Vegetarian & food

Hello everyone! Today I’d like to introduce you to Subak Soju, a very popular cocktail in Korean bars in America that you can easily make at home. It’s made with soju, which is the #1 distilled beverage in Korea but not well known to the rest of the world. If you can’t find it in a Koreatown near you, you can substitute it with vodka.

The fun thing about subak soju is that you can use the blended flesh of the watermelon to make your drink and use the watermelon shell to serve it in — nothing is wasted! The first time I ever tried something like this was at one of my favorite Korean bars in Manhattan, Pocha 32. They make it from half of a large watermelon that everyone at the table can share together, not with small watermelons like I do in this video.

Whichever method you use, the ratio of soju to blended watermelon is 1:1. People love the floating ice and the delicious watermelon in this drink – it’s sweet, cold, and very refreshing. But be careful! It tastes very fruity but there’s a lot of alcohol inside!

This video was filmed at the Tastemade kitchen studios in Los Angeles with Hilah of Hilahcooking. Jimmy Wong of Feast of Fiction also stopped by for a drink. Check out their channels and subscribe to them, they are all pretty cool.

Ingredients (Serves 4-8)

• 2 small seedless watermelons, kept in the fridge
• 2 bottles of soju, kept in the fridge (about 4 cups’ worth)
• 2 cups of ice cubes

Directions

1. Cut off the top of watermelon. Scoop the flesh out with a spoon and put it in a blender. Set aside the watermelon bowls.
2. Blend the watermelon flesh for 1 minute, until smooth.
3. Set a fine-mesh strainer over a bowl and pour the blended watermelon through it. Press down with a spoon to strain it well. Discard the pulp. Remove the foam from the top with a spoon.
4. Measure 4 cups of blended watermelon juice and put it into a pitcher. Add 4 cups of soju and mix well.
5. Pour the mixture into the watermelon bowl and add ice cubes.
6. Serve cold with a green onion pancake.

Songpyeon is a Korean traditional rice cake to eat on Chuseok, which is celebration of the year’s good harvest. Traditionally it’s made with the rice of the first harvest of the year. Chuseok is August 15 by the lunar calendar, which is usually in the middle of September by the solar calendar. This year it’s September 14th.

Ingredients

Frozen rice flour, salt, water, sesame seeds, sesame oil, dried and skinned mung beans, brown sugar, white sugar, pine needles, mugwort powder (ssook garu in Korean), strawberry Jell-o powder.

Make the dough:

1. Prepare a package of rice powder (2 lbs) usually sold frozen at a Korean grocery store. Just before using it, you must thaw it until the powder is at room temperature.
2. Put rice powder through a sifter to make the powder fine.Tip: If your rice powder is very fine, you can skip sifting. If your rice powder is coarse, you may have to grind it with a food processor or coffee grinder before sifting.
3. Prepare 3 stainless bowls and put 1 cup of finely sifted rice powder into the each bowl. (Bowl A, B, and C)
4. Boil 2 cups of water for your rice dough.
5. Bowl A (white songpyeon): add a pinch of salt and 3 tbs of boiling water and mix it with a wooden spoon. (it’ll be too hot if you use your hands at first) Knead the rice dough for about 5 minutes. Put the dough into a plastic bag and set it aside.
6. Bowl B (pink songpyeon): add a pinch of salt, a pinch of strawberry Jell-o powder, and 3 tbs of boiling water. Mix it with a wooden spoon and knead the rice dough for about 5 minutes. Put the dough into a plastic bag and set it aside.
7. Bowl C (green songpyeon): add a pinch of salt, 1 ts of ssookgaru (mugwort power) and 3.5 tbs boiling water. Mix it with a wooden spoon and knead the rice dough for about 5 minutes. Put the dough into a plastic bag and set it aside.Tip: You will need to add 3.5 tbs of water because of  the 1 ts of ssookgaru.

Make the filling:

Roasted sesame seeds powder filling:

1. Grind ¼ cup of roasted sesame seeds using a coffee grinder for 15-20 seconds.
2. Transfer the ground sesame powder into a small bowl and mix it with ¼ cup of brown sugar and a pinch of salt.Tip: if you grind too long, the powder will become sticky from the oil in the seeds.

Mung bean powder filling:

1. Wash and drain ¼ cup of dried and skinned mung beans and put them in a pot with a thick bottom.
2. Add ¼ cup of water and a pinch of salt to the pot and simmer it for 30 minutes.Tip: Be sure not to burn it – simmer over the lowest heat.
3. Open the pot and use your wooden spoon to crush the beans into fine powder.Tip: if you make more than ¼ cup of mung bean powder, you may have to use your grinder or food processor to grind it finely.
4. Transfer the crushed mung bean powder into a small bowl or container and wait until it cools down.
5. Add ¼ cup of white sugar and mix it. That’s it!

