What we did…

I had to go out to pay the premium for the insurance policy on my house and on the way home, I stopped by the shop in my neighbourhood.

I spotted these dates…

… there but no, they’re not the Yusuf Taiyoob ones that I would buy every year but beggars can’t be choosers. I sure would not want to drive around looking for those so I just grabbed a box of this, regardless.

I went and googled and found out that these kurma tangkai (dates with stems) from Tunisia, the Deglet Noor Natural…

…are actually quite popular. Much to my delight, when I tried them, they turned out to be very nice – not so sweet like the honey-coated ones, not dry, just right…but at RM14.90 a box, I think this will do for this year.

I don’t know when this was but it was definitely after Mother’s Day. I bought a RM2.00 pack of tang hoon (glass noodles) and my missus went and soaked all of it. Of course, we had a lot left even though we did eat some of it during our steamboat lunch. Well, we just stuffed what was left in the fridge to keep and eventually, my missus took it and cooked this japchae/잡채 (glass noodles, stir-fried with vegetables)…

Needless to say, my girl was delighted – she loved anything and everything Korean and she enjoyed that so much! The mum also made a few big jars of kim chi to keep and eat slowly and the two had had kim chi fried rice since more than once. None for me, thank you very much!

There were some mussels left after our steamboat lunch too – my missus said she only took out 10 as there were too many things already. My girl took them the other day and cooked her version of the baked cheesy garlic mussels and if anyone is interested, she has shared this recipe on how to cook this dish…

below…

Ingredients
• 2 shallots
• a clove of garlic
• 1 tbs flour• 2 tbs butter/olive oil
• 100ml evaporated milk
• 1 cup of water
• shredded Kraft cheddar block/parmesan/pizza plus cheese
• dill
• 1 tsp thyme
• pepper

Method:
1. Dice the shallots and garlic finely.
2. Heat up the butter/olive oil in the pan.
3. Put in shallots before adding the garlic and thyme. Cook till light brown.
4. Add in the flour and mix well.
5. Pour in the evaporated milk and water and cook the white sauce till slightly thickened.
6. Spoon the sauce onto the cleaned mussels. Then, sprinkle generous amount of the cheeses.
7. Bake at 200°C for 15 mins.
8. Take out and sprinkle dill before baking again for about 2-3 mins.
9. Serve!

I must say that it was really very nice. In fact, I was thinking that it would be just as good to cook prawns, crabs or other types of seafood this way. We certainly would want to try with the former one of these days.