Recipe: Dak Bulgogi - Spicy Korean BBQ Chicken

It has been sometime since I posted the last recipe. Well, after such a long wait, I decided to post a heavy weight recipe - one of my very own creations, on how to marinate and cook Bulgogi (Korean BBQ meat) at home!

Ingredients:

Chicken Meat, cut in Chunks– 800g  (Preferably leg meat) 

Spring Onions – Handful (Optional)

Marinate:

Korean Chili Paste – One tablespoon

Minced Garlic – 2 cloves

Sesame Seed Oil – Half a tablespoon

If prefer spicier, can add in fresh minced chili.

Also, freshly squeezed juice of half an orange or pear.

To note:

It is better to use chicken thigh meat for this recipe as they are more suitable for grill. I do not recommend chicken breast as they tend to be dry if grilled for too long. You can also replace the chicken meat with pork or beef. Suggest to use pork shoulder, i.e. fattier cut of meat for this recipe.

Depending on how sweet the fruits are, you might need additional sugar. Alternatively, use Citroen Honey as sweetener and some water to dilute the marinate into paste-like mixture.

The marinate also do not need soy sauce or salt as the Korean Chili paste, see picture above, is salty by nature. The Korean Chili paste is not really spicy, in my opinion and in fact tasted more like Chili- flavoured bean paste.

Method:

In a large bowl, mix all marinate condiments together.

Our family love spicy food, thus I added quite a huge amount of minced chili.  

The mixture is then diluted with the freshly squeezed juice. I would strongly recommend you taste the marinate at this stage and make adjustment to see if it suited your taste.

Add more sugar if you prefer the meat to be slightly sweeter or a bit of soy sauce if you feel that it is too sweet and not salty enough. The thumb of rule is that the marinate should be slightly stronger in taste, so that when you add in the chicken meats later, it will be just right.

 

Mix in the chicken pieces thoroughly. It should preferably left to marinate for at least one day. You can store this directly in the chilling compartment for about 2 days. You can also marinate in bulk and store the marinate meat in freezer. It can be kept for at least two weeks. 

To cook:

Although I did say grilled and BBQ, to save the hassle, you can actually “grill” them in a non-stick pan. 

This is what I did.

 

Heat up a non-stick pan with medium-high heat and grill the marinate meat without oil. To accompany the meat, you can also grill onions and fresh mushroom in the same pan.

Viola! There you have it, beautifully grilled, aromatic, spicy and sweet Korean BBQ Chicken ! 

Looking at the dish, I can’t help myself to tuck in immediately.

Tip: As there is sugar content in marinate, the meat burnt easily. Pay closer attention when cooking it. Turn it frequently. Add a bit of water to deglaze the pan, if it gets too dry.

Of course, such a wonderful dish can be serve as it is or with a bowl of hot rice! Let me show you how I eat it:

I learnt this from Korean restaurant. They loved to pair greasy grilled meat with fresh lettuce leaves and so I did.

On top of it, I put in a bit of caramelised grilled onions.

 

Then, the grilled mushroom.

After that, I select one of the golden grilled meat…

 

… and place it on top of the mushroom and onions

Gently, picked up the lettuce leaf and make it sort of like a wrap. Shove it into the mouth immediately (not that you can wait anyway…) !

Hmmm… Now where is the ice-cold beer?

Yishun’s Bottle Tree Park

On a beautiful day, the KL shopping kakis decided to meet up and do something different for a change. They didn’t manage to travel to Malaysia for holiday this year, a pity, due to differences in schedule. Therefore, they decided to find retreat in Singapore instead. A relaxing place with never-done before activities…

This bottle-shaped tree is aptly known as Bottle Tree. It is native to Australia and cost the park owner quite a fortune to fly them from Australia, so that they can be transplanted in Singapore…

The dilemma is that we have basically done everything that we could do in Singapore. There are only that many songs to sing in Karaoke, that many shopping centres we can shopped in, that many movies we can watch, that many one for one buffets we can enjoy…

So, after a brain storming session, we decided to do something “outdoorsy”, something close to natural, something which we have heard a lot, but never tried before.

We decided to …

…go Prawn-Fishing ~! I first got know of prawn fishing activities from this nasty “Ah Beng” intern. Don’t know why, but he always bring the gang of intern to go prawn fishing in the middle of night. I always wondered then whether it is really “fun”.