Let’s make songpyeon now!

1. Break off a piece of rice dough about 1 inch in diameter and roll it between your palms to make a rice ball. Then press your thumb in the center of the ball to make it shaped like a cup.
2. Fill the cup with either sesame filling or mung bean filling using a small spoon, and seal it using your thumb and index fingers.

1. Place all the raw rice cakes (songpyeon) on a plate.
2. Wash your pine needles thoroughly with a little dish soap. Towel dry them.
3. Put some water (4 cups) into a steamer and boil it. When it starts boiling, place a damp cotton cloth on the bottom of the steamer tray.
4. Make a bed of pine needles on the wet cloth and put the raw songpyeon on top. Put more pine needles on top of the songpyeon, too.Tip: Pine needles stop the songpyeon from sticking together and give them a good flavor.
5. Steam it for 25 minutes over medium high heat.
6. Prepare some cold water in a large bowl, and drop in a little sesame oil.
7. Dump your steamed songpyeon into to the cold water and quickly remove pine needles. Take them out, put them on a plate to serve.

Enjoy your songpyeon and happy Chuseok!

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.

Sigeumchi-namul is a Korean side dish (banchan) made of blanched spinach seasoned with soy sauce, garlic, and sesame oil. The spinach is only slightly cooked, leaving it a little crispy, but still soft and tasty. Because it’s so easy to make and so delicious, it’s a very popular and common side dish among Koreans. For many Koreans an easy, simple everyday meal consists of rice, kimchi, a stew (often doenjang-jjigae), kongnamul-muchim (a bean sprout side dish), and sigeumchi-namul.

It’s on our everyday table and also served at special occasions, family gatherings, BBQ parties—basically anywhere Koreans are gathering with food, sigeumchi-namul is there and among the most popular dishes, often paired with kongnamul-muchim, another favorite.

In this recipe you can replace spinach with bok choy or arugula or experiment with something new if you want. I had a potluck party with my readers a few years ago, and one of them brought his own sigeumchi-namul made with an ingredient I couldn’t recognize. I asked him and he told me it was tender kale! Blanched and prepared like sigeumchi-namul, it was so delicious!

I hope you enjoy this recipe and the remade HD video. Let me know if you make it. If you try your own experiments, let me know in the comments!

Ingredients

• 8 ounces spinach, cleaned and washed
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1 green onion, chopped
• 1½ teaspoon soy sauce
• 1½ teaspoon sesame oil
• 2 teaspoon sesame seeds
• silgochu (Korean dried shredded red pepper), optional

Directions

1. Boil 8 to 10 cups of water in a large pot.
2. Blanch the spinach for 30 seconds to 1 minute with lid off, stirring with a wooden spoon.
3. Strain the spinach and rinse in cold water a couple of times to remove any residual dirt.
4. Squeeze out excess water and cut a few times into bite size pieces.
5. Mix the spinach with garlic, green onion, soy sauce, sesame oil, and sesame seeds in a mixing bowl by hand.
6. Transfer to a bowl or plate and garnish with silgochu, if used.
7. Serve with rice.

Today’s recipe is a sweet, sour, and spicy mushroom dish with water dropwort, called Beoseot minari chomuchim. It’s a variation of a popular traditional Korean dish that’s prepared the same way but uses squid instead of mushrooms (called ojingeo minari chomuchim), and something I came up with in my hotel room in Sydney, Australia during my Gapshida tour. I was making the squid version to bring to the Sydney readers’ meetup & potluck, and quickly whipped up this vegetarian alternative in case some people didn’t like squid.

To my surprise, most of the people at the party preferred my mushroom version to the original! I promised them I would post the recipe someday, and here it is!

I use king oyster mushrooms in this version, but you could use other mushrooms, too. Blanched mushrooms go well with water dropwort, the textures of each play off each other and both are awesome with this Korean-style sweet, sour, and spicy sauce. Water dropwort (called minari in Korean) can be hard to find, so you can substitute it with parsley leaves, or even basil leaves.

Enjoy the recipe and hello Australia! This is for you!

