Tag: rice

Fresh Tot (a.k.a. hijiki) 3 Ways
[media-credit id=52 align=”alignnone” width=”700″][/media-credit]
One thing I miss about living in Korea is the abundance of sea vegetables. Although more people are now aware of and have found applications for a couple of kinds of dried seaweed in the U.S., such as nori (김 – gim, dried laver) for California rolls and kombu (다시마 – dashima, dried kelp) for quick dashi stock, I feel that these still fall into one mysteriously unattractive grass category lumped in as sea-‘weeds’ to many. On the other hand, these sea vegetables are part of the everyday dinner table in Korea, each with an identity of its own and used in multiple simple dishes. Even if you go to a shikdang (식당 – restaurant, usually referring to humble, local Korean ones) in Korea, especially in coastal towns, it’s common to find at least a couple of simply prepared sea vegetable banchan (반찬 – side dish) along with a small grilled fish for each person. Having missed these ingredients, I was happy to get my hands on them during my recent month-long stay in Korea. One is tot (톳 pronounced like “tote”), also less commonly known as nokmichae (녹미채) in Korea, but you may be more familiar with it as hijiki, dried form of tot, in a Japanese side dish with its black color contrasting shredded carrot pieces. Tot in Korea is known for high content of calcium and iron as well as for oceany crunchy bites. Applications for tot are simple and easy. For this post, I don’t have the usual recipe measurements since a blog post was an after-thought to a happy meal at home in Korea. I just hope that this provides you with some ideas of how tot can be used in simple, delicious ways. If you live in Korea, by all means go buy some fresh tot from a grocery store and make your own dish tonight – I envy you.
Basic Tot Preparation
[media-credit id=52 align=”alignnone” width=”700″][/media-credit]
[media-credit id=52 align=”alignnone” width=”700″][/media-credit]
For any tot dish you want to make, start with rinsing tot in cold water to remove dirt. Blanch tot in boiling water with salt for base seasoning. Tot will turn bright green as soon as you put them in boiling water. After 30 seconds or less when they are all bright green, remove from heat. Drain and rinse tot in cold water. Squeeze out excess water. They come in long strands, so cut them into about 1-inch or bite size length, depending on how you prefer them in your dish.

