ZenKimchi Korean Food Journal

BBC and Experts Agree with ZenKimchi

2012-02-02T07:31:55Z

A BBC article was recently published, “Selling South Korea: No ‘sparkling’ brand image” by Lucy Williamson. It delves into the Korean governments efforts to promote Korea’s brand. Williamson interviews government officials and experts along with inserting her own little analyses here and there.

The article itself reconfirms much of what we have said here (and we’ve been criticized by kimcheerleaders and trolls for saying) and also frustrates us that so much money and energy was wasted and likely still will be wasted by the ajosshis-in-charge. I’ll post some choice quotes, and you tell me if they sound familiar.

Take the slogan “Korea, Sparkling”.

“It doesn’t make any sense because it’s not easy to interpret – what is sparkling? Is it the people? The springs? The brand has to be very easy to understand,” (Dr Charlotte Horlyck, a specialist in Korean art history at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies) said.

In fact, branding often works best when consumers themselves decide what’s iconic

”That’s one key thing we learned about branding Korea: let people outside Korea decide for themselves what they like.”

But according to one insider, the slogans and images for at least one recent government-funded campaign were chosen by a handful of South Korean experts – most of them male, and all of them over 40. Foreign consumers were only asked their opinion after the decision had been made, he said.

You can advertise your country to tourists, he said, but not actively ‘brand’ it. ”Branding is something that happens in the consumer’s mind.”

“Reputation is something you earn, not something you construct.”

(Brand policy advisor Simon Anholt) agreed. “My only criticism is that they’re still constantly publicizing the fact they want a better image,” he said.

”The first rule of propaganda is that, if you’re going to do a number on people, you shouldn’t warn them you’re about to do it.”

Girls Generation on Letterman

2012-02-01T07:27:03Z

Click here to view the embedded video.

We interrupt our usual food programming to post a clip of Girls Generation making their U.S. national debut on Late Night with David Letterman.

Added bonus

Bill Murray

Actually, not a bad performance at all. You really see what a small set that is. I also like how Dave says, “Gamsa habnida,” the same way my mother does.

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Field Report: Jeju Hallabong Honey Bread

2012-01-31T07:45:03Z

Guest post by Kelly Brock

I recently went to Jeju-do and took a chance on a street vendor that was at the base of Mt. Sanbang temple. They were selling hot chestnuts, so I bought some. After I purchased my chestnuts, I noticed in a basket these little balls covered in seeds. My interest was piqued first because I thought maybe it was a healthy snack and second by the price: it was only KRW 1,000!

As I looked at it closer, I noticed the packaging said it was only made in Jeju-do! I thought to myself, maybe it is a product of a cottage industry. Then I noticed the logo SAMSUNG on the packaging. I decided to buy one and try it.

As I opened the package and held the little ball in my hand, it felt heavier than it looked. To my surprise as I bit into it there was cake and a sweet red bean paste inside! I was in instant heaven. The sesame and sunflower seeds were in a sugary paste that held them to the cake ball. As I bit into it, some of the seeds came off but not many. As I savored every bit other Americans on my tour bus wanted to know what I was eating. I showed it to them, and they were like, “Wow! That is that good and only 1,000 KRW?!!”

Before I knew it, several of my tour mates were off the bus and buying them for themselves. I actually went back and bought a few more. My vegetarian friends were so grateful for snack that was meat free!!

As we trekked around Jeju-do, we found the same balls in baskets at every tourist shop for the same price. We started buying more and more of them because they were so transportable and filling. At the end of our trip we were at the Ferry Terminal and began to wish we had more of them to eat. Lo and behold, we saw some at a tourist shop!

YEA!

My vegetarian friend Dakota bought them out. I already had six stowed away, which I am now carefully saving to enjoy at spaced intervals.

I am so glad I took a chance and bought this little ball of deliciousness. I only wish I could buy them everyday-FRESH! (They do have a two week shelf life according to the package.)

Bulgogi Spaghetti Sauce?

2012-01-27T07:56:14Z

Ottogi’s Fresco, the general jarred spaghetti brand for Korea, recently introduced a Bulgogi flavor. As you can see, it’s “Beef 12%!”

I’m not a big fan of jarred spaghetti sauces, especially ones with meat, but I had to try this.

Yes, like most meat jarred spaghetti sauces, the actual meat appears as tiny specks. I honestly didn’t taste any unique bulgogi flavor. It was like the usual Meat Fresco. But hey, I bet you some hipster food truck or narrow-tabled restaurant will throw a Bulgogi Pasta on a menu and charge $30 for it.

