Part of the plot–did I just imply there was a plot–was that Yu Je-suk’s team, the red one, made a sauce that was god awfully salty. Rocks could float in it. Seeing how they made the sauce now scares me even more. Glad I didn’t see it at the time.
I did a behind-the-scenes video too–in the style of Running Man and most over post-produced Korean TV celebrity shows.
Simon and Martina have done it again. Their videos keep getting better and better. This time they’re featuring their favorite coffee shop, Café Lua in Bucheon, which also makes great waffles and mojitos. It’s fun to watch just for the mood.
Samsung gave me an HD video camera. In exchange I’m doing a few videos for their Samsung Imaging blog.
This latest video is some behind-the-scenes footage I took of the Experience Korean Temple Cuisine event in New York, where I was one of the main speakers. To read more about this video, go to the Samsung Imaging blog.
Getting the hang of doing this video thing again.
The above photo/video has been shot with the HMX-M20,
My most ambitious class video project has been rescued!
In May 2007, we made a few videos at my old school. The one that took the most effects work was one the kids called, “Earth Is Gone.” That was the premise. They came up with the ideas, and I wrote the script, trying to highlight the students’ individual personalities. I used filters, music and shots to mimic Battlestar Galactica, and I figured out a way to cut out the Millennium Falcon and superimpose it on the Seoul cityscape.
It wasn’t easy.
After all that work, YouTube killed it a year after it went online. Some software they were using was looking for music copyright violations. Even though I argued that the clips I used fell into Fair Use, they removed the entire audio from the movie and replaced it with some stock music. The dialogue was gone. Everything.
I had experienced one of my famous computer breakdowns before then, and all original copies of this movie were gone–like a meteor struck them. There was no way to retrieve anything from all that hard work the kids put into that.
I found out today that the old version had been restored. I was so happy that I went ahead and added Closed Captioning so viewers could fully understand the dialogue. Here it is.
While we’re on the topic of student videos, here’s the classic “Clash of the Superkids” vid we made around that time.
Samsung Imaging has posted the first in a series of videos I’m making for them. This is a video I made on the last day of my infamous cooking class this summer. We made character dosirak, which many of you know as “bento.”
Head on over to the Samsung Imaging blog to read the gory details.
It looks like this has been out since early 2010, and I just found it today. I still don’t know what to think of it.
I like the food and atmosphere. It starts out at a hanok in the rain (get it? Rain?). And then Rain comes out and basks in his genderless glory while talking about how much you crave for a “ball” of bibimbap on “a day like diss.”
This is a great ad if you turn down the volume and cut out the bits with Rain looking like a Noxema model. EJ said this, too. Well, not the Noxema part. But she said it looked great if Rain wasn’t in there.
Then there’s the script, another reason to turn down the volume. Rather than talk about what’s so great about bibimbap, they give quick clinical instructions on how to make bibimbap. “Lightly stir-fry or boil seasonal vegetables.”
And then the dreaded health benefits at the end. These days, I’ve lightened up about promoting the health qualities of Korean food. But this is a prime example of putting health before taste. Two mentions of healthiness and one single passing mention of taste.
The YouTube page promotes the website hansik.org, which is given the task of promoting Korean food to the rest of the world–in Korean. A classic case of Koreans promoting overseas to impress other Koreans. More proof that this heavily funded international campaign is as much for domestic consumption as it is for actually… promoting… Korean… food.
This is also a textbook example of Korean marketing’s over-reliance on celebrity endorsements, even when the market barely knows who it is in the ad. If I hadn’t told you it was Rain, would you have recognized Ninja Assassin? The American public only knows Rain, if they can remember him, from a comedy stint on Stephen Colbert a couple of years ago and as an actor on two bad movies. If you insist on getting a celebrity, why not get one people recognize, like Kim Yunjin, Sandra Oh or Daniel Dae Kim? I also hear Gwyneth Paltrow is a big fan of bibimbap.
Ah, but it was a rainy day today, and I did have bibimbap for lunch. A good one. And I did feel wholesome afterward–like going to church on Easter. Maybe Rain wins this one.
The crew at Arirang followed my fat dumpy self around for a day, talking about how Korean food encapsulates aspects of the Korean character. We eat at Gwanghwamun Jip and Mapo Jeong Depo. Thanks to Zach, Yuni and Stafford for joining. And thanks to Yoonmi for making sense out of that day of shooting.
Oh, and yes, I know my name is spelled wrongly. I’ve learned that it just happens with a name like McPherson.
I bought the Korean version of Bae Yong Joon’s best-selling book, The Journey to Discover the Beauty of Korea. I got the book because I knew there would be several Korean food recipes tucked in the pages. I got excited when I found his recipe for Kalbi steak so I decided I would work translating the recipe into English (ahead of Bae’s forthcoming English version) and also test out the recipe to make sure the ingredients and methods would work in an American kitchen.
Even though the kalbi recipe excited me (and my family) the most, there are other noteworthy recipes in the book as well, including Bae’s mother’s personal recipe for cucumber kimchi (page 67).
My first step in translating this recipe for American audiences was to try to make sure I got the correct cut of beef rib. The picture Bae included is a spartan shot of the finished kalbi steak on a plate. It did not look like the chopped up beef ribs one usually finds in the grocery store for braised ribs. It also didn’t look like the wang kalbi style that one finds all over Korea and at higher end kalbi restaurants in the USA. Bae’s recipe does not use the thinly sliced LA style kalbi ribs like those featured in my own Kalbi video on YouTube.
