Category: Recipes

This is my mock up of my favorite restaurant slaw. The preparation method I got from Alton Brown.

INGREDIENTS
1 head of Cabbage, thinly shredded
Salt
1 Onion, thinly shredded
1 Carrot, thinly shredded
2 tsp. Sugar
1 Tbsp. Vinegar
Mayonnaise
2 Tbsp. Buttermilk (optional)

1. Rub a lot of Salt in the Cabbage and let it sit in a collandar over a bowl for an hour. This leeches out a good bit of water, preventing the slaw from getting watery.
2. Rinse the Cabbage thoroughly by dunking it in a bowl of water and draining it again in the collander.
3. Combine with the Onions and Carrots.
4. Mix the Mayonnaise, Sugar, Vinegar, and Buttermilk and combine with the vegetables.
5. Add lots of Black Pepper, tasting for balance.
6. Refrigerate for 1 hour before serving, giving the flavors time to mingle and mellow.

Sometimes I enjoy a simple food from childhood. Of course I make it a little more grown up. Korean stores have canned baked beans, but I haven’t heard of any cases of them being used as actual baked beans, like a can of cream of mushroom soup in America is more a casserole ingredient than a soup. Baked beans in Korea are used in budae jjigae, a stew made from ingredients from U.S. Army surplus around the time of the Korean War.

Hot dogs are available. They honestly aren’t that good. I prefer the sausages they make at E-Mart.

I first sweated some onions, green pepper, and a little garlic. I then cooked some sliced sausage in the pan.

Next came the canned baked beans. From there, it was a matter of balancing the flavors with yellow mustard, maple syrup, brown sugar, black pepper, and a splash of whiskey.

Again, this dish was me placating my childhood memories. People love foods from their childhoods, no matter how disgusting they can be. That’s why I’m not as crazy about some foods that Koreans had as children, like dried squid, silkworm larvae, and the tea made from pouring hot water into the scrapings of rice served in a hot stone pot.

Yet Eun Jeong loved the beanie weenies. She ate more of them than I did. She ate the leftovers for breakfast. She like my childhood food more than me.

I wonder what she would think of grilled peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

Everyone has that special food they really miss from home. I didn’t become aware of mine until I was just craving it. Italian sandwiches are just about my favorite food in the world. It really got bad when I had a short stint working at Jersey Mike’s Subs. Jersey Mike’s has been in the business for a long time. They started on the Jersey shore and slowly expanded. The guy who started Blimpie used to work for them.

I really got into their Jersey style Italian sandwiches. There were many ways to make them, but there were a few techniques and a few rules, or the sandwich was ruined.

The trick, as with any western food in Korea, is in finding the ingredients. Scouring around at my local E-Mart, I found frozen imported balogna and salami. Better processed meats are popping up in the refrigerated section, next to the cheddar cheese. From that I got a stick of pepperoni-style hard salami and a little block of ham coated in cracked pepper.

That took care of the meats. I got some cheddar cheese from the same case where I got the ham and hard salami. I know the Kim’s Club at Beomgye station has swiss cheese, but I’ve been too lazy to go down there.

Now, of course, making a sandwich is a no-brainer. Put something in between two slices of bread. Simple. I’m not going to insult your intelligence by telling you how to make a sandwich. Yet there are ways to make one better.

The great tool for sandwich making is one of those cheap plastic slicers. The metal ones are called ‘mandolins’ and are expensive. This cheapo slicer is great because you can just chuck it and get a new one when it wears down.

The first thing I do is slice vegetables. In this case, some cucumbers and lots and lots of thinly sliced onions.

I then shave the ham and pepperoni. This can get a bit dangerous, so here’s a safe way to do it. Get a work glove to protect your hand. Cover the work glove with a plastic glove for sanitation. It’s some work, but I just love shaved ham.

When everything is done, slice the bread in half. I usually use a baguette from a local bakery — one of the few bakery items in Korea that isn’t infected with sugar. I found a bakery near my house that sells delicious garlic baguettes. The thing to remember when getting a baguette at a Korean bakery is that they will almost always ask if you want them to slice it. It’s hard to tell what they’re saying because they will not always make the slicing motion when they ask you. Just be alert, and when you think they’re asking you if you want it sliced, say, “An’yo.”

One technique I sometimes do with a sandwich like this is scoop out the insides. I learned from Rodney Dangerfield.

Now, the big rule about Italian subs: Only oil and vinegar. NO MAYONNAISE!

I coat the bread with extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

I then pile on the vegetables, including lettuce from a ssam bag (see Gumbo-less Gumbo) and some jalapenos (which are starting to pop up more frequently in supermarkets).

On the other side, I laid down the meats, loosely piling the shaved ham.

