Korean food time! Korean restaurants often start with a big collection of banchan, little side dishes like pickled veggies, preserved seafood, and other little things. Feasible on a restaurant scale (or a habitually Korean-eating household, I guess!), but I’m just going to make one: japchae, the glass noodles. I’ll make it up by making it super colorful.

Japchae (Korean glass noodles)

• 250g sweet potato starch noodles, boiled for 7 minutes, then rinsed in cold water, then mixed with
  • 3 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp honey, 1 tbsp brown sugar, 1 tbsp sesame oil, 2 tsp minced garlic, 2 tsp roasted sesame seeds, pinch pepper.
• Garnish with:
  • Lean beef (sirloin or rib eye) sliced small then marinated in soy sauce, garlic, sesame oil, rice wine
  • Blanched spinach in sesame oil, garlic, soy sauce.
  • Sliced fresh shiitake mushrooms marinated in noodle sauce.
  • Carrots julienned, sliced onion, bell pepper julienned, scallions in strips, stir fried.
  • Jidan: Omelette-like fried egg yolk, fried egg white, sliced into matchsticks.
  • Sesame seeds

To use up more of my copious amount of gochugaru, we cooked some spicy pork. Somewhere I read that typically beef bulgogi is cooked non-spicy, and pork “bulgogi” is cooked spicy. Can this be verified?

Korean Spicy Pork

• Blend together 5 tbsp gochujang, 1/4 cup asian pear (~1/6 huge pear), 6 cloves garlic, 1” ginger, 1 tbsp soy sauce 1 tbsp sesame oil, 1 tbsp sugar, 1 tbsp rice wine, 2 tbsp gochugaru.
• Marinate 2 lb pork shoulder, cut to thin strips
• Saute 1 onion thinly sliced, 2 scallions white parts sliced, 1 korean green chili pepper until softened. Reserve.
• Saute 1 packed cup kimchi drained. Reserve.
• In batches, brown pork until cooked through and starting to brown.
• Combine everything, sprinkle with sesame seeds.
• Serve with lettuce, gochujang, rice.

In my mind, Korean food is always so red. Turns out, there’s a simple trick to that: gochugaru. Red chili powder. The Korean grocer just sells very large quantities of it. The smallest package is 7 oz, which means I now have more gochugaru than all other spices combined.

Soondubu Jjigae (Korean spicy tofu stew)

To make a stew, I want to start right at the source: an anchovy and seaweed stock. Sourced from chowdivine and zenkimchi and kimchimom.

Stock: 

• 2″x3″ strip kombu (or dashima), 1/2  onion, 3 garlic cloves in 8 cups water. Boil for 10 minutes.
• 10 large dried anchovies, gutted. Add, then boil on low uncovered for 15 minutes.
• Scoop out solid ingredients, leaving golden broth.

Soondubu with beef:

• Marinate 10 oz thinly sliced steak in 2 tbsp gochugaru (pepper powder), 1/2 tbsp minced garlic, 1 tbsp sesame oil, 1 tbsp soju (or cooking wine), 1.5 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tsp salt, pinch pepper.
• In pot, saute 1/2 onion. Add beef and ladle of stock, and cook beef.
• Add enough (how much?) broth. Adjust seasoning.
• Add 11-oz tube of soondubu (silken tofu) and 1/2 zucchini, and simmer for at most 3-5 more minutes, or else will draw water from tofu.
• Serve with room-temp egg, scallions, and steamed rice.