Recipe: Korean Fried Chicken Nuggets

2012-01-25T07:58:51Z

I received a box of Kikkoman Kara-Áge Soy-Ginger Seasoned Coating Mix courtesy of the Foodbuzz Tastemakers Program to review. I didn’t sign up for it the first time around because I couldn’t think of a Korean way to use this classic Japanese cooking technique. By the time the chance came around again, I knew I wanted to experiment with the Kara-Áge coating and find out if it could be a recipe-less way to make basic Korean fried chicken.

The box contains two mix pouches, each able to easily coat 1¹/₂ pounds of chicken or fish. Two pouches, so here are two versions.

The first version I simply made “straight up” with diced chicken thighs, following the directions on the packet without addition, elaboration or substitution. The coating was light and crisp. When fried according to the directions, the chicken bites weren’t greasy.

“This is what chicken nuggets should taste like,” Hubby said, referring to the crisp yet not lumpy crust.

The second version, I made with diced chicken breasts. To spice them up Korean fried chicken–style, I added spicy curry powder to the coating mix and a light layer of Korean hot sauce just before serving with a small bowl of fried rice.

Korean Fried Chicken Nuggets (양념닭 Yangnyeomdak)

Chicken ingredients

1 pouch Kikkoman Kara-Áge Soy-Ginger Seasoned Coating Mix
1¹/₂ pound chicken, either breast or thigh meat
1 tablespoon Korean curry powder

Instructions

Pour coating mix into a one-gallon plastic locking bag

Dice 1¹/₂ pounds chicken breast into 1¹/₂-inch, bite-sized pieces.

Rinse chicken pieces with water and allow most of the water to drain away from the chicken.

Put the chicken into the bag and shake the chicken in the mix until the chicken pieces are completely coated.

Add sunflower oil into a large cast-iron skillet until there’s 1/4 inch of oil in the skillet. Heat it up to 350 degrees Fahrenheit over medium heat.

Put in one handful of chicken pieces at a time to the heated oil. (The coating mix box says add a dozen pieces at a time. Every handful ended up being about a dozen pieces without tedious counting.)

Set timer for four minutes (for diced chicken thigh) or three minutes (for diced chicken breast). Turn over the chicken chunks frequently in the hot oil until they are golden brown.

Put the cooked chicken pieces onto a towel-draped towel to drain, and repeat steps 6-8 until all the chicken is cooked. Set aside.

Discard the unused coating mix in the bag. I found that there was very little coating mix left, so I didn’t feel wasteful to throw the unused coating away.

Sauce (양념 Yangnyeom) ingredients

2 tablespoons chives, finely minced
1 teaspoon ginger, minced
2 tablespoons 고추장 gochujang (spicy Korean red pepper paste)
2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon garlic¹/₂ tablespoon 고추가루 gochugaru (spicy Korean red pepper powder) or Hungarian hot paprika¹/₂ tablespoon sesame oil

Directions

Mix the remaining ingredients together in a bowl. Heat in microwave for about 30 seconds to one minute to dissolve the sugar.

Brush a light coating of sauce on the chicken pieces. You don’t want to marinate the chicken in the sauce, else they won’t be as crisp.

As part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program, I received a box of Kikkoman® Kara-Áge Soy-Ginger Seasoned Coating Mix to test out and review. I received no other compensation for this post.

Tex-Mex Bibimbap

2012-01-25T04:40:01Z

Korean food purists walk away.

One evening last week I took over dinner prep and thought I’d make some chicken burritos. Got everything ready and then took out the tortillas. They’d grown a bit of mold. Each one. So I was stuck with the ingredients I had put together. Well, why not replace one starch with another? So I got a metal bowl, put in a few scoops of rice, and topped it with fajita chicken and onions, lettuce, shredded Monterey Jack, and salsa. Stirred it up and didn’t expect it to taste any good.

It was damn good! The cheese brought it together. Melted a bit in the hot rice and chicken. Again, this is proof that you don’t need to make bibimbap a big production. It’s a way to get rid of leftovers.

Sweet Soy Glazed Lotus Roots (Yeongeun Jorim)

2012-01-20T00:14:33Z

yeongeun jorim – home style

Yeongeun 연근 (lotus root) jorim 조림 (reduced) is one of the basic, everyday banchan 반찬 (side dishes) found at home tables and restaurants. It is a simple dish of sliced lotus roots boiled then reduced in soy sauce and corn syrup. That’s also how a Korean mother will describe it to you if you asked about a recipe of this dish.

