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Korean Food

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Re: Korean Food

Postby Sakkarin » Sun Aug 13, 2017 9:57 pm

Tteokbokki - Spicy Rice Cakes
I'm glad I didn't give up on this! I ended up using this recipe mainly, although I used cabbage/carrot/onion/radish as the veg (not too much though). The two recipes are surprisingly similar (this and the one I mentioned in previous post), both use 7 dried anchovies and 1 sheet of kelp. Hmm.

The end result really thickens up, maybe I shouldn't have added that extra dollop of corn starch - it was like a very spicy tomato sauce, odd when it has two sea products and no tomatoes. Deep flavour, on the verge of being very hot.

Last time I soaked the cakes in warm water.for 10 minutes, after which they were still pretty hard. This time I soaked them in cold water for 30 minutes as per recipe, but they were still solid, so I did another 15 minutes in boiling water. Much better, but next time I will go for 30 mins in hot water. Still not entirely in tune with that glutinousness, but this time they were much more palatable.

I served them with deep fried tofu, which went really well with them, and a sprinkling of "sprunnions" as JT would say. Oh bum, just realised I forgot the sesame seed garnish...

EDIT: P.S. It really does end up that technicolour red.

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Re: Korean Food

Postby Sakkarin » Tue Aug 15, 2017 12:08 pm

Oh well, it had to come around to Kimchi eventually. I've re-read this thread in anticipation:
Korean Chili Powder & Salted Shrimps wanted to make Kimchi

...and the very first post has a link to Sunflower's recipe, which is as good a starting point as you could hope for. No salted pickled shrimps, but I'm considering using some of that anchovy/kelp stock from the rice cakes recipe.
http://sunflower-recipes.blogspot.co.uk ... imchi.html

Out of curiosity (in the light of the current stand off with the US) I was just reading the North Korean official website, which has a section on food. Top line in the paragraph on Kimchi: "It plays an important role in neutralizing the acid humours with alkali ones for the Koreans who eat boiled cereals as their staple food."

http://www.korea-dpr.com/foods.html

EDIT: From the same article, could this be the dullest, least inspirational saying in the world?
As a Korean saying goes, "Cooked cereals may be taken without side dishes but not without soup..."

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Re: Korean Food

Postby Stokey Sue » Tue Aug 15, 2017 5:49 pm

I bought a jar of UK made kimchi from a local health food store

It's OK, but I think I'll go back to buying it from the oriental store, cheaper and the label on mine says the main ingredient is pak choy, of course it's not, it's Napa cabbage but it doesn't inspire confidence.

Kavey has made and blogged several kinds of kimchi

Reading sunflower's recipe I wonder if some of the ones I've not liked have had differing kinds of seafood in them, I'm not keen on the shrimp flavoured chilli oil although I use dried shrimp and fish sauce

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Re: Korean Food

Postby Sakkarin » Wed Aug 16, 2017 12:49 am

Kimchi - Spicy Pickled Fermented Cabbage
Used Sunflower's recipe, except with the kelp/anchovy stock replacing the water, instead of the shrimp. I've just tried some "raw", and it already tastes pretty authentic, a lot more palatable than the commercial jar of kimchi I opened the other day (mean spirited little bits of veg in lots of heavy juice).

There's a whole cabbage in that bowlful! I'm leaving it to fester till the morning, then I'll refrigerate it, so the next test will not be for a couple of days yet. I'm feeling optimistic it will be great.

Other differences: I used a conference pear, and slightly less garlic, ginger and chilli than Sunflower's recipe. I even followed her advice on the gloves, I found an old pack of disposable ones at the back of the cupboard. Wise move, as it gets really messy mixing it.

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Re: Korean Food

Postby jeral » Thu Aug 17, 2017 3:31 pm

I don't belong in thread as I'm a spice wimp of the first order who says Uncle after the first forkful.

However, I saw on Beach Bites (Food Network 12 noon weekdays) a beach bar which served an only-beef burger patty with sauteed shitake mushrooms in a spicy gravy spooned generously over the patty and topped with - drum roll - crispy tempura'd kimchi, which seemingly one used to scoop some of the mushroom gravy. The kimchi dollops were free-style teaspoon-size dropped into the oil so couldn't have been coated in anything.

