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 :-). 

Chocolate Chip Cookies

It was a nice sunny day today, the temperature was around 18 degrees centigrade and yet i was bored ( hubby wasnt home). I have played with Shadow and walked longer than we used to but still feel lonely and grumpy. Then i decided to bake something, something sweet, simple and doesn't leave many dirty dishes (lazy hehe). 

Hubby loves Nigella´s Totally chocolate chip cookies (TCCC) and i have been making these cookies many times. This time i will just make Chocolate chip cookies (CCC), it still comes from Nigella´s recipe. Hubby loves them both but for me, i love CCC better. 

Chocolate Chip Cookies

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

Ingredients:

150 gr soft unsalted butter

125 gr soft light brown sugar

100 gr caster sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg, fridge-cold

1 egg yolk, fridge-cold

300 gr flour

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 x 326g packet of milk chocolate morsels or choc chips

1 x large baking sheet

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 170C/gas mark 3.  Line a baking sheet with baking parchment.

2. Melt the butter and let it cool a bit.  Put the brown and white sugars into a bowl, pour the slightly cooled, melted butter over them and beat together.

3. Beat in the vanilla, the cold egg and cold egg yolk until your mixture is light and creamy.

4. Slowly mix in the flour and the bicarb. until just blended, then fold in the chocolate chips.

5. Scoop the cookie dough into an American quarter-cup measure or a 60ml round ice-cream scoop and drop onto the prepared baking sheet, plopping the cookies down about 8cm apart.  You will need to make these 2 batches, keeping the bowl of cookie dough in the fridge between batches.

6. Bake for 15-17 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the edges are lightly toasted.  Cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to wire racks.

Make Ahead Note: The cookies can be made up to three days ahead and stored in an airtight container.  Cookies will keep for a total of five days

English Crumpets

English Crumpet

English crumpet is traditionally eaten as a breakfast snack or a snack for afternoon tea in the UK. If you think my British husband was the one who introduced me to this snack, well you´re wrong. It was his friend Terry, he introduced me to the English crumpet when hubby and i spent Christmas with him in York last year. The thing is, hubby is not such an adventurous person as i am when it comes to food!. 

I searched for the recipe on the internet and stumbled on Lisa´s blog Sunday Hotpants. I tried it yesterday and we both loved it  :-).  

English Crumpets

Adapted from Sydney Food by Bill Granger

Ingredients:

1½ cups of milk

1½ tsp sugar

7 gr dried instant yeast

375 gr flour

½ tsp baking soda

200 ml water

pinch of salt

Method:

1. Pour the milk into a saucepan and heat until just warm. 

2. Transfer into a bowl and add the sugar and yeast. Allow to stand for 10 minutes or until the milk starts to bubble.

3. Sift the flour and salt into a bowl and make a well in the centre. Add the milk mixture to the flour and beat with an electric beater until completely smooth. 

4. Cover in plastic wrap and stand in a warm place for 1 - 1½ hours until doubled in volume and full of air bubbles.

5. Mix the baking soda with the water and use your electric beater to combine this with the batter.

6. Heat a heavy based frying pan over a medium heat and grease with a little butter.

7. Grease your crumpet moulds (baking rings) - keep them greased throughout the cooking. Place your moulds on the hot surface and place 2-3 Tbsp of mixture inside the mould. 

8. Within a short period of time your crumpets should get small bubbles all over the surface that begin to break.

9. Once the surface is covered in broken bubbles and a light skin has formed you can gently remove your crumpet from the mould, turn and cook on the other side.

10. Remove from the pan and snuggle your crumpets in a clean tea towel while you cook the rest.

11. The crumpets can be eaten fresh or toasted.

You can spread it with butter, jams, honey or anything else you fancy. For me, i love it with just butter. 

Langedrag Naturpark, Norway

Langedrag Naturpark

Langedrag is a mountain farm and wild life park located in Nesbyen, around 2 hours driving from Kongsberg. This farm lies 1000 meters above sea level and has a fantastic view of lakes and mountains. Besides seeing the animals, the main attractions are when they feed the wolves and the Lynx. Hubby and i went there last summer with some friends, it was a nice experience for me to see the animals in close proximity.


For more information about Langedrag Naturpark, please visit their website here.

Wolf is waiting to be feed

Lynx

Reindeer

Highland cattle

The pictures above are only few different animals at Langedrag. They have around 22 different species with 250 individual in total. It´s worth the visit :-).

Fiep Westendorp Postcards

I just LOVE all Fiep Westendorp´s illustrations and this time i got it on postcards. 

Jip and Janneke