Author: Taeyang Yoon

Kimchi Fried Rice (Kimchi Bokkeumbap)
You could say that kimchi is the Swiss Army Knife of the Korean food. It is almost always offered up as banchan on the dinner table, but it can be transformed into myriad of other dishes. One fine example of kimchi becoming the main ingredient in a dish would be kimchi fried rice. If you have some old rice in the rice cooker, some sour kimchi, and some pork, you’re more than halfway there.
Kimchi Fried Rice (Kimchi Bokkeumbap)
INGREDIENTS
Kimchi – 3 cups, chopped into 1/4 – 1/2 inch cubes (sour or old kimchi preferred)
Pork – 2 cups, diced into 1/2 inch cubes (samgyupsal preferred)
Onion – 1 medium, diced into 1/4 – 1/2 inch cubes
Rice – 5 – 6 cups, cooked (preferably a day or two old)
Oil
Salt and Pepper
Optional:
Eggs – 1 each per person
Green Onions – 1 or 2 stalks, chopped into 1/4 – 1/2 inch pieces
TOTAL PREP TIME
15-30 minutes
SERVES: 4
- Coat the bottom of a pan or a wok with cooking oil, in high heat
- When the pan/wok is hot, throw in the onions and pork
- In about 2 – 3 minutes, add the kimchi
- After about 5 – 7 minutes, add the rice and green onions
- Break up the rice and mix it well with the fried/sauteed kimchi
- Salt and pepper to taste, but depending on the kimchi, you may not need to season it any further
- As soon as the rice is thoroughly mixed in with the kimchi, give it another minute or so… and plate it
- On a separate frying pan, fry some eggs (sunny side up or over easy) and top your fried rice
Notes:
This recipe is pretty simple… but you may customize it anyway you want. For example, if you can’t eat pork, substitute with some canned tuna, beef, sausage, or leave it out. I have used some Spam on occasion with very good results.
February 1, 2011
Yukgejang (Korean Shredded Beef Soup)
The Korean phrase ‘ulken hada’ (얼큰하다), which means ‘it is refreshingly spicy’, is a phrase appropriate for any season. In summertime, Koreans enjoy bowls of hot spicy soup to sweat out the heat. And in the winter, hot spicy soup is consumed to warm up the body. Yukgejang (육개장, shredded beef soup), is the perfect “refreshingly spicy” soup to warm your body.
Gosari (고사리) is the primary vegetable in yukgejang. Gosari is the Korean word for bracken, or fiddlehead ferns. Only the young shoots are eaten. Sometimes they are sautéed in garlic and set on the dinner table as one of the optional banchan (반찬) on the dinner table, but most Koreans recognize gosari as a crucial ingredient in bibimbap and yukgejang.
I don’t think gosari has any wondrous medicinal benefits, other than as a good source of some minerals and fiber. Someone told me that in the old days Koreans used gosari as a meat substitute, although it’s not a good source of protein. Also, of note, gosari eating populations maybe linked with high rate of stomach cancer.
My girlfriend’s question about the gosari in my bibimbap inspired me to make some yukgejang. Personally, I don’t like making yukgejang, as it is too time intensive. I also think purchasing the ingredients costs more than ordering it at a Korean restaurant. But if you are serving more than two people, do not trust the restaurant ingredients, and/or just want to make this wonderful soup, this is how you do it.
Yukgejang (Korean Shredded Beef Soup)
Main Ingredients:
4 qts. Water
1/2 lbs. Gosari (saeng gosari – 생고사리) *
2 lbs. Flank Steak
6 cloves Garlic, crushed
1 medium Onion, sliced
6 stalks Green Onion, chopped into 3-inch pieces
1/2 lbs. Mung Bean Sprouts, rinsed
Spices:
2-3 Tbsp. Salt
1 tsp. Ground Black Pepper
3 Tbsp. Korean Chili Powder (Gochugaru)
Optional:
2 Eggs, beaten
1/2 lbs. Pyogo (Shitake) Mushrooms, sliced
1 oz. Dangmyun (당면) or about ½ lbs. reconstituted in warm water.