It is true to some extent, that there isn’t much to this side dish. Aside from the basic ingredients of lotus root, water, soy sauce, and some kind of sweetener such as sugar or corn syrup 물엿 (mulyeot), the rest are bells and whistles that add a deeper dimension to the flavor and affect its texture, but you could certainly do without kelp, shitake mushroom or Korean rice malt syrup 조청 (jocheong).

What stumped me was that, although the name yeongeun jorim is shared by both home and restaurant versions, the home version tends to have crunchy bites with light seasoning of sweet-salty flavor, whereas a sticky, sweet, chewy yeongeun jorim seems to be more common in restaurants (oh and they look so shiny and sexy). In fact, the restaurant version comes closer to candied snack 정과 (jeonggwa) with added soy sauce. Just to be clear, I didn’t get this from any restaurant informant, but the recipe below is what I had to do to get something similar. You can also use a mix of regular corn syrup and Korean rice malt syrup, a.k.a. brown corn syrup, grain syrup, or rice syrup. Although rice malt syrup tastes sweeter with a hint of malty-earthy back note on its own, the end result of yeongeun jorim is not too noticeably different in color, taste, or texture (ones cooked in jocheong are slightly chewier) from using just regular corn syrup. This might have to do with how traditional jocheong is produced these days, but I’ll leave that for another day.

Also, speaking of candied snacks, I’ve seen from a few places on the world wide web out there that named this side dish as yeongeun jeonggwa. Jeonggwa is a generic term referring to traditional candied snack in Korea and is not used for savory dishes. Traditionally, many root vegetables as well as fruits were cooked in syrup to have the sweet flavor infused and alter the texture to sticky-soft, which were then enjoyed as snack or used as garnish with altered shapes. Radish 무우 (mu-u), balloon flower root 도라지 (doraji), ginseng 인삼 (insam), and lotus root are some common ingredients made into jeonggwa.

Now, back to today’s topic – yeongeun jorim. A common recipe, home or restaurant version, calls for drops of vinegar in the beginning to prevent the lotus root from oxidizing, i.e., browning, and for the initial boiling to remove the tannic/puckering bitterness, I generally skip vinegar. I am okay with letting the vegetable turn a little brown which will be soon doused in brown sauce anyway. As far as the bitterness goes, maybe it’s the kind I get (the kind that’s available near me), but I haven’t found the lotus roots too bitter in any sense.

One more thing about the lotus roots–although lotus roots are available year-round in dried and packaged forms, they remain seasonal ingredients to me. I bought packaged sliced lotus roots a long time ago, lacking other options. They looked sickly pale (I wonder, bleached?) and tasted like crumbled recycled paper (and somehow I know the taste of crumbled recycled paper). I might have picked a wrong package, but, lotus roots as seasonal ingredients are much more enjoyable to me.

So here you go – hope you enjoy the variety of yeongeun jorim styles. And thank you Alice for requesting this recipe and for your infinite patience.

Sweet Soy Glazed Lotus Roots (home style)

About 300g or 3 C fresh lotus root, peeled and sliced thinly
water to boil
water to rinse

Optional) A piece of dried kelp about the size of your palm (다시마 - dashima)
Optional) 1 dried shitake mushroom
2 C water
1/4 C soy sauce
1 T brown sugar
Optional) 2 T honey
2 t sesame oil
Optional) toasted sesame seeds for garnish

Optional) Add dried kelp and dried shitake in 2 C water. Set aside.

Add peeled and sliced lotus roots in a pot and add enough water to submerge them. Bring it up to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Strain and rinse lotus roots in cold water.

In a clean pot, add lotus root slices. Add soy sauce, brown sugar, and kelp & shitake water. Bring it up to a boil then simmer until the outside of lotus root slices becomes slightly soft with a nice crunchy bite, about 40 minutes over moderate heat. Stir occasionally in order to cook evenly. Once lotus root slices reach your desired texture, increase the heat to reduce the liquid, stirring often to keep coating all the lotus root slices evenly. Taste and adjust seasoning by adding more soy sauce and try honey for added sweetness. When the liquid is coating the bottom of the pot, remove from heat. Finish with sesame oil. Sprinkle toasted sesame seeds.

Cool to room temperature then keep in the refrigerator.

Sweet, Sticky Lotus Roots (restaurant style)

Lotus roots cooked in corn syrup (left) vs. cooked in jo cheong, Korean rice malt syrup (right)

About 300g or 3 C fresh lotus root, peeled and sliced thinly
water to boil
water to rinse

Optional) A piece of dried kelp about the size of your palm (다시마; dashima)
Optional) 1 dried shitake mushroom
2 C+ water
1/4 C soy sauce
1 C corn syrup (물엿 – mul yeot) or rice malt syrup (조청 – jo cheong)
2 t sesame oil
Optional) toasted sesame seeds

Optional) Add dried kelp and dried shitake in 2 C water. Set aside.

