Happy Chuseok!

Even though many things have been changed by Korea’s rapid industrialization, urbanization, and globalization, family remains the bedrock of Korean society. Chusok is a celebration of family—both past and present.

- Eun Mee Kim, “Chusok: The Korean Thanksgiving”

These last few years, I’ve wondered how to celebrate a holiday that is almost universally about “family” when the only family I know never bothered to learn that said holiday even exists.  Descriptions of Chuseok in Korea invariably involve the words “family” and “hometown,”  and frequently describe long sojourns back to one’s hometown in order to visit with family…. but what do you do when you have neither?

All I can say is, thank God for the Korean adoptees I know in real life… and, of course, 소주! ^ ^

*****************************

For women, Chuseok usually involves days and days of cooking.  I haven’t been cooking much Korean food lately, but the photos in this e-book from Aeri’s Kitchen are almost inspiring me to start again.  If you haven’t gotten your copy yet, click on over — it’s free!

Sonmul! (Part 1)

From my friend:

Seafood Rice Porridge

On my first trip back to Korea, I met an adoptee who had a few fuzzy memories of being in an orphanage.  She didn’t remember much, but distinctly remembered eating 전복죽, or abalone rice porridge, while she was there.  I was too young to have eaten rice porridge at my orphanage, but hearing her connect this food with her past made me want to try it too.

As it turned out, there was actually some abalone rice porridge in one of the many bowls on my breakfast tray during the last day of my first trip back.  (Tthe top row of bowls is occasionally my header photo on this blog.)  Since then I have tried a grocery-store version of it, and made it a point to have it again on my second trip back.  But really, I needed to learn how to make it myself.

Since I haven’t had much luck finding abalone for 전복죽, I decided to try making 해물죽 (seafood rice porridge).  I don’t think I’ve ever seen seafood rice porridge on the menu in a restaurant anywhere, and have never seen an actual recipe for it.  But I figured I would simply made 죽 (rice porridge), add 해물 (seafood), and — tada — seafood rice porridge!

Making 죽 (rice porridge) is really easy, although it does require some planning since you have to soak the rice for a few hours beforehand.  For the seafood I used a frozen seafood mix, which I thawed and then diced so that the baby octopi were no longer identifiable as octopi.  (Yes, I realize that “octopi” is a nonstandard plural.  And I don’t care .)

It was really good, but best eaten all at once since the seafood becomes a little chewy upon reheating.

No Beans About It

When I was in Korea in April, I had pink rice for the first time.  And I thought I didn’t like it.

I actually had pink rice on several occasions in Korean, and each time there were red beans mixed in with the rice… which are what I thought made it red.  However, I did like the idea of mixing other grains (sans beans) in with my rice, and decided to try it when I got home.  I bought a bag of mixed grains at my local Korean grocery store, which was a blend of sweet rice, wild sweet rice, barley, brown rice, and sweet brown rice (I know, it looks like birdseed):

.

Then, I combined this blend (the bag on the right) with my regular white rice (the bag on the left) in a ratio of about 3:1 (3 cups of regular white rice, 1 cup of the mixed grains).  I measured each kind into the pot of my rice cooker, and washed it as I normally do:

.

Because there were no red beans, and nothing in the pre-cooked state of the rice to suggest that it would still turn pink, I was surprised to see a rice cooker full of this:

.

I love it — it’s healthier, has more interesting textures and flavors, and boasts an intriguing color with no beans required.  We still love plain white rice as well, but this has become a new favorite here in the Household of the Not-So-Calm.  If you’ve ever thought about mixing things into your rice, definitely give this a try!

Throw-Together 떡 만두국

This isn’t authentic 떡 만두국 (rice cake and dumpling soup), but it was good anyway.  I didn’t use a recipe; I just boiled some water with a little chicken bouillon, and threw in some frozen 떡 (rice cakes) and 만두 (dumplings).  I also added some leftovers I had in the fridge from making 잡채 –  baby spinach, a few bean sprouts, cooked beef, and dried shiitake mushrooms.  And simply because I love noodles and they were already cooked, I threw in some 녹차 메밀 국수 (soba noodles flavored with green tea) at the last minute.  I stirred in some red pepper flakes and sesame seeds, and it was done!

Here’s another pic that shows off the special spoon-and-chopstick set that I got on my first trip to Korea:

I’m not sure why I’ve been cooking so much recently. (Actually I do know why, and it involves certain other KAD bloggers who inspired me by posting pictures of their delicious food — ladies, you know who you are!)

My hobbies tend to come and go in rather unpredictable phases, and I have no idea how long this one will last.  I’m just hoping that when the next Lunar New Year rolls around, I can dispense with the Campbell’s Chunky Chicken Noodle.

