Yes, I wanted to be rather adventurous when I prepared for my dinner yesterday :). I added shredded smoked cheese as the topping for the duck fried rice - after trying Budae Jjigae (Korean Ramen) with cheese last week and liked it, I thought, why not adding cheese as well now to my fried rice? I have to say, the combination works well, honestly! But of course if you prefer normal, traditional fried rice, you don't have to add shredded cheese on top of your fried rice.

By the way, I used ready-made Peking duck breast which I bought in a local Asian grocery store. If you cannot find ready-made Peking duck breast, you just have to marinade the duck with star anise and cinnamon powder, a bit of soy sauce and sugar before you bake or roast it.

Duck Fried Rice with Shredded Smoked Cheese Serves 2
1 cup (cooked) long grained rice	210
2 tbs olive oil	240
1 clove garlic, minced	4
3 seeded bird's eye chilies, sliced thinly	15?
100 g roasted duck breast, sliced thinly	341
2 tbs fish sauce	1
2 tbs oyster sauce	1
1 tbs sweet soy sauce	35
½ cup chopped green onions	14
1 medium egg (thin omelet), with 1 tsp oil	125
1 slice smoked cheese, shredded	89
TOTAL	1075 calories
	538 calories per serving

What to do:

• Heat up your wok to high. Add 2 tbs oil.
  
• Add minced garlic and chilli slices and fry until the garlic is slightly brown.
• Add the duck breast and fish sauce and stir fry for 1 minute.
• Quickly add the rice, oyster sauce and sweet sauce. Stir fry for another 1 minute.
• Add chopped green onions before serving and mix well.
• Serve your fried rice with thinly sliced omelet and shredded cheese.
  

If you wish, you can add tomatoes, cucumber slices and lettuce too!

Yesterday evening I was browsing Bakerella's site and saw her 'Brookies' recipe - it should taste like both cookies and brownies. Since I love both, I just had to make some myself, and damn it was 22:00 in the evening...;)! The bars taste fantastic, but I didn't get the right texture of both cookies and brownies, I guess it's because I used white sugar instead of brown sugar - I didn't have brown sugar in my pantry but couldn't wait until the next day to make some!! My blondie bars taste more like choc-chips cake, it's still very good, but just not what it's supposed to be. I shall make some more with brown sugar in the near future.

Below you can see the recipe I adapted from Bakerella's site. Basically it's exactly the same recipe, I just changed the measurement units, used chopped dark chocolate instead (didn't have chocolate chips either!) and I cut down the amount of sugar to 50% - 450 g sugar in the real recipe...(*o*)!! That's too much for me...;)

Dark Chocolate Blondie Bars Makes 16
350 g all purpose flour	1244
2 ½ tsp baking powder	5
150 g butter (softened)	1076
200 g brown sugar	760
3 medium eggs	210
1 tsp vanilla	3
200 g chopped dark chocolate	1106
TOTAL	4404 calories
	275 calories per serving

What to do:

• Combine eggs, butter and sugar and mix well.
• Sift the flour and baking powder into the eggs/butter/sugar mixture.
• Add vanilla and chopped dark chocolates.
• Bake for 30-35 minutes at 180 degrees.
  

The blondie bars (well, cake in my case) after 35 minutes of baking at 180 degrees.

Cut into 16 pieces, or more if you want.

Enjoy the bars (well, I have to stress one more time, cake in my case! What a failure !!)

Kuotie is the Chinese-Indonesian interpretation of guotie. It basically tastes very similar to guotie, the main difference is that kuotie is much more garlicky in flavour. Kuotie is also often eaten with chili-garlic sauce as condiment, together with minced garlic. Definitely not something that you should eat on a Sunday evening, unless you want to get some frowns from your colleagues or boss the next day ;).

Kuotie Makes 50
300 g flour	1029
1 cup boiling water	0
250 g ground pork	640
100 gr chopped shrimps	91
5 cloves garlic, minced	20
½ cup chopped Napa cabbage (45 g)	10
1 tsp minced ginger	2
2 tbs oyster sauce	2
1 tbs fish sauce	1
½ tsp sugar	8
1 tbs chopped chives	1
A dash of pepper	?
TOTAL	1804 calories
	36 calories per serving (Not fried)

Chili-Garlic Sauce

• 5 tbs Sriracha chili sauce
• 100 ml boiling water
• 1/2 tbs sugar
• 1/2 tbs vinegar
  
• 1 tbs minced garlic
  

The kuotie before being pan-fried

Pan-fried kuotie

What to do

Kuotie skins

• Combine flour and boiling water. Mix and knead well until you get a non-sticky consistency. You might need some extra flour for dusting. Check this link if you need some step-by-step pictures to help you making the dumpling skins.

