Recipe 2: How Do I Spell This Again?

Here we go for Recipe number 2, 떡볶이, also know as ddeokbokki, teokbokki, topokki and dukboki. I have gone for the Korean name above as romanizations are confusing me more and more these days. My Korean skills are still pretty patchy, but I much prefer to read the Korean over searching for the romanizations - I feel it leaves less room for error (but there will always be error, at least for the time being.) But I digress...

떡볶이 is my ultimate lazy food. It's also a classic street food. Meandering around, especially in busy areas, it's not uncommon to find a wee canopied stall with a smiling lady mixing up her 떡볶이, it's a cheap and delicious way to grab a snack. Then there are the 떡볶이 restaurants where all sorts of options can be added to you 떡볶이 and you can munch away as it sizzles away in front of you. 

Have I ever mentioned how much I love the way so much of the food here is cooked on the table, right in front of you. It makes eating out a much more enjoyable and social experience. There really are a lot of things that Korea does right! But I digress... again...!!!

Back to 떡볶이... what do you need: 

Ingredients

• 떡 (here-after called rice cakes.) These are pretty essential (as if that wasn't obvious from the name) and come in an array of shapes and sizes. Personally I'm a fan of the tubular ones! 
• Red Pepper Paste
• Red Pepper Flakes
• Sugar
• Fish Cake
• Green Onion / Leek
• Boiled Eggs
• Water
• Dried Anchovies
• Dried Seaweed

First you need to make the stock. This is wonderfully simple (and used for many Korean recipes, so it's good to know.) Take your anchovies and seaweed and put what you need in a pan. I now do this by eye, but you don't need much. My advice is the same as that given to me by a bread baker many years ago: Add as much as you think you need, then add a little bit more. Throw them into a pan, add as much water as you think you need (depending on how many people you're cooking for) and let it boil. Again, as long as you feel it needs. 

When you're happy it's boiled enough REMOVE THE ANCHOVIES AND SEAWEED! Don't forget to do this - it's not pleasant! 

Gather the rest of the ingredients: 

Make a paste using: 

1tbsp hot pepper paste

1tsp pepper flakes

1tsp sugar

and mix it all up!

Chop the fish cake into chunks, gather as many rice cakes as you want/need and cut the green onion/leeks so that they're in long sticks, but make sure you score down one side, not enough to slice them in half, but enough so that they will separate during cooking. 

Now throw all of these into the pan and stir away. 

You don't have to add boiled eggs, but they add a nice extra texture. I've used wee quail eggs here, with are mighty easy to get hold of down in your local mart! I usually add these towards the end of the cooking process. 

When it's cooked the 떡볶이 should be soft and chewy (in a good way). Serve up and munch away.

You can mix it up as you like: add some ramyeon, some chicken or some cheese (or all three as per my first 떡볶이 experience). The possibilities are endless, but sometimes plain and simple, and very very spicy, is best! 

Recipe 1: Kimbap

Are you ready to put all that know-how from the last post into action? No, me neither, but we're going to jump in anyway.

Here's what I'm going to use in my kimbap.

• Rice
• Kim
• Fish Cake
• Ham
• Carrot
• Cucumber
• Burdock
• Radish
• Salt
• Sesame Oil
• Soy Sauce
• Honey

So first things first. If you're using a rice cooker or a pan, get your rice going so it's cooking while you cook everything else. If, like me, you use microwavable rice then cook it later.

Start with the carrots and cucumber (and burdock if you're preparing it from scratch.) They should end up looking a little like this: 

Place the cucumber on it's own plate and sprinkle with a little salt. This is to draw the water from the cucumber. Doing this now means the salt has time to do it's stuff while you prepare everything else. 

Throw the carrots into a pan (though not literally, mind) and add the soy sauce and honey. I do this by eye, a healthy few slugs of soy sauce and just a wee but of honey to take the edge off the saltiness. As you can see, there isn't much in there. Let this simmer for a minute or two. When you're ready, use tongs to remove the carrots from the remaining liquid and put them on their own plate. This may seem like dirtying a lot of plates, but it's better to get as much of the liquid away from both the carrots and cucumber as possible before adding them to the tray of gloriousness you'll see later! 

Time to introduce some more ingredients. Here we have, from left to right, the kimbap ham, pre-scored for all your kimbap needs; the burdock and the yellow radish and the fish cakes. (These are the same fish cakes that are used for ddeokbokki (which also has more romanizations than you can shake a stick at!)

I drain the liquid from the burdock and radish and fire it onto the tray, like so: 

I then slice a fish cake:

Then add everything to the tray. Now doesn't that look like all kinds of yummy!

It's worth noting here that the ham is the only think I keep wrapped up in it's own wrapper and I only remove as much as I will need for that day's kimbap making session. In this case, I'll be making two rolls, so 2 sticks of ham.

In the interest of aesthetics, I'm making this kimbap with white rice and I'm using this tub of microwaveable rice. There are three sizes of these and this is the middle sized one that perfectly makes 2 kimbap rolls, and they're not too big either.  

Once cooked according to instructions (or when your rice has finished cooking) add a splash of sesame oil and a pinch of salt. You don't need to do this, if you don't want too (but I like to.)

Then we get out our seaweed. This is the one I'm using at the moment. If I'm opening a new pack, I use it straight away. I then fire the rest into the freezer. When I take the sheets I need out of the freezer, I wave them over the flame on my gas hob a few times each side, just to get rid of excess moisture (tips and tricks Koreans have taught me!)