On a different Beach Bites prog, (on St Barts, a Caribbean island) it showed crab in a flour tortilla wrap. The crab was mixed with aioli, chives, and - drum roll - kimchi sauce.

Is kimchi taking over? I read that even US buyers are going off bog standard Heinz 57 tom sauce in favour of more "adventurous" varieties.

Incidentally, the St Barts one was interesting. The bar owner said it was French crab via a weekly import (it's a French owned island) and yet said of his tortilla wrap "Very fresh" confirming the presenter's typical oohs and aahs. Well, it can't be that fresh if it was brought in cooked up to a week ago, and probably as frozen, so he meant "Tastes very fresh" no doubt.

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Re: Korean Food

Postby Sakkarin » Sat Aug 19, 2017 7:44 pm

That "tempura" business sounds 100% messy! Surely it must have batter, or you couldn't call it tempura. Maybe it's mixed with "kimchi juice", so appears red. On the "is it taking over" front, bear in mind that I've toyed with kimchi for many years, and it's only with this latest batch of Korean recipes that the taste for me has begun to click. I think it's a "marmite" product, so will never be 100% accepted.

On my homemade kimchi I've decided rather than refrigerate the fresh kimchi after 5 hours, as per Sunflower, I'm going the full hog and leaving it out to see how the fermenting progresses (even Jamie O'Liver's recipe says up to 5 days). I'm testing it every day alongside my jar of commercial kimchi, which for me is overdone (although some kimchi I bought in a plastic bag pack was milder, as was the canned). Lots of extra juice leaching out. It's not quite there yet (Day 4), but it already tastes better than the commercial stuff to my taste. Unfortunately the daily test it means it is disappearing fast!


Old Beeb Board threads on "Kimchi" and "Korean".
Just to give a historic note, here's all the Kimchi and Korean threads on the Beeb board:
http://www.carta.co.uk/cgi-bin/sakkarin ... hi%20korea

P.S. The Beeb's "heritage" site for the old board seems to working very slowly, and the latest version doesn't show the post dates. At least they're still there, though :-(

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Re: Korean Food

Postby Sakkarin » Sat Aug 19, 2017 11:17 pm

Tangsayuk - Korean Sweet & Sour Pork

Today's dish, not particularly exciting, but I've just about run out of dishes, most of the others are variants of what I've already posted. The recipe says it's a bit more "subtle and delicate" than the usual Hong Kong style sweet and sour. Hmm. I used that apple vinegar, which adds a noticeable brightness to it, however it is too much of a faff to be worth the bother.

The recipe annoyed me, as two lines from the end it introduces an ingredient it hasn't mentioned before, it says "add the egg mixture...". The only egg mixture was the batter for the pork, so I assumed it must mean use some of the remaining batter, however there was far too much, so I added a tablespoonful, which seemed to do the thickening job required. Sack that recipe tester...

The method for making the batter was strange - soak 90g of potato starch for an hour in 250ml of cold water. At the end of the hour the starch has settled on the bottom: pour off all the excess water, add a beaten egg to the soaked starch and mix thoroughly. That's it. You can see the pork pieces ended up quite crispy, you can hardly see the batter.

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Re: Korean Food

Postby Stokey Sue » Sun Aug 20, 2017 2:26 am

I did notice Torode made a batter that had a higher proportion of egg than normal, but maybe won't bother

Anyone watched any of Gizzi Erskine in Korea?

Gizzi Erskine's Seoul Food, Good Food Channel
http://www.radiotimes.com/tv-programme/e/ftzmss/gizzi-erskine-seoul-food-episode-guide/

Not massively impressed, after Joo and Torode a bit deja vu, and she does that thing of doing her own version for no good reason

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Re: Korean Food

Postby Sakkarin » Mon Aug 21, 2017 5:41 pm

Thanks for that heads up, Sue. I'm still recovering from 10 hours of Torode's series! I see however that those programmes are on a very short fuse on catchup (several have already expired), so I guess it's quite urgent. I wonder how long they wait in between reruns?

