Making Korean Potato Pancakes

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Sha

Wow, it’s been a long while since I’ve blogged about invading the kitchen and actually creating edible food!

Nonetheless, this is a very interesting thing the bf and I attempted to make (and with great success): Korean potato pancakes. Inspired by the popular Korean variety show, Family Outing, he was dying to try making these after seeing that it wasn’t all that difficult to make.

The ingredients (for about 8 pancakes) are pretty simple:

4 medium sized potatoes
Salt to taste (we used half a teaspoon)
Red pepper and spring onion (also known as green onion)
Shallots
Cooking oil

So here are the steps:

1) Peel potatoes and dice them into cubes

cut potatoes

2) Blend the cut potatoes until you have a fine mixture
blender

3) Strain the mixture so that you only capture the potato bits

strain

4) Be sure to have another bowl below the strainer to collect the potato water. Leave the water for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, there should be potato starch at the bottom of the bowl.

potato juice

5) Remove the liquid, leaving the potato starch behind. Add the potato starch to the blended potato mixture

[no photo for this step]

6) Add salt to the mixture and mix well

salted

7) On the side, chop up the red pepper and spring onion

garnish

8) Throw in the chopped vegetables into the potato mixture. You’d notice that there are also bits of shallots in the photo below (and not in the photo above). Well this was a innovative choice of the head chef (which is not me, lol). I’m fine with anything that has onions to be honest.

throw

9) Scoop a tablespoonful of the mixture to add to the frying pan

spoonful

10) Shape the spoonful of potato-garnish mixture into circles and fry till golden brown. We used a tiny frying pan right here, so we could only fry one pancake at a time, so if you have a bigger frying pan – it will be faster to fry all 8 pancakes.

And there you have it, your Korean potato pancakes all done and ready to be devoured!

potato cakes

Conclusion:

This was relatively easy to make, and tasted pretty good despite the first attempt. Try having it with a dash of chili sauce by the side to make it even yummier! This was also my first savoury dish (I normally attempt to bake) and I’m glad it turned out pretty nicely. Here’s to more cooking experiments with the man in the coming future

Ayam Brand Tunamagik

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Sha

So I gave in to my PMS cravings that got totally influenced by the Ayam Brand tunamagik commercial I’ve seen in cinemas.

I also did it just to curb the ridiculous craving, seriously. So I bought two cans (because it’s going at $3.45 for 2 at NTUC). They just had these two flavours so I picked one each – not too sure if there are actually more flavours.

There are instructions on the can, but come on – it’s as simple as pouring the entire contents of the can to a plate of hot rice and mixing it all together!

2 bowls of rice they say? I can hardly finish a normal portion of rice on most days! Anyway, I decided to go with the sambal one because when there’s a choice, always go for the spicy one.

And then I poured the contents on white rice (no brainer really).

And then I mixed it all up.

And there you have it – instant fried rice! I wish I had cucumber and tomato slices to go with it, but I only realized we’ve run out of all vegetables after I’m done mixing it.

My verdict?
It’s not that bad, but it’s not fantastic either. First of all, it was not spicy at all. I don’t think it’s my high level of expectation for spicy food. There’s just no sambal taste to it. I could only finish half the portion because after awhile, it just overwhelms – which is why I said it’s better to have cucumbers or tomatoes or even eggs to complement the taste. Maybe next time I’ll try harder at making it palatable at least.

Rainbow Pancakes

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Sha

FP had the idea earlier in the week that we should make rainbow pancakes over the weekend.

So we did. What’s not to like, everybody loves rainbows!

Because we’re such amateurs in the kitchen, we decided to take a shortcut and use a pancake mix instead of making the batter from scratch. But instead of adding cold water as per the instructions, we used cold milk.

We had 4 small bowls ready (because we wanted to have pancakes in 4 different colours). The pancake batter is then divided equally to the 4 bowls, and we added a different food colour to each bowl. And we ended up with these. Such glorious colours!

Then we started frying. We started off with a mini frying pan (because we thought it’ll be so cute to have small pancakes – such idealists), but it turned out that a small frying pan makes it hard to flip the pancake over.

And the pancakes were not pretty, until we switched to a bigger frying pan. Then, it became easier to make them.

This was the first pancake we made using the bigger frying pan. That’s not oil, that’s just a teensy bit of butter, and it was just heating up.

So here’s the end product. We had it with maple syrup and butter – just like any other pancake.

To be honest, the pancakes fried in the bigger pan (blue and yellow) tastes better and were well-cooked. The ones made in the smaller pan (green and purple) still has a slight taste of flour in it. But hey like I said – we’re amateurs. Don’t expect too much from us.

We should really, however, have a pink as one of the colours next time. Pink pancakes, fancy that! There’s no pink in the rainbow you say? Well mine is a made-up rainbow then.

Do you have a problem with that?

Strawberry Jelly Hearts – Failed Attempt

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Sha

Edit: Thanks to the responses on Facebook and Twitter, I’ve finally gotten to the bottom of this.

The first thing to note was that the instructions I followed was for a recipe using gelatin powder, and not agar powder. Since I was using agar powder, I should have left the baking tray with the cream cheese mixture to set in the fridge for a few hours first before putting on the last layer of jello!

On the topic of jello, another mistake i made was to not let it cool down completely before pouring it into the baking tray.

Also I should have sieved the cream cheese mixture to get rid of the lumps.

As for where to get gelatin powder in Singapore, I’ve been told by some that you can get it at Phoon Huat – which has a few outlets islandwide.

Thanks girls for all your comments!

*******

I based my attempt on some recipes I found online, but here’s the exact one that I derived on my own after reading plenty of yet similar yet different recipes.

