Tag: eggs

Posted on

Zucchini pancakes!

In Korea there is a dish called “yachaejeon” (야채전) which literally means “vegetable pancake.” You mince or chop veggies finely, add a little flour and some seasonings to taste and then fry them up. In Ghana we’re used to pancakes being a sweet food, but once you try it and season it to your liking, you’ll have a whole new item to add to your repertoire.

I made these zucchini pancakes as an experiment to see how they tasted, and they were great. If you don’t have zucchini, you can use pretty much any other vegetable. Onions, carrots, cabbage, mushrooms, even the dandelion you find growing in your backyard. It can be just one veggie, it can be a mix of veggies, you can throw in some seafood or an egg or two for binding. The only things that don’t work too well are wet veggies like tomatoes and cucumbers, but there might be a way to make them tastier.

Recipe (of sorts)

-Finely chopped, minced or grated veggies

-Enough flour and water to form a pourable batter. Be careful with the water because some vegetables like zucchini and cabbage release water as they sit.

-Add an egg for better binding if you wish. I usually add one for protein

-Add a little salt, sesame oil, black pepper, other condiments to taste. Leave out anything you don’t want except the salt. I usually chill the batter in the fridge for an hour or two to allow the flavours to meld and develop. It’s a tip I picked up from a blog, but whether it really works or not, who knows?

-Heat up a pan with a little oil, add a ladle of pancake batter and fry on both sides until crisp.

The insides will still be moist and fluffy because of the moisture content in the vegetables, so don’t think about getting the whole thing dry.

This almost-burnt one is for my mom, who is of the Ghanaian persuasion that food must be cooked and cooked and cooked aaa until it can’t be cooked any more. And then cook it a little more just in case.

Enjoy with whatever sauce you like. In the blue bowl I have a mix of soy sauce and vinegar, my preferred dipping sauce for savory Asian dishes.

But instead of soy sauce and vinegar, you can use ketchup, salad dressing, chili oil, shitor, or just enjoy it plain. A word of caution: it doesn’t taste as good when cold or reheated, so eat it as fast as possible. You can also store the batter in the fridge for at least a day, so fry it up when ready to serve. Enjoy~

I should have other pictures I’ve taken of other vegetable pancakes that I’ve made, so I’ll post them whenever I find them. See you then!

Posted on

Mushroom omelette – or at least I tried!

I like eggs. They’re cheap and tasty and can be cooked in 2 minutes or less. In a pinch some people eat them raw, but I’m not that hardcore yet. And even picky kids can be coaxed into eating a fried egg or two, so it makes a good bribe.

I also like mushrooms. Not as much as eggs, but they’re supposed to be really good for you and we have a regular oyster mushroom supplier, so I eat them quite a bit. Most often as a meat substitute in a quick gravy when all my meat is frozen or I just can’t be bothered to fiddle with meat.

So you put the eggs and the mushrooms together and you get a mushroom omelette! Or omelet, if you’re American. In the past I’ve experimented with slicing the mushrooms really small and beating them into the omelette, but I didn’t quite like the taste. It still seemed a bit undercooked, and rather flavorless. So this time I had a new idea. First prepare the ingredients as usual:

Mushrooms, onions, eggs, pepper, salt, any other seasoning you wish to add. I then fried up the onions and mushrooms with the seasonings:

Just a few minutes over medium heat so the mushrooms are a little wilted and soft but the onions still have some crunch. Then I started beat the eggs with some salt and pepper and poured it into the pan:

This was where I was supposed to put the mushrooms on top of the egg and fold it over. I would have liked the middle to be slightly creamy and the outside not too dry, but I think I left the heat on too long. It still turned out relatively nice:

But it was more like a plain omelette wrapped around a mushroom filling rather than a mushroom omelette. I.e. I didn’t get that mix of egg and mushroom I wanted, each is still very much its own entity. It was still delicious though. Went great with some hot buttered toast and tea. And a very good time was had by all. If/when I get a better camera I’ll attempt this recipe again and see if I can get it just the way I like it. Until then!