On my Korean epic, here's today's offering:


Bindaettoek - Mung Bean Pancakes
There were two methods in all the recipes I looked at - in some all the ingredients were mixed together, however in the one in my book the batter is put separately in the pan first, and then the "filling" is placed on top as the bottom cooks, and fried when you turn the pancake. I'm afraid I took the lazy all-in-one route.

The recipe was for beef and prawn, I used pork and prawn. Looking at loads of recipes, it seems very much a case of whatever you fancy. Kimchi features in most, and I used the stuff that I made the other day. The more I "test" it, the more I'm liking it.

The batter is considerably more forgiving than I thought it would be, you have plenty of time to form the dollops before they firm up (hence I now realise the "two stage" method is less faff than I imagined). They also stood keeping warm in the oven well, I couldn't tell you which were cooked first on that plateful.

Very solid and very filling. They reminded me of the Korean seafood pancakes I made years ago, and I am also reminded that mung beans featured in some of my bahn xeo pancake recipes. Will be revisiting this dish.

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Re: Korean Food

Postby Sakkarin » Tue Aug 22, 2017 10:24 am

Well after 5 days festering, I've deemed my kimchi "done". Not an awful lot left though, I think another batch may be in order.

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Stokey, I see what you mean about the Gizzi programme (watched episode 1) - in the "doenjang factory", it felt as if Torode had only left 5 minutes earlier. To make the association closer, she even used a Masterchef phrase at one point, one of Greg Wallace's "it gives me a big hug" quotes.

I found a lot of the way she spoke to her interviewees quite patronising. Have Koreans really not heard of crispy pork belly?

Incidentally when I set a series link for the programme on my TiVO, it added the first 5 episodes in as catchup automatically.

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Re: Korean Food

Postby Stokey Sue » Tue Aug 22, 2017 4:06 pm

That's TiVo's new trick
When I set the link for S3 of Detectorists, it added links to all episodes of S1 and S2 :thumbsup

Unfortunately, they are all on Netflix, to which I do not subscribe :thumbsdown

Gizzi also wears some seriously naff wardrobe, the first one I saw she was wearing a sort of chambray Babygro

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Re: Korean Food

Postby Sakkarin » Tue Aug 22, 2017 9:28 pm

I see the Gizzi programmes preceded JT's series by a couple of years, maybe they used it as a template and he is stepping on her toes rather than the other way round! They are mercifully short at 22 minutes, so with fast-forwarding I've already watched episodes 1 to 5. I haven't really learnt anything new so far.


Bibim Naengmyun - Iced Spicy Buckwheat Noodles
Another of those surprise dishes that on paper don't look very exciting.

I wasn't going to add the ice cubes (specified in the recipe), but I'm glad I did, they really set the dish off, it is great, and really tastes best with the freezing hit of the ice. I even went to the bother of getting a new ice cube tray to get pretty little ice cubes rather than the icebergs my existing trays turn out.

This dish is astonishingly quick to make too, just the egg to boil and noodles to cook, refresh and chill, the sauce is instant, just ingredients mixed together and the veg are all raw. I did the usual trawl of recipes and added carrot to the cucumber and pear julienne, and some apple vinegar to the sauce differently from my book recipe, both good moves.

Warning: there is lots of sugar in the sauce which is very naughty.

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Re: Korean Food

Postby Sakkarin » Fri Aug 25, 2017 11:26 am

Two streetfood dishes today. Both of these were bulked out with tofu, something I've never used either in a dumpling or a fritter.

The tofu (fresh from the local oriental place) was the firmest I've ever encountered, so solid it was actually difficult to pulverise it, firmer than the "firm" fresh stuff I bought a few weeks back. I had never realised it could be so firm. The "japanese" tetrapak firm tofu I've used in the past is like jelly alongside this, and it explains why I've always had difficulty frying tofu when it's supposed to stay in a cube.