Ingredients:
For the crust -
300g digestive biscuits
150g melted butter

For the cheesecake layer -
250g cream cheese
1 & 1/2 tablespoons agar-agar powder (couldn’t find gelatin powder anywhere so I subbed it with agar agar jelly)
1 & 1/4 cups boiling water
10 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 strawberries, halved

For the jelly layer -
170g strawberry flavoured jelly (Jello brand)
500ml boiling water
500ml cold water

And these are the steps I did (and in between unforeseen events that happened):

1) Place the digestive biscuits in a ziplock bag

2) Crush the biscuits until they look like this:

3) In the meantime, melt the butter (I use a frying pan) so that once the biscuits are crushed, you can add the melted butter to it

4) Mix the melted butter and crushed biscuits together, and place the mixture at the base of the baking tin

So that settles the crust. The tray is then placed in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes (more or less).

This is where it started getting complicated (both from the lack of experience and circumstance). So the next part is where we create the cheese filling for the jelly hearts.

5) Place 250 grams of cream cheese in a bowl, and add 10 tablespoons of sugar in it

In the meantime, I placed the agar-agar powder (once again, let me remind you that I subbed the gelatin powder with agar agar powder) in hot water and let it cool.

Back to the cream cheese and sugar mixture, I also had to add a teaspoonful of vanilla essence, which is always in stock at my house. ALWAYS. Well until today. So I had a mixture right there (and agar agar powder in boiling water at the side) – and NO VANILLA ESSENCE.

I had no choice but to rush out to get a bottle of the essence. And of course the first grocery store I went to ran out of it, and I had to walk a little further down. But eventually – I got the vanilla essence – which I added to my cream cheese and sugar mixture.

6) The next step was to pour in the agar agar water mixture to the cream cheese and sugar one. Simple enough right? NO.

BECAUSE THE AGAR AGAR MIXTURE HAD TURNED TO ACTUAL JELLY WHILE I WAS OUT ON A VANILLA ESSENCE HUNT:

At this point, my mind went blank. Seriously. Like, what just happened? Of course I didn’t have an extra packet of agar powder. So I had to rush out again and get another packet. Rushing out in the hot sun twice in a day just to hunt for ingredients will tend to take a toll on you. Ok so when I got back, and re-did step of mixing the agar agar jelly to boiling water.

7) After the mixture has cooled down a little, I poured it to the baking tin on top of the digestive biscuit crust.

8) The lumpy bits were actually from the agar agar powder. Those lumps will eventually be the downfall of this project. So I let the mixture set for a bit and went on to cut the strawberries into hearts.

9) The cut up strawberry hearts were then placed on the cream cheese and digestive biscuits layer in the baking tin.

And then I placed the baking tin back in the fridge again, while making the jello mixture – which is the final step.

10) What I did was put hot water to it, and when the crystals start to dissolve, I added cold water. And mixed and mixed.

11) I only poured the mixture into the baking tin when it was lukewarm.

No photo for this step because this is where I know that shit has hit the fan. When I poured the jello mixture into the pan, some of the lumpy parts (from the agar jelly) became very visible. So parts of the baking tray surface had patches of white. Also, the mixture seems a tad too watery. I don’t know if it was because I used too much water.

12) The contents of the baking tray is then left to chill for at least 4 hours.

Finally – this is the end product. Ugly as hell, omg I can’t believe I created this. The white patch in the middle was a result of my mum putting a cling wrap over the tray while I took a nap in the afternoon. But well, it was already destroyed even before that anyway.

So what I’d like to know, if any of you can be so kind are:

1) Was it a mistake to use agar agar powder? Can I still make this dessert without gelatin or agar agar powder?
2) Did I do any of the steps wrongly?
3) Where did I go wrong?

Thanks

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Sha

Sometime in November last year, Nena and I decided we’d stay in and bake. We were so looking forward to baking rainbow cupcakes, but because we couldn’t find some of the ingredients (such as gel food colouring – let me know if any other forms of food colouring can be used for rainbow cakes), we settled on red velvet cupcakes.

Before we go further, I need to say that neither of us have baked red velvet cupcakes before this. It was a first attempt, and it was highly risky for two amateurs to take on this task. But I guess things turned out better than expected.

The second thing I need to tell you guys is that we didn’t have an electric mixer. So everything was mixed by hand. Exhausting but worth it, I guess!

We looked up a random red velvet recipe online while grocery shopping. It seemed simple enough to follow, and so we based our purchases on the ingredients listed. It was all pretty impromptu.

We followed the recipe pretty closely despite having to make a few changes along the way. For example, if I recall correctly, we had to add in more food colouring because the batter didn’t seem red enough. We also added more sugar to the frosting.

At first we baked using pretty cupcake liners, but after our first batch flopped (big time), we did the next few batches without the liners. Not only were they easier to remove from our silicon cupcake tray, the cupcakes were also bigger.

Another reason why our first batch failed was because the baking duration indicated in the recipe was 18-22 minutes. Not only was it rock hard, but it was also very burnt. So the next batch onwards, we cut the baking time by half – just 9 minutes! And they turned out perfect.

I guess the best part of baking these cupcakes was the frosting and decorating part! We made a piping bag and filled it with the cream cheese mixture we made – and started swirling it all over the cupcakes! And staying true to the initial idea of rainbow cupcakes, we scattered rainbow pebbles and sprinkles over the frosting. And here’s the end result:

So I guess we did get our “rainbow” cupcakes after all!

.: asylum for the sane :.

where rainbows end.

Category Archives: Kitchen Adventures

Making Korean Potato Pancakes

Ayam Brand Tunamagik

Rainbow Pancakes

Strawberry Jelly Hearts – Failed Attempt

Red Velvet Cupcakes