This salad dressing has been in my mother’s repetoire for many years, and comes from a little clipping from a Korean magazine that she got whilst we were living there years ago.
It’s highly unusual in that it’s a little bit like mayonaise in it’s consistancy and quite thick, but it’s extremely fresh and great to dollop over a mixed leaf lettuce salad.
Looks weird, but looks are very deceiving.
Ingredients
2 ripe kiwi fruit
1/3 medium sized sweet pineapple, thorny skin cut off and roughly chopped*
1/3 red onion
1/4 cup vinegar
4 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp olive oil
*If you can’t get to ripe, sweet and fresh pineapple, use 4 rings of tinned pineapple.
Get all the ingredients, throw them into a food processor (or into a bowl and use a stick blender as I do) and pulverise till completely smooth. This makes about 500 ml of salad dressing, and you can pour it into a bottle for use. It’s good for about a month 
[tags]salad, salad dressing, fruit[/tags]
Well, mung bean’ed at any rate 
For the opening of my parent’s new business we had to prepare a whole lot of food, and this particular food was made in great quantity.
Made with a base of pureed mung beans, it’s called ‘bin-dae-dduk’, it is another of those foods which appear at most feast day tables in Korea, and for very good reason! It’s one of my favourite dishes and I think I can speak without bias to say that my mother’s recipe is the best I’ve ever tasted!
Topped with a little thinly sliced thai red chilli, their crisp brown exterior hides a world of delights inside their crispy shell
Ingredients
250g dried mung beans with skin removed *
250g pork mince **
250g bean shoots
135g kimchi, all liquid squeezed out and roughly chopped ***
1 bunch of spring onion, well rinsed
100g dried fernbrake (called ‘gosari’ in Korean), boiled to rehydrate then drained
1 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp minced garlic
10 thai red chillis (the small ones about 1 inch long), seeds removed and thinly sliced
1 cup water
* Trust me when I say this is an important thing – if you don’t then you’ll have skins from the beans floating around in the mixture which are difficult to blend, chewy and generally icky.
** To make a vegan version, you can replace the pork mince with ‘dry’ tofu, an extremely firm tofu that has had almost all the liquid squeezed out. Just mince it by mashing it with a potato masher.
*** Kimchi can be bought in small containers from any Korean grocery store, but failing that you could always try and make it yourself 
1. Soak the dried mung beans overnight, the next morning they should be soft enough to squish between your fingers without too much force. If you haven’t gotten skinned mung beans, then after the soaking you’ll need to lightly rub the beans to remove the skins and manually remove them from the water.
2. Use a food processor or stick blender to process the mung beans with 1 cup of water, blend till completely smooth otherwise you’ll have chunks of raw mung bean in the pancakes and it’ll be strange.
This is the processed mung bean, see how smooth the mixture is?
3. Put the blended mung beans aside, and put on a pot of water to boil. Blanch the bean shoots to slightly cook them, but don’t leave them in any longer than about 2 minutes – you want them to be kinda floppy, but still retain a little bit of crunch when you bite into them. Refresh them in cold water and strain all water from them.
4. Cut the spring onions (scallions) into 2-inch lengths and put them aside, then lightly fry the rehydrated bracken fern in a tsp of oil till fragrant. In a large bowl, mix the chopped spring onion, bcracken fern, pork mince, kimchi, ginger and garlic till well combined.
Aww, the lovely mix of flavours and textures!
5. Pour the mung bean puree into the pork mince and mix till everything is once again well combined.
Look at the consistancy of this mix – thick, not too watery, when you scoop it up with a soup ladle and pour it back it should be ‘gloopy’ (yeah, I’m all about the technical terms here!)
6. Heat up a frying pan or griddle over a low-medium heat and make sure it is extremely well oiled, then pour the mixture into small pancakes, about one soup ladle scoop per pancake. Place a few thin slices of chilli on top of each pancake – it is mostly decorative, but also provides some warmth when the little pancakes are being consumed
These are a little over 1/2 an inch high, when you flip them over you should lightly press down with a spatula to help flatten and even them out.
7. Fry till the underside is firm, crunchy and golden, then flip and fry the other side till it’s also crunchy and golden.