I've now used (not finished) ALL the ingredients from my Korean shopping trip piccy earlier in this thread. That's quite an achievement, usually several will end up at the back of the cupboard never even having been tried.

Mandu - Tofu Dumplings
Forgot to oil the steamer, so they stuck to it and look a bit of a mess. Used ready-made wrappers.

Nevertheless they were very tasty, basically tofu beef, and lots of chives. Szechwan Potsticker Dumplings are still my favourite, but these come a close second.

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Kimchijeon - Kimchi Fritters
These are a bit of a waste of time. The mix was a bit sloppy, so they ended up stodgy, but the main problem is that all they tasted of was the potato. Couldn't really taste the kimchi at all, and the tofu watered down the potatoeyness. Maybe adapting the recipe a bit would work - it also claimed to be for two portions. I made half, but it wasn't really enough for more than a snack. I suppose it was in the "snacks" section though.

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Re: Korean Food

Postby Stokey Sue » Fri Aug 25, 2017 11:55 am

Looks good sakkarin
Isn't the stuff in the tetrapaks "silken", i.e. just moulded but not drained after moulding, so not really very firm? I prefer the firm Chinese style slabs

I was all set to eat Korean food at my local restaurant yesterday, but they were closed so had rogan josh at Wetherspoons (very good)

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Re: Korean Food

Postby Sakkarin » Fri Aug 25, 2017 12:20 pm

I thought I'd check out what I had in the cupboard, and as you can see there's a medium and a firm here, however they're both called "silken". :-(

EDIT: GOOGLE: There are two main kinds of tofu: silken and regular. Silken tofu, also called soft, silk or Japanese-style tofu has a softer consistency than regular tofu and will fall apart if not handled carefully.

Hmm. So my "firm" is firm soft tofu, whereas my fresh stuff is firm firm tofu. At Wing Yip the other day, they even had an "extra firm" fresh tofu. I guess "soft soft" is basically just soya milk.

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Re: Korean Food

Postby Sakkarin » Sat Aug 26, 2017 9:30 pm

Here's how I made those Korean pancakes...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8w0Dq01aEI



...and Bulgogi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijUAcVaKrX0



Apparently this is the next big food craze... some of the videos have had millions upon millions of views!

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Re: Korean Food

Postby Sakkarin » Sun Aug 27, 2017 12:17 am

Memil Chongtteok/Memil Jeonbyeong (?) - Buckwheat Rolled Pancakes
Pancake day again! These are even more of a faff than last week's sushi rolls. Fillings are shiitake mushroom, white radish, red date, watercress, carrot and beansprouts, and served with a mustard relish. There was a slight bitterness to them, slightly dosa-like, but they are soft, not crispy. The piccy in the book had dinky little sushi-style rolls, but as I couldn't get them to stay rolled, I presented them this way, as half-wraps with cocktail sticks. In some of the online pix, they are presented just as normal pancakes, rolled up.

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Re: Korean Food

Postby Sakkarin » Thu Aug 31, 2017 12:28 am

Ha! Looking for a tofu recipe, I found a Korean-style Mapo recipe.
http://www.koreanbapsang.com/2016/01/ma ... style.html

I gave it a try. It's ok, but I prefer the real thing by a huge margin (it's on my all-time favourite meals list). This version's still better than the flourescent stuff they sell in takeaways though. I also prefer the usual softer tofu (i.e. firm silken tofu) with it, this very dense tofu was so solid that it reminded me oddly enough of Indian paneer cheese.

I suppose you could call it fusion Mapo Tofu, although West-West rather than East-West.

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From a book of silly shop names (this shop is in Taiwan)...

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Re: Korean Food

Postby Gillthepainter » Fri Sep 01, 2017 8:59 am

Re firm or not firm silken tofu, I have a sneaky feeling one of them isn't vegan.
Let me see if I can refresh the memory banks? Something in the back of my mind .......


I know nothing about Korean, but those pancakes really do look particularly good.

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Re: Korean Food

Postby Renée » Fri Sep 01, 2017 9:52 am

I have really enjoyed looking at all the wonderful meals that you've made, Sakkarin and great photography.

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