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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

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

(KFC #16) The End of Naengmyeon Season

People who know me have heard about my love of Naengmyeon, chilled buckwheat noodles. I especially like Mul Naengmyeon, where they're swimming in an slushy slightly sweet beef broth with cucumbers, radishes, Korean pears, a hard-boiled egg, and sometimes a slice of beef.

What is it about this stuff that makes me crave it so badly?

I guess it's because cold noodles are such an alien concept to North Americans. Cold soups are limited to gazpacho. I personally was turned off of Naengmyeon at first, mostly because it followed a galbi meal (I was already full) and also because it was Bibim Naengmyeon. Bibim Naengmyeon is the noodles without the broth, which are instead smothered in red pepper paste.

I think that the soupy stuff gives more of a satisfying feeling. I really just slurp the noodles as quickly as possible to get them out of the way. Then the best part comes. I take the cold stainless steel bowl to my lips and drink the sweet and tangy broth. It's like diving into a swimming pool. If I'm fast enough in eating the noodles, there's still shaved ice in the soup when I drink it. When I start drinking it, I can't put the bowl down. It's so peaceful and cool that I don't want to leave.

Naengmyeon is also one of those dishes people passionately love or passionately hate. Eun Joeng herself grew up not liking Naengmyeon. Her dad loved it, though. Only recently did I teach her how to enjoy it. Yes, I convinced a Korean to like Korean food. There's one restaurant near Beomgye Station in Anyang that serves the best Mul Naengmyeon I've ever tasted. The broth has the perfect balance of sweet and tangy. They slosh it full of shaved ice. And they sprinkle the top with toasted sesame seeds. Eun Jeong tried it for the first time in July and fell in love with it immediately. She was getting the same Naengmyeon cravings I had.

An interesting bit of information about Naengmyeon is that it wasn't always a summer dish. It was eaten in the winter and was invented by -- North Koreans. Really. It's maybe the only good thing to come out of North Korea. In fact, the Mul Naengmyeon I like and most people are familiar with is known as Pyeongyang Naengmyeon. Restaurants actually take pride in boasting they have authentic North Korean Naengmyeon.

Okay, if you can wrap your mind around that.

The weather is cooling now. The summer heat was all too short, in my opinion. My cravings for Naengmyeon are dissipating. Last Sunday, Eun Jeong and I returned to the Beomgye Station restaurant and had our last Naengmyeon of the season.

On the bright side, the end of Naengmyeon season means the beginning of oyster season.

Nonetheless, here's my small tribute marking the end. Until next year, cold noodles.

Labels: Korean Food Concept

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Tuesday, September 19, 2006

(KR #9) Spicy Garlicky Potato Side Dish -- Gamja Jorim (감자 조림)

This is a simple potato side dish that Eun Jeong whipped together one night and has been making frequently since then. It's a good garlicky peppery addition to any meal. Jorim, or Jorida (the verb), means to cook a food in a way so that steam and pressure force flavor into it.

She cooked some roughly cut potatoes with sliced onions in oil.

She added a sauce of red pepper paste (gochujang), red pepper powder (gochugaru), a lot of garlic crushed in the mortar, some soy sauce, and a little sugar and corn syrup. She added a little water. She covered the pot and let the water and sauce do its magic.

Garnished with sesame seeds, it's a great side dish to any meal, served hot or cold.

Labels: Korean Recipe

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Tuesday, September 12, 2006

(FFF #19) Pig's Feet Two Ways - German and The French Laundry

NOTE: Oven is used here.

There is just something glorious about pork.

A few months ago, I joined Brant and Terra at a German restaurant in Itaewon. I used to live in Germany, and I have a special fondness for German food and beer. I ordered this MegaMeat platter which included, of all things, a boiled Eisbein (pronounced "ice bine").

Eisbein is basically a pig's leg. I was so surprised by how divine this thing tasted -- even when boiled -- that I had to try this myself.

"No way," Eun Jeong protested.

She had seen enough of my failed kitchen experiments, especially since the purchase of the oven. I had made my mom's chicken and dumplings. But I made a batch for a family of six for a small couple. I made corn pudding, only to remember that I didnt' like corn pudding. My early revival attempts at baking have resulted in biscuits, focaccia, and croissants that would make fine building materials.

So, there ain't no way she's gonna let me bring some pigs' feet into the house.

She went to visit her mom this weekend.

The first thing I did upon returning from Japan was buy a nice leg o' hog.

Now, I've noticed right off that expensive items in one country are cheap staples in another. For example, beef, cheese, and soup bones are very expensinve in Korea, but cool fancy mushrooms, fresh garlic, and squid are cheap, cheap, cheap. Thankfully, pigs' legs are as cheap in Korea as they are in America.

Don't be frightened of the pig's leg. They're thoroughly cleaned. And they contain everything that makes pork so great: succulent meat, bacony fat, and crispy skin. It's all concentrated to the Nth degree.

The trouble was that the lady at the butcher stop asked how I wanted it cut. I indicated that I just wanted the cut at the ankle. She went to the back and handed it to one of the butchers and told him what to do.