See the oil bubbling around the pancake? I guess they really should be called fritters as they should be fried in about 3mm oil to make sure the sides of these thick pancakes is cooked also.
8. Leave them to drain on some paper kitchen towels. These can be fried and lightly refried before serving, but they do need to be served warm otherwise they are a bit tough.
By the time me and mom had finished, this wooden basket was piled high with these crispy little bundles of joy
Thanks to the kimchi, these don’t require any dipping sauce, but you can make a simple one of vinegar and soy sauce in a 1:1 ratio with a 1/2 tsp of dried chilli powder mixed in.
[tags]korean food, fritters, mung bean[/tags]
Have you ever made a dish that wasn’t quite sure what it was? Not quite a pasta sauce, but not quite a stew or a satay either? Well, this dish is pretty much exactly that. It works as a pasta sauce or even on rice, can be spooned up with some roti or naan or even just some mountain bread. I’ve had a friend eat this spooned onto toast! Even though it can’t decide quite what it is, it’s peanutty and delicious and choc full of goodness!
Mmm, look at that yumminess right there!
Ingredients
1 medium zucchini, sliced
1 small-medium carrot, sliced
1 small sweet potato, peeled and sliced
1 small red capsicum (bell pepper), deseeded and diced
300g button mushrooms, thickly sliced
1 onion, diced
2 tbsp garlic mince
1 tsp ground ginger
1 small can of 4-bean mix
3 tbsp tomato paste
1/3 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup sweet chilli sauce
1/2 cup water
Optional
100g lean rump steak, v. thinly sliced (optional, I often omit this when I want a vegetarian dish)
1. Saute garlic, ginger and onion in 1 tbsp of olive oil. Then add carrot, sweet potato and capsicum/bell pepper and saute till carrot is slightly cooked but still retains some crunch.
2. Add mushrooms and zucchini and mix in well and saute till the zucchini is slightly cooked, then toss in 4-bean mix, tomato paste, peanut butter, sweet chilli sauce and water. Stir everything through till well combined, then lower the heat and simmer for about 20-30 minutes or till veggies have cooked (but not disintegrated).
3. Serve with whatever you want (pasta, rice, toast, roti) and enjoy
I usually serve this with pasta, but my brother loves to eat it as a stew with a crusty roll, and I’ve had other friends eat it in a manner akin to beans-on-toast
[tags]pasta sauce, vegetarian, pasta, stew, satay, peanut butter[/tags]
There’s a million and one recipes for ‘authentic’ guacamole out there, so I’m not even going to pretend that this one is anywhere near authentic (so, no – this was not passed down to me by the guacamole master in some tiny Mexican village – it’s just something I made up!). Even though this isn’t authentic, it’s been loved by everyone who has tried it is definetely a great dip to have on hand for any parties
Mmm, avocadoey goodness!
Ingredients
1 large, ripe avocado
1 tomato, pulp and seeds removed and diced
1/2 red/spanish onion, finely diced
1-2 tbsp lime juice
1 finely sliced red chilli
Tabasco sauce, to taste
Salt and pepper, to taste
1. Mash avocado, mix with diced tomato and onion.
2. Add lime juice and mix in, then add sliced chilli and stir to combine.
3. Add some tabasco sauce, salt and freshly cracked black pepper to taste, mix thoroughly, then open a bag of corn chips and go for it!
[tags]avocado, dip, guacamole, mexican, recipe[/tags]
Kimchi (also spelt as kimchee), is a traditional Korean dish of fermented chilli peppers with a variety of vegetables, the most common being made with Chinese cabbage. It’s deeply ingrained into Korean culture and whilst it is mostly served as a side dish, it can also be used as a basis for other meals such as fried rice, broths and stews. Many Koreans, myself included, will only last a few days before the cravings kick in and kimchi must be eaten in some shape or form.
An example of how much we Koreans love kimchi? In 2005 a report was released that heavy consumption of kimchi could not be very good for your health…and as a result, the professor who released this statement received a variety of death threats.
Kimchi is serious business.
My mother’s kimchi is unlike any other that I’ve tasted, and whilst this is probably due to the care she takes with her particular recipe, it is extremely time-consuming (but very very worth it!). So, if you’ve got a spare weekend with absolutely nothing on your hands, try her family recipe for kimchi. By the end, your back will ache, your hands will be pruney and you’ll have salt and chilli flakes everywhere…but you’ll also have a little slice of fermented heaven.
