Tri-colored carrots with honey glaze and parsley

My kids love love love this side dish, it's so obvious because of the sweetness and the color is so interesting. I was so happy to got tri-colored carrots, it's not available all the time here in Bellingham. You can use baby carrots if you could not find tri-colored carrots.

Anyway, the cooking method is similar to Green Beans Amandine, in term of blanching the vegetable, so you can prepared this process ahead of time, put it in the refrigerator and ready to toasted in honey glaze the next day.

Tri-colored carrots with honey glaze and parsley

1lb of tri-colored carrots

2 tbsp unsalted butter 

2 tbsp honey

1 tbsp lemon juice and about 1/2 tsp lemon zest 

Black pepper

dash of salt

1/4 cup of flat leave parsley, chopped.

Method

Blanch the carrots, set aside

Melt the butter in a pan then add honey

Add the carrots and stir or toss it

Add the remain ingredients, stir again to make sure every carrot is coated by honey glaze.

Remove from the heat and ready to serve. Enjoy!

Thanksgiving Roasted Turkey

Happy Thanksgiving everyone ^__^
Our thanksgiving dinner this year was super scrumptious! despite what has happened to us this week. Started with hubby got so sick on Sunday before thanksgiving, continued with my oldest son then my second son they are all so sick and missed the last couple days of schools.
To make it worst my baby is also getting so sick, then my asthma doesn't seems to go away... *sigh* Dealing with sick family and preparing thanksgiving dinner was quite a challenge. But I think I managed to pull it together.

I brine to turkey on Sunday, and I use this recipe for guidance since I made my own vegetable stock.

http://bbq.about.com/od/turkeybrinerecipes/r/bl71116d.htm

I am tellin ya ... I am stick with that recipe! turkey always turn out super moist and very tasty. My hubby usually eats dark meat on Thanksgiving because he think that the most moist part, but since I use this method he loves the white meat too.

Before you decide to brine turkey, I'd strongly suggest you to read THIS  article because there are so many things we have to pay attention to, like what kind of turkey, how long you brine it for, etc. But it worth every efforts.

So here's how my brining vegetable stock recipe, using the recipe form the above link as a guidance, I made about 2 gallons of stock

Ingredients :

Carrots, cut into large size (you can use whatever vegetable left in the frige)
Onion, quartered
Garlic
Celery, chopped
Bunch of fresh sage, thyme and rosemary
1 cup of salt
1 cup of sugar
2 gallons of water

Method :

Boil the water, then add all the ingredients and let it simmer for about 45 minutes to 1 hour.
Remove from the heat, covered and let it cool completely.

Wash the thawed turkey thoroughly and place it in the plastic container or stainless steel large pot. Pour brine over top, brine it for 1 hour per pound.
I did mine for 4 days and turkey came out perfect!! love it!

How to cook the turkey :

Wash the turkey again with cool water, pat dry it with paper towel, then rubbed it with extra virgin olive oil and sprinkle with a little salt and pepper. You don't need to add anything since the turkey is already seasoned.
Place the turkey in the roasting rack.
Slow bake it in 325F oven until done. I put stuffing in mine so I went for 5 hours.

I also made these following side dishes :

Roasted potatoes
Pop overs - Yorkshire pudding
Sweet onion gravy (with garlic, rosemary and dripping juice from the turkey)
Tri-colored carrots with honey glaze and parsley
Green beans amandine

Desert :
Pumpkin pie
Pumpkin mini cupcakes with vanilla and cream cheese frosting
Butterscotch chip cookies

Okay, it's 1.30 right now and my kids still do not want to eat lunch, they were too stuffed from last night dinner ... LOL

Happy Thanksgiving again everyone !!!

Kimchi

I always adore Korean food, I love the spiciness, the aroma of sesame oil combined with some other ingredient and the simplicity of Korean cooking, it's just so delish!! 
The first time I ate kimchi was years ago (late 90's) when I am still living in Indonesia, a good friend of mine took me to a nice Korean restaurant in town. I loooooooove the bulgogi so much!! but kimchi??? to be quite honest the first impression wasn't so good, maybe I wasn't really familiar with it or kimchi is an acquired taste food. 
But I always give another try, so we went again the second time and I start to enjoy the kimchi, more and more and more. I don't know why but whenever I think of Korean food it always make me think of kimchi.