Tot Rice (톳밥) Simply add tot in rice to cook in rice cooker. You don’t need to change the ratio of rice to water measurements. You can also make rice in a regular pot or Korean ddukbaegi (뚝배기 – clay pot for stovetop cooking). Without getting into too much detail, you can start by pre-soaking rice in water for 30 minutes. Mix blanched tot with rice before putting it on the stovetop. Then put it over low heat, covered, for about 20 minutes until you can smell the rice. Turn off the heat and let the rice rest for another 10 minutes, covered. If you like an egg on top of your rice, feel free to crack in an egg after turning off the heat but before the 10-minute resting. When you open the lid at the end, you will get a whiff of sea from your rice. If this sounds all mystery to you, I recommend the rice cooker method. Tot rice doesn’t need seasoning if you are eating it with the usual Korean side dishes. If it’s the feature dish, make seasoning sauce separately. A simple seasoning sauce is a mix of soy sauce, sesame oil, sesame seeds, minced garlic, chopped scallions and gochugaru (고추가루 – red pepper powder).
[media-credit id=52 align=”alignnone” width=”700″][/media-credit]
[media-credit id=52 align=”alignnone” width=”450″][/media-credit]
[media-credit id=52 align=”alignnone” width=”700″][/media-credit]
[media-credit id=52 align=”alignnone” width=”700″][/media-credit]
[media-credit id=52 align=”alignnone” width=”700″][/media-credit]
Tot with Spicy-Tangy Seasoning (톳 초무침) Make the sauce by mixing gochujang (고추장 – red pepper paste), vinegar, honey, and sesame seeds. Mix in the blanched tot. This can be a side dish to eat with rice or an accent ingredient in your everyday salad.
[media-credit id=52 align=”alignnone” width=”700″][/media-credit]
Tot & Tofu Side Dish (톳 두부 반찬) A common preparation I saw in restaurants was this tot and crumbled tofu mixed together. You can use the trimmings and ends of tofu after using tofu for a main ingredient in another dish. Squeeze excess water out from tofu and crumble. Season crumbled tofu with soy sauce, vinegar and black pepper. Let it rest for 30 minutes. Mix in blanched tot. Sprinkle toasted sesame seeds for garnish.
[media-credit id=52 align=”alignnone” width=”700″][/media-credit]
shinshine | ZenKimchi
매생이 (mae saeng yi), another common sea vegetable used in many ways Here is a bonus track of the day.^_^ I also bought a package of 매생이 (Capsosiphon fulvescens) on sale. It looks like a ball of really fine, green threads, and you may be thinking something really unappetizing by the look of this. But it’s so fine that the mouthfeel is just very soft, and there is no effort necessary to chew this one. It’s commonly used in soups, but I like it in savory pancakes, where the outside is crispy but the inside just melts in your mouth. Make the pancake batter by mixing flour, egg and water. Season with salt and pepper. Rinse mae-saeng-yi in cold water and drain. Squeeze out excess water. Whisk it in the batter to loosen, which will slowly spread out and be incorporated in the batter. Add the batter on a heated, oiled pan and spread out to a thin, round shape. When the edges become crispy, flip to the other side. The pancakes are ready when both sides turn crispy golden. Serve hot with simple dipping sauce (soy sauce splashed with vinegar or lemon juice).
Here is a link to deep-fried mae-saeng-yi (매생이 튀김) from the popular Korean food magazine Essen (에쎈) website. Although the recipe is in Korean, the step-by-step pictures should be helpful. Deep-fry (튀김 – tuigim) powder is used for this, sold in Korean grocery stores.
[media-credit id=52 align=”alignnone” width=”700″][/media-credit]
Here is a mae-saeng-yi kalguksu (칼국수 – knife-cut noodles) I had when I was in Korea 2 years ago. Enjoy!
March 2, 2012
Tex-Mex Bibimbap
Korean food purists walk away.
One evening last week I took over dinner prep and thought I’d make some chicken burritos. Got everything ready and then took out the tortillas. They’d grown a bit of mold. Each one. So I was stuck with the ingredients I had put together. Well, why not replace one starch with another? So I got a metal bowl, put in a few scoops of rice, and topped it with fajita chicken and onions, lettuce, shredded Monterey Jack, and salsa. Stirred it up and didn’t expect it to taste any good.
It was damn good! The cheese brought it together. Melted a bit in the hot rice and chicken. Again, this is proof that you don’t need to make bibimbap a big production. It’s a way to get rid of leftovers.
January 25, 2012
Cooking Video – Crispy Bibimbap
Just in time for Halloween, not that I intended that in any way or I can force any relations between bibimbap and Halloween, here comes my first self-produced cooking video on crispy bibimbap (recipe).
I submitted this to the Delicious Seoul Story cooking video contest, in which they choose 5 entries based on the number of views, ‘like’s, and creativity among other things. The finalists will be invited to Seoul, Korea for a final round of cooking in front of judges and will be treated for various Korean food experiences.
With my late entry, I only have today to get the views and ‘like’ votes, so please follow this link to ‘like’ my video on Youtube and help me visit Korea in November.
At any rate, the contest deadline became a good motivator for me – I’ve wanted to put up complementary video clips to my blog posts for a while because of, well, obvious reasons. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a short video clip is worth…a lot of pictures.
Now I’ve shot and edited my first cooking video, I commend anyone who does this on a regular basis. In the process of making this 3-minute clip which took too much time and made me watch my endless faults endless times, I also had a lot of fun with it. I plan to post complementary video clips once in a while, maybe going back to some of my previous dishes and of course for my future trials.
I hope you enjoy the video clip. If nothing else, it’s 3 minutes of good laugh. Imagine me all dressed up, cooking and talking to myself all afternoon.
Go ahead, laugh at me, laugh with me. I also hope that it shows you how easy it is to make crispy bibimbap at home and how delicious it really is. Even if it doesn’t, I hope it brings you at least a sliver of smile.
For my previous blog posts on crispy bibimbap, click the link below.
Crispy Bibimbap, Revisited February, 2011
Crispy Bibimbap January, 2010
By the way, it’s bizarre, weird and worrisome to have blizzard-like snow in October, but I couldn’t help myself getting really excited about it. I mean that in the ‘sitting at home watching the snowfall outside’-kind of way, not the ‘let’s go outside in the snow’ way. Here is a picture of the first snow of the season in NYC from yesterday (Saturday) afternoon.