Mmm, spicy goodness!
Now, we usually use about 10 heads of Chinese cabbage (around 20kg of kimchi), but I’ve trimmed the recipe down for just 1 head of Chinese cabbage
Ingredients
1 fresh Chinese cabbage, dark green outer leaves removed
1 1/2 cup cooking salt
1L water
1 cup Korean chilli powder – aka gochugaru (not flakes, look for it at your local Korean grocery store)
1/2 cup fish sauce
2 tbsp white sugar
6 spring onions, washed and sliced on an angle into slices about 1-2″ long
5 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 knob of ginger, grated
1/4 nashi pear, cored and peeled
1/4 brown onion, peeled
200g white/chinese radish (long and white as opposed to small, round and pink-tinged)
1. Cut the cabbage in halves or quarters, and cut into the stem to remove most of it.
2. Combine 1L water with 1/2 cup of cooking salt into a large bowl, then plunge one half or quarter of cabbage into the water at a time. Carefully seperate the leaves layer by layer and make sure that you get the salted water right to the base of the leaves.
3. Drain water from the cabbage segments, then sprinkle a light layer of cooking salt over each layer of leaves, making sure to get more towards the thick, white base of the leaf rather than the thinner, green end. This is usually done by coating the lower half of your fingers in salt and using a flicking motion. Don’t feel that you have to use the ENTIRE 1 cup of salt here – just as much as is needed to give the leaves a light sprinkling – its hard to judge how much salt you will need/use as it depends on how big and how ‘ripe’ your cabbage is.
4. Place the cabbage segments into a bowl and leave covered for 5-6 hours, or till cabbage is floppy enough so that the leaves can be bent over, but still make a crisp ‘snapping’ noise when snapped.
20kg of Chinese/Napa cabbage that has been salted and is now ready to be washed and wrung out before the seasoning process begins!
5. After leaving for 5-6 hours, rinse the lettuce twice in clean water, then squeeze as much water out of the lettuce as humanly possible (yes, squishing the cabbage is perfectly alright), and leave on a strainer for another 15-30 mins to drain the last of the water out.
6. The ‘sauce’ can be made whilst you’re waiting for the cabbage to wilt (in step 4). Combine 1 heaped tbsp of glutinous rice powder with 1/2 cup water in a pot, stir vigorously over a low heat till the mixture has turned white, has a very thick consistancy and bubbles whilst being stirred.
7. Let the rice powder glue cool down, and while it’s cooling, blend together the garlic, ginger, nashi pear, onion and Chinese radish into a pulpy liquid. Once the rice powder glue is completely cool, stir in the chilli powder, sugar and fish sauce, then pear mix and spring onion and combine well.
8. Lay out the cabbage and coat the front and back of every leaf with this rice chilli paste, making sure that they’re well coated and you haven’t missed any bits.
9. Once all the cabbage has been coated, press down into an airtight container and store in a cool, dark place for 3 days to aid the fermentation process. Taste it after 3 days, and if the lettuce tastes slightly tangy, soft but with some crunch and spicy, then place in your fridge. This can be stored in your fridge for up to 3 months (if it lasts that long!)
If you’ve never tried eating this before, I’d suggest going to a Korean restaurant to try it first befrore making it, but once you taste this, I guarantee you’ll come back for more!
So, the recipe is time consuming, requires a lot of effort and is very hands on. You have to really be a fan to make it often, but we go through a 10-head batch in about 4-6 weeks, so it’s usually a monthly process for me and mom
As for how serious we are about our kimchi – I’d like to introduce you to our ‘kimchi refrigerator’. That’s right, a refrigerator dedicated to storing your kimchi and keeping it as tasty as possible. Mr Woofy models next to it to provide a bit of a size comparison.
Have you actually read this entire entry? Good grief – I demand you go pour yourself a glass of wine and congratulate yourself on suffering through the length of this Please, anyone who tries this, please let me know how you go as me and mom would love to know of anyone trying this most favourite food of ours!
[tags]kimchi, korean food, korean recipes, pickling, vegetables, pickles, Asian food[/tags]
