All in one…

Nothing beats cooking a one-pot meal like this kim chi stew…

…for instance.

Some of you may recall my blogpost last month where I mentioned that my missus made her own kim chi…

…two big bottles and from the look of it, it is not going to last much longer. They have finished the big bottle and are halfway through the smaller Nescafe one.

They had their own-made bibimbap and kim chi fried rice…

…a few times, kim chi pancakes, japchae and so on or they would just eat it like that with rice.

Well, this time around, they attempted to cook this kim chi stew in a claypot. It certainly was very easy to cook – you just have to dilute some kim chi in water, depending on how concentrated you would like it to be. After that, you bring it to boil before you start throwing in anything you want.

That day, my missus added mushrooms, tofu, mussels, Pacific clams, Chinese cabbage and dunno what else, even some Korean rice cakes which is something like our Chinese/Foochow pek koi…

It was impromptu, a spur of the moment kind of thing. Otherwise, if we had prepared some nicer ingredients to throw in – some prawns, udang galah or our freshwater prawns especially, some sotong (squid), clams, fish slices or fish balls, scallops and so on and so forth for a lovely kim chi seafood stew, I bet it would taste really great. I must add, however, that I would prefer tang hoon (glass noodles) or the fine and smooth translucent hor fun/kway teow instead of the Korean rice cake though as I am not quite into its chewy texture, same thing with our local pek koi.

Yes, I did help myself to the stew – I had it with rice and it was actually very nice. The taste of the kim chi was not that strong and the sweetness of the mussels and the Pacific clams plus the flavours of all the added ingredients sure brought the taste to a whole new level. With all the special aforementioned ingredients, I bet it is going to be in a class of its own.

Having said that, I do think that there are other dishes that will definitely turn out awesome with such special ingredients – I would love them in tom yum…

…for instance, a lot and I’m wondering if there is such a thing as a seafood poon choy, just seafood…

…or not. That would probably be nice but of course, it all boils down to personal choice and preference. Like I always say, what’s good for the goose may not be good for the gander. To each his own!