Cream of Mushroom Soup 2

Here is another version of the cream of mushroom, requiring less cooking time, less fat and lots of mushrooms.

Serves 6
Preparation Time : 10 mins
Cooking Time : 35 mins
Printable Recipe

Ingredients

12 large mushrooms
3 tbsp butter
1 dash salt
1 egg yolk
10 oz. can of beef consommé + 10 oz. of water (or as instructed)
2 tbsp flour
2 tbsp black pepper
1 tbsp sage
2 cups of cream (15%)
1 onion
1 celery stick thinly sliced
1/2 cup white wine

Preparation

1. Chop 3/4 of mushrooms into minced cubes and thinly slice the remaining ones. Chop onions into cubes.

2. In a saucepan, boil beef consommé with water and thinly sliced celery.

3. In large pot, cook onions with butter until transparent on medium heat. Add minced mushrooms on low heat.

4. Stir in flour until thick.

5. Pour boiled broth and turn heat up.

6. Add sliced mushrooms, bring it to a boil then turn it to low heat.

7. Add sage, black pepper and white wine. Simmer for 15-20 mins.

8. Turn to very low temperature. Add cream and let it sit for 5 minutes.

9. Add egg yolk, leave it for 1-2 mins. Serve.

Quiche Lorraine 2

We have invited a French collegue to our collective cooking. He was assigned to work on the main dish and he made Quiche Lorraine. I made my version of Quiche Lorraine in January. Here is his version.

Serves 4
Preparation Time : 15 mins
Cooking Time : about 25 mins
Printable Recipe

Ingredients

1 pâte brisée
150 mL crème fraîche
150 mL whole milk
ham
1 small onion, chopped
3 large mushrooms, sliced
1/2 tsp nutmeg
grated mozzerella
salt and pepper

Preparation

1. Preheat oven at 400F.

2. Cook onion over medium-high heat until transparent.

3. Beat eggs in a medium bowl. Blend in crème fraîche and milk. Add ham, onion, mushrooms, nutmeg, salt and pepper.

4. Lay pastry dough on a baking dish or a 8-inch tart pan. With fork, prick dough all over.


5. Pour batter and top with grated cheese.

6. Bake for 20-30 mins or until golden.

Enchiladas de Mole

Here comes some real Mexican enchiladas with mole topped with a mix of crumbled cheese and sour cream. This dish has a bit of spiciness, sweetness and chocolate, which is what you find in mole. Mole poblano is the specific name of this sauce, a blend of several ingredients. It contains a combination of 4 popular Mexican chili peppers, nuts, Mexican chocolate and spices. This sauce is complicated to make by scratch and it is better store-bought.

Serves 4-6
Preparation Time : 20 mins
Cooking Time : 15 mins
Printable Recipe

Ingredients

1/2 whole roasted chicken
1 jar La Costena mole
3-4 cups water
1 cup sour cream
feta cheese, as much as you want
250g cream cheese
1 onion, minced
soft tortillas

Preparation

1. Shred chicken.

2. In a medium saucepan, add mole and water over medium-high heat. Boil and stir occasionally until dissolved.

3. Meanwhile, combine sour cream, cream cheese and feta cheese.

4. On a frying pan, heat oil over medium-high heat and pan fried tortillas until slightly crunchy and still bendable.

5. Dip tortilla in mole.

6. Place tortilla on a plate and fill it with chicken and chopped onion. Fold it and top with cheese mix.

Mussels Marinières

Mussels marinières is a famous dish in France. This is commonly known as Sailor's mussels, or even plain mussels in white wine sauce. The dish basically consists of delicately steamed fresh mussels in a white wine, garlic, parsley, butter, onion and sometimes cream sauce. This can be served as a starter or even a light main meal. The French traditionally serve it with French fries, which they dip into the juices.

To clean properly mussels, check out this link on allrecipes.
Serves 4
Preparation Time : 5 mins + cleaning, about 20 mins
Cooking Time : until the mussels open, less than 5 mins
Printable Recipe
Ingredients

2 lb mussels, cleaned
1 small onion, diced
1 celery stalk, diced
1 garlic clove, chopped
1/4 cup white wine
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped

Procedure
1. In a soup pot, place mussels, onion, celery, garlic, and white wine.

