Vegetarian & food

Today I’m going to introduce you to a popular dish that came to Korea from Japan called omurice, or omeu-raiseu: 오므라이스 in Korean. It’s sweet sour, and savory fried rice packed with crispy vegetables wrapped in a soft and thin omelette.

This dish has an interesting history. For a long time Japan had a very strict foreign policy where it interacted very little with the West, until around 1866. Korea also had a similar policy, which is how we got the nickname “The Hermit Kingdom,” because we didn’t associate with a lot of countries.

Once the policy was lifted Japan started trading with foreign countries and they got new ideas for food, too. These foods included “beefsteak,” curry rice, cutlets, and spaghetti, all of these were new to Japan and they called them “Western foods” even though they were Japanese interpretations of Western-style foods. They often used tomato ketchup and Worcester sauce, which were a new thing at the time. They also used Japanese pronunciations of English words like raisu (for”rice”) and sutēki (for “steak”).

How did Japanese omurice come to Korea?

When Japan occupied Korea (1910-1945) they introduced these new Western-style foods there. Eventually Korean had “Western restaurants” (Kyoungyang-sik: 경양식, “light Western food”) all over.

We adapted some of the recipes to our own tastes, and we used the Japanese pronunciations of these English words, which had no meaning at all in Korean. I ate omeu-raiseu for many years but when I learned English I figured out that “omeu” was supposed to be “omelette” and “raiseu” was supposed to be “rice”! It suddenly made a lot of sense.

I ate omurice as a kid and I made it for my own children when I grew up. It was a lunchbox favorite of theirs and I hope you enjoy it too!

Ingredients (Serves 1)

• 1 cup (6 ounces) mixture of green and red bell peppers, cut into small pieces
• ¼ cup chopped celery
• ¼ cup chopped carrot
• 5 white mushrooms, cut into chunks
• 3/4 cup (4 to 5 ounces) chopped onion
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1 smoked sausage (4 ounces), chopped
• a few chunks of aged cheddar cheese (optional)
• 1 green chili pepper, chopped (optional)
• 1 tablespoon butter
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 cup cooked rice
• 2 tablespoons ketchup
• 2 eggs
• ¼ teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
• a few bay or mint leaves for garnish (optional)

Directions

It’s a two-step dish: first we make fried rice and a thin omelette, and then we wrap the rice in the omelette.

Make the fried rice:

You can put almost anything you want into the fried rice, but I like to fill it with delicious, nutritious stuff.

1. Heat up a large pan. Add butter, sausage and garlic and stir for 1 minute until the garlic turns a little crispy.
2. Add the green bell pepper, red bell pepper, celery, carrot, mushroom, and onion. Stir a few minutes until the onion turns a little translucent.
3. Stir in ¼ teaspoon salt and the ½ teaspoon of black pepper.
4. Add the rice, ketchup, and mix it well. Let it cook without stirring for a minute, so that the bottom of the rice gets a little crunchy. Stir it again.
5. Remove from the heat.
6. Transfer the fried rice to a bowl that can fit all of it, plus a bit more. Fill it about halfway with the fried rice, then if you’re using cheddar cheese stash it in there before filling the rest of the bowl.
7. If you’re using chopped green chili pepper, put it on top. Gently press everything down with a spoon so that it’ll mold nicely to the inside of the bowl.

Make a beautiful round omelette:

Our goal is to make a beautiful, smooth, thin omelette that’s a uniform color, in a similar way that we make a traditional Korean egg garnish (gyeran-jidan: 계란지단).

1. Beat 2 eggs in a bowl with ¼ teaspoon salt and sugar.
2. Put a strainer over another bowl and strain the egg mixture through, to make it smooth, remove any lumps, and to catch the chalazae (white thing that hangs off the yolk).
3. Heat up a non-stick pan. Add vegetable oil and swirl the oil around so it covers the pan. Then wipe off the excess heated oil with a paper towel so only a thin layer remains. Turn down the heat to medium low, so we don’t burn or brown the egg at all.
4. Pour the egg mixture into the pan and swirl the pan around to make a nice round circle. Keep moving the pan around and let the low heat cook the egg until it doesn’t flow anymore. Remove from the heat.

Put it together:

1. Put a large plate over the bowl of stir-fried rice. Flip everything over and remove the bowl, so you have a perfect dome of fried rice.
2. Place the omelette over top of the dome. Tuck the edges close under the rice.
3. Top with a bit of ketchup and or any other garnish you like, and serve.

The Korean danhobak is a kind of winter squash, known by its Japanese name kabocha in English. In Korean, dan means “sweet,” and hobak means “pumpkin,” and bap means “rice,” so you could translate this dish as “sweet pumpkin rice.” A danhobak is very sweet and fluffy when cooked, so I often steam it and eat it by itself. The texture is very similar to sweet potato.

There are 2 ways to prepare danhobakbap. The first way is to mix rice with chunks of kabocha in a pot, and serve with a seasoning sauce called yangnyeomjang. The second way is to scoop out the insides of the kabocha, fill it with rice and other ingredients, and cook it.

I’m introducing the second version to you today because Halloween is coming soon, so I think you might be interested in making this beautiful and delicious danhobakbap with the kabocha pumpkin intact. If you take danhobakbap to your party, it will be popular because your friends will be excited to open the lid to see the colorful delicious looking rice inside!

Ingredients

Kabocha (1½ kilograms, or about 3 pounds), sweet rice, black sweet rice, salt, jujubes, pine nuts, raisins, canned chestnuts, soy sauce, vinegar, green onion, green peas, and red chili pepper.

Directions

Let’s make the rice first!

1. Place 1 cup of sweet rice and 2 tbs of black sweet rice in a small pot.
2. Add some water to the rice and scrub it by hand a couple of times. Rinse, and then drain the water. Repeat until the rice is clean and the drained water is mostly clear.
3. Add 1 cup of water and a pinch of salt to the rice and close the lid. Set aside to soak for at least 30 minutes.
   
4. After soaking, bring to a boil over medium high heat for about 5-6 minutes.
5. Open the lid and simmer over low heat with the lid closed for 10 minutes.
6. Add ⅓ cup of green peas to the hot rice and mix it up. Set aside.

Prepare the kabocha:

1. Cut off the top to make the lid just like a jack o’ lantern.
2. Scoop out the insides and set aside.
   
3. Remove the pits from 8 dried jujubes. Measure 2 tbs raisins, 2 tbs pine nuts with the tips removed, and ½ cup canned chestnuts, and set aside.
4. Place the jujubes on the bottom of the kabocha and add the cooked rice, the raisins, and the pine nuts, in that order.
5. Add more rice on top to fill it out.
6. Open a can of chestnuts and place them over top of the rice.
   
7. Put the lid back on the danhobak and steam or boil for 30-40 minutes until it’s cooked thoroughly. Wrap it in cheesecloth beforehand so you can easily take it out when it’s ready.
8. Make sauce by mixing 3 tbs soy sauce, 2 ts vinegar, 1 tbs chopped green onion, and 1 ts red chili pepper in a bowl.

How to serve:

1. Open the lid of the kabocha and cut it into 4 pieces with a knife.
2. Transfer each piece to a plate and serve with the sauce.

Enjoy the recipe!

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.

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.