2 tsp. Hondashi or Dashida**
Total Prep Time: 2-3+ hours
Serves: 4-6
1.       Bring about 4 quarts of cold water along with the flank steak in a stock pot
2.       After about 30 minutes to an hour, take the steak out and put it in a bowl to cool

3.       Skim the blood and other impurities from the beef stock
4.       Add garlic and onion to the stock, and salt and pepper to taste
5.       When the flank steak is cool enough, shred the beef into long strips of about ¼ inch in width
6.       Add beef and gosari into the soup (pyogo mushrooms goes in at this time)
7.       Skim for additional blood and other impurities from the soup
8.       After about an hour of boiling under medium heat, check for more impurities, then add the chili powder, mung bean sprouts, and green onions
9.       Adjust the seasoning or add water to taste with salt (hondashi or dashida, if necessary)
10.   Add the beaten eggs in the soup at the last minute, stir (not too much), and then serve
* Notes: Use saeng gosari to save time. If you can only find the dried kind, soak it in water overnight. You may also cut the gosari and shredded beef into 3 inch length to match the green onions and mung bean sprouts.
** Use hondashi or dashida only if you messed up on the water levels. I do not believe in using them as soup base, but as a flavor enhancing agent of sorts. I mainly use them when I’m pressed for time.
January 20, 2011
Review: New Garden Restaurant, Los Angeles area
Written by Taeyang Yoon
Rowland Heights restaurant known for jajangmyeon
Continuing our journey down the ‘Korean’ section of Colima Road in Rowland Heights, we stop at one of my favorite places. I have been coming here on a fairly regular basis for a few months now. This restaurant is renowned for its ‘joonghwa yori’ (Chinese-Korean cooking), the people in the know go crazy over their jajangmyun (jajangmyeon) and tangsuyook – and I am one of them.
I found this place by asking some grocery store clerks nearby and almost unanimously they recommended this restaurant – New Garden Restaurant. It’s on Colima Road near the Paso Real Avenue intersection.
The restaurant itself is fairly large; it has a main dining area with about 100 seats and also a couple of private banquet rooms. The decor is clean and somewhat dominated by the two large big screen Samsung TV’s on either side of the dining area. Also, you can always find some customers slurping on some jajangmyun noodles at anytime of the day.
A huge plus for the restaurant is that the staff is excellent, probably some of the best service I receive in a ‘Chinese’ restaurant – they are very attentive and courteous. As soon as you sit down, they bring you some hot tea. After you order the food, they immediately serve you the dice onions with chunjang sauce (AKA jajang sauce) and joonghwa style cabbage kimchi. The main dishes come out not too long after the order. Just the scent of the food being served make the salivary glands instantly work in overtime, not unlike the Pavlov’s dogs.
Jjajamyun with kimchi and radish banchan served with a side of extra black bean sauce. (Photo by Taeyang Yoon)
The beauty of jajangmyun is in its simplicity. It’s just jajang sauce served over thick noodles. The sauce is made with onions, squash, and beef stir fried in black bean paste (chunjang) sauce which is thickened with some corn starch. Some gringos might call this the Chinese spaghetti, and they are not too far off in saying so. But we all know where the Italians got their noodles from…
The New Garden’s version of jajangmyun can be described as perfect sauce with machine extruded noodles. A true dish of jajangmyun is served with ‘sutamyun’, which is made by hand-pulling and beaten over the worktable. This type of noodles gives it a superior mouth-feel, but artisans who can create such noodles are getting rare today. At any rate, the New Garden’s offering gets a top-notch score in flavor, texture, and in preparation. The sauce is not sugary, not greasy, and not salty. It has just the right amount of savoriness, or umami. The noodles are cooked just right, although it is a shame that this great sauce does not get the deserved sutahmyun!
Their tangsuyook also deserves a very high praise. The meat is perfectly deep-fried with no funny, oily aftertaste. The meat actually stays crispy and the longer it sits in the sauce, the coating on the meat become chewy. At most restaurants, the tangsuyook goes soggy after a few minutes… not here. Also, to note, the sauce is not overly sweet as it often is at other places.
The ending verdict is that if you are a fan of jajangmyun, one of Korea’s national foods, or want to try it for the first time, New Garden Restaurant in Rowland Heights is one of the best.
New Garden Restaurant
18740 Colima Rd.
Rowland Heights, Calif.
(626) 912-9588
[googleMap name=”New Garden Restaurant”]18740 Colima Rd., Rowland Heights, CA[/googleMap]
December 1, 2010
Korea House, Santa Clara, California
After a five-month stay in Southern California, I returned to the San Francisco Bay Area. I began to miss good Korean food following a few evenings in various Japanese restaurants.