2. Cook over medium heat until mussels have opened. Stir frequently.

3. Add pepper to taste. Stir in butter and top with parsley before serving.
4. Serve with french fries as would traditionally or over rice with the juice.



July 24 news : On foodbuzz.com, the top 9 posts are chosen based on the activity from the previous day. It seems that my recipe is ranked 4 for this day. I'm very excited as my recipes had never been in the top 9. Thanks to everyone that had buzzed and viewed.

For those who are unfamiliar of foodbuzz, here is the picture of the top 9.

Chili with Bacon

Probably, you might or not have noticed, you readers can now print the recipes here on Random Cuisine without my blablas and pictures. All you have to do is to click on "Printable Recipe" which is found before the "Ingredients" section and then simply print the recipe out. Another change is that you can now click-to-enlarge my pictures and see every details of the image. Let me know what do you think of the new changes. Right now, I'm taking a break of writing about my trip to Seoul.

I'm finally back with my usual collective cooking with my friends. One of my friend loves the show Chef at Home and he gets most of his recipes from that show. Today, he made chili with bacon as a flavor enhancer. Here is his inspirational recipe. You can adjust the seasonings to your liking.

Serves 4
Preparation Time : 5 mins
Cooking Time : 75 mins
Printable Recipe

Ingredients

8 slices of bacon
1 large onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 garlic clove, minced
1 lb ground beef
1 28 oz. can diced tomatoes
1 15 oz. can red kidney beans
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp paprika
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp oregano
1 tbsp cayenne pepper (optional)
Salt and Pepper

Ingredients

1. In a large pot, cook bacon with a splash of water over medium-high heat until it turns brown.

2. Remove excess of fat and add onions, garlic and red peppers.

3. Cook until onion becomes transparent and pepper softened, about 5 mins.

4. Add cumin, paprika, coriander, oregano, cayenne pepper, and ground beef. Stir and cook until beef starts to turn brown.

5. Add tomatoes and beans. Season with salt and pepper.

6. Simmer for an hour, uncovered until it becomes thick. Stir time to time. If after an hour, it is still too liquid, turn the heat to high and let it cook for a few mins until thickens while stirring, then turn off the heat. Serve.

Korean Fusion - Day 4 lunch

News: Probably some of you foodie already know, Martha Stewart has posted some quick recipes on her Twitter written within 140 characters.

The following day, after the morning conference, we went to another restaurant next to our hostel named Kook Dang. This restaurant is Korean fused with Western Cuisine. It seems that it is common to see some restaurant offer meals mixed with Occidental Cuisine in Seoul. The food display in front of this restaurant looks very attractive to dine in.

We basically chose the two most attractive dishes from the display. This is what I took. It is an omelette stuffed with rice combined with chilli paste, some chicken wings, one small tomato and coleslaw with melted strawberry ice cream (you read right!).

On my brother side, he took some fried pork cutlet in some gravy topped with cheese, along with white rice, coleslaw with melted strawberry ice cream, and two french fries. The side dishes were kimchi and white raddish. Kimchi from one restaurant to another taste all the same thing.

After the afternoon conference, we went for an excursion with the people at the conference at Changdeokgung. This palace is located in the heart of Seoul, it is famous for its beauty and perfect harmony with nature. It was designated as UNESCO World Heritage Site. Tourists can't go in the palace freely as they must be accompanied by a tour guide at specific time.

Korean BBQ - Day 3

This is the first day of my attendance at the conference. This is like a dream for me, meeting the discoverer and leaders of my research field assemble in one place to give a 40-minutes talk on their current research. Many small and big discoveries were presented during the whole conference. So, I did learn a lot on how to improve my research.

My brother basically stayed at the hostel while I was at the conference and he met a few American from filmmaking and some Chinese students there to learn Korean. When I came back from the hostel around 6pm, the Americans decided to have some Korean BBQ. Anyone who knows about Korean BBQ, it is famous for the method of grilling marinated and non-marinated meat. As you can see in the picture below, the grill is built in the table. In this restaurant, before serving the food, they first bring a traditional brazier with hot charcoal and then top it with a barbecue grid depending on which meat you ordered.

