Vegan yangnyeom-chikin

I tasted this in Amsterdam in the Veganees, a shared dining restaurant based on Asian classics (1e Constantijn Huygenstraat 45, Amsterdam). The fried cauliflower in gochujang is basically the Korean restaurant classic yangnyeom-chikin.

You can substitute the chicken for cauliflower, I’m sure this will work. The recipe below is Maangchi's.

Ingredients:

One cauliflower, taken apart in florets.

For the batter:

½ teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
½ cup potato starch
¼ cup all purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
2 large eggs (skip for a truly vegan version)
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds

For the sauce:

2 teaspoons vegetable oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
⅓ cup ketchup
⅓ cup rice syrup (skip for a less sweet version)
¼ cup gochujang (Korean hot pepper paste)
2 teaspoons white vinegar
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
corn (or vegetable) oil for frying

For a side dish, pickled radish (chicken-mu), optional

Fry the cauliflower florets coated in the batter in hot oil. Cool down. Mix the ingredients for the sauce on a medium heat. Fry the cauliflower florets for a second time until slightly crunchy. Coat the cauliflower in the sauce, mix well and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Dububuchim-yangnyeomjang 두부부침 양념장

A quick recipe for left over firm tofu. Mix to make yangnyeomjang:

1 clove of minced garlic.
1 chopped green onion.
1 ts hot Korean pepper flakes (gochugaru 고추가루).
1 ts sugar.
1 tbs soy sauce.
1 ts sesame oil.

Slice firm tofu (optional: coat with flower and salt) and fry in hot oil until light brown.

Spoon yangnyeomjang evenly over the tofu, and sprinkle some roasted sesame seeds over top just before serving.

San-namul (산나물)

Literally: mountain herbs & vegetables. Namul is a type of banchan made from herbs & vegetables. If wild greens are used the banchan becomes san-namul. The vegetables in namul can be fried, sautéed, fermented, dried, or steamed. A namul can also be made from seaweed or mushrooms.

Fresh mountain herbs & vegetables can be dried in summer so they can be consumed in wintertime. It takes quite some effort to make the dried vegetables edible again.

Preparing dried sannamul
Rinse in cold water and boil for one hour in plenty of water. Turn the heat off and let the vegetables sit in the water for another 3 hours. Drain and rinse in cold water. Soak the vegetables overnight and drain. The vegetables are now ready to be used.

Cut in bite sized pieces and mix with soy sauce and perilla seeds oil. Fry in oil until done.

Below are two dried sannamul in bought at the entrance of Taebaeksan National Park (태백산 국립공원). I have used these sannamul as toppings for bibimbap.

On the left: Cirsium setidens, also known as gondre and Korean thistle (곤드레).

Bugeoguk 북어국

This is such a simple, light and tasty soup. You need good quality wind-dried Alaska pollock, pre-shredded. I bought a packet in Korea, but sadly I just finished the whole packet. I'm sure this will be available outside Korea. The Korean name of the fish is myeongtae (명태).

Tear 60 grams of dried pollack into 6 cm long pieces (this just means halving the pre-shredded pollack) and fry these for a minute or so in a tablespoon of pure sesame oil with a couple of diced cloves of garlic.

Add 1,25 litter of water to the pan and Korean radish (mu 무) cut in bite sized pieces. Boil for 20 minutes until the radish is cooked. Add 2 tablespoons of Korean fish sauce, simmer for a couple of more minutes. Pour a beaten egg into the boiling soup and only stir after the egg has set. Turn off the heat and add fresh spring onion. Serve with white rice, which you can add to the soup halfway for a more substantial meal.

Bugeo (북어) – dried Alaska pollock

You can also make a somewhat similar soup with hwangtae, made by drying Alaska pollack during winter and allowing it to undergo natural freeze-thaw cycles.

Hwangtae (황태) – "yellow" Alaska pollock drying during winter with repeated freeze-thaw cycles. Photo shared under CC BY 2.5 licensing: http://blog.daum.net/sansanaiys/2935

Tteokbokki 떡볶이 + Eomukguk 어묵국

Spicy rice cakes (Tteokbokki) and fish cake soup (Eomukgu) are often sold together. Both are essentially streetfood. This streetfood restaurant in Gwangjin-gu 광진구 in Seoul had only one, bright yellow, table. When I arrived in Seoul on the last day of my journey I was overwhelmed by the city. I first got off at Jonggak metro station in Jongno (종로) district. The tall buildings, the heat and the traffic were relentless. I quickly got back in the metro and travelled for more than half an hour to Gwangjin district. In Gwangjin the city was cut down to human proportions. Off the main streets the houses were only four stories high and I could browse the small coffee shops and restaurants. Tteokbokki and Eomukguk made for a perfect lunch.

