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I love food. During my time in Korea, I have been collecting recipes and anecdotes about Korean food. I also have been working on survival techniques for westerners living in Korea.

In this journal are recipes for cooking Korean food in Korea or abroad and recipes for recreating western food with Korean ingredients.

But mostly, it's about enjoying life.

SUBJECT KEY
Christmas Chronicles - Trying to celebrate Christmas in Korea
Drink - Imbibe me
Event - Special events involving special Korean foods
FFF (Food for Foreigners) - Recipes for foreigners living in Korea
FP (Food Porn) - Pictures for stimulation
Fusion - A mixture -- or clash -- of cultures
Junk - Junk food
KFC (Korean Food Concept) - A blog entry explaining a type of Korean food
Kimchi - Something about kimchi
KR (Korean Recipe) - A recipe for Korean food, duh!
Miscellaneous - Stuff, stuff, and stuff
News - Korean food in the news
Out There - What others are saying
Rest (Restaurant) - An entry about a restaurant in Korea
Street Food - An entry about a street food concept or adventure
Tip - A survival tip for living or visiting Korea
Video - A summary of a video on the site
WTF - A feature on anything unusual that has to be investigated further

Friday, April 28, 2006

(Video #2) K-Scene on Jay Leno

If you didn't know already, I've been contributing articles to K-Scene magazine, the English language city mag for Seoul. Last month, I think, some Canadian guys at the Three Alleys Pub came up with an idea for a prank. They posted an ad in K-Scene that got their fellow countrymen riled up. They were making fun of how sensitive and nationalistic they were.

And they were proven right. Some folks didn't get the joke. They took it seriously. The Korea Herald ran an article on it. Bloggers were picking it up, and the board on Dave's ESL Cafe exploded with rancor.

Then it appeared on Jay Leno, and the prank entered into a whole new realm of surrealness.

Labels: Video

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Wednesday, April 26, 2006

(FFF #16) Gourmet Beanie Weenies

Sometimes I enjoy a simple food from childhood. Of course I make it a little more grown up. Korean stores have canned baked beans, but I haven't heard of any cases of them being used as actual baked beans, like a can of cream of mushroom soup in America is more a casserole ingredient than a soup. Baked beans in Korea are used in budae jjigae, a stew made from ingredients from U.S. Army surplus around the time of the Korean War.

Hot dogs are available. They honestly aren't that good. I prefer the sausages they make at E-Mart.

I first sweated some onions, green pepper, and a little garlic. I then cooked some sliced sausage in the pan.

Next came the canned baked beans. From there, it was a matter of balancing the flavors with yellow mustard, maple syrup, brown sugar, black pepper, and a splash of whiskey.

Again, this dish was me placating my childhood memories. People love foods from their childhoods, no matter how disgusting they can be. That's why I'm not as crazy about some foods that Koreans had as children, like dried squid, silkworm larvae, and the tea made from pouring hot water into the scrapings of rice served in a hot stone pot.

Yet Eun Jeong loved the beanie weenies. She ate more of them than I did. She ate the leftovers for breakfast. She like my childhood food more than me.

I wonder what she would think of grilled peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

Labels: Food for Foreigners

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Monday, April 24, 2006

Sushi Santa and the Outhouse

Just some pictures I took that don't fit in any category except that they're funny and that they relate to food. First is Sushi Santa. In his off time, Santa likes to stand outside of sushi restaurants and advertise what's on the menu.

And another example of unfortunate word combinations. Mmm... outhouse sushi. The Japanese delicacy finds its way to Korean shores.

Labels: Miscellaneous

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Sunday, April 23, 2006

(KR #7) Eun Jeong's Noodle Soup (Janchi Kuksu 잔치국수)

I love it when Eun Jeong cooks. When we first started dating, she told me that she couldn't cook. I later figured out it was a ruse to make me cook for her more often. She makes some great Korean food.

This little recipe for Janchi Kuksu 잔치국수 is simple and honest food. I'll present this as a traditional recipe rather than use my usual stream-of-consciousness journal style. Eun Jeong served it in four separate parts: noodles, dashi stock, condiments, and yangyeomjang 양념장 sauce

INGREDIENTS
Noodles
Kuksu noodles (thin wheat noodles)
Water (duh!)
Green onion, chopped

Dashi Stock
1 pot Dashi
1 Onion, sliced
1/2 Zucchini, sliced

Condiments
Kimchi, chopped
Cucumber, peeled and sliced into matchsticks
2 Eggs, scrambled like an omelette, rolled, and sliced into thin strips
Muchim

YangYeomJang Sauce
1 tsp. Sesame seeds, toasted in a dry pan
2 cloves Garlic, chopped
1 Green onion, chopped
1 tsp. Gochugaru (Korean red pepper powder)*
2 tbsp. Soy sauce
Salt to taste

1. Make the YangYeomJang sauce by crushing the sesame seeds in a mortar. Add and crush the garlic, green onion, and gochugaru. Gradually mix in the soy sauce until there is a hearty paste. Season with salt, if needed. Sprinkle more sesame seeds on top.

