Oh! Yes, please!

Normally, I am one of the most terrible decision makers. Simple things like ordering food at restaurants or choosing products at the supermarket could be very difficult and time-consuming for me. However, there is one thing I'm defintely sure of. That is I would never say no to Champagne. I can say, without a moment of hesitation, it is my favourite drink. It turns out that I have Champagne tastes and beer income as Rob often says. Sad reality but I can't help but love this bubbly drink so much! Ok, here is a picture of me enjoyoing my lovely Champagne in style. No, not really. Sorry it's just a scanned copy of last Valentine's Day card from Rob. (And yes, I had to twist his arm to get me one.)



A few weeks ago, we had a perfectly legitimate reason to celebrate something with my favourite drink. My friend J had finished her short course successfully. Hooray! Well done, you! So, here is a picture of Rob pouring the Champagne for all of us. I can tell you it was very, very nice.

Sadly, she has gone back to Korea now and I would like to say something to my dearest friend. "Hey, J. Once again, congratulations on your achievement and good luck with your future career! It was so good to have you here with us. We both look forward to seeing you again in Korea hopefully soon."

Spaghetti Bolognese

It is extremely difficult for me to pick one particular dish or type of cuisine that I like the most. Simply there are so many of them. It was never easy except perhaps when I was very young. Like many Korean children, my favourite dish used to be Jajangmyeon (click the link if you are not sure what I'm talking about). But if you asked me the same question about 10 years ago, my answer was likely to have been pasta. There was something about pasta, especially creamy ones like Carbonara, and I never got tired of having them. Still Spaghetti Bolognese has never been one of my favourites. I don't know why but it seemed a bit boring and too predictable if you know what I mean. Unlike here in the UK, cooking pasta at home was not very common in my country and naturally I didn't know how to make them properly from scratch. Even after I came to the UK, my pasta dishes normally involved the ready-made sauce in the jars and my first choice would have been the pesto sauce.

Spaghetti Bolognese, or Spag Bol as many people affectionately call it, has become one of my staple diet only after I met Rob. Apparently it was one of his favourite dishes. By then I have already realised that many other British people loved this 'more British than Italian' pasta. Since he seemed to like it so much, I wanted to know how to make it properly. One day I was searching for an easy recipe and found this wonderfully simple recipe on the Internet. It was called Antonio Carluccio's ragù Bolognese (click for the recipe). One of the things I liked about his recipe is that it does not require any herbs. I'm not a big fan of dried herbs and you know my motto: the simpler the better. Since we both love garlic and onion, I tend to add a couple of cloves of garlic as well as an extra onion. And for Rob who needs a kick, I sometimes use some dried chillie as well. Personally I would prefer tagliatelle, as the recipe says, but most of the times we have this ragu with spaghetti pasta just as many do here. But apart from these few changes, I try to stick to the original recipe, which does work beautifully all the time. Having tried it out several times, I can now quite comfortably say that I can cook Spag Bol. So, here goes my big thank-you to Mr. Carluccio. THANK YOU!