Americano coffee. American Coffee?

There is a big difference between American coffee and Americano Coffee.  And it behooves me to say the latter is becoming more prevalent overseas.

I first encountered the term in Reading, England.  In fact, the restaurant was nice enough to provide the definition:  Coffee diluted with water.  Well, that didn't make any sense.  I don't like my coffee diluted water.

The most prevalent form of coffee in the US is drip coffee.  You find it everywhere.  Every little diner to the largest restaurant serves drip coffee.  The result of dripping hot water through a bed of ground coffee is a rather mellowed bitter flavored coffee.

Americano Coffee (or Cafe' Americano in Italy) is produced differently.  The beverage is merely espresso diluted with water.  That's it.

But the flavor is different.  And it's not my favorite.  It's stronger and has a flavor that is a forgettable bitter.

So, I get excited with I see a coffee shop in Seoul that actually advertises "Drip Coffee".  In fact, the phrase we use in the USA is that we are brewing coffee.

Here is a great website that discusses some of the methods for brewing drip coffee. 

I find the flavor of coffee from a French Press is the closest to Americano coffee.  But still far enough from it to be enjoyable.

Beer Braised Pork Tenderloin With Cabbage And Apples

If I haven't mentioned it yet, Seoul has very nice looking pork.  So, I try to find recipes that use it.  The local grocery here also has some good looking ground pork, so I try to fine recipes for that as well.

So, the very available ingredients here in Seoul are:

- pork

- cabbage

- apples

- beer.

This particular recipe also calls for dijon mustard, among other things, which is probably available here, but you sort of get tired of hunting after a while and just use substitutes.  So, I just used regular yellow mustard with is everywhere.

This recipe was a hit with my wife and daughter.

Yummly

Korean supermarkets are a sea of green leafy vegetables.  It's pretty remarkable.  But many of the spices or herbs we take for granted just aren't here.

Flat leaf Italian parsley for one.  Very hard to find unless it's in a package of a few sprigs....garnish.

So, I go to my go-to website for finding recipes with whatever ingredients I have on hand.

Yummly.com

Yummly is a meta search engine that allows you to search for recipes based on ingredients.  Recipes are from all kinds of websites:  Martha Stewart, Rachel Ray, Serious Eats, All Recipes and many more.

OK.  So, I have some pork tenderloin.  And I have some cabbage.  Yummly will help me find recipes with the ingredients I have on hand.

What can I make?

And this is where Yummly really shines.  Yummly will pour out recipes that have as the ingredients pork loin and cabbage.  Put you mouse over each recipe truncated ingredients list and the rest of them appear.  Now you can just peruse the recipes until you find one that lists ingredients you're pretty sure you can get.

You can add ingredients to the list and the recipe selections narrows.

Korea and Fried Chicken

This is one of those things that just comes out of left field.  Fried Chicken...in Korea?  Yes.  And it is tastey.

I stopped off at this place on teh way home from shopping and picked up some great fried chicken for dinner for the family.  It appears to be run by a mom and pop.

Since we started eating the local stuff we haven't set foot in KFC which is here also.

Filming in Seoul

We were all excited when we heard some filming for Winter Soldier was going to be done here (I think that's the movie).  But obviously it wouldn't be at any time near us at all.

But still, snippets of filming and modeling sessions popup in and around the Itaewon area.  These guys were trying out some really cool camera stuff.  I don't know what it's called, but the effect is the extreme panning affect you see that pans a person and then quickly zooms in on the person at the same time.  

The set-up was with one persono operating the camera on the subject.  Then two people, each sporting their own device, would control the tilt and zoom.  You can see it all in the video.

 

I've found heaven

I take the 405 bus every morning to work and pass several Paris Baguette stores.  And only ONE stood out as being stocked "early".  The PG is located feet from the 405 City Hall Bus stop.  It's 7:36am and I just got finished eating one of the freshest croissants I've ever had in my life.  It was still warm.

I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

COEX Aquarium

We had a great time at the COEX Aquarium.   It was good to see my daughter get excited about something.  The photos below are from one of the more bizarre looking fish.  These are called the Garden Eels.  

Just weird.