Vegetarian & food

Hi everybody! I’m pleased to introduce you to another traditional Korean recipe today. It’s called goguma-bap. In Korean Goguma is sweet potato, and bap is cooked rice.

When I was in elementary school in Korea, I often watched my grandmother making this dish. She lived on an island, and when I visited her, I loved her goguma-bap. The main room where she slept was heated using the traditional Korean system called ondol, which heats the floor. The room was divided into 2 sections: the warm area and the cool area.

During the cold winter, my grandmother slept in the warm area, and the goguma were kept in the cool area. They were sleeping in the same room with my grandmother and they were always ready to be served any minute. : )

Goguma freezes easily so they should always should be kept in cool place. If they’re frozen, the texture is totally changed, just like a radish, and they aren’t tasty at all.

When I laid down to sleep next to my grandmother, I couldn’t help but stare at the pile of goguma, and when I woke up the next morning, the first thing I saw every day was goguma.

She used to prepare them in many different ways. Some of my favorites were:

1. Sweet potato rice, served as a main dish.
2. Sweet potato sticks for a snack: the sweet potatoes are simply peeled and split into several sticks. There was not much candy available on that island at the time, so goguma sticks was delicious enough for us.
3. Dried sweet potato soup for lunch: my grandmother sliced and dried sweet potatoes for days until each piece got hard like a rock. She put them away in a sack for future use, and boil them in water for lunch. Sometimes she added red beans and sugar or some other kind of sweetener.
4. Steamed and dried sweet potatoes for a snack:  sweet potatoes are cooked, sliced, and dried until they are rock hard. It was a delicious snack for us, and we treated it like candy. I’m not sure I would enjoy it these days though. I should make it and see if I still like it. : )

In this video I use the sweet potatoes with orange flesh because these are easier to find than Korean sweet potatoes, which have white flesh. Both are equally delicious.

Enjoy the recipe!

Ingredients (for 2-3 servings)

• 1 cup of short grain rice
• 1 pound (453 grams) of sweet potato
• Water

For seasoning sauce:

• ½ cup of chopped Asian chives (can be replaced with green onions)
• 1 clove of minced garlic
• ¼ cup soy sauce
• 1 ts honey or sugar
• 2 Tbs of vinegar
• 1 ts of hot pepper flakes
• 1 Tbs of toasted sesame seeds

Directions

1. Put 1 cup of short grain rice in a heavy bottomed pot or stone pot. Rinse in cold water and drain. Scrub the wet rice with your hand, and rinse and drain until the drained water runs clear. Drain the last of the water by tilting the pot as much as you can. The rice should still be wet. Add 1 cup of water and soak in the pot for 30 minutes with the lid closed.
2. Peel the sweet potatoes and rinse in cold water. Cut them into ½ inch cubes.
   
3. Add the sweet potato cubes over the rice in the pot.
   
4. Bring it to a boil over medium heat and let it cook for about 15 minutes in a stone pot (or 10 minutes in the regular pot).
   
5. Open the lid and turn over the rice and the sweet potato with a wooden spoon.
6. Close the lid and let it simmer for another 15-20 minutes in a stone pot (or 10-15 minutes in a regular pot) until the sweet potato and rice are cooked fully.
7. Open the lid and use a wooden spoon to turn over the rice and sweet potato so they mix well.
   
8. Transfer some to serving bowls and serve with seasoning sauce.
   

For the seasoning sauce:

1. Combine the soy sauce, chopped chives, garlic, honey, hot pepper flakes, vinegar, and toasted sesame seeds in a small bowl.
   

Today I am introducing you to a delicious, sweet, crispy Korean dessert: a sesame peanut candy called kkae-ttangkong gangjeong. This is my version of a traditional Korean candy made with sesame seeds (called kkae-gangjeong) or peanuts (called ttangkong-gangjeong). I wanted to make these traditional candies more pretty, nutritious, and delicious so I combined them and added freeze dried strawberries and raspberries from an American grocery store.

The end result is sweet, crispy, light, delicious, easy to make and irresistible, especially when made with my homemade toasted sesame seeds. It’s not gooey at all: it’s a little brittle and breaks apart in your mouth, and the fruit gives it a tangy kick.

The recipe looks very simple but I actually spent a lot of time getting the measurements and the technique just right. This candy is not only delicious but it never goes soft or soggy, even if you leave in on the counter uncovered for a few days.