Jonesing for home-style 조선 Joseon food, my date and I stopped at Korea House restaurant (한국의집) in Santa Clara, located between San Tomas Expressway and Los Padres Boulevard.
Santa Clara is near San Jose in the South Bay part of the San Francisco region. A section of El Camino Real between Wolfe Road and Lincoln Street is known locally as K-town. While not as extensive as the real Koreatown in Los Angeles, this area in the city of Santa Clara has a variety of Korean cuisine.
I’ve been frequenting Korea House since I moved to the Bay Area in 2000. It’s been consistently good, even though the restaurant has changed hands a few times. The service is still great, and the food quality hasn’t dropped off. The owner of the establishment greeted us after we sat down.
The menu is well-organized with a lot of suggestions for combinations of dishes — dinner packages of sorts. We ordered 김지 찌개 kimchi jjigae (kimchi stew) and 갈비 galbi (grilled ribs).
They usually bring out first a complimentary plate of 잡채 japche (cellophane noodles with a garlicky zesty sauce and vegetables). Then a couple of minutes later, the various 반찬 banchan (side dishes) come out in myriad little dishes.
There is no fancy banchan presentation, but all the usual favorites are there: 막김치 mak-kimchi (quick kimchi), 콩나물 kongnamul (cold-boiled marinated mung bean sprouts), 시금치나물 shigeumchi namul (parboiled and marinated spinach), fire-roasted sheets of seaweed and 어묵 eomuk (fish cake).
A few moments later, we received our bowls of 밥 bap (rice), and you can’t help but start eating the rice with the various banchan. Who needs the main entrees anyways? In a number of restaurants, banchan have become the appetizer course Western diners recognize.
As we started filling up with bap and banchan, the dinner dishes makes their way on to the table. As is traditional, the kimchi jjigae is served inside a blazing-hot stone bowl, and the galbi is presented on a hot cast-iron plate.
The key to a great kimchi jjigae is, obviously, the kimchi itself. It has to be great-tasting and aged properly to give it that tangy taste. Our jjigae was seasoned properly, but the kimchi it was made from was just average in taste. Although the kimchi was aged correctly, the taste wasn’t quite over the top.
The galbi, on the other hand, was perfect in every way. The new owner did brag about how good the galbi was, and she wasn’t lying. The meat was not too sweet, was perfectly tender, and the smokiness was just right.
The first owner of this joint fed me like her own son. I have never left that place without feeling miserable due to eating too much.
The second owner kept the same food, but the service wasn’t quite the same.
The current owner seems to have her own recipes for the meat dishes. The service was great on my last visit, just like with the first owner. The owner even gave us more rice and banchan to take home with the leftover galbi, so we could have it for the next day’s lunch.
Korea House
2340 El Camino Real
Santa Clara, CA 95050
www.koreahousesantaclara.com
408-249-0808
Prices: $10–$23 (one combination barbecue dish is $58)
[googleMap name=”Korea House”]2340 El Camino Real Santa Clara, CA 95050[/googleMap]
October 10, 2010
Go Hyang Tofu Restaurant, Los Angeles area
Written by Taeyang Yoon
There is a pretty nice Korean community in the Rowland Heights/Diamond Bar area on the border of Los Angeles and Orange counties. Along Colima Road, between Fullerton Road and Fairway Drive, you can find a number of Korean and Chinese restaurants.
I was having one of those Mondays. A day filled with meetings and odd waiting times led me to skip lunch. After the last meeting, I got in the car and just started to drive. Traffic in Los Angeles was no joke that day — typical Monday evening going-home traffic. I wanted to wait until I got home to eat, but I just couldn’t hold off the hunger any longer.
On this day, due to some silly drivers on the road and bad construction markings, I ended up at Galleria Market Plaza at the corner of Fullerton and Colima roads. In the shopping center, my choices narrowed down to either a tonkatsu restaurant or Go Hyang Tofu Restaurant. The Korean script above the English sign read, Gohyang Sulungtang, or “Hometown Sulung Soup.”
It is a small place, with about 25 seats. The straightforward menu had no appetizers but various soondubu soups and some other Korean favorites. It seems this restaurant specializes in two main tang dishes — soondubu, or soft tofu, and sulung.
As for banchan, or side dishes, I was served baechu kimchi, the common spicy Nappa cabbage kind of pickled vegetables; gagtooki, or cubed daikon radish kimchi; and soy sauce–braised potatoes.