On that day, we had a Korean speaker to order for us. The first order was strips of beef loin. I do not know exactly the Korean name of this dish, I'm waiting for confirmation.

The way to eat is to pick a piece of lettuce, add some side dishes and top it with the meat, and roll it up. Along with the lettuce wrap, you can enjoy with roasted garlic.

You can also enjoy the pig's blood soup with bean sprout in a hot stone pot.

The second order is thin strips of unsalted fat pork.

In any Korean BBQ restaurant, you can enjoy a famous South Korean alcoholic drink known as Soju. You can think of soju as half of the alcoholic content of vodka and it is primarly made from rice. You drink shots according to the traditional Soju drinking game and custom.

All in all, the course meal costs around 10,000 Won per person.

Korean Food - Day 2 night

This post is short as we didn't visit any tourist attractions after lunch. At night, we were not very hungry around 8pm. I woke up at 2 AM to see what to eat outside. You will be surprised that a couple of restaurants are open only during the night. In the picture below, this restaurant opens from 4 PM to 9 AM and it was very busy at this time when I took this picture. There are still people wondering around the streets and they do not look drunk at all. Strangely, car traffic seems to be common at anytime of the day.

As my bro was sleeping, I decided to eat something small. I ate at Samsung Fried Chicken. You can find this restaurant chain a bit everywhere. The menu was all in Korean, I basically pinpointed at the cheapest item which is half of a fried chicken for 7,000 Won.

The fried chicken came with some kind of Korean BBQ sauce and white raddish. The coleslaw came with a dollop of mayonnaise with vinegar added. No kimchi was served.

Korean Food - Day 2 afternoon

After the ceremony, we went to Insadong market about 30 minutes of walk. This market consists of shady streets, hidden alleys and underground bars. It mainly sells traditional Korean item. There is one special restaurant in which we are interested known as Sadongmyenok. Sadongmyenok serves the largest dumpling/gyoza you have ever seen. Only 3 of these mandu will make your meal guaranteed. If you compare the size of a typical chopped scallion to the mandu (top picture), you can convince yourself how large it is.

When we were in the market, it took us about 15 mins to find it, we asked at least 5 Korean to point us where its location. We passed back and forth the restaurant. No signs or indication that it is found in a hidden alley. Here is the picture of the alley, you can see why we can miss it easily.

Further in the alley...

Finally, we arrived at the restaurant.

In front of the restaurant, you can see a woman making large mandu skins.

Cooked mandu, ready to be served...

Two popular dishes make this restaurant famous : manduguk (mandu in a soup) and haemul pajeon (seafood pancake).

The seafood pancake is famous for its size, crispness and lots of seafood (oyster, octopus, squid, shrimp)

Along with the dishes, we get side dishes such as rice noodle in sesame oil, sliced jellyfish, and kimchi.

After eating all this great food, our stomach is fully full.

Korean Food - Day 2 morning

We didn't eat cake for breakfast on the second day. We bought some bread at Crown Bakery near our hostel. It is one of the famous bakery chain along with Tous Les Jours bakery in Seoul. I must have forgotten to take the pictures of the breads. A large variety of breads can be bought and they even offer samples to taste.

This day, we decided to visit a few palaces in Seoul. The first one is not really consider as a palace but this is the location of the large bell known as Bosingak in the town of Jongno. We weren't sure if we can go inside to actually see the bell, it seems to be well guarded. The bell is only rung during New Year's Eve. Check wiki for more info.

Our next stop was to head for Deoksugung palace, about 15 mins of walk from Bosingak. It was exactly 9:58 AM, while my bro was taking a picture of me of the palace and the drum, the young woman in colorful dress (on the right) came to see me if I am willing to participate in the Royal Guard Changing Ceremony starting at 10:00AM. Weirdly, she knew that we were tourists as many people in the city think that we were Korean. She guessed that we were Americans, but she was close.

Basically, I have to hit the drum three times during the ceremony.

The ceremony relives the Joseon era with full of colorful costume and musical affair which lasts about 30 minutes.