2. Boil the dashi with the sliced onion and zucchini for two minutes.

3. Prepare the condiments in separate dishes or in one big dish.

4. Boil the kuksu noodles lightly. They don't need as much time as Italian style pasta. Put them in individual bowls and garnish with green onion.

5. Serve the noodles, dashi, condiments, and YangYeomJang separately. The diners build their own soups from these ingredients to their liking.

*Cayenne pepper may work as a substitution for gochugaru. Maybe.

Labels: Korean Recipe

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(KR #6) Simple Spinach Side Dish (Muchim 무침)

This is something simple Eun Jeong made one night that was used in a later recipe. But it is great by itself as a side dish. It's a spinach garlic stir fry called muchim 무침.

She trimmed some fresh spinach and blanched it by putting it in boiling water for less than a minute. She then stir fried it with a pinch of salt, two or three cloves of chopped garlic, and some sesame oil.

That's it.

Labels: Korean Recipe

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Thursday, April 20, 2006

NEWS: ZenKimchi - Paid Food Writer

Just a note that I'm getting paid (a little) to contribute food columns to K-Scene, the English language city magazine for Seoul. I'm technically a paid food writer!

My first two-page feature is in the current issue out around town, mostly in Itaewon, Gangnam/Apgujeong, and Hongdae. It's a rewrite of three previous posts on the site, grilled intestines, gogi buffet, and grilled shellfish.

I'm putting the finishing touches on my next article on how to cook Mexican food in Korea. Cinco de Mayo and Children's Day coincide, and I prefer to celebrate the former.

Again, I have a pile of posts in the works. I'm posting them as soon as I get time. Some day I may be able to be like Chez Pim and make this my full-time job. Yeah, right. :)

Labels: Miscellaneous

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Tuesday, April 18, 2006

(KFC #10) Order-in Bossam

It's been a while in this Korean food journal that I've talked about, um, Korean food. I have a lot of stuff in the backlogs waiting to be posted. The thing is, I'm just an explorer, not an expert. So really, I eat some really good food and know very little about it beyond its name (most of the time) and pictures.

Bossam (보쌈) is basically steamed pork with kimchi served with lettuce leaves (the "ssam"). I had this for the first time in the dead of winter. Eun Jeong wanted it for dinner. I thought, "What's so great about steamed pork? There's no flavor."

That's true. There's not much flavor in the steamed pork itself. It's mild. Yet the power of bossam comes in the condiments, particularly the kimchi. The kimchi at bossam places is particularly good. It's very smooth and a little sweet. It's almost elegant.

The other condiment that stands out in bossam is the hot shrimp sauce. It's a sweet vinegary hot sauce flavored heavily with little dried shrimp. You would not think that a seafood tinged sauce and steamed pork would work together, but they do.

Last week, Eun Jeong and I were really hungry. We were too lazy to go to a restaurant. Too lazy to cook. We were tired of the usual order-in fare. I thumbed through the coupon books that regularly are posted outside the door to my apartment.

"How about bossam?"

"I don't know. Delivery may not be so delicious."

But the more we thought about it, the more the bossam suggestion cemented in both our minds.

And, yes, it wasn't as good as a restaurant, but it was damn good for something delivered to the door.

First, the steamed pork. A good amount of this, with a healthy rind of glistening fat.

Then the glorious kimchi. This tasted a lot better than it looks in the picture. It was bright and crunchy with a complex medley of flavors from sweet to sour to garlicky.

The small condiments tray had raw slices of garlic (yes, we sometimes/usually eat garlic raw in Korea), sliced korean peppers, a bag of ssamjang (dwinjang and gochujang mixed with garlic and other ingredients), and the red shrimp sauce.

We also had a tray of cold buckwheat noodles that looked like bibim naengmyeon. Yet Eun Jeong said it wasn't naengmyeon.

With some rice we made ourselves, we had a glorious lunch, making lettuce wraps with whatever we felt like stuffing in our mouths. I think it was just 12,000 won ($12) for the whole set, which fed us with leftovers to spare.

Labels: Korean Food Concept

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Wednesday, April 12, 2006

(FFF #15) The Ultimate Italian Sub

Everyone has that special food they really miss from home. I didn't become aware of mine until I was just craving it. Italian sandwiches are just about my favorite food in the world. It really got bad when I had a short stint working at Jersey Mike's Subs. Jersey Mike's has been in the business for a long time. They started on the Jersey shore and slowly expanded. The guy who started Blimpie used to work for them.

I really got into their Jersey style Italian sandwiches. There were many ways to make them, but there were a few techniques and a few rules, or the sandwich was ruined.

The trick, as with any western food in Korea, is in finding the ingredients. Scouring around at my local E-Mart, I found frozen imported balogna and salami. Better processed meats are popping up in the refrigerated section, next to the cheddar cheese. From that I got a stick of pepperoni-style hard salami and a little block of ham coated in cracked pepper.

That took care of the meats. I got some cheddar cheese from the same case where I got the ham and hard salami. I know the Kim's Club at Beomgye station has swiss cheese, but I've been too lazy to go down there.

