Instant Jajangmyeon

I bought a pack of instant Jajangmyeon last week. I have never tried Jajangmyeon before, so I was pretty excited when I found out that Ranch 99 Market sell various kinds of instant Jajangmyeon. Jajangmyeon, you see, is a Korean dish - wheat noodles topped with black bean sauce, and usually garnished with some diced meat and vegetables. This particular noodles derived from a Chinese dish named Zhajiangmian, which basically made out of the same element of food.

Instant Jajangmeyon

Sure, you may see nothing special about this dish, for it is merely noodles with sauce. But, the thing is, the sauce is the main star of the dish. The sauce is black in color and it is made out of fermented black soybeans. The only thing that popped into my mind when I heard the word "fermented soybean" is a traditional Japanese food named Natto. I've tasted Natto before and I'm not fond of it because it tasted weird, bitter, and funky in a bad way. My past self hoped that Jajangmyeon would tasted somehow better than Natto. 

Put the noodle into a pan of boiling water

The instant Jajangmyeon that I bought had a slightly larger and wider noodle compared to the ones that we have here in Indonesia. It came with another pack inside the packaging, which is the black bean sauce. As I grope the smaller packaging, I could feel some chunks and cube-shaped object at random places. "That must be the meat," I thought.

A pack of black bean paste

Mom did the cooking while I documenting the process. It was written on the package that the noodle must be cooked for five minutes. I don't like soft and squishy noodles, so Mom cooked it for three minutes. The noodles turned out medium well, just how I like it!

Pour the sauce into the bowl

After the noodle was nicely cooked, Mom proceed to tore the smaller packaging and pour the black bean sauce onto the goldilocks. They didn't lie when they said that the sauce is black because it was! Its' pitch black color was intimidating. Now I know why squid-eating predators would sprint when the squid has squirt out its' ultimate self-defense tool: the blinding black ink.

False advertisement 

As I mix the black sauce with the noodles, I could smell the aroma tingling my nose. It smelled slightly weird, to be honest. I rolled my chopstick around the dark brown noodle and took my first bite of Jajangmyeon. It tasted weird, but not too weird for me to finish the whole bowl. The sauce tasted like soy sauce, and it has this weird flavor which I cannot determine. Maybe it was the flavor of the black bean since I have never tried black bean before. There were chunks of mushroom, meat, and potato, and they didn't taste that bad.

Bon appetite~

Long story short, my first experience in eating Jajangmyeon was okay. It didn't tasted that bad, but I would prefer to have a couple bowl of Indomie Kari Ayam. For those who fancy Korean dish, you should definitely try Jajangmyeon. Who knows, maybe you will like it better than I do. 

P.S. You can get instant Jajangmyeon at most supermarket that sells imported products, such as Ranch 99 Market and Food Hall. Happy hunting!

Mochi Ice Cream

The numbers  of ice creams that I had eaten for the past seventeen years of life escapes me. I love ice cream and I will always do. If I were to be offered a job to be an ice cream taster, I wouldn't consider twice and immediately accept the job. "When do I start," I will say, holding a spoon on my right hand and a napkin on my left hand. 

As a person who loves to travel, I have tasted various kinds of ice creams at various tourist destination spots. I once bought myself a chocolate ice cream cone when I was at Mount Titlis, Switzerland, during winter. Then, I found myself returning to the same spot to buy ice cream over and over again at an ice cream shop at Frankfurt, Germany, which name I forgot. There were lots of drunk local citizen, screaming and shouting to each other, waving flags of their favorite team, when I bough myself a cone of Melon-flavored ice cream because it was during the FIFA World Cup 2010 when I visited Frankfurt. Even by the thought of me finally got the chance to taste the famous sandwich ice cream at New York makes me all giddy inside. If music can connects people, despite the fact that they have no idea on how to communicate with each other because of the language barrier, I say ice cream can do it too. 

My first encounter with Binggrae Mochi Ice Cream was a couple of months ago, at Seven Eleven. My cousin invited me, along with my Mom and Dad, to her birthday dinner at a fancy restaurant. We spent hours at that place, then we continued our chat at a nearby Seven Eleven. Dad asked me whether I want to buy something to eat or not, so I looked around and found this packaging at the freezer that caught my attention. The packaging was decorated with korean words, which I cannot understand but readable. It turned out to be a pack of korean mochi ice cream. Without any hesitation, I gave it to my Dad to be paid.

The packaging contained two pieces of watermelon-flavored mochi ice cream. I shared it with my cousin, and the both of us were overwhelmed by the taste of the gooey ice-cream filled rice cake. The mochi is dark green in color, more or less share the same color with a cup of Japanese green tea. When you rip the mochi open, you will find yourself some milky and creamy pink-colored ice cream. I scooped the ice cream with the plastic fork that was provided in the packaging and had a taste of that delicious looking pink ice cream. Well, what do you know, the pink-colored ice cream was a milky watermelon-flavored ice cream. Yum!

The ice cream was a bit pricey, considering the fact that it is imported from Korea, but I don't see any harm by spending a rather-large sum of money to taste this wonderful creation of Binggrae. You can find this particular ice cream at any fancy grocery store at fancy malls, such as Food Hall and Kamome Swalayan. Just go to the ice cream section, and hunt for this appealing packaging, then you will have the chance to savor the goodness of a korean ice cream.

Lotte's Custard Cake

One of my Dad's old friend and his family went to Seoul, Korea, for a few days and just got back from the country of great taste. Yesterday, his daughter, which happens to be my kindergarten friend and my senior, stopped by at this house of mine to hand me some souvenirs that she bought at Seoul. There were shot glass, a pair of home socks, an "I Love Seoul" pen, and a pack of Lotte's snack. I got so excited when I saw such peculiar food. The urge to try a bite of the korean cake is unbearable.

The words in green are read "Custard", whilst the
white words bellow it are read "Original"

I opened the rather medium-sized packaging and found six small
packagings inside, which contain one custard cake each

I took a packaging and opened it, and I found a shiny golden cake that would make your fingers all sticky when you touch it. I was already amused by the physical appearance, which I found cute and turtle-like (because it has this shape that looks like a turtle's shell. Well, at least I think it does.) I was a bit confused on how to eat the custard cake, so I decided to split it into two parts. I got a good look of the custard fillings at it was soft yellow in color, not much different from the color of the inner part of the cake. 

I took a bite of the puffy custard cake. It tasted good, as in the composition of the cream was well-balanced and the texture of the cake was soft like sponge cakes. The cream filling tasted fine, as it was not too sweet, which made a perfect combination with the rather sweet and sticky cake. It took me less than a minute to gulp down the whole cake. It's not as big in size as it looks because each custard cake is only as wide as a seven-year-old's palm. 

A cracked-open custard cake that was filled with
a rather creamy, not too sweet, fillings 

I finished a pack last night and I'm tempted to have one pack at the moment. But since it's a snack that you can only buy at Korea, then I shall resists the temptation on having a bite. The great thing about being given food as a souvenir is that you can indulge the same food that the local people usually eat without having to spend some coins on buying a plane ticket to that particular country. But you have to eat it bite by bite because you will probably be lacking of chances to get another taste of that food when it's finished. Enjoy both the simplicity of souvenir food and the little things in life.

How can you resists such soft and creamy cake?