Add peeled and sliced lotus roots in a pot and add enough water to submerge them. Bring it up to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Strain and rinse lotus roots in cold water.

In a clean pot, add lotus root slices. Add soy sauce, corn syrup (or rice-malt syrup) and kelp & shitake water. Bring it up to a boil then reduce heat to barely simmer lotus root slices for 2 hours or longer, until the slices become soft and glistening. You may need to add 1/2C to 1 C water to keep the lotus roots submerged in liquid to allow them enough time to soften. Once they become soft, meaning, no crunchy bite yet with slight resistence, increase heat to reduce the remaining liquid and thicken it to a syrupy consistency. Remove from heat and finish with sesame oil. Sprinkle toasted sesame seeds.

Cool to room temperature then keep in the refrigerator.

KOREAN WORDS
sugar             설탕        (seol tang)
brown sugar   흑설탕    (heuk seol tang)
honey            꿀            (ggul)

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Clearing Some Bossam Myths

2012-01-19T00:01:19Z

Real Korean Bossam | Credit: Pixelgrapher from Flickr (cc)

The New York Times has a scrumptious piece showcasing David Chang’s recipe for bo ssam (“The Bo Ssam Miracle”). It’s gorgeous. I’ve heard it tastes great. And I would love to try it myself.

I also see why some of my friends hate David Chang. I thought it was that they were just being stubborn Korean food purists, if there is such a thing. The fear, though, is that people will start thinking that David Chang’s interpretations of Korean food are traditional Korean food. It brings to mind when New Yorkers come to Korea and expect Korean fried chicken to be like Kyochon and not like Two-Two and BBQ when Kyochon is really the only major chain to make chicken that way. Or when Koreans think that real Italian pizza comes with canned corn, sweet potato mousse, and sweet pickles on the side.

In essence, David Chang’s bo ssam is to Korean food as the California roll is to Japanese. It’s inspired by Korean cuisine and could later be considered part of the edges of Korean cuisine, but it’s not Bossam 보쌈 that you’d find in Korea.

Let’s get through the similarities. David Chang’s bo ssam is a pork shoulder. Korean Bossam comes from moksal 목살, which is from the back of the neck. So they’re close together in porcine geography. Both are highly flavored and served with kimchi and condiments to be wrapped in lettuce leaves.

Then they diverge. David Chang’s bo ssam is roasted, which actually sounds good. Korean Bossam is boiled. Ovens are about as common in Korean households as rice cookers are in American. Roasting and baking are not common Korean cooking methods. The mention of boiled pork may turn a lot of people off, but Korean Bossam is highly flavored and delicious. Chang’s bo ssam comes with raw oysters (YUM!). Korean Bossam may come with marinated oysters or with oysters in the kimchi, but usually not. It has ssamjang and tiny pickled shrimpies. Kimchi for Bossam is markedly fresher and fruitier than most kimchi.

To clarify, I tend to defend David Chang amongst Korean food purists. I’ve eaten at one of his restaurants, and I loved the food, and I love what he’s doing. I consider a lot of his dishes to be Korean food–or rather–Korean-American food. The NYT article, though, opened by implying that traditional Korean Bossam is roasted pork shoulder.

Another misnomer I’m hearing bandied about is the use of ssam as a dish, as in, “Let’s go out for some ssam!”

Ssam 쌈 is from the verb ssada 싸다, which means “to wrap” in this sense. When you wrap your morsels in leaves, that bundle is ssam. But you don’t hear people talking about eating ssam like it’s a food category. You eat Bossam or SsamBap. You don’t eat ssam. Like you go out for pizza, not “slices.” It’s prissy semantics, but it sounds as awkward to me as “french fried potatoes,” and “hamburger sandwich” and, in Korea, the tendency to call sandwiches “sand.”

So to clear up, in the Korean cuisine you’ll find in Korea, Bossam is boiled pork, not roasted (and it’s sometimes other things like smoked duck). And ssam are the little wrapped bundles, but not a food you go out to eat.

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Hidden kimchi: Java Hub, San Anselmo, Calif.

2012-01-18T03:02:59Z

Many assume the territory between San Francisco and Sonoma County wine country an hour’s drive north is bereft of Korean cuisine. I did, too, until I discovered one long-disguised as a coffee shop.

Java Hub Cafe is Marin County’s only noted venue for Korean victuals. It’s a simple coffee shop in San Anselmo, Calif., a suburb of San Rafael located about 10 minutes north of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. And it is well off the beaten tourism path of Highway 101, the Marin-Sonoma thoroughfare.

