Asian Food

I was craving for Japanese food last week. Sadly, there is no good Japanese restaurant here. They offer decent sushi, but hot food wise? It's terrible.
So, I browsed the internet (thank God, for internet), and found the recipe for what I want.

Hambaagu (Japanese hamburger)

Recipe from Just hungry
I didn't really follow the recipe to the dot because I was out of several items. But it still turned out decent, and quick dinner.

Croquette

Basically coat leftover mashed potato with flour, egg, and panko bread. And fry it.
Really awesome use of leftover mashed potato. It's a very versatile recipe. You can put veggies, meat or herbs, curry in the mashed potato before you turn it into croquette. I put veggies (carrot, corn and peas) and ground beef in the mashed potato.

Kwetiau Sirem

Surprisingly quick to make.

Somewhat of a direction to make:

1. Boil kwetiaw til soft (2-3 min). Put into a bowl, add about 1 Tbs of oil, oyster sauce, and sesame oil.
2. Heat cooking oil in a wok. Add minced shallot, minced garlic til fragrant. Add meat. Cook til cooked through. Add in vegetables.
   
3. Ad water about 1.5-2 cups. After the water boil, add in salt, pepper, and a bit sugar. Stir.
   
4. In a small bowl, mix 1Tbs cornstarch with a bit of water
5. Add the cornstarch mix to the wok. After the sauce thickens, add in 1 egg. Immediately stir it. Turn heat off.
6. Prepare bowl/plate with kwetiaw. Pour the sauce on top.
   

By the way, kwetiaw is he fen.

Cooking stuff

When it was mushroom season, the monkey king brought home a box of Cantarella mushroom. Never cook with them before, so after intense browsing, I decided to make mushroom stew, except that I don't really have the ingredients.


Recipe: none. I fused several mushroom stew that I found online to adjust for my lack of ingredients.
Verdict: mm...too mushroomy? :)

Curry Kyllingboller (Curry chicken meatballs)

Recipe: from Rema 2000 (grocery store) pamphlet. They are advocating dinner for 4 in less that U$20.
Verdict: definitely not enough flavor us. The idea of using chicken meatball than real meat for curry is refreshing, but not using coconut milk for the curry sauce? That's baffling for me.

Farikal (lamb in cabbage)

I couldn't believe that I've been living in Norway for 2 years. Time flies. And during those 2 years, I've never cooked farikal, despite the abundance of lamb during October.
This is about to change...


Recipe: Farikal
Modification: nothing, I think.
Verdict: Really easy recipe. Just just assembled the meat and cabbage in a pot, and leave it for 1.5 hours on low heat. And it came out really good. The meat is soft, tender, and flavorful.

Furikake

I love love love furikake. They are really yummy eaten with warm rice. But sadly, there is no furikake in Bergen. So, after reading Just Bento's furikake, I decided to make homemade furikake



Recipe:

• 1 piece of fish (I use cod marinated in pepper and lemon)
• 1 teaspoon of sesame oil
• 2 teaspoon of soy sauce
• 1 sheet of nori (cut up in small pieces)
  
• 1-2 teaspoon of sesame seeds
  

Heat up a dry non-stick frying pan. Dump in the fish, and break them up with a spatula. As they cook and dry out, keep breaking them up until they form fine flakes. Add the sesame oil, and soy sauce halfway through and keep stirring. Your objective is to dry out and crisp up the fish without burning it.

When the fish is fairly dry and fine, add the nori and sesame seeds. Stir this only takes about 10-20 seconds.

Remove from the frying pan into a bowl. Let cool completely before storing in an airtight container in the refrigerator. It will keep for up to a week. But in our case, we finished it right away.