Quick Thoughts

I (finally) got around to posting the 잡채 (chap ch’ae) recipe that a couple of people asked for.  I added it to the bottom of the original post in case anyone else wants to check it out, although it’s not much of a recipe since I usually just throw stuff in and mix.  Honest.

*************************************************************************

Tonight I went to an Asian food court in search of bubble tea, and discovered that one of the vendors sold 불고기 김밥 (bulgogi kimbap)!  I thought that $7 was pretty steep for 김밥, but I decided I needed some and so I went ahead and ordered it.  It turns out that $7 was for TWO rolls plus really good 김치 (kimchi) … which I think is roughly what I paid at the Hyundai department store food court in Seoul.  I’m incredibly excited by my find, and will definitely be coming back.

Oh, and a large bubble tea and freshly made 불고기 김밥 go a long way toward making up for a crappy weekend.

*************************************************************************

Sorry for all the short posts lately. I think my brain has turned to porridge and my attention span has regressed to pre-K levels.

Clearly I need to read more, preferably things with pages made of paper rather than pixels.

See What I Made

… for dinner tonight:

It’s a dish called 잡채 (chap ch’ae) — clear noodles made from potato starch, mixed with assorted vegetables and a little bit of marinated beef or chicken.  Tonight I used beef, along with yellow onions, carrots, zucchini, bean sprouts, shiitake mushrooms, and baby spinach.  If I’d had scallions and bell peppers I would have added those as well.

I used to cook this a lot when I was in high school, but hadn’t made it in a while for some reason (probably due to all the chopping required).  But MH’s 잡채 success earlier this month inspired me to dig out my recipe again, with delicious results!

********************************************************************

Edited on 8/31 to add:

Since people have asked for the recipe, I’ll give my best attempt at what I did the other night.  The recipe below is loosely based on

Double Desserts

After skipping a few weeks of Korean class due to TRA-related hangups, I finally decided to try going again.  And boy, am I glad that I went!

The first part of the class was a lesson on 팥빙수 (patbingsu, or shaved ice with sweet red beans).  The three different Korean classes gathered together and learned about patbingsu while the teachers actually made 우유 팥빙수 (patbingsu made with frozen milk) for everyone.  It included fruit cocktail, rice cakes, a powdery grain that tasted like ground-up cereal, and of course 팥, (pat, or sweet red beans). An intriguing combination of tastes and textures to be sure, but I liked it.  And believe it or not, that was actually my first taste of patbingsu ever — even though my first trip was in the sweltering sauna of August, and the second was in the pleasant but still warm month of April.

While explaining what patbingsu was, one of the teachers happened to mention that there was a place nearby where you could get yogurt-flavored ice cream.  My ears perked up — could she possibly be talking about Red Mango?? At the end of the long class I rushed up to her, pushing aside my silly classmates who only wanted to talk about the finer points of noun-modifying clauses.  I asked her about the yogurt-flavored ice cream that she had mentioned, and she said that while it wasn’t actually a Red Mango, there was a store selling exactly the same stuff just five minutes away.  She even produced one of their business cards that had a little map on the back, which I studied as one might study a treasure map.

Since we had already driven in to the city for the class, I begged and pleaded with LB to go to this new fro-yo vendor directly, even though we had already eaten the patbingsu only two hours before.  And so I had my second dessert of the evening, which unfortunately I could not document since I didn’t have my camera.

But I assure you, it was true love, and deliciously evocative of my Red Mango days in Korea.

*************************************************

I’ll leave you with the music video that we watched in class, an amusing ode to patbingsu by 윤종신 (Yoon Jong Shin).  The chorus translated into English is something like this:

Patbingsu

I like it, I really like it

Patbingsu

It’s best in the summer

Patbingsu

I love you, please don’t melt.

Random Thoughts on Boricha

(picture added late due to WordPress image loader acting up)

I read today that regular black ice (iced?) tea is high in oxalates, which have been linked to kidney stones. I knew someone in college who had kidney stones and it seemed pretty painful, so I’m glad that I’ve been drinking mostly iced green tea and cold 보리차 (boricha, or barley tea). I have some more, uh, substantial posts coming, but until then here are some other random musings about boricha:

• On my first trip back to Korea, we went out to dinner with some people from our traveling group. There was a pitcher of pale-brown-colored water on the table, and one of the people we were traveling with looked at it and said in a loud stage whisper, “I don’t know about you, but I don’t think we should drink that water!” I stifled a laugh and immediately explained that it was cold barley tea and that it was supposed to be that color.