The star attraction: sulungtang
If sulungtang is in the name of the joint, it had to be good. My bowl of it came a couple of minutes after the banchan. The broth looked great. I added some sea salt and chopped green onions to my taste. Then, I dumped the accompanying bowlful of rice into the soup.
Personally, I’m a gomtang kind of a guy. If you like gomtang, you may not like sulungtang. The two soups may look very similar, but they are slightly different. Gomtang uses more types of bones in the stock and it’s cooked much, much longer, providing a much deeper taste. Sulungtang is lighter in taste, because it’s cooked relatively fast. Sulung is roughly translated “haste” or “hollow.”
Go Hyang’s sulungtang had nice texture or viscosity. The meat was excellently prepared, sliced thin and without the funny aftertaste it often has in basic Korean restaurants.
One reservation I had with the soup was the flavor was rather bland. I know, it was sulungtang and not gomtang, but there was absolutely no umami, or savory, taste to the broth. Maybe it was an off-day for the kitchen.
So, in the three categories that make a great Korean tang, Go Hyang gets top-notch scores on two: color/viscosity and meat preparation. This makes me want to go for a second time to confirm the impression.
Go Hyang Tofu Restaurant
18311 Colima Road
Rowland Heights, Calif.
(626) 913-7104
[googleMap name=”Go Hyang Tofu Restaurant 고향설렁탕”]18311 Colima Road Rowland Heights, CA[/googleMap]
Taeyang Yoon is an entrepreneur who has owned and operated a small Asian fusion restaurant with a sushi/sake bar. He loves to marry flavors and textures from various parts of the world and tries to make them his own. Although, he is not professionally trained in a culinary school, nor journalism, that doesn’t stop him from opining on the world of food. He founded KarFarm.com and bokko10.com, and you can find him roaming around the San Francisco Bay Area or Southern California.
August 6, 2010
Calbi Fusion Tacos and Burritos, Los Angeles
Credit: systemf99 on Photobucket
Written by Taeyang Yoon
Korean taco trucks are part of the growing assortment truck-based cuisine, offering simple fusion of Korean-style marinated meat with Mexican tacos. Although, it’s not as simple as just replacing taco meat with Korean barbecue.
Privately owned Kogi BBQ was the first Korean taco truck and now operates four trucks in the Los Angeles area. Calbi Fusion Tacos and Burritos, started last year and now owned by Baja Fresh Mexican Grill, operates arguably the largest fleet of Korean taco trucks in the U.S., with six trucks in Los Angeles and active interest in franchisees.
One of my friend’s brothers runs MoGo BBQ trucks serving Korean tacos in San Jose, Calif., so I had some baseline to work with. Unfortunately, I haven’t tried Kogi’s offerings yet.
I encountered Calbi while strolling around Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, a.k.a. Japantown. A familiar scent wafted through the air — Korean barbecue on the grill — but there wasn’t a Korean restaurant to be seen. Then my friends and I spotted a Calbi truck, parked as it usually is across the street from the Honda Plaza, located at East Second Street and South Central Avenue. Although we were full from dinner at Honey Pig in Koreatown, we gave it a go.
We ordered the spicy pork taco ($1.99). The meat certainly had the Korean flavor to it, though a little too sweet, which is common. The tenderness and texture were good, and the spiciness was well-controlled, what could be classified as medium hot. There is a gamut of hot sauces and other condiments available, if you want it to be hotter. A hint of charred flavor came through the mild dressing and crisp chopped greens.
Overall, the sweet, savory flavor with a slight kick worked well with the cooling effect of the dressing, tortilla, cheese and toasted sesame seeds.
I would recommend it to those who are new to Korean barbecue and want something different from a traditional Mexican taco. Yet Koreans and those well-versed in Korean food likely would find fault.
It’s one of those things that are more of a novelty than a new food revolution. You try it once and be appreciative of people who are attempting something like this, getting the word out about the Korean food and culture.
Calbi Fusion Tacos and Burritos on the Internet: Website, Facebook, Twitter
Taeyang Yoon is an entrepreneur who has owned and operated a small Asian fusion restaurant with a sushi/sake bar. He loves to marry flavors and textures from various parts of the world and tries to make them his own. Although, he is not professionally trained in a culinary school, nor journalism, that doesn’t stop him from opining in the world of food. He has founded KarFarm.com and bokko10.com, and you can find him roaming around the SF Bay Area or SoCal.
July 23, 2010