We reached there at about 1 pm. There were few groups of people already fishing. Each of them occupied certain area of the pond, patiently waiting for prawns to hook. Seriously, it doesn’t looked like it was a difficult task. Every few minutes, there will always be a prawn hooked up somewhere.

 

Prawn fishing charges hourly. I remembered we paid about $13 dollars each for 1 hour worth of fishing time. Rods and baits are provided. It looked easy enough, but strangely experience does play an important part.

The uncle-in-charge was a very nice guy. At Bottle Tree Park, there is no such things as “to prevent people catching too much prawns”. Somehow, I got to a slow start. Prawns just avoided my bait. Uncle though busy with other chores, still managed to keep an eye on me. After 15 mins without a hook-on, he came back and check my rod. Eventually, he decided to change a new rod for me and even directs me to a good fishing spot.

He said “Let’s get you another rod, if not you will be bored and not be able to enjoy fishing with your friend.” I was so impressed with their service standard.

True enough, less than two minutes after his coaching, I caught my very first prawn. It was a female prawn with roe. Somewhat, I pity it a lot and did not want to eat it. Thus, I secretly missed the net when trying to put it into the net. Big sister caught eye of it and I was scolded for wasting time and money. Well, as long as my conscientious felt better (briefly) then. 

Here’s some inside tips about prawn fishing. The bait used is actually chicken heart. Usually, you only need a small piece at the tip of the hook. Uncle says the heart will expand when comes in contact with water, so don’t be greedy and use a big piece. Also, prawn had a small mouth, so if it is too big, you might not be able to hook it.

Then when fishing, try to place your line near ventilators, Uncle said that prawns usually congregated there for more air. The next thing to take note is to be able to spot the slight, very gentle tugging. When the prawn is eating the bait, it would tug the line. 

 

While you might not agree, but sometimes it pays to be the “weaker sex”. Even with uncle’s tutorage, I did not fare too well, only managed to catch about 3 prawns. (I thought I have committed enough sins…) Mindy caught slightly more than me but still lost to the winner - Jade who caught more than a dozen of them. She practically got prawns up her hook every few minutes. I guessed she is their cup of tea.

Maybe our laughable awkward action caught eye of those experienced fisher, one of them actually gave all of his catch, about 20 of them, to us. I jokingly exclaimed that Jade is not only good at catching prawns, but also caught attention from some men. LOL.  

The good thing about bottle tree park is that they have an electrical grill near the pond, for people to grill prawns on the spot.

The thing about prawn fishing is that it is rather cruel spots. Called me a hypocrite, although I am a meat-eater, but I can’t bear to kill them myself. In the end, Mindy and Jade had to wash, cut off their long claws, skewed them for me to cook them. Mindy joked that if we were back to prehistoric times, Jade will be the hunter, she will be the processor and I will be the chef.

Nope I did not felt better after hearing it. I was really bad.

It was interesting, but somewhat cruel activity. I think I still prefer to delude myself with packed meat and dead seafood.

To those prawns that I have cooked that day, may your souls rest in peace and be born a better being.

Amibatha…

For those who are not that sentimental, please do visit Bottle Tree Park. It is a relaxing place with many back-to-natural activities for one to rub off those city-stresses.

Visit their website for more details:
http://www.bottletree.com.sg/

Good Luck Birthday Noodles

Celebrating one’s Birthday with a Birthday cake has become a common practise that people forget it was originally a western tradition. Traditionally, Chinese would celebrate one’s lunar birthday with a bowl of noodles cooked in broth called mian xian “面线". The supposedly long noodles symbolised longevity and Chinese would add a pair of hard-boiled eggs for good luck.

My mum cooked me a bowl of mian xian on my lunar birthday. A simple pig liver and minced meat noodles soup, with of course a pair of hard boil eggs for good luck. A simple dish, but filled with so much love and well-wishes.

Immediately, one felt much better smelling the appetising sesame seed oil fragrance. To be eaten while it is hot, I sweat as I gulped down the noodles – a sign of purifying. Hmm…I wondered if one’s bad luck would be expel from body through the sweat. I certainly hope it was!