Now, of course, making a sandwich is a no-brainer. Put something in between two slices of bread. Simple. I'm not going to insult your intelligence by telling you how to make a sandwich. Yet there are ways to make one better.

The great tool for sandwich making is one of those cheap plastic slicers. The metal ones are called 'mandolins' and are expensive. This cheapo slicer is great because you can just chuck it and get a new one when it wears down.

The first thing I do is slice vegetables. In this case, some cucumbers and lots and lots of thinly sliced onions.

I then shave the ham and pepperoni. This can get a bit dangerous, so here's a safe way to do it. Get a work glove to protect your hand. Cover the work glove with a plastic glove for sanitation. It's some work, but I just love shaved ham.

When everything is done, slice the bread in half. I usually use a baguette from a local bakery -- one of the few bakery items in Korea that isn't infected with sugar. I found a bakery near my house that sells delicious garlic baguettes. The thing to remember when getting a baguette at a Korean bakery is that they will almost always ask if you want them to slice it. It's hard to tell what they're saying because they will not always make the slicing motion when they ask you. Just be alert, and when you think they're asking you if you want it sliced, say, "An'yo."

One technique I sometimes do with a sandwich like this is scoop out the insides. I learned from Rodney Dangerfield.

Now, the big rule about Italian subs: Only oil and vinegar. NO MAYONNAISE!

I coat the bread with extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

I then pile on the vegetables, including lettuce from a ssam bag (see Gumbo-less Gumbo) and some jalapenos (which are starting to pop up more frequently in supermarkets).

On the other side, I laid down the meats, loosely piling the shaved ham.

After putting the two sides together, the last thing I do is squeeze the bread. I learned this at Jersey Mike's, and supposedly it's a European technique. Squeezing it helps the flavors meld together. I remember watching the Two Fat Ladies, and they put a brick on a sandwich to give the same effect.

In fact, tightly squeezing and wrapping the sandwich and letting it sit in the fridge overnight makes it taste better.

Labels: Food for Foreigners

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Monday, April 03, 2006

(FFF #14) The Veggie Burger Fiasco

I'm not sure what to make of this one.

Honestly, I have grown to like veggie burgers. Veggie burger technology, coming from the chemical geniuses in New Jersey, have made them not only tastier, but more texturally pleasing.

I've also met a good many vegetarians in Korea from the West. It's possible to eat vegetarian in Korea. In fact, Korea has some of the best vegetarian food in the world. Yet there aren't many non-Korean vegetarian alternatives available.

I caught a show, Chef at Home, where Chef Michael Smith came up with an enticing veggie burger recipe. His goal was to make them full of non-animal protein yet make them taste meaty. His secrets were Japanese mushrooms and Japanese miso paste.

Immediately, it occured to me that using Korean ingredients would make them taste even meatier -- or stronger, at least.

I started by gathering all the ingredients.

Included were some Korean mushrooms,

some barley (boribap 보리밥),

rosemary and thyme from my "garden," red Korean peppers, and Korean dwenjang paste (the "stinky miso").

In fact, I'll break my usual convention and list all the ingredients at once.

Olive Oil
2 packages of hearty Mushrooms
2 Onions, chopped
Handful of Garlic, chopped
3 Red Korean Peppers, seeded and sliced
1/2 cup of Short Grain Rice, rinsed
1/2 cup of Barley
2 cups of Water
Soy Sauce
Hite Stout Beer
Fresh Rosemary and Thyme
2 Eggs
1 block of Firm Tofu
1 big dollop of Dwenjang Paste
1 cup of Panko Breadcrumbs
Salt and Pepper

I started by slowly sweating the mushrooms, onions, red peppers, and garlic in olive oil, seasoned with black pepper, a little bit of salt, and the herbs.

I slowly cooked the mixture down until the liquid was almost gone. At that point, it tasted pretty good, like Thanksgiving stuffing. Maybe I could serve that as it was.

I then added the barley, rice, water, a quick pour of soy sauce, and a bit of the stout I was drinking.

I put a lid on it and slowly simmered it until the rice and barley had softened. It still looked, smelled, and tasted pretty good.

In a blender I pureed the tofu, eggs, and dwenjang. I tried adding the breadcrumbs, but this blender just ain't that powerful. I added it instead to the rice mixture.

When the rice mixture had cooled, I pureed it and mixed it with the breadcrumbs and tofu mixture.

Then I rolled them,

patted them, and put them in the fridge to firm up a bit.

After an hour or so, I pan fried them in olive oil and toasted some split butter rolls. Since I'm not anything near being a vegetarian, I threw on some sharp cheddar cheese.

I dressed them in onions and mustard, similar to small hamburgers made in certain establishments.

Honestly, the hamburgers tasted pretty good when I ate them. But still, they weren't something I wanted to eat again. That's too bad since I made a good many of them (anyone out there want some extra frozen veggie burger patties).

I'm thinking that maybe I put in too much tofu, or the tofu was not necessary at all. It felt like something was missing -- like meat. Maybe someone out there could help me fix this recipe. I never claim to be an expert in all this. I'm just bumping my way through a kitchen in Korea.

Labels: Food for Foreigners

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