Milk and Butter Dumplings

I once dined at the restaurant at the basement of Sogo Hong Kong, and I was amused that this ramen restaurant had a ramen called the Hokkaido 3.6 ramen. It was apparently one of their bestsellers, and to my surprise, it's not something you see everyday. 

Because Hokkaido 3.6 is a brand of milk, and they have a ramen with milk as its soup base. I tried it, and it was amusing because it was creamy, but at the same time the taste was light as it was only salt and butter that were with the milk. It's definitely far from the usual tonkotsu, or the usual lard based broth you see in ramen. 

I was so lazy one night that I decided to have milk based soup for dinner. 

I took these discs and these were my "noodles" for the night. I have very little idea on what this is formally called, but these are supposedly Korean rice cake discs. I bought this from Hong Kong, and I have yet to see this in the Philippines. In Hong Kong, it seems that there is a following as our relatives treated us to dishes that involved boiling these discs then stir frying them in a teriyaki sauce...

The important thing is to wash these, as they smell like alcohol. I'm not sure if it's a preservative, or a byproduct, or an actual ingredient of the discs, but the instructions say that these rice cakes need to be washed thoroughly before boiling. 

I pop them in when the water starts to boil and bubbles up so that the bubbles will push the discs upward and keep them from sticking onto the bottom of the pot. But meh, I also stir like crazy.

And for the meat and tasty part, I now have my Wanchai Ferry brand dumplings. I love this brand to bits because their dumplings are really tasty and juicy, and that there are so many flavors to choose from. 

I usually add the dumplings later because the discs take such a long time to cook while the dumplings cook relatively quickly. 

What I did prior to this is add in just half the amount of water that I'd need so that once I put in the milk, the amount of soup will be just right. I used Emborg's Low Fat milk today, although I know I can make better use of their full cream milk or the legit Hokkaido 3.6 milk. 

To finish it off, I add in a sliver of butter. This is our Emborg butter.

This will taste better with more vegetables and meat to make up for the simple flavor of the soup, but for a really really really lazy night, this'll do.