Illustration: TDAC featured collection... Woo hoo.

So following on from yesterdays post, the seaweed rice recipe was promptly approved and included on the They Draw and Cook website... woo hoo, Brilliant news. The site owners then added some amazing comments, oh yes... I was overjoyed. Then this very morning I awoke to find an email telling me the excellent news that my recipe had been chosen to be included in this weeks featured collection. Oh my days, I am over the moon, absolutely marvellous news which has made my day/ week/ month... woop, woop.


Thumbs up:

My happy little thumb.

Screen shot:

The first recipe, right bang in the middle of their home page. Woo hoo. (This will be here for one week only).

Recipe:

And here is the recipe again, just in case you had missed it. he he. Should anyone actually ever cook it, please do let me know how it turns out and whether your little ones enjoyed it.

Artwork copyright of Queen Kwak.

Illustration: TDAC Seaweed rice illustrated recipe.

Here is a little something I have been working on over the summer holidays in honour of my little lady. A little illustrated recipe of the very first food she ate and what is still to this day her absolute most favourite food ever, Seaweed rice. I have sent it to the website They Draw and Cook, a brilliant site filled with lovely illustrated recipes (check it out, there is some amazing stuff). I hope they like it enough to add it to the site, fingers crossed on that, but here is the recipe illustration, a recipe I created myself, though I am not too sure if that is something to be too proud of, it is pretty easy plus a bit gloopy, but the little lady LOVES it.

Recipe Illustration:

The entire piece.

To the left:

So you can see it in a little more detail.

And to the right:

A bit more detail for you.

Gloopy:

So this is what it really looks like. Serve gloopy, in a porridge like consistency. And its not just for the babies,  King Kwak has been known to often enjoy a bowl, though admittedly it is not really my cup of tea.

First sampling:

The little ladies first sampling of the wondrous stuff. She is just too cute in these two photos, it makes my heart ache. She is 6 months, we were on holiday in Jeju Island, a little island off of Korea, and the restaurant brought her a bowl. Having only had powdered rice/ porridge and fruit until that point, we figured why not and that was the beginning of her love. My recipe is my interpretation of what was served that day. No idea if it tasted similar, purely based on appearance only I'm afraid.

Nom nom:

Still going strong, here she is about a year ago properly devouring it. Look how overjoyed the doll behind her is, proper wooping and air punching... Go seaweed rice!!

I will keep you posted if it is included on the website.

Artwork copyright of Queen Kwak.

Royal Feasts: Bento lunch epiphany.

Last week I had an epiphany, a proper angel chorusing 'hallelujah', life altering, seeing the light moment... I discovered bento lunches, all thanks to this blog: www.meetthedubiens.com. This lady is a genius, seriously, she is AMAZING and I knew from there on, that fine dining at Kwak palace will forever be changed... They will be funky as, fact. It took every single possible ounce of my will power not to immediately buy every single bento creating gadget available, I was a very strong lady that day.
The following pictures depict our week of bento lunches. I am not sure if bento lunch is really the correct term, as I imagine that is more appropriate to the lunch box food, but as I do not know a proper term for this, that is what I shall call it. The pictures show what I served the little lady, aged 3. The little chap had similar but chopped up and pieced back together, not quite so pretty on the photo front I'm afraid.

Row row row the boat:
Photo above. A cheese and ham sandwich with tomato portholes, ham sail and cheese flag. spinach spaghetti waves with carrot and cheese fish and frankfurter octopus. Covers most food groups I feel.

Curly whirly:

Poor effort I know. Cream cheese and chopped spinach pasta hair, broccoli and cauliflower hair bow, egg eyes and chicken ears and mouth.

Medusa pizza:

Whilst I am normally quite modest, I do feel this was my piece de resistance. Tomato and ham homemade pizza with cucumber fangs and eyes, caper eyeballs, red pepper mouth and eyebrows, olive oil and broccoli spaghetti hair with broccoli snakes. We were getting into the halloween spirit, she even wore a witches costume to eat it.

Beetle blood soup:

A bit of a failure, you can't win them all, but seriously have you ever tried to carve beetles out of frankfurters? its hard. Tomato soup, grated cheese, toast spider and frankfurter beetles that look nothing like beetles. I rushed.

Teddybears picnic:

Tomato and cheese home made pizza bear head with ham, cheese and caper features, cabbage smile and broccoli trees.

After serving the bear masterpiece, yes I was quite proud of that one, my little lady, aged three, sat me down, patted me on the knee and said 'mummy, please stop making scary food, please make normal food'. 

A. bullet. in. my heart.

So that is the end of that. Sob. But it won't be, I will just let my bento making dream lay low for a week or two, then it will be back, super friendly scenes a plenty, she will see.
After the initial devastation of 'our chat', I did realise she had endured 5 days of it, 5 days of me sat right next to her applauding myself whilst she ate. Also I could only come up with bread based ideas, and neither of my babies particularly like bread (nightmare) and I very, very rarely ever gave her pizza before, and frankfurters never, so I can see her point. Slightly. but like I said, I am not crushed, my bento dreams will return.

Royal Feast: Hwedupbap: Korean raw fish and vegetable rice bowl.

This is a very easy, very quick meal that is very healthy and very low fat. That's a lot of very's. Hwedupbap, a Korean dish translated as hwe: fish, dup: top, bap: rice, is as it says... fish on top of rice, with a few raw vegetables thrown in for good measure.

Base Ingredients: Cooked rice, small raw salmon fillet, small raw tuna fillet (both or either), red cabbage, spring onion, carrot, cucumber with skin removed, washed watercress and sesame seeds.

Wash and finely slice all vegetables, except watercress. This little gadget is excellent, it is a scallion slicer I picked it up at a Korean supermarket for about a pound:

Amazon sell similar. Chop up the fish. Pop a rice bowl full of rice in the centre of the bowl, then arrange little piles of each vegetable separately around the sides. Pile them on, no need to be sparing. The vegetables I used are typical for this meal but use any you wish, cooked spinach, sesame leaves and bean sprouts work well. Pile the fish on top in the centre and sprinkle the sesame seeds on top of that.

Now for the sauce which will be poured all over the top. The proper Korean way is to have a spicy hot sauce on top, chogochujang, which naturally is the way King Kwak prefers his.

Chogochujang sauce: Red chilli paste, honey, rice vinegar and soya sauce, all mixed together.
Cho: vinegar/ acidity, gochu: chilli, jang: paste. I used to make it, it is easy. But you can also buy it if you know a Korean/ Asian supermarket, like so:

My preference for Hwedupbap is to top it with a simple dressing of sliced chilli's, soya sauce with a drop of sesame oil. Pour this on top and it is lovely.

I had best not class this as cooking, more slicing and arranging. Hands up, I didn't even cook the rice, we have a rice cooker. When I married my Korean, he came free with a rice cooker, like a little prize. It talks and sings in Korean, amazing. I have no idea what its saying but it is excellent, my babies even sing a long too, yay!! I am talking about the rice cooker, not the husband by the way. Though on occasion that sentence could be applied to both. ha.

This might work if you were on a raw food diet. Something I am keen to look into, but as not haven't so not sure how rice works on a raw food diet. raw rice? yuk.