Birthday Dinner

My Husband and I decided to host my dad's birthday dinner at our place this year. I cooked most of it with the help of my mom and brought in a few outside favorites of my dad. We did a Korean-Chinese fusion theme which is fitting as it describes my new family situation.

One of the main dishes we had was a Korean soup called miyuk guk. It is a seaweed soup that is traditionally eaten on your birthday. There are many variations, but the one we made had beef and mushrooms in it and of course tons of garlic. Miyuk is known to have a lot of calcium and also help lower cholesterol. It looks a little scary, but it's delicious with a bowl of rice!

The next dish that I made was a Chinese style seafood stir fry. It's a recipe that I got from my aunt and it is much simpler than it looks. It is a great dish for when you're craving fresh veggies but when you know you don't want a salad. The ingredients are shrimp, squid, scallops, baby bokchoy, carrots, shiitakes, green onions, garlic and ginger. The key to getting that Chinese taste is using oyster sauce.

One of the outside dishes that we bought was a spicy fried shrimp. It is a family favorite! If you have never eaten Korean-Chinese food you need to try it. One of my favorite restaurants in LA for this food is The Dragon (aka Yong Goong). It is located on 966 South Vermont Avenue.

Of course we had banchan of fried tofu and this time we also made muk (acorn jelly). Muk is one of the easiest things to make. You just cut it up into slices and then garnish it with the same sauce that is used for the tofu. It can be served at room temperature or cold.

We ended the meal with the desserts in the first picture, which are from one of my favorite bakeries in the area, Paris Baguette. We had a chocolate lava cake, strawberry freshcream cake and a green tea cake. They were all delicious with dollops of ice cream on the side!