Seoul Food Souvenirs

What to buy from Seoul as food souvenirs? A few friends have started asking me this. So I thought I’d share this with all of you. There are actually a lot to buy, it all depends on what you like. My husband and I enjoy food and of course the KimChi. So we ended up buy a 1kg bag of KimChi. To add to that, we also bought a big tub of Koreas' chili paste and a small tub of soy bean paste and Korean chili flakes. These are used to make the KimChi soup and the broth of seafood tofu soup and pork soup. If you are a die hard fan of their broth, I would highly recommend buying these.

Seoul Food Souvenirs

Other food souvenir we bought was the sweet potato crisp. These were unique to me as we always see potato crisp but sweet potato was something out of the ordinary to me.

These are some of the recommended food souvenirs. There are lots of other stuff you can get from their local supermarket and wet market. So go around and have look. You may be surprised by what you can find!

Happy shopping…..

Steam Boat

My husband and I got bored of eating out and the regular meals that I cook at home. That got us thinking of having something that was easy to prepare and yet delicious and hopefully healthier that eating out. The weather has also gotten cooler with the bouts of sudden heavy thunderstorm like rain for the past week. That’s when we decided to have steamboat! It would the perfect meal on a cooling day.

Steamboat normally refers to an array of dishes where the ingredients are cooked in a simmering pot of broth at the table usually communally, similar to a fondue. The term Steamboat is mostly used in Malaysia and Singapore while Hotpot is more commonly used in other parts of the world.

Steamboat dinner

Soup/Stock Recipe

If you are planning to have fresh seafood and meats during the meal, you don’t really need to have any flavour enhancing soup. For my soup, I made something healthy and simple.

1.  2 chicken bones
2. 1 corn (cup into smaller pieces)
3. 1 clove of garlic
4. 2 litres of water
5. 3 table spoon on soya sauce
6. Salt to taste
7. Pepper to taste

Soup

Put everything into the pot and bring to boil. Once reached boiling temperature, reduce fire to a simmer. Simmer for 1 hour making sure that the soup does not dry up. Top-up the water where necessary.

Dipping Sauce

Everyone has their preference when it comes to dipping sauce. For me I prefer the simple yet healthier sauce that actually enhances the taste of the meal rather than overpowering it.

1.  ½ clove of garlic (minced)
2. 4 Small chilli - chilli padi (finely sliced)
3. Soya sauce (enough to drench the garlic)
4. Sesame oil (a few dashes)
5. Coriander leaves (finely chopped).

Just mixed all the ingredients together and your dipping sauce is ready. For those who don’t like the raw garlic taste, you can opt to lightly fry it first and then mix all the above ingredients together.

Dipping sauce

Steamboat Ingredients

Generally, you can put anything you want into the steamboat. Here are some of the usual ingredients.

1. Prawn
2. Fish slices
3. Scallop
4. Clams (la-la)
5. Squid
6. Thinly sliced meat (akin meat used for shabu-shabu)
7. Fish/meat/cuttlefish balls
8. Crab-stick
9. Pin/button mushroom
10. Leafy vegetables
11. Tofu
12. Fried bean curd skin
13. Egg
14. Noodles

Scallops, Crab-stick & Pin mushroom

Squid & Prawn

Clams

Meatball

Sliced meat

Fried bean-curd skin

Leafy vegetables

Prep Time: 2 hours including cleaning

Cook Time: 1 hour

Serves: 2-3 pax

Au Petit Salut

Au Petit Salut

It was out 5^th wedding anniversary and my husband decided to bring me to somewhere romantic for dinner. Au Petit Salut! An award winning restaurant nestled on a hillock at Harding Road.

Squid

The restaurant boasts extensive selection of duck, beef, lamb, seafood and a fair selection of traditional French desserts as well. Crème Brulee, Souffle, melted Valrhona chocolate and profiteroles are some of the all time favourites.

Pan seared duck foie gras

The restaurant offers both al fresco and indoor setting. The ambience and service of the restaurant is a bit less than a fine-dining restaurant. The restaurant offers both set menu and ala cart. The food was absolutely delicious! I definitely recommend all to have a go at this. But mind you the price tag is quite hefty of about $100 per person if you take a 3 course. Do remember to make a reservation if you don’t want to be disappointed. Enjoy!

Hand-made pasta with lobster tail

Confit duck leg - signature dish

Souffle with chocolate truffle

Address: 40C Harding Road, Singapore 249548

Telephone: (65) 64751976

Special Green Bean Dessert with Gula Melaka & Durian

Green beans with gula melaka & durian

It’s one of those days when you crave for something sweet to eat and I happen to have leftover durian sitting in the fridge.  So I decided to make my special green bean dessert with gula Melaka and durian. This is a recipe passed on from my dad. Yes, you read right. My dad is the cook of the family!! Every member of my dad’s family can cook. They all take over my late grandmother who was a glorious and talented cook. And I guess I took after my dad, the passion and love for cooking. But I must admit that I am not as good as them.

