I love seaweed salad!

February 7, 2009

I really love seaweed salad.

It is normally served as side dish in Japanese or Korean restaurant. I really love the one served by a Korean restaurant that we go frequently in Chatswood.

Googled “seaweed” and found out that it is really a nutritious food:

Wakame fronds are green and have a subtly sweet flavour and slippery texture. The leaves should be cut into small pieces as they will expand during cooking.

Since long in Japan and now also in Europe, wakame is distributed either dried or salted, and used in soups (particularly miso soup), and salads (tofu salad), or often simply as a side dish to tofu and a salad vegetable like cucumber. These dishes are typically dressed with Japanese ingredients including soya sauce and vinegar/rice vinegar.

* In China, it is called qundaicai (裙带菜). Chinese production is concentrated around Dalian.
* In Korea, it is called miyeok (미역) and used in salads or soup.
* In French, it is called “fougère des mers”.

Wakame is a rich source of EPA, an ω-3 essential fatty acid. At over 400 mg/100 kcal or almost 1 mg/kJ, it has one of the higher nutrient:calorie ratios, and among the very highest for a vegetarian source. However, 100 grams of wakame is more than 44 tablespoons of dried wakame. The usual consumpton of wakame is closer to 1 or 2 tablespoons.[2] Wakame also has high levels of calcium, iodine, thiamine and niacin.
[Source: wikipedia]

Seaweed Salad

The next task for me is to find out how can I make this yummy dish myself!


YRWYE: Shiitake?

April 26, 2007

I am pretty sure everyone have eaten it before. It is my favourite food!!! But Chinese do not call it “shiitake”. The shiitake is an edible mushroom and it is generally known in the English-speaking world by its Japanese name, shiitake (). In Chinese, we call it xiānggū (, lit. “fragrant mushroom”). Other names by which the mushroom is known in English include Chinese black mushroom and black forest mushroom. In Korean it is called pyogo (hangul: ; hanja: ), and in Thai they are called hed hom (เห็ดหอม, “fragrant mushroom”).

Why are we taking such a long introduction for shiitake? All because shiitake worths it.

Read the rest of this entry »

YRWYE: White or Brown?

April 24, 2007

Will start a new series of YRWYE (read: You are what you eat!) to compile some useful information about the healthiness of food. Be concious of what we put into our mouth because we are what we eat!

So to kick-start, do you prefer white or brown? haha.. What am I talking about? Yeah, I am asking whether you prefer white bread or brown bread or wholemeal bread or wholegrain bread? I am confused. So many types of bread! Which one is actually better for our body?

I think it has been widely promoted that wholemeal/wholegrain bread is better for us. But why? What makes it more beneficial for us? Ths is the structure of a wheat grain. All types of wheat bread are made of this grain. But which parts are included in the bread essentially make one bread different from another!


So what is the difference between wholegrain, wholemeal, white or brown bread? Read the rest of this entry »