Le Grand Chef

So I watched this yesterday, its a sweet movie very predicable but none the less very enjoyable.
You can find it here.

"Le Grand Chef is about a cooking contest between two grandsons of two apprentices of the Royal Chef. The reward will be a precious cooking knife with a very prestigious history attached to it. A story that was depicted from Huh Young-man’s comic series with the same title which began in 2002. It was published and more than 500,000 copies were sold. "

The deadly Blow fish.

Grilled Little Lamp Chops

Hi!

Jackie's new contribution:

- CHULETILLAS DE CORDERO A LA PLANCHA con TOMATE de guarnición (GRILLED LITTLE LAMB CHOPS garnished with TOMATOE)



Thanks Jackie!

My Friend Rob Makes His Own Beer

Rob really doesn't like to drink Hite or OB so he has started to make his own. Here is is writing about making beer in Korea.



I have wanted to brew my own beer for the past few years, but had never gotten around to it. So a few months ago after moving into a bigger place I bought all the gear and started brewing. You can buy the basic starter kits from a bunch of places in Korea. All the basic kits include the fermenter, airlock, thermometer, hydrometer, some bottles and some sanitizer and cost around 60,000won. I bought mine from www.winekit.co.kr. You can also get them from www.housebeer.co.kr and www.goodbeer.co.kr.

All of these sites also have the beer kits that you need to start brewing. They are all really easy. All of the work has been done for you. Just heat up some water and dissolve the contents of the can (or two). Then add cool water (I used bottled water as I don't want my beer tasting like chlorine) to bring the volume up to 23 litres, making sure that your final temperature is where it needs to be (different types of yeast need different temperatures). Then tuck the fermenter away somewhere where it will stay at the proper temperature for a week or two until fermentation is done, then bottle or keg it. After you get the hang of this, there are better kits which require a bit more work or you can even cook up a recipe all your own, which I have yet to do.

Growing up, my Dad made a lot of wine and beer. My job was washing the bottles, which is awful. After the first batch reminded me of how much I hate washing bottles, I decided to really get after it and make a kegerator.......this is where it gets good!!!

After a few phone calls and people telling me I couldn't get Corny Kegs in Korea, I finally found a place in a restaurant supply market in downtown Seoul, 중앙시장. Just a tiny place....중엉 케그 (Joongang Keg), (02)-2238-8339/011-216-9536. I grabbed up two of these kegs for 60,000won (used and still had cola in them, but held pressure). I also got a 20lb (I think) CO₂ tank off the guy for 60,000won and a regulator for 30,000won. Then around the corner I picked up a used mini-type fridge for 60,000won.

I had to cut the plastic shelves out of the door as it wouldn't shut with the kegs in the fridge.

I tried my hardest, but I couldn't find anywhere to get a nice beer tower/tap in Korea. I ended up ordering a dual tap beer tower, all the beer and gas lines, the beer and gas disconnects for the kegs, new o-al rings and grease from LearnToBrew in the U.S.. Shipping was a killer....cost me just as much as all the parts, but now that its all hooked up it was definitely worth it!!!!

The two kegs and the CO₂ cylinder fit perfectly into the fridge.

Installing it all was easy. I traced the coolant lines in the fridge and made sure (well, pretty sure) that none of them ran through the top of the fridge. I drilled out a hole in the center and ran the beer lines and screwed down the beer tap. It's on there pretty good, but it's a tiny bit wobbly. When I get around to it, I want to put a piece of wood under the plastic in the top of the fridge to give the tower something stiffer to screw down into.

That's pretty much all there was to it. You need to set the CO₂ pressure according to the temperature of your beer and how much you want it carbonated. Check out this carbonation chart, tells ya everything you need to know.

That's it.....Happy brewing and just think in a few weeks you'll never have to drink Hite, Cass or OB again!!! Here are a few pictures of the final product...

Los últimos días de la magia

Es lo que parece, el final decadente de una fiesta; y me encanta. Huracán y tornado que se devoran el uno al otro; así es como yo lo veo, la verdad, no podría definirlo mejor.
Esto es una puta tormenta con rayos y truenos y descargas eléctricas que sólo me hacen desear golpearte más y más, morder toda tu alma y aspirar tu esencia.

Es extraño descubrir cosas así a estas alturas de la situación, me encanta sorprenderme a mí misma... todavía tengo esperanzas, oh, sí...

Ése mágico momento...

Punching above their weight

One of the first things we said that we would do when we moved to the countryside was buy chickens. Real live clucking, pecking, laying chickens so that we could have the freshest organic eggs possible. Unfortunately, these have gradually slipped down the shopping list to make way for more essential items such as a sofa or bookcases to house the many hundreds of books we’ve collected over the years. And to be perfectly honest, I can barely look after courgettes and kale so it is probably best that I get used to tending plants before I’m entrusted with something that breathes and craps.

The benefit of living the rural life though is that we don’t have to go very far to get our eggs even though we haven’t invested in any hens ourselves as yet. A mere four houses down the road is the extent of the distance we have to travel to buy eggs laid by happy birds free to see the sky above or peck at worms and bugs below.

We usually go for plain old hens’ eggs, occasionally stretching to duck eggs if we are feeling indulgent – the yolks are larger and richer and they poach beautifully thanks to their freshness. But in addition to these conventional ova, quail and bantam eggs are also on sale.


Now, I’ve never really been able to see the point of quail eggs. They make a relatively good garnish. If you are crafting a selection of canapés, for example, then a fried quail’s egg sitting proudly atop a morsel of toasted truffle brioche is a delicious mouthful but they have little everyday application.

I was also unfamiliar with the bantam breed until quite recently. These are about half the size of a traditional brown hen with eggs proportionally smaller which is why we’ve never really bothered with them before. It would seem that we aren’t the only ones and our egg people struggle to sell them, instead they gave us a box for free on Saturday morning for which we were truly grateful and curiously intrigued.


They are an absolute revelation. On cracking one into a hot pan, I was surprised by how much egg managed to fit into such a small shell. The yolk was a deep yellow and larger than any supermarket yolk I’ve ever seen. It took less than a minute to cook and, once done, I slid it onto a waiting slice of home-baked bread, lightly toasted and generously buttered so that a little of the butter dribbled over the side. Topped with no more than black pepper and a few flakes of sea salt, this was comfort food at its delicious and simplistic best – guaranteed to force and smile and convince me that these bantams pack a serious punch.

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I couldn’t write a post about chickens without mentioning the fantastic ‘Chicken Out’ campaign for a free-range future. Sign up here.