Preparation Takes a Little Time

Hello, Aloha, Bonjour, 안녕 or whatever greeting you prefer! It's been a wee while, hasn't it. I started a second blog a while back, where this post first appeared, but I missed the ol' Paper Elephant so I'm shifting everything onto this blog whilst I give the old girl a much needed facelift!!

 So here we go, ten months into my Korean adventure (at the time of writing), I bring you some of my kimbap know-how.

Kimbap (김밥) is very similar in appearance to Japanese sushi. It is not sushi. Not even a little bit. For a start, there's no raw fish involved, there can be no fish at all, but that depends on your personal preference. It's a hugely popular item in Korea, finding it's way into lunch boxes in place of sandwiches and is pretty healthy too. Yes, it may have a hefty amount of rice in it, but that too is down to personal preference and no one ever said you HAD to use the white variety.

The downside to kimbap, is the prep time. It can take a wee while to get your ingredients prepared and set out (also dependant on how many ingredients you want to put into your kimbap and how readily available some ingredients are (the primary example here being burdock, which I never remember seeing EVER in a British supermarket, but I can't imagine my Kimbap without it!)

Before we can even think about making kimbap, we need some lists:

Essentials:

• Rice (this can be white, brown, purple whatever. So long as it has a modicum of stickyness. When I was taught to make kimbap, my friend actually used a combination of rices, cooked together)
• Yellow Radish
• Burdock
• Carrot
• Cucumber
• Ham
• Kim / Seaweed (very important as this is what you wrap the kimbap in)
• Soy Sauce
• Sesame Oil
• Honey
• Salt

Optionals:

• Fish cake. Of the Korean variety. This is a flat, floppy rectangle that is made of ground fish I guess. Personally, for me this is in the Essential list, but as not everyone is a fan of our friends from the sea, I'm putting it here. On a side note, fish in Korean is 물고기 which literally translates as 'water meat'. It's one of my favourite words! 

• Fish sticks. Much the same as the fish sticks you get in the UK. Pink things with white in the middle. I don't mind them, but I don't go out of my way to use them. I forgot them one day and didn't notice the difference.

• Egg. In the form of the thinnest of thin omelettes.

• Side dishes. Now, I don't know the name of all them (bar the ever present kimchi) but any number of these can be added to you kimbap depending on your personal preference.

Variations: 

The options here are endless, but here are a few suggestions:

• Tuna. Replace the ham with tuna. You can add a wee bit of mayonnaise if you like, but you have to make sure it's not too runny, or it can be such a bind to wrap.

• Bulgogi. This is a marinated meat, most often beef.

• Or you can be really adventurous and make your own combinations. This year, for Christmas, in lew of a Christmas Dinner, I made Christmas Kimbap. It consited of chicken (poached) cranberry stuffing, vichy carrots and a token green vegetable (I think it was pak choi). If I repeated this, I'd probably use lettuce, but I was please with the end result and it definitely tasted of Christmas!)

Utensils: 

Bar the obvious, here are some things I have found invaluable when it comes to making kimbap.

• Sushi/kimbap roller. You honestly HAVE to have one of these!

• Brush. A pastry brush will do, to brush your kimbap and knife with sesame oil to make slicing it easier - honestly this makes all the difference in the world. It took me a while to be able to slice my kimbap without the filling splurging out all over the place. 

• Tray. This is a very useful piece of kit. when I prep my ingredients, I like to lay out what I'm using on a tray. I then cling film it up when I'm done and fire it into the fridge. This way, one day of prep means the kimbap is ready to go any time. It also makes the assembly line quicker when the ingredients are in one place.

• Rice Scoop. This isn't necessary at all, but I find it useful to gauge quantities of rice and it flattens/spreads the rice out well.

Phew!! You made it to the end! Congratulations! Kimbap really is all about the preparation, but I promise you it's so worth it!

I'll give you time to digest all of this (digest.... get it... ah I'm too funny................... or not) and I will return later to show you how to turn this:

into this:

"How Am I Going To Explain That?"

This was the first things that came out of my mouth when I left the cinema. The film in question was 'From Vegas To Macau' (also apparently knoqn as 'The Man From Macau')

I still, several months later, don't really know how to explain this film! It was the most bizarre, hilarious and at times completely confusing but all in the most fabulous of ways. The plot line was deeply, deeply questionable. It started as one thing, then ended as another, no reasoning in between. At times it was gritty and dramatic and at others it was a slapstick comedy. To be honest, I still don't know how to explain what I saw... but I liked it. 