I ended up with it cut into four sections with the foot split. That actually was a blessing in disguise because it gave me the opportunity to try to make them in two ways.

First, I brined them overnight in a large zipper bag in water mixed with a small handful of salt.

German Eisbein
With the largest portion and one of the foot halves, I made a roasted Eisbein. This was the simplest one.

I noted at the top that I use an oven for this. The reason is this entry is in the FFF (Food For Foreigners) category. The two rules I try to follow for FFF are the following:

1. Use what typical foreigners have available in Korea, meaning no ovens or food processors.

2. Costco is cheating.

Forgive me for using an oven on this one. If you do happen to have one, you can do this recipe.

Basically, I removed the pork hocks from the brine the next day and placed them on a bed of sliced onions. Now, I did make a mistake that I don't want you to make. Onions have a lot of sugars, which makes them great for caramelizing and making foods taste sweet. This also means that they'll stick like a mother to your baking pan after a good few hours of roasting. Protect your baking pan with a sheet of aluminimum foil first.

I put them in the oven at a little under 200 degrees Celsius. I roasted them for around three hours.

Oh, don't forget the Hite Stout!

I poured a little Hite Stout over the feet to baste them every thirty minutes. Around fifteen minutes to the end of cooking, I pumped up the heat to around 220 degrees Celsius to crisp the skin.

The result was remarkable. Served with some mashed potatoes and kimchi. Kimchi tastes great with German food, by the way. Decent substitute for sauerkraut. Had a little mustard as a condiment. Good classic hearty German cooking.

Now, if you don't have an oven and want to do a German Eisbein, you can boil it in water with some salt and vinegar, or even better, some chicken stock. That goes great with kimchi and mustard too. It's basically what they served at that German restaurant in Itaewon.

Mock French Laundry Trotters
I got the basics and techniques for this one from a former cook at Thomas Keller's The French Laundry (thanks, ChefJohnny). I followed it in spirit since I didn't have everything available that he used. I also was too lazy and hungry to make them into rillettes.

I got out my basic hardy vegetables for the mirepoix. This basically was stuff in my refrigerator and shelf that I had to use up before they spoiled. This included a daikon radish, some Korean peppers, one of those big ass Asian carrots, some onions, and a green apple.

I chopped them up and sweated them in some olive oil. "Sweating" means that I cooked them gently without much sizzling and no browning.

When the onions got a little clear, I added the aromatics. For this one, they included some fresh ground black pepper, whole allspice, whole cloves, a cinnamon stick, and what was left of my poor rosemary plant. I added some red wine. ChefJohnny said to use white wine, but I only had red in the house.

I slowly cooked it until the wine and moisture were almost gone from the pan. This required a lot of vigilance to make sure it didn't go too dry and burn everything.

I transferred the veggies to my pyrex casserole dish. Placed the piggy feet on top.

Covered them as much as I could with hot chicken stock. I then covered the dish and put it in the oven at a little below 200 degrees Celsius.

Now, I'm not sure about this, and someone please help me with this notion. For people who don't have ovens you may be able to do something similar on the stovetop by stewing the pig's feet under very low heat in a large pot.

UPDATE: Chef Johnny says, "Thats totally do-able. I've done it before when all of our ovens were full. Just keep the flame low and keep a close eye on it."

Back to the oven technique.

I braised the pig's feet for eight hours.

Yes, eight hours.

Slow cooking, man. The smell in the apartment was un-freakin-believable!

I removed the feet and deboned them. The bones came right out, really. I had to do this before they got cold because they had so much gelatin, they could get too hard to handle. I also was meticulous at weeding out the little toe bones. I then separated the skin from the meat.

I chopped up the skin and fried it in butter. The skin violently popped in there. Have a grease screen or a pan lid at the ready. The result was the most amazing crispy bacony bits of heaven. I mixed the crispy skin (cracklin') back with the meat.

There was still some goodness in the casserole dish. I strained the braising sauce and used a potato masher to squeeze out as much as I could.

I then reduced the sauce on high heat until it was a little syrupy. You know, coating the back of a spoon and such.

Towards the end of the reducing, I added a hunk o' butter to smooth it out.

This has to be the greatest thing I've every cooked. It's possibly the best thing I've ever put in my mouth! It was hard to return to regular food when I had finished it all. The pictures don't do it justice. You just have to try it. I'm definitely doing this again.

Thanks Chef Johnny!

Labels: Food for Foreigners

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Monday, September 11, 2006

(Out There #4) The Daily Kimchi

I was looking at one blog that linked here, and it linked to another food blog. The Daily Kimchi. It's fairly new, started in June 2006. And it promises to be one of those great must reads in the growing realm of Korean food blogs.

I like Gdog's humor and fresh eye. He's already posted about things that I've been meaning to post for a long time, like Two Two Fried Chicken, my first fried chicken experience in Korea that obliterated my cultural prejudice from Southern fried chicken.

It's great that Gdog came to the country with cameras blaring. He's pointing out a lot of stuff I had gotten used to, taking pics, and giving an entertaining read.

Gdog, don't let yourself get jaded, man. Hold on to that fresh perspective and publish more observations on why this country never lets us get bored.

Labels: Out There

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