Happy Halloween and stay warm!
October 31, 2011
Recipe: Noryangjin-inspired ‘Bomb Rice’
Seoul-Suburban posted this comment about a new dish they discovered while exploring the neighborhood around the famous Noryangjin Fish Market:
I passed carts offering bibimbap, bulgogi hot dogs, deopbap, omurice, hamburgers, bokkeumbap, and something that one cart called poktanbap (폭탄밥), or ‘bomb rice.’
This last one was something new to me, so I definitely had to give it a try, especially as the sucker for anything that screams ‘spicy!’ that I am.
What I got was a decent-sized bowl of rice with ground beef, sesame oil, a slice of ‘cheese,’ a fried egg, two different kinds of dried seaweed, some fish roe, two generous dollops of gochujang, and a sprinkling of sesame seeds. Total cost: 2,000 won, less than a plate of tteokbokki will cost you at most stalls. A large serving is just an extra 500.
And how was it? Pretty much as you might imagine all those ingredients thrown together tasting – which is to say it falls squarely under the rubric of comfort food.
With a name and description like that, it’s a dish I just had to try to recreate in my kitchen.
Two kinds of seaweed and flying-fish roe certainly bring the ocean to your bowl. (Tammy Quackenbush photo)
The fish roe is indispensable for the recipe. The snap of each egg as you chew creates a popping sound like that of firecrackers or crispy rice. I think Pokjukbap (폭죽밥), or “Firecracker Rice,” may be a more accurate name for this fun, uncommon Korean comfort food.
*The processed stuff that comes wrapped individually in plastic. It’s not very healthful, but it’s “authentic.” If you have access — and the money — to buy the good stuff, use it. I’d advise using a mild, subtle-flavored cheese though. This is not the recipe for trying out that sharp cheddar.
Please read more about the Noryangjin neighborhood on Seoul-Suburban and snoop around a little bit to discover other underexposed and under-appreciated areas of Seoul to visit vicariously.
September 12, 2011
Nurungji (Scorched Rice) Chips
I always have some cooked rice, in the freezer or kept warm in the rice cooker. This is pretty common for many Korean families without them really having second thoughts about it.  It’s like air and water that I only notice the lack of its existence on the rare occasions I run out of it.
Of course freshly made rice is the best. Yet leftover rice, as there is always some, comes in handy in many ways, from a lazy meal option of simply warming it in the microwave to a ready ingredient for stir-fried rice for which cold rice works better.
Nurungji can be another delicious derivative made with leftover rice, the scorched part that happens at the bottom of the pot when rice is hard-boiled. It’s also the prized part at the bottom of dolsot (돌솥; stone bowl) bibimbap that keeps you in anticipation the moment you start digging into the melange of rice, vegetables and gochujang sauce with a dose of hot sizzle that adds to the excitement.
It’s become so widely popular that dried nurungji is sold separately in grocery stores, but it’s also easy to make at home. Just spread a thin layer of cooked rice in a pan and give enough time for the rice to turn golden brown on both sides over low heat. Then it can be made into nurungji juk (누룽지 죽), a simple rice porridge with subtle nutty flavor that is easy on the stomach. Another nurungji variation is made by deep-frying then rolling them in sugar – what could be so bad about hot, cruncy, sweet nurungji snack?
Here is another option.  This happens to complement icy cold beer so well on a hot summer day, based on my numerous pairng attempts. It’s cruncy from nurungji, salty from Parmesan cheese, extra-nutty from black sesame seeds, and if you’d like, with a bit of heat from gochugaru (고추 가루; Korean chili powder).
To make nurungji chips, just make sure that white short grain rice (a.k.a. sushi rice) is part of the rice base so it has enough starch to keep the rice grains together. I usually mix sweet brown rice (현미 찹쌀; hyeon mi chap ssal) and white rice for my daily consumption, which is what I used for nurungji chips here.
KOREAN WORDS
beer       맥주 (maek ju)
summer 여름 (yeo reum)
Crispy rice snack or fancy garnish to your dishes Crispy rice snack or fancy garnish to your dishes
August 3, 2011
Pul-bbang Korean pancake dumplings
Jeff couldn’t wait to take a bite out of them. Here’s the proof. (Photo by Jeff Quackenbush)
I found a Danish Æbelskiver pancake pan at William-Sonoma some time ago. I kept staring at the catalog, scratching my head trying to figure out why the pan and its baked contents looked so familiar. Then I realized I was looking at the perfect pul-bbang pan.
Pul-bbang (풀빵) is a Korean pancake dumpling, usually stuffed with sweetened red bean paste (팥 앙금, patanggeum). You could call them Korean doughnut holes, if you want. Korean street vendors can make 20 or more at at time. My little skillet is puny in comparison.
The Japanese have their own version of pul-bbang, called takoyaki. It is stuffed with boiled, chopped octopus. Takoyaki batter also is more savory — featuring bonito flakes — than either pul-bbang or Æbelskiver batter.
Æbelskiver is traditionally filled with spiced, sauteed apples. However, filling options are limited only by your imagination and the contents of your pantry, such as yujacha (유자차), Nutella chocolate hazelnut spread or peanut butter.