Posted on

Easy breakfast – rice and egg drop soup

Still clearing up old photos I have on my hard drive for some reason. The disadvantage of that is that sometimes I can’t remember exactly how I cooked something. Or even why. I think in the case of the egg drop soup I had some leftover tofu I wanted to use up. I tossed in some other stuff as well. It’s a very simple breakfast to make when you don’t feel like the usual bread and tea or porridge. You just need:

Ingredients
Eggs – as many as you want
Stock/broth. Powdered is fine, and in a pinch you can dissolve a maggi cube in some water
Thinly sliced or precooked vegetables, meat or tofu as needed
A little light soy sauce for extra salt and flavour
A pinch of powdered pepper or curry powder

1. Bring the stock to a boil. No quantity given because it’s a very versatile recipe that’s hard to mess up.
2. Throw in your veggies and any meat if you’re using it. In this case I added some grated carrots, glass noodles and tofu. It would have been nice to get some green veggies in there for added colour.
3. Beat the eggs in a separate container until frothy.
4. Take the soup off the heat, stir the soup till you get a good circulating motion going then pour the beaten eggs in in a thin stream.
5. Wait a minute or two for the eggs to set then return the soup to the heat.
6. Bring it to a simmer again. Stir gently and add pepper, soy sauce and other spices to taste.
7. Serve immediately with rice or plain noodles.

There, that was simple enough, wasn’t it? It’s too late now, but I think it would have looked great if I could have stirred some chopped green onions in at the end. Or if I served it with a leafy salad on the side. I like a mix of colors in my dishes, though you wouldn’t know it to look at the stuff I’ve posted so far. We have a lot of dandelions growing in our backyard because of the rainy season, so they would be a good addition.

So that’s it! One day I’ll do a proper recipe with quantities and everything, but that day is not today. Enjoy!

Posted on

Experiment: Scrambled eggs with onions and tomatoes

Another day, another experiment gone wrong. This is a photo I took last year, so I don’t remember exactly what I was trying to make or why, I just remember it didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to. I think I was aiming to make a big omelette filled with tomatoes and onions? No… Or yes… Actually I seriously don’t remember. But looking at the photo triggers memories of too dry, too-finely scrambled eggs, all boring and grainy in my mouth.

It would have been better if I had just fried the eggs separately and the veggies separately and eaten them with my rice for a tasty breakfast or light lunch. The thing is, I make Chinese-style egg and tomatoes all the time so what went wrong here? The onions? It was the onions, wasn’t it? Anyway, I’m just clearing out old photos of stuff I’ve made in the past and came across this one. I have about a 7:3 ratio of success to failure when I cook stuff, so you can expect more stuff like this in the future. See ya!

Posted on

Ampesi and abom – An unconventional breakfast

I call it unconventional, but maybe ampesi (boiled yam, cocoyam or unripe plantain) and abom (fresh cocoyam leaf stew) is a common breakfast in rural areas of Ghana, but in Accra we fancy ourselves modern so it’s all oats and rice water and bread and tea. But this is the real stuff, food that can take you from 6am to 6pm on a single plate. This is the good stuff.

My favorite part of abom is the sliced onions in there, the more onions the better. I used to hate raw onions as a child – and actually I only started eating abom recently – but now I don’t mind them in dishes. Or with red pepper. Or in a salad. It’s even better when they’re cooked though, but just a little bit so they still have the shape and the crunch

When it comes to ampesi, I’m not very picky. But if I had to rank the various options in terms of preference it would be new yam > unripe plantain > cocoyam >>> ripe plantain >> sweet potato >>>> old yam. I haven’t had cassava ampesi before but I imagine it must be good too.

Posted on

What’s a Korean breakfast like?

accrafoodie korean breakfast

I watched a Korean drama where the heroine made breakfast twice for her totally-not-love-interest. You know, the guy she’s going to be head over heels over by episode 10. These scenes were obviously shoehorned in so they could advertise their sponsor’s dinner (looks like Ikea?) but they meals still looked pretty delicious so I took screenshots.

I can’t figure most of the stuff out, though. The internet tells me all the little dishes are known as banchan, i.e. side dishes, but there are hundreds of side dishes in Korea. Anyway, I’m uploading them here for now and will update with the proper names of the food as and when I figure them out.

Here’s the first breakfast:

  1. Some kind of vegetable salad in involving korean cucumbers (muchim)
  2. Gamja jorim (potatoes cooked with soy sauce)
  3. ?
  4. Green tea
  5. Miyeok guk (seaweed soup)
  6. Sookju namul (stir fried bean sprouts)
  7. Steamed white rice
  8. Gaeran mari (Rolled omelette)
  9. Mashed sweet potatoes
  10. Pickled lotus root and vegetables

And there’s the second.

 

  1. ?
  2. Musaengchae (shredded daikon salad)?
  3. ? Possibly seasoned seaweed
  4. Some kind of soup, possibly bukeoguk (dried pollock soup)
  5. Fried eggs sunny side up
  6. ?
  7. Steamed white rice
  8. Some kind of salad?
  9. Tofu? or Eomuk (fish cake)
  10. Gaji namul? (stir-fried eggplant)
  11. Braised/stewed fish in a spicy-looking sauce

Some of this stuff looks pretty good (especially the soups) so I might try a few here and there as I get the recipes. Look forward to it!