Location: Mapo
Cuisine: Korean, Snack Food, Pub Grub
Reservations: No
Suggested Items: Modeum Jeon (Various Pancakes), Modeum Twigim (Various Fried Things)
Other Amenities:
Phone: 02-715-3775
Website:
Location
[mappress mapid=”88″]
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Location: Mapo-dong
Cuisine: Korean (South Jeolla Province)
Reservations: Accepted. Especially need them on weekend evenings.
Suggested Items: MulHui, Hui DeopBap
Other Amenities:
Phone: 02-714-1233
Website:
Location
More pictures on Flickr.
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Location: Chain
Cuisine: Korean
Reservations: Accepted
Suggested Items: Beats me
Other Amenities: English menu
Location
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Location: Itaewon, Samcheong, Myeong-dong
Cuisine: Korean
Reservations: Optional
Suggested Items: Pork cheeks
Other Amenities:
Phone: Check map
Location
Location: Gwanghwamun
Cuisine: Korean
Reservations: None
Suggested Items: Kimchi jjigae 김치 찌개, Gyeran mari 계란마리 (rolled omelet)
Menu
공기밥 Gongibap (Rice) W1,000
생두부 Saeng Dubu (Fresh Tofu) W2,000
계란마리 Gyeran Mari (Rolled Omelet) W5,000
제육볶음 Jeyuk Bokkeum (Spicy Stir-fried Pork) W10,000
돼지김치찌개 Dwaeji Kimchi Jjigae (Pork & Kimchi Stew) W5,000
Phone: 02-739-7737
Location
More pictures on Flickr.
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I’ve been in search of a breakfast item lately, something healthy and light yet filling – in the stomach and in the brain. A bowl of cereal and some fruit are nice, but my brain recognizes them more as desserts than proper breakfasts.
Danhobak (단호박; known by its Japanese name kabocha in the U.S.) has always been one of my favorite ingredients, and it was one of the first topics I wrote about when I started my own blog. Although it’s categorized as a winter squash, I can easily find it year-round, and that’s how often I have it at home – year-round. Its bright orange-yellow color, which is also an indication of high level of beta-carotene, and natural sweetness make it a great main or supporting ingredient for any dish. Even the hard skin that comes with high dietary fiber content becomes soft and edible after cooking. Add more of other good stuff – brown rice flour, sweet rice flour and walnuts and bring everything together with some of the usual baking ingredients.
The texture of this rice muffin – right in between dense, chewy tteok (떡; rice cake) and soft muffin – is quite interesting. I mulled over to decide if it’s tteok or muffin with each bite (which led me to eat 3 in a row), but it’s so right in the middle I first named it Tteok Muffin. That’s not so creative but it speaks the reality of it. I’m still getting used to the texture, but one thing I like about it is that it is pretty filling in my mouth and in my stomach.
The recipe below makes about 12 small rice muffins.
Kabocha Rice Muffin
INGREDIENTS
1 Danhobak
2/3 cup Brown rice flour
2/3 cup Mochiko (찹쌀가루; chap ssal ga ru or sweet rice flour)
1 tsp. Baking powder
1/4 tsp. Salt
2 Eggs
2 Tbsp. Sugar
1/3 cup Oil (preferably light, like grape seed oil)
1/2 cup Milk
1/2 cup Walnuts, toasted and chopped
- Microwave a rinsed danhobak for 5-7 minutes, or until a knife goes through with no resistance. Cut in half, then scoop out the seeds. Scoop out the flesh and reserve. I saved the flesh and the skin separately.
- Sift together 2/3 C brown rice flour (I used the one from Wholefoods), 2/3 cup mochiko, 1 tsp. baking powder, 1/4 tsp. salt and reserve.
- Whisk 2 eggs and 2 Tbsp. sugar (this is about the minimum amount of sugar you can add. Feel free to add 1-2 Tbsp. more) until slightly foamy. Then add 1/3 cup oil (I used grape seed oil), 1/2 cup milk, and 1/2 cup danhobak flesh from #1 and mix well. Add #2 and mix well. Fold in 1/2 cup of toasted, chopped walnuts.
Optional: Top the muffins with small diced danhobak skin pieces for garnish.- Spoon the batter into cupcake molds (silicon molds or paper cups), and place them in a steamer. Put the lid on and steam for 30 minutes. When a toothpick inserted through the middle of a muffin comes out clean, it’s done.
You can freeze the leftover danhobak flesh and skin in a plastic bag for another time. You can also freeze the leftover muffins in a plastic bag and microwave it for 30 seconds to a minute right before eating. For those adventurous souls out there, I also baked the same batter in a mini cake mold at 350°F, and it feels just too wet even after passing the toothpick test.
Enjoy this delicious rice muffin with another breakfast favorite of mine, black bean smoothie!
KOREAN WORDS
brown rice 현미 (hyeon mi)
rice (uncooked) 쌀 (ssal)
rice (cooked) 밥 (bap)
Cuisine: Korean bunshik snacks
Location: Hongdae, Seoul
Reservations: Don’t even think about it
Suggested Items: Fried stuff, Ddeokbokki
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Posted by Tammy
I’ll be posting 12 tteokbokki recipes over the next 12 days leading up to the Korean Lunar New Year (Eum-nyeok Seollal, 음 력 설날) in response to the South Korean government’s campaign to make the rice cake dish the linchpin in their international marketing strategy for Korean cuisine.