On entering the little cafe, I noticed the subtle sounds of acoustic modern folk and alternative music playing subtly from speakers. The large counter has a big posted menu from which to order.

Indoor seating is on barstools with a long table facing a large window. That’s nice natural lighting for food photography, but it offers an unimpressive view of the regular stream of traffic.

Outside there are more than half-dozen tables. It would be nice to enjoy coffee and a meal alfresco in the summertime. However, it’s now winter in California. Even though our winter days are mild compared to Korea’s, I still didn’t want to eat outside.

Tucked behind the coffee shop edifice is a restaurant serving all sorts of North Asian cuisine, including 갈비 kalbi, 비빔면 bibimmyun and miso udon.

After waffling between ordering bibimmyun or bibimbap, I initially ordered the spicy bibim noodles (called bibimmyun in Korean, $7.25 USD). But owner Joyce Jung immediately advised me it would take about 20 minutes to make it. I asked if the bibimbap ($6.50 USD) would arrive more quickly, and she said “yes.” So I opted for the popular Korean dish.

The bibimbap arrived in a regular ceramic bowl — not the oven-heated stone bowls of dolsot bibimbap — with steamed white rice, raw shredded carrot, sauteed mushrooms, steamed broccoli, a sunny-side-up fried egg and a couple of tablespoons of 고추장 gochujang.

After thoroughly mixing items together with the supplied fork. The raw carrots and lack of marination of the ingredients made the Java Hub version not as sweet and garlicy as the dish often is in traditional Korean restaurants.

Non-Korean vegetables such as broccoli may surprise some, but as a big fan of broccoli I enjoyed it very much.

Jung told me Java Hub has been open at this location for 10 years. Originally she only served coffee, tea and typical coffee shop fare like bagels and sandwiches. However, she soon found she needed to offer something more to keep the doors open.

“I noticed that business dropped off in the winter, and I started offering hot meal options to draw winter business,” she said.

So she began offering familiar Korean and Japanese dishes to her menu as well as other hot items like hamburgers.

The mix of coffee joint and Korean restaurant may seem eclectic. Yet while I was talking to Jung after my meal, one of her customers, waiting for his “usual order” of a bacon cheeseburger, opined, “Her burgers are the best anywhere.”

If 빨리 빨리 bbali bbali (“Hurry, hurry!”) is your battlecry and you just want a quick coffee to go, you can place your order from the drive-through window. Jung makes the coffee herself and will bring your order to your car.

Java Hub Cafe

60 Greenfield Ave.
San Anselmo, CA 94960
(415) 451-4928

ZenKimchi Dining: New Buzz Posts

2012-01-17T06:33:36Z

We’ve been running ZenKimchi Dining for a few years now. One of my frustrations is that I get info on restaurants much faster than I can go out and review them. But why keep all that to myself?

So I’ve started a new thing called Buzz Posts. These are very sparse posts of restaurants that people are talking about but haven’t been properly reviewed yet. I try to include as much information as possible, like map directions, Foursquare venue, and links to other bloggers (in English and Korean) who have been to these places. Hopefully from this you can figure out if you want to try it out yourself.

And if you do try it, please update the review on ZenKimchi Dining to help everyone else. Just submit a review or post what you can in the comments.

ALSO…

New restaurants on ZenKimchi Dining:

Braai Republic (South African, Itaewon)

Buzz Post: Bao (Asian Noodle Bar, Haebangcheon)

Buzz Post: Cook’n Heim (Burgers, Jongno)

Buzz Post: Namja Pizza (Pizza, Gangnam)

Buzz Post: Teppen (Japanese Izakaya, Hongdae)

105 South St. Grill

: Braai Republic

(Philly Cheesesteaks, Yangjae)

ZenKimchi Korean Food Journal

BBC and Experts Agree with ZenKimchi

Girls Generation on Letterman

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Field Report: Jeju Hallabong Honey Bread

Bulgogi Spaghetti Sauce?

Recipe: Korean Fried Chicken Nuggets

Korean Fried Chicken Nuggets (양념닭 Yangnyeomdak)

Chicken ingredients

Instructions

Sauce (양념 Yangnyeom) ingredients

Directions

Tex-Mex Bibimbap

Sweet Soy Glazed Lotus Roots (Yeongeun Jorim)

Sweet Soy Glazed Lotus Roots (home style)

Sweet, Sticky Lotus Roots (restaurant style)

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Clearing Some Bossam Myths

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Hidden kimchi: Java Hub, San Anselmo, Calif.

ZenKimchi Dining: New Buzz Posts

New restaurants on ZenKimchi Dining: