Korean egg toast

My husband never says no to an egg (or to eggs more likely) and neither do I. The beauty of eggs is that you don't need to know much about cooking to enjoy them. Even if you just boil or fry them, they are simply tasty. As an inexperienced cook I like its simplicity and readiness, but of course I do understand that there are far too many ways to use them in cooking & baking. I guess Rob's favourite egg dish will be egg sandwiches whereas mine should be Korean omelette (계란말이). We both love eggs so much that they tend to appear on our shopping list almost without fail. Now that we are joined by another egg lover, my friend J, the egg consumption index in this household seems to have reached its peak.

A recent addition to our egg dishes is the 'Korean egg toast'. This is a kind of street food popular among the busy Koreans as breakfast on-the-go or just as snacks. Basically it is an omelette sandwiched between two slices of toasted white bread (I don't think we had brown/wholemeal bread in Korea). It is important to toast the bread in the frying pan/griddle with a little bit of oil. To make an omelette mixture, use one egg and some finely chopped vegetables such as onion, carrot and spring onion per serving. No need to add milk or water. When the toast is ready to be assembled in the frying pan, it is optional to add a slice of processed cheddar cheese. Believe me - it is better than the real thing! And finally some dash of tomato ketchup to go with it. Now enjoy!

PS: This picture shows the toasts made with wholemeal bread because we do not normally have white bread. Still I think the soft white bread will go better with this recipe.

Friend's visit

J - one of my Korean friends is currently staying with us for a few weeks. We had met each other when we were doing our course at the University here. One of the reasons we became close was that we shared the love of food and the willingness to try new food stuff. For example, she was the only other Korean who liked Marmite apart from me. The main difference between her and me is the size, I guess. Whereas I'm very tall, J is tiny (& cute I may add) and naturally eats only a small amount of food. Unfortunately for me, she now lives in Korea and is only visiting the UK for a couple of months.

Thanks to her, we have been having lots of Korean food recently. Nothing grand or special but just simple dishes. Luckily, this suits fine all three of us. My husband loves Korean food, especially Kimchi or anything spicy. Like most Koreans, my friend seems to prefer Korean diet to western. A lot healthier arguably. Sensible girl! And me? As I said, I am quite happy with any sorts of food and I don't mind cooking either. The only trouble is that I am very very slow and tend to panic if the task looks slightly daunting. As a result, I tend to stick to a handful of recipes I feel comfortable with. Very bad! I know. Good news is that J is a lot quicker and more confident in cooking and with her help, I have been practising some other Korean dishes. I am sure that there will be another handful of Korean recipes in my collection by the end of her stay.

Picture of Kimchi

After my very first post, my husband pointed out that I should have some photographs of Kimchi on this site. I was, of course, fully aware of that myself. The trouble was that I had no pictures of Kimchi nor any Kimchi at home to take a photo of. Luckily I had a chance to have a meal at one of my Korean friends' house the other night. I took my camera with me and took some shots. As I had not told her my ulterior motive, they seemed to look rather too natural without any cosmetic dressing and with poor lighting. But probably the main reason why it did not look great is down to my basic phtographic skills. Anyway, this is KIMCHI (김치), to be precise the CABBAGE KIMCHI (배추김치) and this will do until I could get some decent ones.

Why Kimchi?

Like my fellow Koreans, I love Kimchi so much. There is a variety of Kimch dishes to begin with and it is also so versatile that you could use it in many Korean dishes. Unfortunately outside Korea, not many people seem to know about Kimchi at all. For those who has never tried it, Kimchi is a kind of raw vegetable dish made of mainly Chinese cabbage or radish with the seasoning of salt, chilli pepper powder, garlic, ginger, onion, spring onion and so forth. It is normally eaten after a couple of days when it starts developing unique flavour by fermentation. It is scientifically proven that it has a great deal of health benefits. It makes me feel very proud of my ancestors who came up with the recipe. How clever!

I came to the UK to study in the spring of 2002. Sadly I had to say goodbye to my beloved Kimchi because firstly, I didn't know how to make it myself. Secondly, I was just lazy and poor as I am now, so I wouldn't go and buy the relatively pricey ready-made stuff at the Korean grocery shops (not easy to find them unless you live in the central London or New Malden, Surrey). It was OK since although I loved my Kimchi very much, I was known for having a versatile palate to cope with any kinds of food (maybe greedy in other words?). No one I knew really worried about me in that matter actually. They knew I would survive as long as there was any type of form of food available. Yes, that's ME!

Apart from the occasional encounters, my life was continued without Kimchi and I was more or less happy. Then I met Rob my husband back in 2006 and fell in love and all that sort. He is originally from Edinburgh and had never met any Koreans before me. Naturally he was very curious about anything Korean including food and I dutifully tried to let him sample as much Korean food as I could (not necessarily of my cooking though). To my surprise, he instantly liked Kimchi and became a huge fan. I was lucky because he was very open about different types of food and also liked spicy foods in general.

Anyway, when I was considering the name of this blog, I was thinking about food which will also reflect my identity. I was quite tempted to call myself - the lazy cook but I am hardly a cook and besides there was somebody else using this name. Hmm... How about Kimchi? Kimchi = Korean? OK, that will do.

The thing is that I love food but I am not really a good cook nor experienced in food industry as other people might have. Therefore, I know perfectly well that I am not qualified, in any sense, to run a proper food blog if you know what I mean. I am just very envious about people who can express themselves in their blogs. There are things I like to learn more about but I always have a list of endless excuses and I never seem to achieve anything. This is my humble beginning just to motivate myself to learn a thing or two about food and some other stuff as well. Yes, I would give it a go. I cannot pretend that I am an expert or a connoisseur in anything. So, this is from someone simply interested in food. Nothing more or nothing less. I hope this would take me somewhere, ideally somewhere nice. One can dream, can't one? But hope I'm not fooling myself here.