Tag: Korean snack

Recipe: Chamchi Jeon (Korean tuna cakes)
Many keep some cans of tuna in the pantry as an inexpensive source of protein. But for a number of Americans, the only purpose for canned tuna is tuna salad or cat food.
Veer from the deep-rutted tuna salad trail with this easy recipe for 참치전 chamchi jeon. These little, two-bite-sized tuna cakes are seasoned simply with salt, pepper, onion and a little garlic. That helps them pair well with bolder, spicier main dishes or kimchi banchan (pickled vegetable side dishes).

I used common canned tuna in my version of this recipe. However, if you are able to get your hands on the Korean canned tuna commonly sold for making kimchi jjigae, use it. It’s pre-marinaded in spicy gochujang and will add some spice and excitement to your tuna cakes.
If you want to eat them western style, you can serve them with tartar sauce, spicy mayonnaise or tzatziki. I served them with a couple of Korean dipping sauces: vinegar spicy pepper sauce (식초 고추장 shikcho gochujang) and vinegar soy sauce (초간장 cho ganjang).
Based on recipe by Naomi Imatome-Yun.
August 20, 2012
Review of Korean taco truck Seoul on Wheels
I found Seoul on Wheels at the Eat Real Food Festival in Oakland, Calif. at Jack London Square. Julia Yoon was serving up a truncated menu of Beef, Chicken, Pork or Tofu Korean tacos and spicy chilled noodles.
We tried the chicken and beef Korean tacos. They were very good. The charcoal grilled beef and chicken BBQ was served on a corn tortilla with chopped romaine lettuce, sliced daikon radish and topped with sour cream and spicy gochujang. The bulgogi taco had the right amount of sweet and savory that one expects from bulgogi and the grilled chicken was a good kind of spicy. A small amount of sour cream kept the spice balanced.
The best part of our visit to Seoul on Wheels (besides trying their food) is an impromptu interview I did with a young man who was trying Korean food for the first time. Check out his reaction to his first bite at 2:03.
Seoul on Wheels has a Twitter account with more than 3,700 followers broadcasting their whereabouts. You can also find them on Facebook.
March 28, 2011
The Olive Garlic Roll
I’ve heard the rumors of its existence. My crack photography skills caught a glimpse of this freak of nature: Dunkin’ Donuts’ Olive Garlic Roll. It’s like a cinnamon bun but with garlic and olive oil instead of stuff that should be in a pastry. I guess they feel the pressure from the bakery chains’ production model, which can be summed up as, “What would a five-year-old put together in a kitchen?”
In other news, EJ made me exorcise the Garlic Pies from the house, and I gave it to some students–who loved them.
April 30, 2010
Garlic Pie
I was on a PKW (Pregnant Korean Wife) craving run at the store when I came across a box of cookies that had this in hangeul.
Oooh, “Gallic Pie!” Some super French pastry–hey! What’s that clove of garlic doing there… whut… uh… mm… no. It can’t be!
I turned it over and saw the English title at the top. I had to buy the box to see if it was true.
This goes back to one of my pet peeves about modern Korean foods. There is a documented tendency for cultures to sweeten foods adopted from others. But sometimes I think Korea goes a bit overboard. It’s very difficult to find buttered garlic bread without a good handful of sugar thrown on it. The tomato juice is sweetened–sometimes turned into popsicles. Bacon and egg toast comes with a heaping dollop of kiwi sauce if you don’t stop the lady in time. Corn dogs are covered in sugar. Pizzas are piped with sweet potato mousse. Burgers come with syrupy sweet bulgogi sauce. And most all western food comes with the ubiquitous sweet pickles.
::sigh::
The things I do for you people.
Okay, I’ll say this. I like the texture. Mostly sweet and not much garlic. Overall the thing ain’t that bad if it wasn’t for the lingering hint of garlic–a lingering hint that grows after you eat it, leaving your mouth vampire proof for an hour.
There. I tried it so you didn’t have to. That’s the service we provide at the ZKFJ.
April 21, 2010
Ice Cream for a Dentist’s Kid
I love summer’s new ice creams! This one is called Al Gum Bar. What makes this one unique?
Yes, it contains sugarless gum with that magical tooth enhancing ingredient, xylitol. Actually, I think it’s the Xylitol brand gum, which, okay, does have xylitol in it. Whatever. There’s gum there.
And it’s in the “stick.” Had to take this picture fast because the ice cream was collapsing. Camera just refused to focus.
The ice cream itself is strawberry flavor with what I think is a basic ice milk middle. The strawberry flavor was too over powering to taste what the middle part was. So why do they have it?
Maybe it’s just decoration.
Finishing the bar gives you a vial of contraband. I wonder how far I’ll get at the airport with something like this.
There we have it. Gum. In an ice cream bar. Now you can clean your teeth after eating a sugary snack.
Guilt free.
August 7, 2008
"They Taste Like Nuts, But They're Juicy Inside"
Joshua from An American in Geoje and his friend Michael recently had a very ZenKimchi experience dear to my heart. They went to what seems like a makkoli bar and randomly tried the food there. Makkoli bars are shamelessly traditional–to the point that the guys were served Beondaeggi 번댁기 (Silkworm Larvae) in lieu of peanuts when they sat down.
And get this… they weren’t too squeamish about them. Michael seemed to enjoy them. They then ordered something random off the menu. They can read Korean but are still learning what the words mean. So they had already started eating their order before Joshua bothered checking his dictionary to find out what it was.
Read on to find out.
April 22, 2008
Kids Love Squid
The only thing I have ever had to ban in the classroom is dried squid, ojingeo오징어.
IT STINKS!!!
Actually, I occasionally enjoy dried squid. It matches well with beer. It tastes better than it smells, but OMG–it can truly reek. You can almost smell it in this instructional video.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wll-VJfv_Q]
It comes in different flavors. My favorites are barbecue and butter. If you go to see a movie, you can even get peanut butter flavored dried squid.This leads to one of my more surprising observations: in Korea, kids love squid.
They frequently snack on this, and it is marketed to kids next to the candies.
When I taught kindergarten, the schools had birthday parties each month for the students whose birthdays fell on that month. There were kids each month who would not touch cake. They couldn’t stand it. But all of the kids attacked an opened bag of dried squid.
Observe.
Like velociraptors on a holstein.
So the conclusion of my unscientific survey: kids love squid more than chocolate cake.
January 20, 2007
“Popping Sue” – The Summertime Treat
I haven’t seen any treat like this anywhere else. Patbingsu 팥빙수 (or “Popping Sue” to foreigners) is a Korean summertime treat, that, in my mind, divides ice cream into all its separate elements and throws it back together minus the eggs.
It’s a simple concept, really. It’s shaved ice topped with sweetened red beans (the “pat”), fruit (usually canned, jellied, or dried), syrup, ddeok (chewy rice cakes), and milk (fresh or condensed). Now, that’s not how each patbingsu is made. Giving a concrete official ingredient list of patbingsu is like giving an official ingredient list to an ice cream sundae. It depends on who’s serving it and the taste of the customer. Some varieties get pretty far out there. I’ve heard of creamed corn being thrown on there.
Like Bibimbap, you take this concoction and stir it until the individual components are unrecognizable.
This is another one of those dishes that creates emphatic divided opinions amongst people. Eun Jeong absolutely loves it. Others hate it. I personally — well, I’d take an ice cream over Popping Sue, but if it’s put in front of me, I’d enjoy it. I’m one of those foreigners who actually likes the sweetened red beans. It’s the shaved ice with milk that turns me off.
I think it reminds me of a bad experiment I made with the Snoopy Sno-Cone Makertm when I was a kid.

August 14, 2006
Ppeppero Day

Children get all excited about this day, Ppeppero Day.
Ppeppero comes from the Korean root meaning “skinny.” These are skinny cookie sticks dipped in chocolate. Ppeppero Day occurs on November 11th, or 11/11.
Get it?
It’s an obvious commercial ploy by the Korean conglomerates, more than likely Lotte, to obligate children to buy candies on a specified day. It’s really no different from Hallmark inventing Valentine’s Day to sell more greeting cards.
When I talk about Ppeppero Day with Korean adults, they almost all ask, “What do you think about that?”
The adults are acutely aware of the commercial propaganda of this day. Being a teacher and a parent, I have learned that one person alone is powerless against a multi-million dollar marketing campaign.
So I bought a few 500 won packs of Bpebpero to hand out to my students.

On Ppeppero Day, we teachers also receive Ppeppero from students. This was only my second Ppeppero Day, but in one year’s time, it seems like the flavor has improved a lot. Last year, I could barely eat the things because they tasted so laden with chemicals.
This year they tasted more natural, like a delicate Swiss cookie. And they had larger, more creative varieties. My favorite was essentially a waffle cone rolled into a long tube and dipped in chocolate. It was a foot long.
And also, they can be pretty useful. Their pencil-like shapes come in handy when you run out of ink.

June 30, 2006