山穷水尽疑无路 柳岸花明又一村。。。

风水是会轮流转的。。。

Past A Quarter of A Century Old

I celebrated my 26 year-old last week. A low-key affair, but with so much warmth that I felt so touched.

 

Brother A had always been a thrift person. On a pretext of going for his nightly exercise routine, he cycled out to get me a birthday cake from Crystal Jade. Yes, Crystal Jade bakery offered 40% discount after 8 pm. He was so proud of this buy. (Nope, I don’t mind it at all.)

Vesparado worked quite late that day, but also brought back noodles, fried rice and yam ring from our favourite zi char stall for the mini-celebration.

Half-eaten fried rice.

Colourful yam ring from a zi-char stall.

That day, I felt so contented as I realised that I have a lot of things.

Selamat Hari Raya!

Wishing all Muslim readers - Selamat Hari Raya! See left, one of our neighbours sent us a box of delicious cakes and sweet stuff. Yummy~

Yeah!

Pigeon Flew Away This Morning!

Yup! As per the header, "Percy" the pigeon, who was wounded by the cat had finally recovered and flew away this morning. I did not get to see him go, but my dad saw him on the window still (instead of inside the box) and flew away moments later.

A satisfying ending, but somewhat disappointed as for the five days that he was with us, he was very afraid of human contact. I had a hard time putting medication on him.

I hope that he would live its life to the fullest and start a family even after this scary ordeal! Maybe in its limited memory, he would remembered that a strange being, maybe as terrifying as the cat, had captured it for five days.

Last Day of Hungry Ghost Month

Today was the last day of Lunar 7th Month which is also known as Hungry Ghost Month. Just like how people would pray on the start of the month, people will also pray on the last day of the month to send the spirits and demigods back.

Let's hope all will be well and that there will be blessing throughout the year for the family!

A Fated Intervention – Took Home A Wounded Pigeon to Nurse

Not that I am Lim Dai Yu or I am relating an ancient story where the gentle (Not me definitely) female lead character took home a wounded animal to nurse on behalf of the male lead character, but I just took a wounded pigeon home (out of my own accord) to nurse. I believed it is all fated.

Was on my way to work this morning when suddenly I heard some rustling sound coming out from a nearby bush. Out of curiosity (what’s new…), I went to the source of the commotion to take a closer look.

It turned out that an adolescent orange-fur tabby cat managed caught a pigeon and was trying to tug it deeper into the bush to eat it. Luckily for the pigeon (and too bad for the cat), the cat was distracted by my presence and the pigeon took chance to hop off. Worried that the cat would pursue it, I shooed it off, hopping that the bird would have a chance to survive.

I went off hurriedly to work as the cat ran off, putting the incident behind me. I was only reminded of it as I was walking home in the evening. I saw a man squatting near a bird, cooing it. Something is wrong with the bird, I thought to myself. The sky is almost dark and it did not fly off with its friends…

As I walked closer, I noticed that it was a pigeon and that it could be the pigeon I saved this morning! Usually, I would struggle with thoughts on whether my mum would kill me if I bring it home , but strangely I did not even betted an eye lid this time round and told the uncle that it was wounded by a cat and that I am going to bring it home.

Honestly, I couldn’t really catch the pigeon even though it was wounded. My god, it could run really fast. Luckily, the uncle volunteer to catch it for me. I was a bit scare at first at the thought of holding the bird as it kept flapping one of the wings, but somehow I got hold of myself and just took over it from the Uncle nonchalantly. I remembered walk home at usual speed.

Mum was watching TV at the living room when I reached home. I hold the bird for her to see and told her the story. (Surprisingly) She did not scold me and even urged me to bring it to a vet. Not sure whether veterinary clinic would still operate at this hour, I decided to nurse it myself. Since it cannot fly, I conveniently put it into a cupboard box.

The pigeon was in good condition despite it cannot fly. The nasty cat took a big bite out of the bird’s breast. The wing was also slightly scratched by the claws. I applied some antiseptic cream on the wounds and even managed to feed it water. It could still drink by itself.

(Didn’t manage to take a picture as both of my hands were occupied)

I really hope that it would survive. Will try to feed it with some food tomorrow morning and see if the conditions improves.

I will update everyone about it again. :)

Ps: For easy remembrance sake, I have decided to name the pigeon – Percy!