The government wants Korean cuisine and culture to be more greatly appreciated all over the world and chose tteokbokki as key to the public relations push. [See “Tteokbokki, topokki: Whatever you call it, it’s good!“]
I wonder whether the governmental champions of Korean cuisine think that by making tteokbokki an international cuisine it will boost other Korean delicacies, such as Chosun royal cuisine, to international recognition.
Many in the Korean ex-pat blogosphere wonder why the Korean government would be pushing tteokbokki (or any other rice product) when current domestic production doesn’t meet current demand.
Tteok commonly found in most Korean grocery stores on this side of the Pacific (San Francisco Bay Area) is made in the U.S. with American rice. In other words, increasing domestic rice production is only part of the issue. Imagine tteokbokki as a tool of public relations and international diplomacy.
There’s a small snag though. Tteokbokki traditionally is a very, very spicy dish. Even some Koreans won’t eat it because it’s so spicy. That’s why the Korean government created an official government agency to create Korean-fusion tteokbokki recipes.
If the Korean government wants to send me a donation for inspiration kindled during my forthcoming 12 Days of Tteok, I wouldn’t mind. However, I’m doing this because of my love of Korean cuisine and the challenge of making 12 dishes in a row with the same ingredient.
When I pitched this project to Joe McPherson, my “boss” he asked, “You think you could pull them off?”
Peer into my refrigerator (right) and see that I’ve got the tteok stocked. I’ll blog; you decide.
The first thing I will do to help the South Korean government promote this dish is to not use their dumbed-down pronunciation of it. Some ex-pats and tourists in Korea consider it a little insulting that the Korean government thinks we’re too babo (바보, or dumb) to pick up the correct pronunciation.
Here’s a hint: Tteok is pronounced somewhere between dock and tock. The double-T of the transliteration is more like a held-D when spoken. The bogi part of the dish name is pronounced like bogey. So, tteokbogi is pronounced like dock bogey. See, that wasn’t so difficult.
Twelve different versions of tteokbokki (using sauces from different parts of Asia, Europe and North America) in 12 days can wreak havoc on anyone’s diet, so dine in moderation. Feasting with your eyes is calorie free.
The Wall Street Journal has a profile of the man who started the gourmet taco truck craze and was inadvertently one of the big boosts to Twitter in the early years (early as in late 2008)–Roy Choi. Yes, the same Roy Choi of the Kogi Taco Truck. The story goes into his Korean-American background and the all-to-familiar themes of pressure to perform at school with subsequent rebellion.
It also gives some hints to what his upcoming rice bowl restaurant will be like. They say in the article that there’s no name, but I could have sworn that I read somewhere that it was going to be “Scoop.”
[HT to Edward]
Posted by shinshine
Living in New York usually means limited space. I go through an automatic justification process in my head on how much space a specific item will occupy even before considering its price. I have a stovetop coffee maker for its compact size and a hand mixer instead of a kitchen aid. There are so many other things I just decided not to get because it wasn’t worth trying to re-define the kitchen boundary (can I keep an ice cream machine next to my couch?).
Then it dawned on me that the biggest instrument sitting on the kitchen countertop is my rice cooker. The frequency of use somewhat makes up for its permanent occupancy, but even after reading all about the things I could/should be making with my rice cooker, I’ve made so many of the same plain rice for so long. Time to change it up and get more rent out of the rice cooker.
Hence the carrot-mushroom rice. This is an abridged version of my Japanese host mother’s takikomi gohan (I lived in Japan for a year a long time ago), rice mixed with chicken, sliced carrots, shitake mushrooms, fried tofu skin (abura age), and burdock roots (gobou), seasoned with soy sauce and sake, then cooked in dashi water. Variations are easily found on the internet.
To Make Carrot-Mushroom Rice) To make rice for 2, make dashi water with a piece of kelp (size of any of your 2 fingers) soaked in 2 cups of water for an hour or boil then cool down. Soak 1 cup of rice in dashi water for an hour. Add thinly sliced vegetables, in this case, carrots and shitake mushrooms. Add one tablespoon of soy sauce. Adjust the water level to barely cover all ingredients sittng flat on the rice cooker bowl (may not need all 2 cups of dashi water). Press the ‘cook’ button and walk away. When the rice is done, crack an egg into the rice cooker, and start the rice cooker again. Check after 5 minutes (may need more/less time) for a perfectly cooked egg to put on top of the rice bowl. Don’t forget to turn off the rice cooker!
The ratio of water to rice is the tricky part and also varies slightly depending on the rice cooker. Dashi water is optional, you can use just plain water. I also used sticky brown rice (=glutinous brown rice, sweet brown rice), which is my favorite kind of rice because of its stickiness and texture (vs. short-grain brown rice lacks stickiness, short-grain white rice lacks texture).
The title of ‘Rice Cooker Series’ is more for me – to encourage myself to make more varied use of my rice cooker. This could be one of my new year’s resolutions!
| KOREAN WORDS | ||||
| carrot | 당근 | (dang geun) | ||
| rice (uncooked) | 쌀 | (ssal) | ||
| rice (cooked) | 밥 | (bap) | ||