Back then when the information was nothing like nowadays! we did not have easy access to internet and I just could not find any Korean cooking book. I once tried to make some and it was a total disaster!! kimchi came out very watery and nothings like the one I ate at the restaurant *BLECH*. 
I did not know that you must soak the napa cabbage in salt water for hours! *DUH*
So I always depended on the store bought kimchi and honestly the price is pretty expensive. 


Ever since I wasn't dare to try every again until last week when I stumbled upon this blog and I encouraged myself to give another try. So I did it!!! and the result?? WOW!! I was so pleased with the taste, the texture, the spiciness and everything. Thank you to whoever own that blog, all the pictures and directions is pretty easy to follow. 
Please note that this recipe yield for a lot of kimchi, it's best to make together with some friends and share the result!

The trick is first, the cabbage needs to soaked and salted. Second, the marinade has to be prepared. Lastly, the cabbage is combined with the marinade and left to ferment for 3 weeks. Here's the recipe :

Tong Baechu Kimchi (Whole Napa Cabbage Kimchi)

For Napa cabbage

• 2 heads Napa cabbage
• 2 cups sea salt
• 8 cups water

For kimchi marinade

• 1 cup sweet rice powder
• 5 cups water
• 1 cup coarse Taeyangcho red chili pepper powder
• 5 ounces garlic
• 10 ounces Asian pear, peeled and quartered
• 9 ounces onions, peeled and quartered
• 1 ounce ginger, peeled
• 4 ounces Fresno chilies
• 2 pounds radish, julienned
• 4 ounces minari
• 4 ounces red mustard greens
• 4 ounces Korean chives
• 4 ounces green onions
• 1/4 cup Korean anchovy fish sauce
• 3/4 cup Korean salted shrimp sauce
• 4 ounces fresh shrimp, chopped
• 4 ounces Korean salted shrimp

METHOD :

Prepare Napa cabbage—Trim the cabbage by removing any brown leaves on the outer layers. Slice the center of the cabbage’s stem 2 inches deep. Using your thumbs and hands, pull the cabbage into two sections through the slit. Repeat for the remaining cabbage.

Soak the cabbage sections in salted water (8 cups water to 1 cup sea salt) for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, remove the cabbage from the salt water and sprinkle the remaining 1 cup of salt between each of the cabbage leaves.

Return the cabbage to the salted water with the cut side facing up. Rotate the cabbage every two hours, bringing the cabbage on the bottom of the container to the top and vice versa.

After 5-6 hours, the texture of the cabbage will be properly rubbery. Wash the cabbage thoroughly and gently. Drain the cabbage in a colander, squeezing as much water from the leaves as possible. Set aside.

Prepare kimchi marinade—Combine the water with the sweet rice powder and whisk until smooth. Heat the water and rice powder mixture on the stove on medium-high heat, stirring occasionally to prevent it from sticking to the bottom of the pan. When bubbles start to form, reduce the heat and continue to stir. Once the mixture thickens and becomes translucent (approximately 10 minutes), take it off the heat. Cool the mixture completely.

Once the rice powder mixture has cooled completely, transfer it to a large bowl. Add the red chili pepper powder to the rice powder mixture and combine well.

Place the onions, pear, garlic, ginger, and Fresno chilies in a food processor and pulse until finely minced. Set aside.

Add the pureed chili mixture, along with the radish, minari, red mustard greens, chives, and green onions to the rice powder mixture. Combine the mixture thoroughly, making sure that the greens are incorporated completely.

Lastly, add in the anchovy fish sauce, salted shrimp sauce, and fresh and salted shrimp. Once again, combine the mixture very well. If mixing with your hands, be sure to wear rubber gloves to avoid chili burn.

Prepare the kimchi—Take the cabbage and stuff the marinade mixture between the leaves, working from outside in, starting with the largest leaf to the smallest. Do not overstuff, but make sure the marinade mixture adequately fills the leaves.

When entire cabbage is stuffed, take one of the larger leaves and wrap it tightly around the rest of the cabbage. Divide the cabbage among jars, pressing down firmly to remove any air bubbles. Only fill the jar 80 percent  full because the kimchi will expand as it ferments. Keep the jar tightly sealed and refrigerated for at least 20 days.