I am having a huge love affair with Asian cinema at the moment, and it's very very different to much of the Cinema in the the West. It's sometimes darker and gritter and often far more "over-acted" than I'm used to, but just go with it! It's fun! Vegas To Macau had to be seen, I live here after all and it's always fun seeing places you've been on the big screen, and I was interested to see Chow Yun Fat in something that wasn't Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. (I'm still in denial that Pirates Of The Caribbean 3 happened - my friend swears I've seen it but I don't remember a thing. If I did see it, I appear to have erased it from my memory!!) He is an excellent actor for sure.

If you're in the mood for some crazy, off the wall Chinese cinema, then do watch this. It's just SO. MUCH. FUN. Though I can't guarantee that you'll be able to explain it afterwards...

When Imagination Meets Reality

So it's not like I've been doing nothing for the best part of five months (five months of no blogging...oh the shame) I have been doing so much stuff, some of which is still on-going, finger majorly crossed, but the high point was the visitor I had over Chinese New Year! The best-friend-from-home-not-seen-in-two-plus-years.

We are just too cool!

Whilst the major downside of living abroad is that you can't take your friends and family with you, these are the very same people who give you the greatest joy when they visit you and you can proudly show them around the place you call home. The Best Friend and I have had our ups and downs, but even now she is back in the old U of K, it feels as if she's just the same old bus ride away (and I do still miss a good old Glasgow - Edinburgh bus journey). Some things really do never change! 

Her introduction to Asia was a crazy one. It just so happened that SHINee had their concert tour in Hong Kong the same day she arrived. I posed the option of going to a concert to her, without telling her who we'd be going to see, and with her (half) consent, I got us tickets: 

It was brilliant. We didn't know what was going on half the time, she was jet-lagged and we had a double language barrier (Korean and Cantonese and yet we still managed to answer half the questions - we got skillz...), but blimey are these boys good live and my K-Pop love was nicely indulged! This is an excellent representation of how we felt: 

Credit to the genius who made this!

What followed was two weeks of awesomeness, including a mosy to the Big Buddah, playing Guidebook or Ritz in Ozone (highest bar in Asia, dontcha know!) and enjoying the sun of Chinese New Year (which descended into a bitterly cold February but that's by-the-by). One of the most amazing things we did was go to Tai O. I'd been meaning to go for Yonks and just not done it however I'm so glad I waited to go with Le Pal. No one else could suitably understand just how inspirational of a place it was. For us, it was perhaps one of the closest realities we'll get to out imaginings of our brain child. We have spent hours on end picking apart what certain places look like, and wandering around Tai O, land and water, suddenly one of those places was physically in front of me.

 Picture SPAAAAAAAAAM! I'm now off to go and battle with a plot and try and find a way of fitting everything I want/need into the epic. Somehow I will find a way of getting it all in there... somehow!

The Woes of a Bad Blogger...

I. Have. Been. AWFUL!!!

I have a plethora of posts I've started to write and never finished! It doesn't help that I am using my laptop less and less for anything other than music and films... I'm going old school as much as possible these days (the number of technology related disasters I have had are too numerous for my liking - I seem to repel it...)

As it's Spring time, I've decided to have a bit of a change and to get around to doing more reading, writing and reviewing... Well that's the plan, and we all know how they always change!

Here goes nothing... See you the other side of the Spring Clean!

Keep Calm and Drink Tea!

I'm having a moment... my first moment in 18 months... and I'm having a decent sized wobble. I seem to be powering through it fairly quickly now that I've screwed my head back on. I've been thinking about good times I've had, which in turn has been making me think of all the hypothetical good times there are to be had in the future... What's that thing people say? Tomorrow is a new day... Even so, here's a wee list of the things that are the source of some mighty fine memories.