I took my book to the nearest butcher. I showed him the picture in Bae’s book and asked him what kind of beef rib was in the picture. He was adamant that Bae’s kalbi steak was made with Beef Plate Short Ribs.
These ribs are a much thicker cut than I’ve ever seen in Korean cuisine. I bought four plate ribs and brought them home. Each rib was 8-9 inches long and over an inch thick. There’s no way that these behemoth ribs are the same thing as Bae’s photo but I tried to make them work within the specifications of Bae’s recipe. These ribs could have been a stand in for T-Rex ribs in a Flinstones movie.
Fortunately, the marinade was much less dramatic and traumatic.
Bae’s kalbi steak recipe is divided into three parts: First he lists the ingredients for the kalbi steak marinade. Then he provides a recipe for the Hyang Shin Jeup sauce (향신즙) which is then mixed into the marinade. At the end, he gives instructions on how to cook the ribs.
If you live near a Koreatown or a well stocked Korean grocery store, you don’t have to make your own Hyang Shin Jeup from scratch. Sempio(샘표), a South Korean food company, sells a version they call “Gourmet Seasoning Sauce.” I’m standing by Bae’s version (even though it takes some work) because not everyone has access to a well-stocked Korean grocery store.
Here is my paraphrase of Bae Yong Joon’s Kalbi Steak Recipe. My comments are in parenthesis. I double checked my paraphrased translation of this recipe with my local Korean grocer to make sure I understood the recipe.
To prep 3-4 flanken cut beef ribs, you need to score them approximately a quarter way down to the rib so the beef will not contort while boiling or grilling.
How to make the Kalbi Steak Marinade
1 cup 향신즙 juice 1/3 cup soy sauce *50 ml (approx 3 tbsp) 맛술 mirin *50 ml (approx 3 tbsp) Cheongju rice wine (similar to Japanese sake) 2/3 cup sugar (설탕) 1/3 cup sesame seed oil a pinch of black pepper
(*Bae’s recipe calls for 50 cc of mirin and cheongju rice wine but cc is equal to ml)
How to make the Hyang Sin Jeup juice (향신즙)
100 grams (approx. 1/3 cup) Korean radish 100 grams (approx 1/3 cup) Korean pear 100 grams (approx 1/3 cup) garlic 10 grams of ginger
Grate the radish, pear, garlic and ginger. (I did it by hand but a food processor or a juicer will do the job, too). Strain in fine cheese cloth (or a fine mesh strainer). Add to the marinade.
How to pre-cook and marinade the ribs
1. Put the ribs in cold water and rinse off the blood. 2. Cook the ribs for 2-3 minutes in boiling water. Pull out the ribs and allow them to cool down before putting the ribs in the marinade. Marinade all day until you are ready to grill or broil the ribs.
Here is where I ran into real problems. Bae recommends pre-boiling the ribs for about 2-3 minutes in boiling water and then pull them out, allow them to cool down and put them in the marinade all day until you’re ready to grill them.
I ran into a lot of problems very quickly
I didn’t have a cooking pot tall enough to fit these very long ribs completely into the pot to boil them and getting them evenly boiled was a lot of work.
I didn’t have a bowl large enough to properly marinade them so I had to buy the largest Tupperware dish I could find (larger than a lasagna pan) to marinade the ribs.
Boiling these thick ribs for only 2-3 minutes wasn’t going to shorten the broiling time enough to make this practical. I boiled them for over 1/2 an hour before marinading them and they still took over an hour, baking at 375 to get to medium rare. I don’t eat meat medium rare on purpose.
So I went back to the drawing board, throwing out the counsel of my well-meaning, non-Korean butcher. I went online and found a page called The Zen of beef ribs and reached an epiphany. Bae has been using flanken ribs all along but he wasn’t using the skinny cut common to LA Kalbi. He was using a thicker cut of flanken ribs. So, I went back to the butcher and ordered up 4 flanken cut beef ribs, approximately 1-2 inches thick.
The right beef rib, an English cut flanken rib. Trim off most of the visible fat but you do need to leave some on while it's cooking.
Bae mentions scoring the ribs so they will broil evenly. This is fine on the top but there’s another step you must take to make sure the ribs do not shrink and contort while grilling. On the backside of the ribs, you’ll find the silver skin, but it is not an edible or tasty silver lining. You must take your sharp chef’s knife and remove the silver skin from the ribs. If you do it right, the silver skin will come off in one strip.
The final product with the right cut of rib.
This time the recipe worked out very well. I baked the ribs at 375 for about 45 minutes to an hour to get them medium well and I was very happy with the results. Since the recipe includes natural sugar from the Asian pear as well as some granulated sugar, you will have some charring, which is unavoidable if you cook the ribs to medium well or well-done.
The ribs got rave reviews and my family are already begging me to make them again.
Someone texted me about this show with Chef Paul Schenk of the Intercontinental Hotel(s). It’s on Arirang, which is the international English channel Korea puts out internationally. You likely would see it in your hotel room when traveling Asia.
The production values ain’t too bad on this one. I really like it. And Paul’s an energetic host. He’s also really big into Korean food.
If you don’t have Arirang or just want to watch it on your computer, you can do it here.
I must warn you. Arirang, like many (if not most) Korean web sites, is stuck in the 1990s. You need to use Internet Explorer, sign in to view it, download some ActiveX controls, and the “High” quality video is a streaming Windows Media file that’s just over 300 pixels wide.
People say that about the Korean internet. It has high speeds, but the web sites themselves are archaic. It’s like building a large superhighway for horse and buggy traffic.
Nonetheless, Korea Confidential is a good show to watch.