Ingredients (Serves 4 to 6)

• ⅓ an English cucumber, sliced in 3 to 3½ inch long and thin strips
• ½ medium carrot, peeled, and  sliced in 3 to 3½ inch long and thin strips
• ½ a medium-sized onion, sliced thinly
• 1½ teaspoons salt
• ½ pound king oyster mushrooms (5 to 6 large king oyster mushrooms), cut into thin strips lengthwise
• 1 bunch of water dropwort (minari): about 2 ounces, with the tough stems and leaves trimmed off
• ¼ cup hot pepper paste (gochujang)
• 1 tablespoon hot pepper flakes (gochugaru)
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 3 tablespoons white vinegar
• 2 teaspoons sesame oil
• 1 green onion, chopped
• 1 green chili pepper (or jalapeno), stemmed, and  chopped

Directions

Prepare vegetables

1. Combine cucumber, carrot, and onion in a bowl and mix with ½ teaspoon salt.
   
2. Bring water to a boil in a pot. Blanch the mushrooms for 1 minute, then strain them with a strainer or a slotted spoon. Rinse them  in cold water. Drain and squeeze to remove excess water. Put them in a mixing bowl.
   
3. Reheat the water and blanch minari (water dropwort) for 30 seconds to 1 minute. Strain and rinse in cold water a couple of times, changing the water to clean them and to stop them from cooking. Squeeze out the excess water. Chop them into bite size pieces. Add to the mixing bowl.
   
4. Squeeze out the excess water from the cucumber, carrot, and onion mixture and put it into the mixing bowl.
   

Make seasoning sauce

1. Combine hot pepper paste, hot pepper flakes, garlic, 1 teaspoon salt, honey, vinegar, sesame oil, and green onion in a bowl. Mix well and add to the vegetables in the mixing bowl.
2. Add green chili pepper and mix well by hand or a wooden spoon.
   

Serve
Transfer to a serving plate. Sprinkle with the sesame seeds and serve right away with rice. Leftovers can be kept in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days.

Doljaban muchim is very delicious, flavorful, and one of the easiest side dishes to prepare. The main ingredient, doljaban, is also called gimjaban, and its texture and flavor are very similar to kim (seaweed paper), which is used for making gimbap. If you like the flavor of kim, you’ll love this side dish. It’s one of my favorite side dishes for doshirak (Korean lunch in a box).

Ingredients

Doljaban, garlic, green onions, soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, sesame seeds.

Directions

In a large mixing bowl, add 3 cloves of minced garlic, 3 chopped green onions, 3 tbs soy sauce,  ⅓ cup water, 1 tbs sugar or honey, 3 tbs sesame oil,  and  mix well with a wooden spoon

1. Measure 100 grams of doljaban from the package.
2. Tear or crush the doljaban into small pieces with both hands and place it in the seasoning sauce in the bowl.
3. Mix it well until moisture is absorbed.
4. Sprinkle 2-3 tbs roasted sesame seeds and mix it together.
5. Serve with rice, kimchi, soup, and a few more side dishes.
   

You can keep it in the fridge up to 1 week.

Hi everybody! I’m so excited to introduce you to a Korean dessert (or snack) called gotgamssam. You need only 2 ingredients: gotgam (dried persimmons) and hodu (walnuts)! I think this is a record for the fewest requirements needed to make one of my recipes. If someone asks me what else they need, I would say  “strong fingers,” because you’re going to need to squeeze the wraps tightly to press the walnuts into the soft persimmons.

Dried persimmons are delicious by themselves, but if you feel like making a special dessert or snack for yourself or your guests without spending too much time preparing them, gotgamssam will be a perfect choice. For your guests, serve a few slices of gotgamssam with tea. They will be very impressed! And it will also be a good idea for a gift. Fill a small box with gotgamssam!

The heart-shaped dried persimmons that I use in this video are sold at a Korean grocery store. The persimmons should be semi-dried so that you can wrap walnuts in them easily. If the dried persimmons are too dry, put some honey inside of them to make them sticky. The other type of dried persimmons that I use in this video that look like flat, round discs are sold at an Asian grocery store. You can make gotgamssam with either one.

If dried persimmons are not available in your area, you can use dried apricots. It will turn out really pretty. If you use dried apricots, you should call them salgussam because apricots are salgu (살구) in Korean. : )

If you like persimmons, check out my dessert persimmon punch (“Sujeonggwa“) recipe.

Enjoy the recipe!

Ingredients

• 2 dried persimmons, stalks removed (replace with dried apricots if not available)
• 6 roasted walnut halves
  

Directions

1. Slice open the persimmons by slitting the sides. Make sure not to cut them all the way through.
2. Open them up and remove the seeds. Flatten them out and trim the edges to make rectangular strips.
3. Put them side by side with sticky part up.
4. Add 3 halved walnuts lengthwise, with the wrinkly part down.
5. Add 3 more halved walnuts to fit on the first like lids.
6. Roll up the persimmon. Cover with plastic wrap and press it together. Keep in the freezer.
7. Serve with tea and slice the wraps into ⅓ inch thick pieces.