When making Tteokbokki and Eomukguk at home you buy the rice cakes and fish cakes ready made. The spicy sauce for the Tteokbokki and the soup for the fish cakes can be made from scratch.

Yache Twigim 야채튀김

Twigim (튀김) are deep-fried dishes in Korean. Yache Twigim 야채튀김 are vegetable fries. 

They are easy to make. For the batter you will need:

120 gram all-purpose flour, 240 gram frying batter mix (튀김가루 Twigim Gahroo) and 600 ml cold water.

Or: 300 gram flour + 60 gram cornstarch + 1 beaten egg + 600 ml cold water + 1 tsp salt in case you cannot buy Twigim Gahroo.

For the vegetables you can use yellow onion (sliced), sweet potato (Gogooma 고구마), carrots, green onion or whole green peppers. I had Yache Twigim for breakfast in Busan in a small local market. Serve with soy vinegar dipping sauce. 

Maeuntang 매운탕

Maeuntang 매운탕, or spicy fish soup, is difficult to recreate outside of Korea because of the fresh water dropwort (Minari 미나리) and chrysanthemum greens (Ssukgat 쑥갓). I have no idea where to buy these herbs.

This soup is very, very spicy. Indeed, “Maeun” means spicy.

Mul-naengmyeon 물냉면

One of my favourite Korean summertime dishes is mul-naengmyeon, cold noodles in chilled broth. It seems like a simple dish but to get it right takes a lot of effort and days in preparation. Below recipe is based on Maangchi's recipe.
 
When you buy naengmyeon-yong-guksu 냉면용국수 (the dried buckwheat noodles) you will usually get a package of liquid or powdered broth. To make the broth from scratch you will need the brine of fermented radish water kimchi (dongchimi: 동치미) and beef stock. It is a time consuming proces since the dongchimi needs about five days to ferment. You can make a quicker broth from 8 cups of water, 3 or 4 shiitake mushrooms, 4 inch piece of dried kelp and 8 to 10 dried anchovies. Boil for 20 minutes and cool.

To do it the proper way:

1. Make Dongchimi 동치미
Roll about 7 small Korean radishes Mu 무 in plenty of salt to coat the radish. Put the salted radish in a glass jar. Put some green radish leaves on top and add the leftover salt. Close the lid and keep it in the refrigerator for 4-5 days.

Then add 4 garlic cloves, minced, 2 teaspoons minced ginger, 2-3 green chili peppers, 2-3 red chili peppers, half a Korean pear, cut into chunks, 3 green onions (including the roots), washed and drained, onion, sliced into pieces and 2 liters of water. Close the lid and let it sit at room temperature for 2-3 days until it ferments.

2. Make beef stock
Bring water to a boil, add washed beef brisket and simmer for two hours. Cool the stock and thinly slice the beef. 

Combine beef stock and dongchimi in approximately a 2 : 1 ratio. 

Once you have the broth chilled in the freezer to the point you will get chunks of ice or slush, you assemble the mul-naengmyeon as follows: 
Put the cooked and cold water rinsed noodles in a bowl and pour over the icy broth. Place pickled cucumber and sliced pear on top. Add mustard oil, sprinkle with sesame seeds powder and add half a hard boiled egg.

Pickled cucumber: mix sliced cucumber, salt, half a teaspoon of sugar, and vinegar in a bowl.

The mul-naengmyeon 물냉면 below was served in Gyeongju (경주) in a small restaurant near my hotel, which was apparently one of the infamous "love hotels" (러브호텔). The free condoms I found in my room were the first give away.

Korean BBQ 고기구이

Korean BBQ is just a method of preparing many different dishes. The meat can be marinated or is served un-marinated. The meat is usually beef or pork, but sometimes chicken or even duck. 

Popular marinated variations with beef are: bulgogi (불고기), galbi (갈비) and jumulleok (주물럭). A marinated version with pork is called dwaeji bulgogi (돼지불고기), or spicy pork bulgogi. 

