meemalee

It's supposed to be Summer, so why are the gutters along my rooftop overflowing with rain? I'm cold, I'm miserable, and I want something to cheer me up.  I wander into the kitchen, and I get a pack of mixed seafood from the freezer, some kimchi from the fridge, a lime, some chives, a chilli, and a packet of udon.  I combine the lot with some vegetable broth and, in minutes, a magical broth is formed. Suddenly it doesn't seem so bad that the sun won't come out to play. Seafood and Kimchi Noodles Serves 2 500ml vegetable stock (I like Marigold bouillon) 400g fresh udon noodles (~ 2 packets) 300g mixed seafood (frozen or fresh, cooked or raw - you can just use prawns if you prefer) 1 tbsp caster sugar 1 tbsp good fish sauce (Three Crabs or Hung Thanh Phu Quoc) 4 tbsp kimchi, chopped ( easy recipe here  or buy ready-made) Handful of chives, chopped One lime, halved 1 red finger chilli, chopped (optional) Combine the stock with the sugar in a...

Killer Kimchi Kimchi. Practically the national dish of Korea, this potent pickle is pungent, sour, spicy and unnecessarily delicious. It works well as a condiment or side dish, in stews and curries, with rice and noodles, and even in a sandwich or bun - in fact, a kimchi hotdog seems to be de rigueur these days. Till recently, I've been lazy and got packets or tubs of the stuff from Oriental supermarkets, but I discovered that it's both cheap and easy to make yourself. This is a good thing as I recently had to make a shed-load for my Momofuku tribute dinner Lunchy Peach . The recipe looks long but I wanted to show you all the steps - it's really straightforward. Korean Pepper Flakes and Burmese Shrimp Paste And you can tweak the flavours (saltier, sweeter, sourer) so it tastes even better than shop-bought. (Burmese) shrimp paste, similar to belacan, is my secret ingredient for extra umami - other recipes add chopped-up oysters, dried shrimp or squid, ...

It's March, but it feels like the depths of winter. All I want to do is fill my belly with hot soups and stews in a bid to stay warm. A double whammy of chilli heat and steaming broth is guaranteed to keep the chills away and one of my weapons of choice is the Korean dish sundubu jjigae aka soondubu jjigae. Dried shiitake, garlic, dried anchovies Sundubu jjigae is a hot and spicy stew (jjigae) made with super-soft uncurdled tofu (dubu), seafood, mushrooms, onions, kombu (kelp) and gochujang (a Korean savoury chilli pepper paste). Made in a special earthenware bowl called a ddukbaegi which can be heated directly on a stovetop, a raw egg is cracked straight into the jjigae just before it's time to eat, and then the jjigae is served in the same bowl while it's still bubbling away. The combination of barely poached egg and cloud-like tofu dancing together in the intense broth is obscenely good, especially when you break into the egg and the soft golden yolk melds with it al...

It's a cold and dreary day and all I want to do is slump at my desk, mainlining cups of tea, but an old school-chum M wants to meet with hubby and me for lunch. M now lives abroad and only comes back for very brief stints, so we're lucky to get a slot in his busy diary. Tottenham Court Road's the venue, so I rally the Twitterverse to ask where we should dine. Some suggestions are less than helpful (thanks Dan for “McDonald’s”) but Catty ’s tip of Koba , a Korean joint, seems just the ticket - what could be more warming than a hearty jjigae ? I'm the first to get to the designated meeting spot, across the road from Big Freddy Mercury . Hubby turns up next and immediately warns me not to steamroller M into going somewhere I want to go. Poo. Then M arrives and asks us where we should eat. I reel off a number of options and perhaps my psychic powers are stronger than I realise for he immediately replies "Ooh, I fancy Korean". Koba is a little tucked away in Blo...