Kuotie filling

• Combine all of the other ingredients (pork, shrimps, cabbage, chives, garlic, ginger, oyster sauce, fish sauce, sugar and pepper) and mix well. Make sure that the napa cabbage is completely dry, you do not want the filling to be too wet, because it might complicate the dumpling pleating process (the kuotie skins might tear easily if the filling is too wet!).

Check my guo tie post, to see how to pleat the kuotie.

• Pan-fry the kuotie for 8-10 minutes. Serve with chili-garlic sauce and minced garlic.
  

Spaghetti Aglio Olio - I never thought that I would like this dish: Just a pasta dish seasoned with olive oil, sauteed garlic, basil/parsley and chili flakes. No meat, I thought! I have always liked my meat and was very sure that this dish would be quite tasteless for me. But then one day, my husband ordered this pasta from a delivery service. I was not that happy when I got it for my dinner. But after one hesitant bite I knew that I had been missing out something so delectable. It was so good! After this occasion, I had always wanted to recreate this dish at home. Finally I decided to do so last week and I added other ingredients which I thought would somehow fit this dish, olives and pepperoncini peppers.

Spaghetti Aglio Olio with Olives and Pepperoncini Serves 1
100 g Spaghetti	148
2 tbs olive oil	240
1 clove garlic, minced	4
1 seeded bird's eye chilli, sliced thinly	5?
1 tsp Maggi vegetable granules	6
2 tsp dried basil	4
10 olives	70
1 pepperoncini, sliced thinly	3
Black Pepper to taste	?
TOTAL	480 calories per serving

What to do

• Heat olive oil on medium heat.
• Add minced garlic and chilli slices. Sauté until fragrant.
• Toss in the spaghetti, olives, pepperonici, Maggi granules and dried basil. Sauté for about 1 minute.
• Serve immediately with a good grind of black pepper and Parmesan cheese (optional).
  

Budae Jjigae is a Korean stew 'invented' during the Korean war when meat and food in general were scarce. The Koreans used Spam, sausages, baked beans, cheese and anything else they could get from the US army base combined with other Korean traditional ingredients like Gojuchang (red pepper paste) and Kimchi to make this stew.

To be true, I had never heard of this stew until a few days ago when I came across this blog. I thought that the stew looked very interesting, combining instant ramen with spam, sausages and even cheese! I am not a big fan of spam, used to like sausages but now it's not that big anymore for me, that's why I decided to make a 'healthier' version of Budae Jjigae without the spam and sausages, but with the cheese. I guess I was just finding some excuses to make a bowl of instant ramen again, since I had forbidden myself to eat instant noodles for some time...;).

Budae Jjigae Serves 1
1 package Korean instant ramen ( I used Shin Ramyun)	240
550 ml water	0
3 mushrooms	12
1 medium egg	70
1 tbs kimchi	10
50 g organic Tofu	53
1 leaf Nappa cabbage	1
1 sliced organic smoked cheese	89
4 slices bellpepper	1
1 tbs chives	1
1 tbs Gojuchang	??
TOTAL	477 calories per serving

What to do:

• Bring the water to boil. Add tofu, mushrooms, nappa cabbage and gojuchang paste. Simmer for 1 minute.
• Add the ramen noodles. When it's 'al dente', tranfer the stew into a bowl.
• Decorate with bellpeppers, boiled egg, cheese, kimchi and chives.
• Serve with rice!
  

Have you ever thought that making mochi is a sticky, time consuming and challenging business? I always hated getting my hands covered by gooey mochi dough and I never like touching my food too much with bare hands - that's why I always appreciate sushi chefs who wear gloves, even though I know that in Japan wearing gloves for making sushi is considered weird/unnatural. I am getting better and don't mind that much any more when the foods I am to eat have gone through some laborious 'hands on' experience...;). But it still can be a problem from time to time, I guess it's something psychological - I have just never been so fond on the idea of 'handmade' food - in the real sense of the word, even though I know that wearing gloves absolutely doesn't make the food cleaner or more hygienic.