Salgussam (Walnuts wrapped in dried apricots)

1. Make 3-4 strips of apricot. Put them side by side on your cutting board with sticky part up.
2. Add walnuts and roll them up the same way you would do for gotgamssam.

Hi everybody!

Dotori … dotori … dotorimuk-muchim recipe is here! : )

Dotorimuk is made from acorns. Some people in Korea still make homemade dotorimuk from scratch, using acorns that they gathered or picked  from the mountain. The traditional way to make acorn jelly is to shell, dry, and powder the acorns, then mix them with water to remove the bitter and astringent taste. The starch will sink to the bottom, so the next day you should discard the bitter water on top and pour new water in. This is repeated for many days until  the starch is not bitter anymore. Then you make porridge with this starch mixture.

Can you make your own dotorimuk from scratch? I’d like to try it, but I’m afraid that when gathering the acorns in the mountain that squirrels will give me a dirty look. : )

It’s a lot of effort to make acorn jelly powder from scratch, but luckily the powder can be found easily at any Korean grocery store, and the quality is usually just the same.

My mungbean jelly recipe is very popular, so I think this dotorimuk-muchim recipe will also be popular. All the people who came to my recent Meetup event and tasted my dotorimuk-muchim will love it. They ate every last piece!

I use only ½ cup powder in this recipe but I used 5 cups of the powder to serve more than 50 people who came to the meetup. It was a huge amount of acorn porridge to make! If you have a big party and are looking for an appetizer recipe, I think dotorimuk-muchim is a great choice because you can make the jelly and the yangnyeomjang (sauce) in advance and demonstrate your mixing in front of people at the party just as I did in my video.

I have a funny story about dotorimuk. When I lived in Korea, my friend  had a German guest who was a food scientist. She invited him to her house for dinner. She made a bunch of different Korean dishes to impress him. One of the dishes was dotorimuk-muchim. A few days after she had the guest, she called me and said: “The German guest said I should add some chocolate to the dotorimuk I made!”  : )

We laughed together but it also made sense because this person had never tasted dotorimuk in his life, so he might have expected it to taste sweet because it looks like creamy chocolate. I may get the same question from some of my readers now. My answer is: “Go ahead and make your favorite dessert with dotorimuk powder!”

Some of my readers have surprised me by using apples, Nutella, and peanut butter as filling for hoddeok. They said it turned out so delicious. If the food turns out delicious, then it means your experiment was a success, don’t you think so? : )

Ingredients

For dotorimuk

• ½ cup acorn jelly powder (dotori mukgaru)
• 3 cups water
• ½ ts salt

For the seasoning sauce

• ⅓ cup soy sauce
• 2 ts honey or sugar
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 3 stalks of green onions, chopped
• 1 tbs hot pepper flakes
• 1 tbs and 2 ts toasted sesame oil
• 1 tbs toasted sesame seeds, add right before serving so they don’t lose their crispiness
• garnish with shredded red pepper (silgochu)

For the vegetables, you can use

• 2 cups lettuce cut into bite size pieces
• ¼ cup onion, sliced thinly
• 1 cup’s worth edible chrysanthemum (ssukgat), cut into bite size
• 3-5 perilla leaves, chopped
• 2 tbs worth carrot, shredded
• ½ cup’s worth cucumber, thinly sliced
• 1 red chili pepper, chopped
• 1 green chili pepper, chopped

Directions

1. In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients for dotorimuk. Stir with a wooden spoon and strain to remove any lumps. Pour the mixture into a thick bottomed pot and stir over medium heat about 7-8 minutes until it bubbles.
   
   
   
2. Lower the heat and stir another 5 minutes.
3. Pour the mixture into a rectangular glass container and let it cool down.
   
4. Put it into the fridge for about 4-7 hours until it’s solid.
5. Create the seasoning sauce by combining soy sauce, sugar or honey, hot pepper flakes, garlic, and sesame oil in a mixing bowl. Set aside.
6. Take the acorn jelly out of the fridge. Turn the glass container upside down over your cutting board so the solidified jelly slides out in one piece. Cut into bite sized pieces 2 inch x 1 inch and ¼ inch thick.
   *tip: Use a crinkle cutter to make a nice wavy pattern on each piece of jelly
    
7. Put all the vegetables in a large bowl. Mix with the seasoning sauce by hand.
8. Add the dotorimuk and gently mix it all together.
9. Transfer to a serving plate. Sprinkle sesame seeds over top and serve.

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.