And here we are all prep'd and ready to go! 

Spread out the rice. The rice scoop is so useful here and spreads as well as compacts the rice. 

Add your filling. 1 stick radish, 1 stick burdock, 1 stick ham, 1 strip of fish cake and carrot and cucumber to your hearts desire. 

Then use the rolling matt to roll it. Make sure you squeeeeeeze as you go! It should end up looking like the photo below. Then brush the top of the kimbap and the blade of your knife with sesame oil. 

The sesame oil makes cutting the kimbap a smoother job and ideally it will come out all neat and tidy. My initial attempts were far from this neat. Filling splurged everywhere, but practice makes (nearly) prefect.

If, like me, you have a think about pretty dishes, transfer your kimbap. I love how perfect a kimbap dish this is (and so colourful!) And then munch away. 

The remaining filling can be cling-wrapped and put in the fridge ready for tomorrows assembly. And the day after. And the day after. And the day after that. It's also a mighty handy thing to make for lunch on those desk warming days during school vacations, and oh so shareable too! 

If you really want to have a "food of life moment" my CT told me that cold kimbap can be dipped in beaten egg and fried for breakfast. This is, hands down, the best breakfast ever. 

Go forth and experiment, switch up the fillings and find a routine that works for you! Sandwiches, eat your heart out, I have kimbap! 

Preparation Takes a Little Time

Hello, Aloha, Bonjour, 안녕 or whatever greeting you prefer! It's been a wee while, hasn't it. I started a second blog a while back, where this post first appeared, but I missed the ol' Paper Elephant so I'm shifting everything onto this blog whilst I give the old girl a much needed facelift!!

 So here we go, ten months into my Korean adventure (at the time of writing), I bring you some of my kimbap know-how.

Kimbap (김밥) is very similar in appearance to Japanese sushi. It is not sushi. Not even a little bit. For a start, there's no raw fish involved, there can be no fish at all, but that depends on your personal preference. It's a hugely popular item in Korea, finding it's way into lunch boxes in place of sandwiches and is pretty healthy too. Yes, it may have a hefty amount of rice in it, but that too is down to personal preference and no one ever said you HAD to use the white variety.

The downside to kimbap, is the prep time. It can take a wee while to get your ingredients prepared and set out (also dependant on how many ingredients you want to put into your kimbap and how readily available some ingredients are (the primary example here being burdock, which I never remember seeing EVER in a British supermarket, but I can't imagine my Kimbap without it!)

Before we can even think about making kimbap, we need some lists:

Essentials:

• Rice (this can be white, brown, purple whatever. So long as it has a modicum of stickyness. When I was taught to make kimbap, my friend actually used a combination of rices, cooked together)
• Yellow Radish
• Burdock
• Carrot
• Cucumber
• Ham
• Kim / Seaweed (very important as this is what you wrap the kimbap in)
• Soy Sauce
• Sesame Oil
• Honey
• Salt

Optionals:

• Fish cake. Of the Korean variety. This is a flat, floppy rectangle that is made of ground fish I guess. Personally, for me this is in the Essential list, but as not everyone is a fan of our friends from the sea, I'm putting it here. On a side note, fish in Korean is 물고기 which literally translates as 'water meat'. It's one of my favourite words! 

• Fish sticks. Much the same as the fish sticks you get in the UK. Pink things with white in the middle. I don't mind them, but I don't go out of my way to use them. I forgot them one day and didn't notice the difference.

• Egg. In the form of the thinnest of thin omelettes.

• Side dishes. Now, I don't know the name of all them (bar the ever present kimchi) but any number of these can be added to you kimbap depending on your personal preference.

Variations: 

The options here are endless, but here are a few suggestions:

• Tuna. Replace the ham with tuna. You can add a wee bit of mayonnaise if you like, but you have to make sure it's not too runny, or it can be such a bind to wrap.

• Bulgogi. This is a marinated meat, most often beef.

• Or you can be really adventurous and make your own combinations. This year, for Christmas, in lew of a Christmas Dinner, I made Christmas Kimbap. It consited of chicken (poached) cranberry stuffing, vichy carrots and a token green vegetable (I think it was pak choi). If I repeated this, I'd probably use lettuce, but I was please with the end result and it definitely tasted of Christmas!)

Utensils: 

Bar the obvious, here are some things I have found invaluable when it comes to making kimbap.

• Sushi/kimbap roller. You honestly HAVE to have one of these!

• Brush. A pastry brush will do, to brush your kimbap and knife with sesame oil to make slicing it easier - honestly this makes all the difference in the world. It took me a while to be able to slice my kimbap without the filling splurging out all over the place. 

• Tray. This is a very useful piece of kit. when I prep my ingredients, I like to lay out what I'm using on a tray. I then cling film it up when I'm done and fire it into the fridge. This way, one day of prep means the kimbap is ready to go any time. It also makes the assembly line quicker when the ingredients are in one place.

• Rice Scoop. This isn't necessary at all, but I find it useful to gauge quantities of rice and it flattens/spreads the rice out well.

Phew!! You made it to the end! Congratulations! Kimbap really is all about the preparation, but I promise you it's so worth it!

I'll give you time to digest all of this (digest.... get it... ah I'm too funny................... or not) and I will return later to show you how to turn this:

into this: