Cooking experiense. 돈까스

Whwn I was in Korea I liked two dishes themost - 돈까스 (pork cutlet) and tteokpokki.
Having come back to my hometown I wanted to make it to treat my family. Cuz the taste is mmm yummi~

Actually 돈까스 is the same as very popular Russian dish but the main is sause. It is tonkasy (donkatsu) sause that makes this dish sodelisious !! So do not ignore this ingridient.

To make this you need pork, flour, eggs and bread and donkatsu sause.
It's really easy to make it~

돈까스 a la Russie ~   ;) 

Tteokpokki à la Russe

Tteokpokki (떡볶이) is my favourite Korean food. I ate it practically everyday during my staying in Korea~

Sometimes I miss its spicy food... There are just one Korean restaurant in my native city, so I can't eat tteokpokki everytime I want.

My Korean friend gave me self-made tteok and explained how to cook))
It's my second Korean dish I tried to cook (the first was gimbab and, I can say, it's not bad!! kkk)

So, take tteok

 and slice it

 I found a recipe at the Youtube and decided to cook in this way)) Stew carrot, cabbage and some onion:

Add sause: hotpepper paste, ketchup ans soy sause

 Some green:

 Add instant noodle:

 
so, it looks a bit different (cuz it's a la Russe!!) but still tasty.

I tried to do my best ~

Some tteok is left and I gonna cook it today)

Then I share my experiense with you))

P.S. Korean cooking is not so easy and might be hard for beginners like me. Additionally, it's not so easy to find ingridients ((

Gongju best Kalbi

Korea Brand Expedition. Day 3. Gongju

 We arrived to Gongju to visit the Tombs of King Muryeong and try Gongju kalbi (Chungcheong-do is famous for this~)

We chose this restaurant:

The service was perfect and meal was veeery delicious~

We interviewed Mrs. Kim Hye-sik, the owner of the restaurant (she is, moreover, talanted poet and photographer. Thanks for splendid photo-book!!)

Mrs. Kim Hye-sik is cutting kalbi especially for foreign guests (Poland and Russian)

<My dream is to make my restaurant the best in Gongju>

Interior

1. Since when did you run the restaurant?

I run this restaurant as my mother started cook gukbapjip. in the market. It was 65 years ago... We restarted our restaurant after Korean War. I'm the second generation who run this business. Moreover, I moved the restaurant to a place where it's intensive traffic.

2. What are the most important that restaurants do?

I'm sure you liked it. Also able to experience the local culture with a restaurant that is very good.

3. Where the best thing you ever been the boss of the restaurant?

Why have small-area restaurant I like to stick to food culture. It represents the region's food to guests from other regions and foreigners.

4. When do you feel worthwhile?

The most worthwhile is that making a food I represent our city - Gongju. Eating out late and go to college has also studied management.

5. Why do you think of food seokgalbi representative?

Nowadays to serve guest with just kukbab is not enough. They prefer to order some meat, I,e. bulgogi or kalbi. They just want to enjoy lots of different menus and to make a choice. So I think, I we should offer wider range of Korean food. That's why we specialize in seokgalbi. Additionally, this are very popular dished abroad. Simply, seokgalbi is a kind of adventure to fit the taste and trend of people.

6. What is your final dream?

In Japan traditionally restaurant is family business: from father to son, from one generation to another. There are restaurant with 200 years history restaurant. I think that we should run our business in the same way. I'd like my daughter to continue running our restaurant.

Mrs. Kim Hye-sik with Korea Brand Expedition from Korea and Poland and a manager Kang Dong-sik from Presidential Council on National Branding

7. Finally, you'll read this article, Please say a few words to foreigners.

The food itself is treated as a tourism sight itself recently. Foreign travellers usually pays attention to sights and cultural treasure, but I think that cuisine helps to understand culture deeper.

Mrs. Kim Hye-sik with Korea Brand Expedition team

How to make Songpyeon

A recipe of traditional Chuseok food - Songpyeon:

Songpyeon Ingredients :

Non-glutinous rice, 5 cups (making 10 cups of powder)
Salt (15ml)
Artemisia or mugwort (50g), Salt (1 ml)
Gardenia seeds & omija juice, as needed

Filling
Chestnuts 10 (200g)
Sugar (30ml)
Young soybeans (100g)
Salt (1ml)
Sesame (100g)
Honey (45ml)
Mung beans 1 cup
Honey (75ml), Salt (2.5ml)
Cinnamon powder (15ml)
Pine needles (300g)
Sesame oil, as needed

Songpyeon Making Direction :

1. Wash non-glutinous rice 3 to 4 times and leave it soaking in water for 8 to 12 hours. Remove the soaked rice from water and sprinkle some salt and grind into a fine powder. Place the Artemisia in boiling water with salt, remove and then chop into fine pieces.
2. Take the powder for the rice cake and divide into 4 parts. Leave one part as it is, another part for the Artemisia. As for the other two parts, mix one with water from pine endodermis, and mix the last part with omija juice and knead it to make dough.
3. Peel chestnuts and cut into 3 or 4 pieces, include some sugar and steam lightly. Take the young soybeans, peel and add a bit of salt. Wash the sesame and when dry, roast and then mix with honey. Take the red beans that have been soaked in water, boil and then grind and mix with honey, salt, cinnamon powder to make the filling.
4. Take little pieces of the prepared dough. Press your thumb into the middle of the piece to make a round, flat piece. Place enough filling in the middle, fold and press the ends to make nicely-shaped songpyeon. Next, wash the pine needles and then dry.
5. In an earthenware steamer, place pine needles on the surface of the steamer and songpyeon on top. Stack more pine needles and repeat the process to add as many layers of songpyeon in the steamer as possible. When you see steam evaporating, place the cover on top. Next, take the pine needles out, dip songpyeon in cold water, rinse quickly and apply some sesame oil. Songpyeon that’s not yet been steamed should be covered with a thin damp cloth to prevent the dough from drying or cracking.

 ~~ Tip ~~

 Potatoes, sweet potatoes and acorns, among other ingredients, can be used as the dough. For the filling or stuffing, black beans, mung beans, chestnuts, jujube, sesame or sweet potatoes are used. If you dont plan on eating the steamed songpyeon right away. Rinse it with the pine needles (not in cold water), keep them covered in a basket.

(The article courtesy of SEOUL magazine)

추석 (Chuseok) - Korean Thanksgiving Day

Chuseok is one of the most important holiday in Korea.

It is celebrated on 15th day of the 8th month (lunar calendar). On Chuseok Koreans visit their parents and  give thanks to their ancestors for the abundant harvest.  

Traditions

 On the morning of Chuseok, Koreans  present newly harvested rice, rice wine and Songpyeon to their ancestral altars. 

There are some rules how to organize ritual table on Chuseok holiday.
  - Direct the ritual table to the north.  -  There is a certain order how to serve dishes:  rice and soup come first. Then, arrange food in the order of quality and price from the perspective of the past. The most expensive and fine dishes are to be put closer to ancestors. Cheap fruits and vegetables are served in the front row, the next are seasoned vegetables and fried dishes.  The last row is for  boiled food.
Meat must be placed on the right (west) of the souls of ancestors and fish on the left (east) because meat is more expensive than fish. Similarly fish should be put with the tail on the right and the head on the left because the tail is the better part to eat.
Among fruit, red ones should be put in the east and white ones in the west. It is also worth remembering to place jujubes, chestnuts, persimmons, and pears in that order from left.
 -  The number of food should be odd.
 - All food offered on a ritual table should be in odd numbers.
 - Pepper and garlic should be avoided.

Songpyeon

Songpyeon is a half-moon shaped rice cake.

It's representative food for this holiday. Songpyeon cakes contain different kinds of sweet or semi-sweet fillings, such as sesame seeds and honey, sweet red bean paste, (azuki) and chestnut paste steamed over a layer of pine needles, which gives them the fragrant smell of fresh pine trees.
There is a belief that the person who makes the most beautiful songpyeon will meet a good-looking spouse (if they are single) or give birth to a beautiful daughter (if they are married or pregnant)~

If you wanna try to make a songpyeon yourself, click here

Hanbok 

Traditional Korean clothes  - hanbok - is still used when celebrating Chuseok.

celebrities wearing hanbok

B2ST

 Chuseok is very important holiday because all family gather together and celebrate. For this reason it is said that it's extremely difficult to buy a ticket on a train or bus)

Chuseok dance

A day of Chuseok is an official day-off in companies.
Happy Chuseok to everyone~

Korean restaraunt in Novosibirsk

Actually, there are only 2 Korean restaraunts, 1 cafe and 1 delivery only places where you can order Korean food. So, it's great opportunity to by a franchise and run restaurant business here~~ **

one of this  restaurant is called "Novii sobek"

The prices there are quite affordable)

Later on I'll post about another restaurants)

떡볶이

I'm not in Korea now, and I miss Korean food a lot...((

Sure, there are a lot of Korean dish I can eat here, in Novosibirsk - gimbab, kimchi, Lotte products and so on. But that is my favourite - Tteokbokki - is not available here T.T

When I saw it for the first time, I didn't feel like eating it, because it seemed tooooo spicy and not really tasty.
How I was mistaking~~~~ Sure, it's spicy (it's Korean after all), but tteok has  so tender taste, that I felt in love with this dish))

I've got learn, that the receipt was a bit changed after the Korean war and became very popular.
On picture:gochujang, a hot paste made from chilli peppers, along with fish cakes.

As far as I know, sometimes  boiled eggs, pan-fried mandu, sausages, cheese, ramyeon are includes in dishes with tteokbokki.
If the dish consists of tteokbokki and ramyeon, it's called 라볶이))
These days, many kinds of tteokbokki are popular such as seafood tteokbokki(해물 떡볶이) or rice tteokbokki(쌀떡볶이). Flour tteokbokki was popular in early days, but rice tteokbokki is more popular these days.

As for cheese...
The most delicious noodle I ate was 치즈볶이 !!

I even bring several pack of this noodle to Russia for my friends and family)

I repost a receipt of tteokbokki below:

1 cup odeng broth
1 cup water
2 tablespoons gochujang (see note below)
1 tablespoon red pepper powder (optional)
1 tablespoon honey
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1 large clove garlic minced
1/2 carrot julienned
1 daepa cut on bias (see note below)
25 garae tteok (see note below)
fishcake and eggs from oden
1 brick of instant ramyeon noodles (optional)

Gochujang is a spicy Korean condiment that’s made from fermented soy beans, glutinous rice flour and chili peppers. It’s a blood red paste that typically comes in jars or plastic tubs and has a unique flavour that you really can’t substitute with anything else. This should be widely available at almost any Asian grocery store.

Daepa are a type of scallion that are much longer and thicker than normal scallions, but they’re not quite as fat as leeks. You should be able to find them in Korean markets as well as Japanese groceries where they go by the name of Tokyo Negi. If you can’t find them, 3 regular scallions will work just fine.

Garae tteok are cylindrical rice cakes, similar to mochi, but they are much more dense and will retain their shape even after cooking for some length. Unfortunately there really isn’t a substitute (mochi will have a much softer texture), if you have an Asian or Korean grocery near you they carry it.  

credits: http://norecipes.com/

Korean food in Russia

I haven't posted for a week... I was busy with preparing my graduation paper))

My today's post I devote to Korean dish that Koreans never try)) (as far as I know from my Korean friends). But if you ask any Russian about Korean dish they know, they'll definitely mention a carrot =)

Have you ever heard about this?))
I think, this is "Korean carrot" that comes into mind when asked about Korean food. Maybe, it's even more popular than kimchi)

You can buy it in every retail chain, and it cheap enough)

The taste is not so spicy, as Korean food, but you can put as much pepper as you want )
It's easy to make this dish at home, but you need a special appliance to slice a carrot))  All you need is carrot, oil, salt, pepper

All Koreans I know liked this dish very much))

Andong-2

I've already  posted about my trip to Andong. My today's post I'd like to dedicate to food I tried in Andong)
Every region in Korea has its own "title" dish, and I couldn't stand trying such a dish in every city I've visited.
I was amazed,  that in Korea, not so big country, there are so differences between regions!! great) Even language and grammar can vary from city to city~
So, let's turn to dishes)

This is 안동찜닭. We were said, it's the most popular dish in Andong, and kind of a symbol of Andong cuisine like kimchi is a symbol of Korea)) We were served with this big plate of duck meat with vegetables and  a portion of rice. It was very delicious!! And not spicy~~ I like hot dishes, not to that extend as some Korean dishes though) I mean "pepper soup"  - just hot chili pepper and water... impossible to eat without tears!!!

I don't know what's the fish, but (imho) it's the less delicious Korean dish!! No offense, but the taste of this thin fishes lags behind another!! 

This is 안동소주~~ the most strong in Korea, as our guide said) It's almost as strong as Russian vodka and twice as much as usual soju)
I haven't tried it at all=)  I just took a pic of it ᄏᄏᄏᄏᄏ