Try it out, and you can substitute peanuts or sesame seeds with either sesame seeds or peanuts, and you could experiment with other types of dried fruit, or just leave them out. The key point is to get everything ready before you make the syrup, because once that is ready and the nuts go in, you need to mix and spread quickly. Otherwise, the mixture will get hard in a few minutes, so it will be difficult for you to spread.

Try out the recipe and  share it with your loved ones!

Ingredients

• 1 cup toasted sesame seeds (store bought or home-toasted
• 1 cup roasted unsalted peanuts
• ¼ cup freeze dried strawberries (optional)
• ¼ cup freeze dried raspberries (optional)
• 2 teaspoons vegetable oil

For the syrup:

• ½ cup sugar
• ¼ cup rice or corn syrup
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon water

Directions

1. Put the sesame seeds and peanuts in one bowl and the freeze dried fruit in another.
2. Spread the vegetable oil on the cutting board with your hand. Massage some into a rolling pin with the oil.
3. Put the sugar, syrup, salt, and water in a small, heavy saucepan and cook over low heat.
   
4. Let it boil for about 4 minutes until small bubbles come up around the edges of the pan. Don’t stir it, but lift the pan and tilt it so the syrup melt evenly.
   
5. When the sugar is all melted, stir it with a wooden spoon. Keep stirring and lifting the wooden spoon in the air until you see sugar threads come off the syrup on the spoon.
   
6. Add the sesame seeds and the peanuts to the syrup and mix well with the wooden spoon until it forms a big lump.
7. Remove it from the heat and put the lump on the oiled cutting board. Quickly spread it out with the wooden spoon and add the freeze dried fruit.
   
8. Roll it out with the rolling pin to a rectangle about 8 x 9 inches. Cut it into bite sized pieces about 2 x 1 inches with a sharp kitchen knife.
   
9. Let cool and transfer to an air-tight container or plastic bag. You can keep it up to 1 week at room temperature and 3 months in the freezer.

Today I’m going to show you how to make your own yellow pickled radish, called danmuji in Korean. It’s a crispy, tangy, refreshing side dish and an essential ingredient in gimbap, Korean seaweed rice rolls.

I know that some of my regular readers and YouTube viewers have been waiting for this recipe for a while. Thank you for your patience! I’ve actually been working on this recipe off and on for years, and after much experimentation, I’ve come up with this delicious, accessible, foolproof version anyone can make!

I use gardenia fruits (chija in Korean) to give these radishes a nice yellow color, naturally, and I use rice bran to give them a deep aftertaste. The resulting radish tastes good and is also really beautiful. Most important to me is that this danmuji is made with all natural ingredients. Many Koreans think chija is good for your health: good for insomnia, jaundice, and is anti-inflammatory. It sounds like a panacea! When I heard this I bought a big bag of chija and have been using it as often as I can.

I’m forever grateful to my readers for requesting this recipe, because without them, I would never have tried to make danmuji at home. It’s pretty easy for me to buy it in a Korean grocery store, but like everything else, homemade is much better, more delicious, and more satisfying. Now I make danmuji at home all the time, I just love it!

I encourage you to give it a try! Good luck with making danmuji!

Ingredients (makes 4 pounds of danmuji)

• 4 pounds daikon radish, washed, the tops trimmed, and dried for 3 days
• 1 ounce chija (gardenia fruits)
• 1½ cup water
• ¼ cup kosher salt
• ⅓ cup white or turbinado sugar
• ⅓  cup white vinegar
• 1 cup rice bran

Directions

Make the pickle mixture:

1. Crush the chija in a plastic bag. Transfer to a sauce pan. Add 1½ cup water, cover, and boil for 20 minutes over medium high heat.
   
2. Remove from the heat and strain the solids over a bowl. Put them into a cheesecloth folded over a few times, with the top tied to make a pouch.
3. Put the strained chija water (about ⅓ cup) into a measuring cup. Add enough cold water to top it up to 1 cup.
4. Rinse out the sauce pan and put the cup of strained chija water back into it. Add the salt, sugar, vinegar, and the rice bran. Mix well and set aside.

Make danmuji:

1. Use a peeler to remove any brown spots and roots from the daikon.
2. Cut the tops and bottoms off the daikons so the the radishes are about 10 inches long. They should be able to fit comfortably into a gallon ziplock bag. Add the leftover tops and bottoms, too.
3. Add the pickle mixture and close the bag. Press gently and move the bag around, upside down and rightside up, so everything gets well mixed. Open the bag and add the gardenia pouch, too.
4. Double bag with plastic bags. Refrigerate.

Ferment danmuji:

1. 24 hours later, take the radishes out of the refrigerator.
2. Press and massage the radishes through the ziplock bag to mix everything well. Turn it upside down and rightside up a few times. Squeeze the pouch, too.
3. Ferment for 1 month, taking it out every other day and giving it a good mix.

Serve danmuji:

1. It should be ready to eat in one month. Discard the pouch, and take out as much radish as you’ll need for a serving. Keep the rest in the bag.
2. Wash the radish well. Slice, and eat.

Koreans often make baekseolgi-tteok to celebrate a baby’s 3 week birthday (saei rye in Korean) or any child’s birthday, but it’s most often traditionally prepared to celebrate a baby’s 100 day birthday (baek il in Korean). The white cake represents purity and perfection and is attained by using fluffy steamed white rice flour and a few other ingredients: sugar, salt, and water.

Everybody at the party gives the baby good wishes on his or her 100 day birthday. They might say: “I hope you grow up to be always healthy, pure, and happy!”

This rice cake was meant to be shared with many people because it’s believed that the more people who share it, the longer life the baby will have.

If you’ve already made my mujigae-tteok (rainbow rice cake), I think making baekseolgi-tteok may be too simple for you. I added some dried fruits and sliced almonds to this rice cake to make it more tasty and colorful, but if you want to make it in the traditional Korean style, leave them out.

Let me know if you make this for your lovely family members, friends, babies, your parents, or even your co-workers! Impress me and my other readers.

A note about short grain rice flour: the flour you buy at your local store or the flour you make may have more or less moisture in it than the rice flour I use in this recipe. This is because of many different things like how long it’s been in the freezer in the store, or the atmospheric conditions where you live. You may need to add more or less water, depending on how dry or wet your short grain rice flour is.

Ingredients

• 4 cups and 1 TBS rice flour (made from short grain rice)
• 1 ts salt
• ¼ cup water
• ¼ cup sugar
• dried colorful fruits and nuts if desired : raisins, golden raisins, papaya or apricot (sliced), cranberries, and almonds (sliced or chopped)

Cooking utensils:
Steamer, sifter, 8 inch (20 cm) cake ring

Directions

1. Thaw out the package of frozen rice flour and put it into a large bowl.
2. Add water and salt. Mix it all up and press out any wet lumps by rubbing the lumps gently between your palms. Repeat until all the lumps are broken and the rice flour is uniformly wet.
3. Sift the rice flour twice, then add sugar and sift once more.
   
4. Add 10 cups of water to the bottom of a steamer and bring to a boil.
5. When the water boils, place a wet cloth or cheese cloth over the rack and put the cake ring on top. Put the sifted rice flour into the ring and flatten it out so the mixture sits level.
   *tip: a business card works well for this
6. Add colorful dried fruits and nuts on top, if you want them. The traditional Korean style doesn’t use them, but you can add them if you like.
   
7. Cover the cake with the cloth and steam over high heat for 30 minutes.
8. Turn off the heat and open the lid. Uncover the cake and carefully lift it out using the sides of the cloth. Place it on a plate or cakeboard.
9. Wait a few minutes for it to cool down before gently pulling the cloth out and removing the cake ring from the cake.
10. Serve with tea, coffee, or milk.
    

Freeze any leftover rice cake: if you freeze it when it’s still fresh and fluffy, it will still be chewy and fluffy when it’s thawed out. Cut the rice cake into individual servings and wrap each piece in plastic wrap. Put the pieces into a plastic bag and keep that  in the freezer. Thaw it out at room temperature before serving, or reheat it in a steamer or microwave oven.

If you can’t find frozen rice flour in a Korean grocery store, you can make rice flour it at home:

1. Rinse and drain some short grain rice a couple of times and soak overnight (10-12 hours).
2. Drain the water and grind the rice very finely. Use it right away, or immediately store in the freezer.

Hi everybody!
I’m introducing another delicious tofu recipe to you today. It’s very juicy and delicious. I didn’t use any chili peppers or powder, so it will be a good side dish for children or those who can’t tolerate spicy food. Yes, I’m a spicy food lover! But I sometimes feel like eating something mild. The sweet salty tangy brine in this recipe makes the intrinsically tasteless tofu very delicious.