After putting the two sides together, the last thing I do is squeeze the bread. I learned this at Jersey Mike’s, and supposedly it’s a European technique. Squeezing it helps the flavors meld together. I remember watching the Two Fat Ladies, and they put a brick on a sandwich to give the same effect.

In fact, tightly squeezing and wrapping the sandwich and letting it sit in the fridge overnight makes it taste better.

I’m not sure what to make of this one.

Honestly, I have grown to like veggie burgers. Veggie burger technology, coming from the chemical geniuses in New Jersey, have made them not only tastier, but more texturally pleasing.

I’ve also met a good many vegetarians in Korea from the West. It’s possible to eat vegetarian in Korea. In fact, Korea has some of the best vegetarian food in the world. Yet there aren’t many non-Korean vegetarian alternatives available.

I caught a show, Chef at Home, where Chef Michael Smith came up with an enticing veggie burger recipe. His goal was to make them full of non-animal protein yet make them taste meaty. His secrets were Japanese mushrooms and Japanese miso paste.

Immediately, it occured to me that using Korean ingredients would make them taste even meatier — or stronger, at least.

I started by gathering all the ingredients.
Included were some Korean mushrooms,

some barley (boribap 보리밥),

rosemary and thyme from my “garden,” red Korean peppers, and Korean doenjang paste (the “stinky miso”).

In fact, I’ll break my usual convention and list all the ingredients at once.

Olive Oil
2 packages of hearty Mushrooms
2 Onions, chopped
Handful of Garlic, chopped
3 Red Korean Peppers, seeded and sliced
1/2 cup of Short Grain Rice, rinsed
1/2 cup of Barley
2 cups of Water
Soy Sauce
Hite Stout Beer
Fresh Rosemary and Thyme
2 Eggs
1 block of Firm Tofu
1 big dollop of Dwenjang Paste
1 cup of Panko Breadcrumbs
Salt and Pepper

I started by slowly sweating the mushrooms, onions, red peppers, and garlic in olive oil, seasoned with black pepper, a little bit of salt, and the herbs.

I slowly cooked the mixture down until the liquid was almost gone. At that point, it tasted pretty good, like Thanksgiving stuffing. Maybe I could serve that as it was.

I then added the barley, rice, water, a quick pour of soy sauce, and a bit of the stout I was drinking.

I put a lid on it and slowly simmered it until the rice and barley had softened. It still looked, smelled, and tasted pretty good.

In a blender I pureed the tofu, eggs, and doenjang. I tried adding the breadcrumbs, but this blender just ain’t that powerful. I added it instead to the rice mixture.

When the rice mixture had cooled, I pureed it and mixed it with the breadcrumbs and tofu mixture.

Then I rolled them,

patted them, and put them in the fridge to firm up a bit.

After an hour or so, I pan fried them in olive oil and toasted some split butter rolls. Since I’m not anything near being a vegetarian, I threw on some sharp cheddar cheese.

I dressed them in onions and mustard, similar to small hamburgers made in certain establishments.

Honestly, the hamburgers tasted pretty good when I ate them. But still, they weren’t something I wanted to eat again. That’s too bad since I made a good many of them (anyone out there want some extra frozen veggie burger patties).

I’m thinking that maybe I put in too much tofu, or the tofu was not necessary at all. It felt like something was missing — like meat. Maybe someone out there could help me fix this recipe. I never claim to be an expert in all this. I’m just bumping my way through a kitchen in Korea.

I found cheddar!!!

Seriously, the cheese section at Korean supermarkets is as large as the kimchi section in American ones. They mostly have just processed cheese and mozzarella. Recently, a few swiss and brie varieties have popped up.

But now, I have finally found cheddar cheese at the E-Mart here in Anyang. Of course, it’s more expensive than in the U.S., but not grotesquely so. I bought a good 12 oz.* block of it.

It sat in the fridge for a while, and one night while walking home, I decided to make something I hadn’t had in a long time, Welsh Rabbit.

I had started getting into a British food freak out before leaving for Korea, and I remembered one pub making it on some great bread with a slice of fried bacon and a slice of ripe tomato.

My pace quickened. Then another brainstorm hit. Since I have cheddar, I can also make macaroni and cheese. I truly missed this essential comfort food.

Oh man, which should I have?

Thought occurred.

No way, really? Hmm”¦ It might just work.

I got home and proceeded to make a roux with a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of flour over medium high heat. I then poured in a quart of milk and stirred constantly to make a basic white sauce, for about the time it took to drink one beer. I also had some elbow macaroni boiling in salted water.

When the sauce started bubbling, I cubed the cheddar and gradually added it. Each time I added a little, I stirred until it blended with the sauce.

