Adzuki are small red beans commonly used in Korean, Japanese and Chinese confections. Called 팥 pat in Korean, these beans have a natural sweetness uncommon in legumes. Added sugar or honey during boiling to make the bean paste accentuates the sweetness for use in a number of East Asian desserts.
Based on archaeological findings, Asians have been cooking adzuki beans since 4000 BC. That’s more than 6,000 years of culinary history. How I wish I had a cookbook from back then.
Black bean brownie recipes have been around for some time, especially here in California. Most versions are flourless, which is helpful for those on gluten-free or Celiac disease diets.
Every time I would talk to people about black bean brownies, I’d scratch my head at why anyone would use black beans when red beans seemed a more logical confection choice. In my culinary world, it’s just a given that the black beans had to go and red beans should take center stage.
The onion does not have an ancient connection to Korean cuisine. But you wouldn’t know that, based on how popular the root vegetable is now in Korea. That’s in sharp contrast to the milder green onion, which has been a part of Korean cuisine for hundreds, even thousands of years.
This recipe for Korean onion relish is an excellent partner for your next Korean barbecue. Just grab a large piece of lettuce or a big 깻잎 kkaenip/shiso/perilla leaf, put a little of the onion relish on the leaf and top with a slice of your favorite Korean grilled meat (불고기 bulgogi, 갈비 kalbi, 닭갈비 dakgalbi, whatever).
If you aren’t on a low-carb diet, add a small spoonful of rice to absorb some of the vinegar brine. Any leftovers would have fun in a bowl of 비빔밥 bibimbap (mixed rice and vegetable dish with or without meat or dubu/tofu) or 김치볶음밥 kimchi boggeumbap (fried rice).
If you aren’t on a low-carb diet, add a small spoonful of rice to absorb some of the vinegar brine. Any leftovers would have fun in a bowl of 비빔밥 bibimbap (mixed rice and vegetable dish with or without meat or dubu/tofu) or 김치볶음밥 kimchi boggeumbap (fried rice).
Korean carrot salad, pronounced Koreyscha Sabzili Salat in the Uzbek language, is ubiquitous throughout the former Soviet Union. The dish was invented by Korean immigrants to Russia’s Far East and the recipe would have stayed there if Stalin hadn’t forcibly deported the Soviet Koreans further west to the Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan and Kazakstan. Stalin’s fear that Japanese spies were infiltrating the USSR via these Korean immigrants spread Korean cuisine into the Soviet Union’s interior.
This is a recipe that begs to be made a day in advance so the ingredients have a chance to get to know each other better.
I have this obsession of taking every non-Korean recipe and trying to put a Korean spin on it. When I have a “eureka” moment, the result is published here.
Just a suggestion: Serve this sauce with some grilled Korean barbecue and lettuce or large leafy herb (깻잎 kkaennip/shiso/perilla shown here) for a low-carb lunch or dinner. (Tammy Quackenbush photo)
Ssamjang (쌈장) is a spicy paste made from fermented soybean paste (된장 doenjang), red pepper paste (고추장 gochujang), sesame oil and seasonings such as green onion and garlic. Ssamjang is sold in most Korean grocery stores in small or large green tubs. If you don’t read Korean, just look for the green tubs.
Ssam is Korean for “wrapping”; jang, for sauce. So ssamjang is a sauce made for flavoring leaves for wrapping around food.
Ssam show and tell: A kkaennip leaf is smeared with raspberry ssamjang and topped with grilled spicy Korean chicken. (Jeff Quackenbush photo
For barbecued and grilled foods, Koreans will take a piece of or whole leaf of lettuce or a broad-leafed herb such as 깻잎 kkaennip (perilla in English), spread some ssamjang on it, top with meat and rice, and pop it in their mouths like a small bite-sized sushi roll.
This isn’t the first ssamjang I’ve made that excluded the basic doenjang, gochujang and sesame oil combo. In May I developed Peanut Ssamjang. Now, with the Raspberry Ssamjang, I have the makings for a weird peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
The combination of the pectin in the raspberry jam and the cornstarch thickened the sauce nicely, thick, yet spreadable. If you leave out the cornstarch it would still be thick and saucy enough to cling to your lettuce wrap.
In the last few days, the weather has wearily cooled down with frequent rain. Uncomfortable humidity makes it feel hotter than weather reports want you to believe. As much as I feel the days are moving fast-forward to greet the autumn, August still belongs to the summer season.
So before the season’s over, I want to squeeze in a couple more summer dishes in the coming posts, including today’s black kong guksu (콩국수), literally meaning bean (콩; kong) noodles (국수; guk su). It is one of the most popular summer dishes and regarded highly for its nutritional values. In its simplest form, you will find somyeon (소면; white wheat noodles, thin like angel hair) in chilled soy milk, often freshly made by boiling crushed soy beans with water and seasoned only with salt. You might find some garnish of sliced cucumbers and an accompaniment of tangy kimchi, but not much else.Over time, the dish has evolved and now you can find a variety of kong guksu. From the simple original version to the ones that use more nuts, such as pine nuts and peanuts to enhance the flavor and mask beany flavor that some people complain about kong guksu. There are also different black kong guksu versions in which the soup is made with black beans (instead of soy beans) and other ingredients added for flavor, color and nutrients, such as black sesame seeds and whatever nuts you like.Making this dish at home can’t be easier. Feel free to make your own soy milk, but I often use soy milk or regular milk, already chilled and conveniently located in my refrigerator. If you are buying soy milk for this recipe, stick to unsweetened soy milk with no additional flavoring, so that you can use it for this savory dish.If you want to deviate from the usual kong guksu and find out how a healthful combination of black beans, black sesame seeds and milk come together as a surprising, flavorful simplicity, try making this. It refreshes you, it cools you down, then the remaining muggy heat isn’t so bad anymore.I usually have a batch of black beans in the refrigerator ready to go for my morning smoothie, so you can soak a bag of black beans overnight and boil them to try both my smoothie and black kong guksu. Any leftover beans can be refrigerated for about a week or frozen for later use. Otherwise, feel free to use canned black beans. Rinse them lightly and just be careful with seasoning as those usually come already salted.Ripe kimchi with a slight tang is a great compliment to chilled kong guksu and, not surprisingly, it is the most common side dish served with kong guksu.
Just a thought about an image of a dish that is mostly black and white…Would it matter if the picture of the dish shows only black and white colors? Would the black and white image help because, now, it focuses on the simplicity of the dish? Or because colors are so important in food, even if the dish is mostly different shades of black and white, does it now look less appetizing? A random thought of the day…By the way, I just got back from Korea Day in Central Park. It’s definitely worth checking out if you’re in NYC ~ great food, fun music and DYI Korean food experience until 7PM tonight. I hope you can make it! I’ll have a full report later.KOREAN WORDSbean 콩 (kong)sesame seed 깨 (ggae)
Annie Chun's noodles are not currently available in the ROK. After Annie Chun's Gochujang sparked controversy in the Korean blogosphere, I decided I'd check out one of her other Korean food offerings to get a sneak preview of things to come.
The Korean blogosphere has been spinning recently over how to introduce Korean cuisine to American markets and, particularly, what should be role of the South Korean government in this popularization. However, Korean food companies on both sides of the Pacific aren’t waiting for Seoul to tell them what to do.
Until Annie Chun's merger with CJ Foods in 2005, Annie Chun's line did not feature any Korean style foods. Since that time, she has introduced Korean noodles, Kimchi soup, and Korean seaweed wraps to her line.
Annie Chun is a Korean-born developer of one of the most popular lines of prepared Asian foods in the United States. After the merger with CJ Foods in 2005, Annie Chun’s started going back to her Korean roots with food items such as the Korean Sweet Chili Noodle Bowl. I found it in a local San Francisco Bay–area supermarket, which was not selling her newly released bottled gochujang (spicy red pepper paste) yet.
I tested the dish by preparing it according to label instructions and without modifications. What’s required is just scalding-hot water — heated in a kettle, bottle dispenser or microwave — to warm the noodles and reconstitute the dehydrated vegetables and spices.
The sauce is very sweet. A number of hanshik lovers may cringe at sweet and spicy Korean noodle dish, but the name of the dish does include the word sweet.
The label also says the spiciness level is “medium,” and that’s an accurate comparison with other spicy Korean foods. But it might be a bit mild for Koreaphiles.
The combination of spiciness and sweetness reminded my husband of the American Chinese food favorite orange chicken, with a Korean flair of sesame oil.
Pros
100 percent natural. For example, the sweetener is cane sugar juice instead of high-fructose corn syrup.
Vegan. That’s rare for prepared Korean foods.
Fresh noodles, not deep fried or dried.
No MSG or preservatives.
Quick to make. It takes about two minutes from heat to eat.
Cons
High in calories. A bowl supposedly has two servings, totaling 640 calories for one bowl.
Too sweet. Traditional Korean food items such as dakkalbi (spicy grilled chicken) and dwejikalbi (spicy grilled pork) have a balance of salty, sweet, spicy and bitter.
One of the reviewers for this product on Amazon.com posted her recipe for what you might call stir-fried Korean sweet chili noodles with shrimp.
So first you saute some veggies, say, in some peanut oil in a skillet or small wok, and then you add some scallops, say, or maybe shrimp, and then you turn off the heat and follow the directions on the box (using the microwave). Then you add the noodles, flavor pack and the UNBELIEVABLY fantastic Sweet Korean Chili sauce to the skillet and toss to heat through. Maybe you add some almonds or peanuts, say, after you add it all either to a bowl or a plate, and then you consume with some moderately sweet wine, like White Zinfandel, say. An absolutely fantastic meal.
That’s certainly a good option to stretch this 600-plus-calorie bowl between two to four people.
On its own, Annie Chun’s Korean Sweet Chili Noodle Bowl is a slightly healthier alternative for a quick lunch at work than greasy fast food or a bowl of deep-fried ramen. But if your sweet tooth is reserved for dessert only, you might want to leave this noodle bowl on the shelf.
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.