Pul-bbang is sold on the street in most major Korean cities. But they’re a bit more difficult to find than their more famous cousins, boong-uh-bbang (붕어빵),which are a red bean–stuffed bread shaped like a fish. Pul-bbang sell for 1,000 to 2,000 won per seven dumplings.
Pul-bbang
I made the pul-bbang batter from rice flour, which is typical of what one would find in Korea. Rice flour is gluten-free. The mix can be dairy-free if you use rice or almond milk. This recipe make approximately 20 pul-bbang.
1 cup Rice Flour
1/4 tsp Salt
2 Eggs, beaten
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 cup 2% Milk, or you can substitute rice milk or almond milk
The basic recipe for pouring pul-bbang is:
2 tablespoons batter
1/2 teaspoon filling (red bean paste or other filling you’d like)
1. Set the pan on medium heat. You don’t want the pan too hot, otherwise the first side will cook too quickly and the pul-bbang won’t have a nice, round shape. They’ll be round on one side and flat on the other.
2. Place approximately 1 tablespoon of batter into each well of the pan.
I used a two spoon technique to scrape and drop the red bean paste into the batter. (Photo by Jeff Quackenbush)
3. After you have filled all the wells with batter, immediately start placing the 1/2 teaspoon of the filling of your choice in the middle.
4. Add another tablespoon or so of batter to the top to cover the filling. Let the dumplings cook for a couple of minutes.
The rounded, wooden, Chinese style chopsticks work perfectly to flip the pul-bbang over. (Photo by Jeff Quackenbush)
5. Turn each dumpling over after you notice bubbles in the batter and slight pulling away on the edges. Toothpicks or wooden chopsticks are best for this task. Flip them “early,” so they are gold-colored on the underside, rather than golden brown.
6. Cook for a few minutes more on the other side. From there, you can flip them alternating until they are golden brown on both sides.
This is what the finished product looked like before my husband/photographer tasted a sample of the finished product. (Photo by Jeff Quackenbush)
Pul-bbang don’t taste as good cold, so make and eat them fresh.
Traditional Korean street food
November 15, 2010
A meal fit for a Buddha: Posotbap (mushrooms and rice)
Buddhism has flourished in Korea for more than 1,600 years. Korean Buddhist temple cuisine, a fusion of Buddhist dharma to North Asian culture, is distinct from foods eaten by other Buddhist sects.
Buddhist food generally doesn’t contain animal products such as meat, fish, eggs and fish roe. But traditional Korean Buddhist cuisine also excludes certain vegetables, including onions, green onions (scallions), baby garlic, leeks and chives. It is believed these whet the sexual appetite, which is forbidden for celibate monks.
Some of the hallmarks of Korean temple food are simplicity in the use of seasonal herbs and vegetables and judicious seasoning. The food might seem bland compared with more popular Korean dishes such as samgyeopsal or dakkalbi, but experimenting with Korean temple cuisine can help you get your recommended five servings of vegetables per day.
Because Buddhist cuisine is vegan, here’s a vegan recipe that features one of my favorite ingredients: mushrooms. Since the Buddha was born in India, I’m using basmati rice in this version.
Posotbap (버섯밥, mushrooms and rice)
1-2 cups rice (makes 2-4 cups cooked)
8 ounces shittake mushroom or other mushrooms, finely diced
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
water (according to instructions on your rice cooker)
Clean off the mushrooms with a damp kitchen towel and wipe off as much dirt as possible. If you are using dried mushrooms, soak them in warm water for 10-20 to rehydrate. Once the mushrooms are rehydrated, squeeze as much water out of them as possible before dicing. Save the mushroom water and put it into your rice cooker to cook your rice.
Heat the vegetable oil in a skillet over medium heat until hot. Add the mushrooms and soy sauce and sauté for six minutes, or until the mushrooms are cooked through. Add the sesame oil, mix well, and set aside.
Put the rice in the rice cooker. Pour the mushroom water — if you used dried, rehydrated mushrooms — into your rice cooker and top off with regular filtered water, if necessary. Set the cooker to cook white rice.
After the rice is cooked, fluff it with a wooden spoon and then serve into bowls. Top with mushrooms and serve with vegetarian banchan, (Korean side dishes) such as Buddhist temple-style watercress.
May 20, 2010
Rice Cooker Series – Carrot Mushroom Rice

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)

January 14, 2010
Crazy Korean Cooking: Kimchi Fried Rice 김치 볶음밥
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgobE3QaM_U]
Okay, I’m getting a big crush on Grace. This time, she and Stephanie show you how to make Kimchi Bokkeumbap–and how to keep your hair from smelling like kimchi when cooking.
If you like this you should also check out CW’s Southern Style Kimchi Bokkeumbap.
October 30, 2008

KOREAN WORDS
	carrot	당근	(dang geun)
	rice (uncooked)	쌀	(ssal)
	rice (cooked)	밥	(bap)

Tag: rice

Pul-bbang

Posotbap (버섯밥, mushrooms and rice)