You can eat it right after making it, and it’ll last for 2 or 3 weeks in the fridge. This side dish is very versatile. For a quick meal, cook some noodles, put them in a bowl, and add some dubu-jangajji over top with the delicious brine, onion, and chopped mushrooms. Or simply mix some pickle juice with your rice. If you have roasted kim in your cupboard, crush a sheet or two and add it to the rice. Yum!

If you have any more ideas on how to prepare this, let me know in the comments below and share your idea with my readers.

Ingredients

• 2 pkg of tofu
• ¾ cup soy sauce
• 3 dried shiitake mushrooms
• ⅓ cup vinegar
• 1½ cup water
• 2 garlic cloves, sliced
• 1 apple, pit removed and sliced (or 2 tbs of sugar)
• 1 onion, sliced
• cooking oil (vegetable oil, canola oil, etc)

Directions

1. Remove the tofu from the package. Drain and rinse.
2. Cube the tofu into bite sized pieces.
   
3. Heat up a pan and add a little cooking oil. Lightly dry off each tofu piece with a paper towel and pan fry until each side is golden brown.
   
4. Prepare the brine by putting the soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, apple, dried shiitake mushrooms, and water into a thick bottomed pot. Bring to a boil over medium high heat for 10 minutes, then turn down the heat and boil for another 30 minutes. Strain with a strainer.
   
5. Put the fried tofu and the sliced onion into a container. Pour the strained brine over top, and add the cooked shiitake mushrooms.
   
6. To serve, put some of the tofu, brine, and onions into a serving bowl, along with some of the shittake mushroom, chopped. Serve as a side dish with rice or noodles. To eat, mix in some of the brine with your rice. Eat your rice and take a piece of tofu, mushroom or slice of onion from time to time, too.

I was really surprised the first time one of my readers requested a recipe for ppopgi. I had totally forgotten about it!

When I was in elementary school in Korea, there was a ppopgi vendor outside my school every day, and I was forever tempted by him, so the request brought back a lot of good memories.

The ingredients can’t be simpler; basically just sugar and baking soda. The key to good ppopgi is all technique, timing, and patience. The candy is sweet, but also a little smoky, nutty, and bitter. You might expect it to be hard and sticky, but the baking soda makes it light, airy, and brittle. This candy has a few different regional names. When I was young, we used to call it “gukja,” which means “ladle” and refers to the ladle it was traditionally made in. It was only later that I heard it called “ppopgi” or “dalgona.”

When I was a kid, anything sweet made for an awesome snack for me and my friends. The ppopgi didn’t even have a stick; thats new technology! These days everyone is afraid to eat sugar, but back then we couldn’t get enough of it. Some of my friends even used to snack on sugar water!

After school we’d gather around the vendor and watch him melt the sugar, mix it up, add the baking soda, and make the candy. He had a few different patterns he used for the designs: a bird, a fish, a star, and a flower. And if you can eat the candy around the design without cracking it, you win a free ppopgi.

I always hoped he would firmly press the pattern into the candy and make a good strong impression that I could easily pop out, but he was so tricky. He only pressed it in for a quick second before wordlessly handing it to me. He didn’t need to explain the challenge: I knew what I was supposed to do. Preserve the shape in the middle and eat everything else. I used all kinds of techniques: nibbling, licking, pinching, but the surprising brittleness of the candy always beat me and it would shatter.

He sometimes let me clean his ladle, and I made sugar water like I show you in the video. I thought I was getting a real treat at the time!

Ppopgi is strictly a street food in Korea, but that shouldn’t stop you from making it at home and challenging your family members and friends to see if they can save the design without cracking. Try it and have fun! Let me know how it goes!