Back to the mochi topic! I think most people find shaping mochi to be rather tricky because the glutinous rice flour has been steamed beforehand, making it very gluey. But if you make mochi using the Tangyuan technique, then the problem is somehow solved, because you do all the forming before the mochi dough is cooked. I tried this trick a few days ago and it worked very well. It made mochi making very simple and quick. But if you want to make something like 'ichigo daifuku', I think this technique might not work, because you have to cook the strawberries as well with the mochi and I am sure you don't want cooked strawberries inside your daifuku. This technique can be used if you want to make simple mochis without fillings, or mochis with paste fillings - I guess you know what I mean by this!

Quick and Easy Red Bean Mochi Makes 10
Ingredients	Calories
110 g glutinous rice flour	107
100 ml water	0
2 g vanilla essence	6
100 g red bean paste (anko)	320
Corn starch for dusting	30?
TOTAL	463 calories
	46 calories per serving

I didn't use sugar for the mochi dough because I didn't want extra calories for the mochi, especially because the anko is already sweet anyway. But feel free to add extra sugar to your liking to the mochi dough if you think it's necessary.

What to do:

Mochi Dough

• Combine the glutinous rice flour, water and vanilla essence in a bowl until mixed well. This dough should not stick to your hand. If it does, add more glutinous flour little by little, until the dough is no longer sticky.
  
• Make 10 balls from the dough.

Red Bean paste (anko)

• Simply make 10 balls from the red bean paste - these balls need to be smaller than the mochi balls.

Now wrap each anko ball inside a mochi ball. When you have filled in all 10 mochi balls with anko, cook them in boiling water. When they float, transfer them to a bowl of water (room temperature). The last step is to coat each mochi ball with corn starch. That's it!

The last time I ate Jjamppong was at a Korean restaurant, called Seoul Ria in Sydney China Town. It was about three years ago and at that time I didn't even know that this delicious, spicy soup is called Jjamppong. The only thing I remembered about this soup was that it was red hot, full with seafood, vegetables and udon-like noodles. But then, I stumbled upon Maangchi's beautiful website some time ago and found the detailed recipe inclusive a video of how to make Jjamppong - noodle soup with seafood, meat and vegetables and it was red! I thought, "This must be recipe of the Korean soup I have been looking for...!!" I was so excited when I found it and finally decided to give a try two days ago. The soup tasted great, just like the one I had in Sydney! Thank you, Maangchi :).
Here is my adapted version of Maangchi's Jjamppong. I used dashi instead of making the stock myself with anchovies, etc. I also excluded the pork and vegetables, because I didn't have them. If you want to look at the original version, please look here.

Jjamppong Serves 1
Ingredients	Calories
200 g udon noodles	230
1 clove garlic, minced	4
¼ medium onion, chopped	13
½ tsp minced ginger	1
1 tbs olive oil	120
1 tbs oyster sauce	1
1 tbs fish sauce	1
½ tbs hot pepper flakes (mixed with 1 tbs of oil)	128
5 shrimps	45
A few pieces of squid, ca. 80 g	74
400 ml water	0
2 tsp dashi granules	20
½ cup leeks, cut into 2cm pieces	14
½ boiled egg	35
TOTAL	686 calories per serving

Please look at this video from Maangchi to see how to make Jjamppong.

Another dish with seafood...:). This time, homemade pasta with clams, shrimps and olives.

Spaghetti Frutti di Mare Serves 1
Ingredients	Calories
1 cup (cooked) spaghetti	225
1 tbs olive oil	120
1 clove garlic, minded	4
9 clams	65
9 shrimps	81
10 olives	70
1 tsp vegetable granules	6
1(small) glass of wine	100
1 medium tomato, chopped	15
1 tbs tomato paste	12
½ tbs sugar	25
50 g low fat yoghurt	32
Dried/ fresh chopped oregano	?
Black pepper	?
TOTAL	755 calories per serving

Sambal Goreng Udang is a traditional Indonesian delicacy. It is very simple to make and tastes delicious, especially if you like something hot and spicy. The perfect combination for Sambal Goreng Udang is actually shrimps with stinky beans (petai). But if you don't want to smell after eating this, you can choose other types of vegetables to accompany the shrimps, such as green beans or diced potatoes.

Sambal Goreng Udang Serves 1
Ingredients	Calories
10 shrimps	90
10 green beans, cut into 5 cm pieces	20
1 tbs olive oil	120
1 tbs minced shallot	5
1 tbs minced garlic	8
1 tbs sambal oelek	0
½ tsp sugar	7
Salt	0
TOTAL	250 calories per serving

What to do

• Heat olive oil on medium heat.
• Add minced garlic, shallot and sambal oelek and stir until fragrant. You can also add a dash of terasi powder if you wish.
  