Un-marinated barbecued pork belly is called samgyeopsal (삼겹살) and among the many un-marinated beef versions, chadol bagi (차돌박이), thinly sliced brisket point, is quite amazing. 

Below are (most likely) pieces of Mokshim sal (목심살), which is a cut of pork, which comes close to the German "Schweinenacken".

The green leaf wraps are well known. You can spice the meat with pajeori (파절이) green onion salad, a raw piece of garlic, raw green pepper and ssamjang (쌈장) dipping sauce, which is basically a mix of doenjang and gochujang. 

Besides meat there is always a selection of mushrooms, sliced onion rings or vegetables to be grilled alongside the meat. You can use a grill pan where the fat drips away, or you can use a grill pan, which contains the fat. This allows you to fry cooked rice, soaking up the fatty juices of the meat.

Pajeori (파절이), green onion salad.

Green leaf wraps.

My Korean grill for home cooking. Fat will drip down into the aluminium cast ring. 

Korean pork cuts diagram by JinJoo Lee (www.kimchimari.com)

Samgyetang 삼계탕

이열치열. To fight fire with fire, that's why Koreans traditionally eat Samgyetang during the hottest days of summer. In Hanja the saying is as follows: 以熱治熱. Main ingredient is a poussin, a young chicken, less than 28 days old at slaughter. The poussin weighs typically about half a kilo. Stuff each poussin with rice soaked in cold water, one fresh ginseng, one jujube, and about eight garlic cloves. Boil on medium heat until the chicken is soft. This can take about 70 minutes.

Transfer the chicken to a stone bowl and add the broth. Sprinkle with the greens of spring onion. This chicken soup is served with ginseng infused soju. No dipping sauce was served in this Busan restaurant near Dongnae, but there was plenty of grey salt to put on a plate for dipping the pieces of chicken. Just ₩ 13.000 including a small bottle of ginseng soju.

Boligulbi 보리굴비 + Nogcha bab 녹차밥

Yellow corvina fermented in barley and green tea rice. The cook first brought the grilled fish in one piece and then asked me something I didn't understand. I nodded. After five minutes he came back with the fish in pieces and had apparently fried the separate pieces. 

The green tea rice was a bit of a mystery to me until the waitress explained. I had to put the rice in a bowl of cold green tea. I can imagine that this dish is served with hot green tea in winter.

The banchan (반찬) were really excellent in this Gunsan (군산) restaurant.  Main ingredient: yellow corvina (gulbi: 굴비). I have not found a recipe for yellow corvina fermented in barley (보리) in English, but you can use gulbi-gui 굴비구이 instead: pan fried dried yellow corvina. 

A bowl of green tea (녹차) on the left.

Doenjang-jjigae 된장찌개

Fermented soybean paste stew is one of the Korean recipes you should memorise, since it accompanies a myriad of other dishes. The basics are very simple: boil a couple of cups of water with: onion, garlic, green Korean chili peper (cheong-gochu 청고추), dried anchovies, fresh large shrimp (optional), clams (optional), mushrooms (optional), potato (optional) and zucchini (optional). Boil for 10-15 minutes.

Add 1-4 tablespoons fermented soybean paste (doenjang) depending on how big your bowl, taste before you add an extra spoon. Mix and boil for 15 minutes, add medium-firm tofu and cook for some more minutes. Add spring onion and serve in a stoneware bowl. Below is a doenjang-jjigae 된장찌개 in a mushroom restaurant near Gurye 구례. The photos are made with an iPhone 7 and are of lower quality than usual.

A rather basic songi-dolsot bap (stone pot rice with pine mushroom). Songi (송이) are pine mushrooms.

Hanguktongsin-ro 한국통신로, Masan-myeon, Gurye, Jeollanam-do

Bulgogi 불고기

This couldn’t be simpler. Slice good quality beef, like beef tenderloin (Dutch: ossenhaas), in very thin slices and marinate in bulgogi sauce for half an hour.

These are the basic ingredients for the marinade:

1/2 cup Korean soy sauce.
1/3 cup sugar.
3 tablespoons rice wine.
2 tablespoons sesame oil.
8 cloves garlic, minced.
4 scallions, minced.
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds.
1/2 teaspoon black pepper, salt.

There are many variations to the bulgogi marinade. This marinade was given to me by my friend Jinyoung so I thought I should keep it.