• late night bus journeys from Glasgow to Edinburgh
• (or by train)
• Scotland in general
• late night Potter chats
• Chicken Casserole
• Fighting crime in dark corners!!
• Cafe Nero (I mean Pacific, you're good, but it's not the same...)
• laughing till your stomach hurts
• COLD WEATHER!!!
• dancing like a lunatic in a box, no matter who's watching
• putting a smile on someone's face when you hand them their morning coffee
• "To the outside world it looks like bullying..."
• classical music and coffee in the snow
• studying in a library - there is nothing better
• lectures! 
• Midday Pints! 
• PIRATES (because really, Pirates!)
• "What if  your train was an ACTUAL train!!!!"
• a proper pub
• watching rugby at a reasonable hour
• sitting on the windowsill in the architecture studio
• a salad that doesn't cost the earth!
• The Hive (R.I.P.)
• talking out ideas
• a hug, when you need it
• Mighty Boosh evenings
• having someone to sit with - conversation not required
• cafe's in bookshops
• Mamma Mia a la Flatmate and Wine!
• WEEKENDS
• Radio 1 (I miss waking up to this, even if I have to listen to Nick Grimshaw - that's the state we've got to!)
• People being a phone call and a short distance away, rather than a phone call and half the world away.
• Cones on statues
• Christmas lights on Buchanan Street
• Rowing on the Clyde
• Daft Friday - Oh what a night! 
• A 2 hour journey to the homestead as opposed to 24! (worth every minute though, even a lay-over in Dubai!)

But,despite all that, and today's sadness, I've got me a supply of Earl Grey tea, for as some wise person somewhere said: 

"You can't buy happiness, but you can buy tea, and that's kind of the same thing!"

Well said Sir, well said!

Sad Songs Say So Much

Yes Elton, yes sad songs DO say so much. Not that I have anything against a happy song, far from it, after all there's a time and place for everything! But a sad song can evoke a wider variety of emotions. I've been listening to the same song and it's not even a sad one, the sentiment is incredibly sweet and heart warming, but today it's had me in tears. Every so often, when you're feeling emotionally fragile, a song comes along and completely floors you. Great!! Just great!! - Thanks John Legend for writing beautiful music and reducing me to a sobbing mess (it really is a great song though - really, go and listen to All Of Me.)

Love in the Future is actually a great album from John Legend! I loved Evolver and then wasn't greatly enamoured with anything that followed (Ordinary People is a good song, but just didn't do it for me!) - he's making up for it now though, despite my tears!

Another day, another public holiday...

One of the things I have come to love about autumn in Hong Kong is the number of Public Holidays (not that you can really call it that, it's not really autumn without the leaves turning brown, the clocks changing and the frosts beginning to set in, but that;s by the by). After three months straight of one day off a week, a run of three public holidays is just what the doctor ordered! That's not to say that the days don't also have their downsides! 

I enjoy these magical days off when I stay at home, or at least in my local area. Venturing into crowded areas on a Public Holiday is only going to cause more harm than good, especially when the pedestrian rage comes in to play! I have discovered that while I don't have a people problem per-se, I do have great difficulty with masses of people with little-to-no spatial awareness and an uncanny knack of stopping in places that make it impossible for you to dart around them. If anything, spending time in Hong Kong makes you a master weaver when it comes to maneuvering along pedestrian crowded pavements! (British People Problems Abroad anyone...!!)

This is the last Public Holiday before Christmas, and while I feel I should be making use of it, I am instead going to stay holed up in my local area doing my usual thing - the biggest debate is whether I get myself a sewing machine to occupy my time or not... The pro's and con's of sending fabric home, or manipulating it into a wearable form so it can make it's way home in a suitcase. Knowing that the burners for the job hunting engine are about to be reignited in the not too distant future, a more versatile and more "me" working wardrobe needs to be concocted and with even more capsule qualities than before. Without doubt, Pinterest is about to become my closest Allie (like it wasn't that before). In fairness the decision is most likely to be swung by the fact that my after school activities were majorly limited by the horrendous post-run shin splints that had me hobbling around like a granny for three days - I gather this was great fun to witness, even if I was in my own personal world of agonizing pain! Have to provide the humour somehow!

So ends another random waffle, tailing off into the distance and losing it's pace as I get ever tireder as the clock winds down on today's proceedings! I'm about to hit the 18 month mark (good lord, when did that happen) but I am no more used to 6 days weeks and the lack of That Friday Feeling - I can count only one in the last 18 months - ONE!!! One thing is for sure, I appreciate two days off in a row far more now than I ever did before, and in celebration of such an event happening this weekend I shall leave you with some celebrating penguins - what's not to love!