One ingredient I didn’t have on hand for making Welsh Rabbit was dry mustard. I read some recipe on the internet that suggested substituting with prepared mustard. So I added a squirt of yellow mustard, a cup of beer, and a few shakes of Worcestershire sauce, along with some salt and black pepper, tasting it until it tasted just right.

Next, I added the drained macaroni, stirred, and when it started bubbling again, I took it off the heat and served it with diced tomatoes as garnish.

Turned out pretty good. I had made a lot, and I ended up eating it for meals and snacks for a week, and I didn’t get tired of it.

* I guess 12 oz. because everything’s metric here. I honestly didn’t check the weight on the package, but it was around the size I remember 12 oz. blocks of cheese were.

So far, this may be my crowning achievement in attempting to mimic foods from home with Korean ingredients. It’s also funny that foods I didn’t eat much at home I crave badly over here.

Specifically, gumbo.

Wikipedia has a good article on gumbo, if you are interested.

Now, I grew up on seafood gumbo. I specifically remember my grandmother spending all day making a pot of it. She put whole blue crabs in there with shrimp and oysters. I figured that seafood is so readily available in Korea that it would be a sin not to attempt it.

Yet when one thing becomes available, another is hard to find, specifically celery and okra. Okra is a slimy vegetable when cooked and is used to thicken gumbo. In fact, the word gumbo comes from the Central Bantu word kigombo, which means okra. Purists say that gumbo is not gumbo without okra.

But I have no okra, and I don’t like okra.

The slimy consistency of okra is used as a thickening agent anyway. I took care of that with a roux. (I also don’t have the other thickening agent, filé, but it also isn’t necessary unless you’re going completely authentic.)

I had attempted gumbo only once back in the States with miserable results. Too many thickening agents. My little sister had made a really good gumbo before I came to Korea. I asked her what her recipe was.

“Um, I just bought some gumbo from the store and added stuff to it.”

I researched books I had on hand, specifically Food, Fun, and Fable: Recipes and tales the river country (from Meme’s on Bon Secour River) and Bay Seasons Cookbook from the Junior Auxiliary of the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay. I also checked on recipes from Emeril and Tyler Florence.

So, this really was a crap shoot. I had no idea where I was going.

Now, even though I could do without the okra and filé, I needed celery. It’s part of the basic mirepoix. Celery is obviously found at Costco, but the rules I follow for the Food For Foreigners is to do it without cheating at Costco. The larger stores, such as E-Mart and Home Plus, sometimes carry celery.

If that is too hard to find, well, the ssam bag usually has celery. It’s a bag that’s with all the lettuce on display. This is a great product to buy when you’re making western food. It’s various lettuce leaves for the purpose of wrapping Korean BBQ, and it’s cheap. But it is also the interesting lettuces that are used in nice restaurant salads in the west. Look closely at the ssam bag at the local grocery store. There are some celery tips in there, just enough to make a mirepoix.

The first step is to make sure you have time to do all this. It takes a while. It was a strange experience for Eun Jeong. She’s used to Korean soups that are instantly thrown together per order at the local shikdang.

“Is it ready yet?”

“Not yet.”

“It takes too long.”

“It’s worth it. Trust me.”

I melted a stick of butter in a pan over medium heat and added a cup of flour to make the roux and stirred…

And stirred…

And stirred. They say that making the proper gumbo roux takes as much time as it does to drink a beer. Okay, half done.

There. It’s supposed to be the color of chocolate.

While it was turning color, Eun Jeong helped me finish chopping and crushing in the mortar and pestle (what I call the “Wesley Crusher”) the mirepoix of celery, two onions, a package of Korean peppers, and a handful of garlic.


I added the mirepoix to the roux. (Why do the French add so many x’s that they don’t pronounce?.) Cooked that a bit.

Now, here is where we diverge and get to our own little creativities. If you’re making a chicken gumbo, use chicken stock. If you’re making seafood gumbo, use some dashi.

Since indecision runs in the family, I made chicken seafood gumbo.

I added the roux to some boiling chicken stock.

Eun Jeong and I removed the meat from the chicken used in the stock. I let the stew simmer for thirty minutes.

I then added a package of frozen seafood I found at E-Mart, which included crab, mussels, shrimp, fish, and calamari. At the end, I added some fresh oysters.

I adjusted the flavors a bit with some salt. I also cheated a bit by adding some Old Bay seasoning and Tony Cachere’s Cajun Seasoning. But really, the mirepoix and the dark roux are the heart of the gumbo flavor.

Served over rice, it was an amazing reminder of home. Eun Jeong loved it, but she said chicken without the seafood would have been better. I sort of agree. Calamari and mussels don’t seem right. But served with a crusty baguette and a cold beer, it’s a great relaxer for a lazy Sunday afternoon.