Ready to eat

Nevertheless, this is a fairly simple recipe. My husband said it was good. He’s never tried this before and even suggested that I share this recipe with everyone out there. So that’s what I’m doing now. Hope you all enjoy it as much.

Modern Korean Cuisine, Shinsegae

Shinsegae - Flagshop store, Myeong-dong

Shinsegae is one of the first department store and discount store of Korea. We went to their flagship store in Myeong-dong which is the pride of Shinsegae. The Main Store consists of the “main building”, which is a premium and very first department store of Korea and the other parts, “new building” and “urban style department store”.

You can really go crazy shopping there as you will be spoilt with the vast choices and variety there. It has up to 14 floors!! There is practically everything under the sun for everyone with different interest to shop, eat, relax and even learn. Ranging from beauty salons, Food Market, Women’s Career Fashion, Cosmetics/Accessories, Young wear, Men’s Wear, Men’s Accessories, Kids, Sport, Home Collection, Restaurants even Shinsegae Cultural Hall and Gallery!!

After walking for hours we decided to stop for dinner. We went to the Restaurant Floor which is 10F. The entire floor houses up to 10 different restaurants ranging from Korean, Italian, Chinese, and Japanese to café/bistro style. After looking around, we decided to go with the Modern Korean Cuisine. 

Modern Korean Cuisine Restaurant

Barbequed minced meat

There was quite a variety to the menu and we decided to ask the manager to recommend their specialty. As a result, we ordered barbequed minced meat, and octopus to go with rice. An array of side dishes was provided including radish, kimchi, bean sprouts with sesame oil, “doenjang” (bean paste) soup and salad. The Kimchi was superb. Think we asked for re-fills twice! Haha..

Variety of side dishes

Everything was delicious, especially the barbequed meat which has a fragrant slight burnt charcoal aroma to it. It was slightly sweet and garnished with some crispy stuff at the side. We just couldn’t get enough of it. We want to ask what the side garnish was but the manager and all the waiters were so busy then we finished everything before we could get their attention to ask! Even the octopus was cooked to perfection, spicy and tender. 

Stir fried octopus

I highly recommend this restaurant to those who want to try Korean food for the first time. I reckon that you will definitely fall in love with Korean food thereafter.

Address:

Modern Korean Cruisine

10F, Shinsegae Department Store

53-50 Chungmuro Iga,

Jung-gu, Seoul.

How to get there:

Hoehyeon Station, Subway Line 4 Exit 7

Korean Fried Chicken (Two-Two)

Two-Two Chicken

If you have never tried Korean fried chicken, you have got to try the Two-Two fried chicken joint in Korea. Two-Two is supposedly the original and best Korean fried chicken chain. Once you’ve tried it, you will definitely be back for more. Two-Two, is sometimes called by its Korean transliteration, Dul Dul. They have many outlets around Korea, but we tried the one at Myeong-dong.

They have a few types of fried chicken consisting of a few permutations such as regular fried chicken, fried with sweet garlic sauce, half and half, chicken tenders (for the lazy one) and a few local side dishes. I could not decide on which to try and decided to go with the half and half if the regular fried chicken the sweet garlic sauce.

Fried Chicken - Sweet garlic sauce

Fried Chicken - Regular

The regular fried chicken is surprisingly juicy. Their plain fried chicken with optional sauce for dipping is perfect beer chicken. The crust is delicate, almost not-existent. It was well marinated and had crackling crispy skin and surprisingly not to greasy. The meat was juicy on the inside even for the breast meat. The garlic sauce was actually piquant (sweet, salty, garlicky and tangy). The skin was still crispy and drenched with the sauce. Sesame seed was sprinkled on for the extra fragrance. Overall, we preferred the regular fried chicken. So much so that we actually went back one more time on the last day for lunch! Yum Yum!! 

Price: 26,000W for 2 pax with beer

Location: Locate the Cinema at Myeong Dong metro, cross the main street and look out for Pacific Hotel. The restaurant is just next to it.

Korean Red Chilli Noodle soup with Mussels...

On the arrival day, by the time I checked into the hotel (Fraser Central Place) I was already starving!! Had no clue where to go for my first meal. Just as I walked out of the hotel there was this small restaurant. The restaurant owner looked kinda friendly and could actually speak mandarin. He thought my husband was from China. Hahaha…We ended up having lunch there after some persuasion by the restaurant owner. It looked like a tiny place from the outside. But it was bigger than it looked when we went in.

The menu was not that extensive. We looked around to see what was the assuming favourite dish ordered by the majority. There were lots of photos stuck on the walls as well. Some were of famous Korean celebrities. There was even one photo showing the long queue of die hard fans under rain just to get a seat in this restaurant!

After seeing this.. we didn’t need any further persuasion and decided to go for the Korean red chilly noodle soup (jjampong) with mussels. When the noodles came, boy, were we surprised. It was a really big bowl with lots of mussels indeed.

We slurped every single mussel down together with the noodles and broth that came with it. The broth was slightly spicy rich in flavour of the mussels, onion, leek and carrots that came with it. It was definitely a satisfying first meal in Seoul!

Check out the photos below.



Korean red chilli noodles soup (jjampong) with mussels