• In Korea I was thrilled to find boricha in single-serve plastic bottles, right next to the bottled sodas, juices, and waters in the convenience stores. There was also a bottled corn tea that I know is very popular as well, but I didn’t like that as much as the barley tea. The corn tea tasted too much like… corn.

• There is a Korean restaurant near my house that serves boricha, but it is always so hot (and I am always so eager to drink it) that I try and slip a few ice cubes from my water glass into it to cool it down faster. I’m not sure how “Korean” this is, but I am nothing if not impatient.

• When I make boricha at home, the brand of boricha teabag that I use is called “어머니가 끓여주시던 보리차,” which I think translates to something like “Mother’s Boiled Barley Tea”. (어머니 or omoni means “mother”.) Unfortunately my mother doesn’t know what boricha is and so she certainly didn’t make it for me while I was growing up, but it’s a nice idea. I guess I’m a sucker for that “just-like-mom-used-to-make” kind of advertising after all.

• Recently I’ve been making the barley tea in my coffee maker. (I put the giant-sized teabag right in the carafe, turn off the automatic grinder, and the coffee maker just makes hot water.) It has a built-in timer and automatically turns off when it’s done, so I can start it brewing and then go somewhere else without having to come back and turn off the stove. Also, the carafe is easier to clean than my tea kettle, and easier to pour from than the stock pot that I was using previously. I usually have a glass of it hot right away, and then stick the rest in the fridge so that I can drink it cold later on.

Anyway, if you’ve never tried boricha, I encourage you to give it a try this summer!

Seoul Food

A few posts ago in one of the comments, junemoon expressed an interest in reading about my “food adventures” while in Korea. I don’t know if I had anything particularly “adventurous,” but I did try some new things that I hadn’t tried before, and I certainly ate a lot of good food!

One of my favorite restaurants was called 본죽 (which I think in English might be something like “Bon Juk”). It was a chain with a location right next to our subway station, and only serves 죽, or rice porridge. I liked the chonbok juk (전복죽), or abalone porridge, the best. Here’s a picture of what it looked like:

Another time we got the shrimp juk (새우죽), shown below with side dishes (반찬):

As you may have noticed, it comes served in one large bowl and then you ladle it out into smaller bowls. On our first visit we didn’t realize that each order served two people, and ended up with twice enough food as we could eat. (The person working there tried to explain it to us, but this was just one example of how my Korean language skills were not nearly as adequate as I was hoping they would be.) Anyway, we learned our lesson and on subsequent visits we shared a single order.

We also ate lots of noodle dishes, including kalguksu (갈국수), which has noodles in a chicken-like broth with lots of shredded 김 (dried seaweed) on top:

I don’t have pictures, but we also had soba noodles (메밀), cellophane noodles (잡채), and naeng myun (냉면) several times. My personal favorite was jajangmyun (자짱면), which is noodles in black bean sauce:

For those of you who have seen the K-drama Fantasy Couple, I definitely felt like the character with whom I share my blogging name!

On several occasions I ordered another one of my favorite Korean foods, soft tofu stew with seafood (순두부찌개). In Korea this dish usually included fully-headed shrimp, which were never in the versions that I ordered back home. I’m not a fan of eyes looking back at me as I eat, but it tasted delicious (the white things on top that look like bean sprouts are actually mushrooms):

And to drink, of course, there was soju (소주)!

When we weren’t eating at a meal, we were eating between meals. There was inexpensive kimbap (김밥) everywhere, although finding it without ham/Spam wasn’t always easy. I could eat the stuff in this picture all day:

For dessert, my favorite things were Red Mango and the spongey rice cakes with 앵두차, which I already posted pictures of. But occasionally I could also be found eating green tea ice cream — this picture was taken at a Cold Stone and had Oreo cookies mixed in:

If folks were hoping for stories of live octopus, silkworms, or anything even more… adventurous, well, I’m sorry to disappoint. On this trip I realized that I actually wasn’t as adventurous an eater as I like to think I am sometimes. But that didn’t stop me from eating large amounts of food — it’s a good thing that we were doing an incredible amount of walking along with all that eating!

**************************************************

This may just be because I love to eat, but I think that food is an incredibly important way of connecting to Korea and Korean culture. When I sit down in front of a bubbling bowl of 순두부찌개 I feel not only happier, but also “more Korean” somehow. As I’ve written about before, my family really didn’t eat Korean food growing up, and I wonder if that’s one of the reasons that I can’t get enough of it now. I’m not exaggerating when I say that the food was one of the best parts of my trip, and is certainly one of the things that I miss the most now that I’m back in the U.S.

All photographs (c) Sang-Shil Kim