I made it before and hubby seemed to enjoy it, this time i will add fresh chillies to get more kick. Hubby and i LOVE spicy food :D. 


Hubby helped me to clean the calamari, well actually i asked him to clean it :p. For those of you who have no idea how to clean it, you better look at this link on youtube.

Nigella´s Korean calamari

Korean Calamari

Adapted from KITCHEN: Recipes From The Heart of The Home by Nigella Lawson

Ingredients:

5 to 6 ounces (6 baby) squid

2 tablespoons rice wine

2 tablespoons Korean gochujang paste (picture below)

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 teaspoons sugar

Few dashes Asian sesame oil

2 teaspoons groundnut or other flavorless oil

75 gr baby corn, cut into 1cm chunks

6 thin or 3 fat spring onions, sliced

additional from me: Chopped chillies

Methods:

1. Cut the tentacles out of the squid bodies, then slice the calamari into rings and put them in a bowl with the tentacles and the 2 tablespoons rice wine. Leave for 15 minutes, then strain, reserving the liquid in a bowl.

2. To this bowl add the Korean pepper paste, soy sauce, sugar, and few dashes of sesame oil, and stir to combine.

3. Put a wok or large, heavy-based frying pan over medium heat and, when it's hot, add the 2 teaspoons groundnut or other flavorless oil.

4. Add the sliced corn and spring onions and (chopped chillies) stir-fry for 2 minutes

5. Add the drained squid and stir-fry for another minute or two until the squid turns opaque.

6. Tip your sauce into the hot pan, stir-fry for 30 seconds or so, until piping hot. Divide the calamari between 2 bowls of the sushi rice and serve.

Gochujang Paste

Kopi Luwak anyone ?

Kopi luwak or luwak coffee is probably the finest and the most expensive coffee in the world. It comes from islands of Sumatra, Java, Bali and Sulawesi in the Indonesian archipelago. What makes this coffee so special is how the coffee is processed.


Before i continue, i need to inform you that Luwak is the name of a palm civet (small creature) in Indonesia. The civet has the ability to locate the sweetest coffee berries (Arabica or Robusta) and eats them. Civets however can only digest the fleshly pulp, so when it´s "out at the other end" the beans are still intact and undigested. The undigested beans are then collected, cleaned, dried, roasted and ground. So yes, it´s literally sh*t coffee!.


Hubby loves this coffee. Personally, i cant tell the difference between normal arabica or robusta coffee and luwak coffee :D. Since it has an interesting story behind it, we always buy it every time we go to Indonesia. Last time we bought 150 gr of 100% luwak coffee for 50 dollars (around 33 Pounds) and a 200 gr packet of 5% for 6 dollars. 


This coffee appeared on Oprah Winfrey Show and also in Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman´s movie The Bucket List. 

Left: 100% Luwak coffee
Right: 5% Luwak cofee

We love to share the coffee with friends but we only tell them what it was after they drank it :p.

Løvås Bruktbu: my kind of store

Løvås Bruktbu
Pedersgata 25, 4013 Stavanger

Løvås Bruktbu is a secondhand bookstore in Stavanger. They have a large collection of used books, comics, magazines and DVDs. It´s a lovely place and what i like most is they have a good selection of English books :D. The price of the books is reasonable and they even put some books (in Norwegian and English) next to entrance door for free. I wish i could have spent the whole day there but i couldn't. I was there during Easter weekend so the store closed early.

reading one of the books i bought from the store :D

If we had this bookstore in Kongsberg, i would definitely be one of their regular customers :-).