• Add shrimps, green beans, salt and sugar. Stir fry for about 2 minutes until the shrimps are pink in colour.
• Serve with hot piping rice!

Prawn tempura is my favourite topping for udon noodle soup. At the moment I am trying not to eat too much deep fried stuff, but I guess 2 pieces of prawn tempura aren't that bad...;).

Prawn Tempura Udon Noodle Soup Serves 1
Ingredients	Calories
200 g udon	230
2 prawn tempura	120
1 boiled egg	70
2 tsp dashi granules	20
1 tbs soy sauce	10
1 tbs mirin	21?
400 ml hot water	0
¼ cup chopped green onions	7
Shichimi Togarashi (Japanese 7-spice powder)	?
TOTAL	478 calories per serving

Refer to this recipe if you want to make your own tempura.

What to do

• Cook udon noodles according to package instructions.
• In a separate bowl, add 1 tbs soy sauce, 1 tbs mirin, 2 tsp dashi powder.
• When the udon is cooked, add it into the bowl with 400 ml hot water.
• Garnish with 1 boiled egg, 2 prawn tempura, green onions and Shichimi Togarashi.
  

Nasi goreng pete means fried rice with stinky beans (Parkia speciosa). Everytime I hear of this dish I have to remember the restaurant near my house in Jakarta that my family and I sometimes visited. It served the most delicious nasi goreng pete :). Unfortunately this restaurant is no longer there... I don't normally eat stinky beans, as, like its name, the beans have a rather unpleasant smell. However, these pete/petai beans can taste fantastic with strong-flavoured, spicy food, even though for a lot of people not used to the beans, pete is an acquired taste.

Since I had some stock of seafood, I stir-fried the fried rice with some white clams and shrimps. I also used some fish and shrimp-balls.

Nasi Goreng Pete with Seafood Serves 1
Ingredients	Calories
½ cup (cooked) long-grain rice	105
3 cloves garlic	12
2 tbs minced shallots	10
2 bird's eye chillies, sliced thinly	10?
2 tbs olive oil	240
½ cup chopped green onions	14
10 shrimps	90
9 white clams	65
2 fish balls	18?
2 shrimp balls	18?
10 petai beans	?
2 tbs fish sauce	1
1 tbs oyster sauce	1
1 tbs sweet soy sauce	35
TOTAL	619 calories per serving

What to do

• Heat olive oil on medium heat. When hot, add minced garlic and shallots and fry until fragrant.
• Add clams, shrimps, petai beans, fish balls and shrimp balls. Drizzle with fish sauce and fry until the clams open and the shrimps, petai, etc are slightly brown.
• Add rice and chili slices. Fry until aromatic, about 15 seconds then drizzle with oyster sauce and sweet soy sauce.
  
• Turn heat to high and add green onions. Toss well to combine, about 15 seconds.
• Turn off the heat and your fried rice is ready.
  

Another light but tasty meal... This dish is adapted from The 1200 Calorie a-Day Menu Cookbook by Nancy S. Hughes.

Cajun Chicken and Rice Serves 2
Ingredients	Calories
2 skinless chicken breast fillets (300 g)	494
1 cup rice (185 g)	270
1 tsp olive oil	45
2 cloves garlic, minced	4
1 medium onion, diced	50
1 bellpepper, diced	30
2 chili pepper, thinly sliced	20
2 tomatoes, diced	30
50 g chicken granules	75
1 tbs Worcestershire sauce	20
1 tbs spring onions	5
Salt, cayenne pepper, paprika, black pepper, thyme to taste	?
TOTAL	1043 calories
	522 calories per serving

What to do

• Rub chicken with oil, salt, cayenne pepper, paprika and black pepper.
  
• Heat 1 tsp of olive oil in your skillet and brown chicken for about 1 minute on each side. Set aside and bake it in the oven for 30 minutes.
  
• Add garlic and onion to pan drippings until aromatic.
• Add tomatoes, rice, 1 cup water, chicken granules, pepper and Worcestershire sauce.
• When half of the water is almost gone, add spring onions.
• Cook the rice mixture in the rice cooker.
• When the rice is cooked, serve with the baked chicken. Garnish with dried thyme.