Ingredients

• 1½ tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon white or brown sugar
• a pinch of baking soda

Sugar and baking soda

Directions

1. Place sugar in a stainless steel ladle and heat it over medium heat until it starts to melt.
2. Stir it with a spoon so it melts evenly and doesn’t burn. Control the heat by lifting the ladle far from the heat or bringing it closer, as needed.
3. Stir the melting sugar until it turns into a smooth, clear liquid with no lumps.
4. Add baking soda and continue stirring. It will expand and change from light brown to creamy golden beige.
5. Sprinkle 1 teaspoon sugar on a cookie pan. Scrape the hot, foamy candy from the ladle onto the sugar coated cookie pan.
6. Place a skewer or lollipop stick in the center of the lower part of the candy, 1 inch from the edge.
7. Press it down with any smooth, flat, non-stick object like a stainless steel bowl, lid, or a spatula.
8. Use a cookie cutter to press a pattern into the center of the candy. Press hard and make a good impression if you want them to break out the design easily, and press softly if you want to drive them crazy!
9. Wait for 1 minute until the candy gets hard. Enjoy!

I made a dozen of candies at the hotel where I stayed  1 night before the shooting day. : )

Thanks to everyone at YouTube LA Space for filming me there,
and a special thanks to Anthony Fantano!

Ingredients

red bean paste, sweet rice flour, boiling water, sugar, pine nuts, cinnamon powder.

Directions

1. In a pot, place 1 cup of washed red beans and 4 cups of water and heat it over high heat for 10 minutes.
2. Lower the heat to low medium and simmer for 50 minutes.
3. Check if the beans are cooked fully. Remove extra water from the beans and crush them with a wooden spoon or use your food processor to grind it.
4. Add 1 cup of brown sugar, 1 ts of salt, 1 ts of cinnamon powder into the red bean paste and set it aside.

1. Put the red bean paste in a pot.
2. Pour some water (about 4- 5 cups) and 1 cup of sugar (depends on your taste) and boil it.
3. Mix one cup of sweet rice powder, a pinch of salt and 1 tbs of sugar in a bowl.
4. Add ½ cup-1 cup of hot water in “3” and mix it with a spoon first and fold it by hand to make dough. (The amount of hot water varies depending on the dryness of sweet rice powder you use, so first use ½ cup of hot water to make your dough and put more hot water while kneading the dough)
5. Make small rice balls with the dough about 0.5 cm diameter.
6. When the red bean soup boils, add the rice balls and cook it.
7. Keep stirring the soup and it will get thicker.
8. Ladle the soup into a bowl and add a few pine nuts on top and sprinkle some cinnamon powder and serve it.

Whenever the season changes, I always love to see the fresh, new ingredients available at the farmers’ market and the Korean grocery store. I love to cook with these ingredients, and I love to eat them, but I’m sometimes not sure if I should use them in my recipe videos, because they might be unfamiliar to a lot of people.

Today’s recipe uses garlic scapes, called maneuljjong in Korean, which are well known and popular in Korea, and I found out they are becoming more popular in the West as well. That’s good news because they are so fresh and delicious, and when they are in season in May and June they are perfectly fresh and tender.

This recipe is for maneuljjong-bokkeum (마늘쫑볶음), stir fried garlic scapes, which is how I usually prepare my garlic scapes. It’s sweet, chewy, crispy, and salty, and when garlic scapes are stir fried like this with a bit of mulyeot they take on a wonderful texture, which is kind of soft and jelly-like but still crispy. It’s hard to describe! Can you imagine?

I hope you like the recipe, and I’m posting this now because garlic scapes are in season right now and it’s the perfect time to make this side dish. Run out now and get some, and let me know how your maneuljjong-bokkeum turns out!

Ingredients

(serves 4)

• 1 pound garlic scapes
• 3 tablespoons cooking oil
• ¼ cup soy sauce
• 3 tablespoons rice syrup (or corn syrup, sugar or honey)
• 2 teaspoons sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds
• a few strips of shredded red pepper (optional)

Directions

1. Cut off the buds of the garlic scrapes and put them in a bowl. Cut the stems into 2 inch long bite size pieces. Wash and drain the buds and the stems separately.
2. Heat up a skillet with the cooking oil. Stir-fry the buds for 1 minute over medium high heat and then add the stems.
3. Stir for about 8 to 10 minutes until the color of the scapes change from fresh green to olive green and look a little withered. Taste a sample to see if they’re well cooked. 
4. Add the soy sauce and lower the heat to medium. Stir for a few minutes. Add the rice syrup and keep stirring for another 3 to 5 minutes until shiny, wrinkly, and well cooked.
5. Remove from the heat and mix with the sesame oil. Transfer it to a serving plate and sprinkle with sesame seeds and silgochu if you use it. Serve as a side dish for rice. It can be stored in the refrigerator up to 1 week.