Korean chive pickle

I have a small farm in my house for vegetables.

Every spring, I sow about 20 kinds of seed in the farm, but chive(korean chive, buchu) can stay over winter in the farm.

I had a chance to eat pickled chive in the food court of department store 3 years ago. 

As I backed to the home, I made it immediately. From then, chive pickle became famous side dish when I eat grilled pork.

Ingredients : Korean chive(2 kg), vinegar 350ml, soysauce 350ml, water 700ml, sugar 350g

1. Wash chives with cold water and put the container.

2. Put the other ingredients in the pot and boil!

3. During this sauce is hot, pour the No.1 container.

4. It is good to put a weight stone above chive.

5. After 2~3 days, pour sauce out and boiled it again. During this sauce is hot, pour it again.

6. After it became cold, store it in the refrigerator. You can enjoy it a few days later.

It is really good marriage with pork.

Young Radish Kimchi(Altari kimchi)

It is really pity that there are no word to explain Korean vegetables, I can't help using just 'radish' for 3~4 different vegetables.

Today's recipe is Young Radish Kimchi(Altari kimchi).
There are over 100 kimchies in Korea. Typical kimchi(chinese cabbage) is for winter season. In this season, between spring and summer, cucumber and young radish kimchi are good.

Ingredients : Young radish 2 kg, Salt 150g, crushed garlic 100g, fish source 50g, salted shrimp 50g, redpepper powder 200g, sugar 100g,(apricot enzyme), flour 50g, water

1. First of all, preserve young radish in salt for 2 ~3 hours and wash well with cold water.
If radish is too big, divide 2 or 4.

2. Make flour paste(starch) and cold down. This will be helpful for fermentation. This is food of ferment bacillus.

3. Mix ingredient with flour paste. According to preference, control the amount of fish source, salted shrimp, and so on.

4. Apply kimchi seasoning of No. 3 to salted radish of No.1.

5. Set this kimchi in room temperature for one day(24 hours) and put them refriger.

Dividing soybean paste(doenjang) and soysauce.

In March,11th, I posted how to make soysauce and bean paste.
http://mykoreanfoodrecipes.blogspot.kr/2016/03/how-to-make-soy-sauce-and-soybean.html
In this post, I wrote "After 45~60days, I will divide soybean block and brine."
After 50 days from then, I divided soybean block and brine as below.

This is photo of 50 days, just started dividing. I pulled out oak charcoal and dried redpepper.

In large bowl, I knead and mix bean block as above, and put it back to pottery as below.

I covered them with dry kelp and  put pottery in sunny pot with special lid. Traditionally, people use white cotton cloth for covering, but nowadays we can by special lid(glass) in online mall.

In case of brine we need to filter it with cloth as below.

After filtering with cloth, boil it for 20 minutes. Cooling down soysauce(from now I can call this soysauce) and put it in pottery and preserve.

beef bone soup(gomguk)

This soup is one of the most beloved soups in Korea.
It isn't easy to make this soup because it takes quite long time, a few days.
I used big iron pot(cauldron) for making this soup.
There are famous brands for iron cookery as likepLodge, Le Creuset, Staub, Skeppshult, Iwaki etc. Eventhough we don't have any worldwide iron cookery brand, Korean has used iron pot - gamasot - from long time ago.

Usually, I use two sort of beef bone, beef leg and other bones.
Before put bone to the pot, it need to dip in cold water for over 1 hour. This step makes getting out blood from bone.
After dipping them in cold water, put them in the pot and boil!

As soon as boiling, drain the water. This step makes getting out blood and foreign substance.
Wash bones with water and put them in pot again and pour water enough.
Make a fire for 5~6 hours until water color turns in white like milk and amount became under half.

Scoop up the white soup and pour clean water again. Make a fire again until white soup and half amount.

Combine 1st soup & 2nd soup in the pot and fire again.
This is last time to fire.
After fire scoop up the all of the soup and cool down soup using refrigerator.
1~2 hours later, you can skim off the fat from soup.

You can enjoy this soup with salt, blackpepper, green onions.
When you preserve this soup, it is good to use zipper bag as below.

 

 

Steamed shishito pepper(kkwarigochu zzim)

It's new writing after quite long interval.
Today's food is steamed shishito pepper, kkwarigochu zzim in Korean.

Ingredients : shishito pepper(kkwarigochu) 600g, flour powder 4TS,
ingredients for sauce : crushed garlic 1TS, soysauce 3TS, sugar 3TS, redpepper powder 1TS, sesame oil 1TS

1. Trim the shishito pepper and wash them.
2. While pepper is in wet, scatter flour powder on them and mix well.

 

3. Steam the coated pepper for 5~6 min.

4. Mix sauce ingredients well and sprinkle on pepper.

It is real easy recipes as you see and good taste. Why don't you try this one today?

Korean vegetable salad series No.3 - spinach salad

Usually, children hate vegetables, especially spinach.
The children of Ameriaca dislike spinach, either, I think.
If they like spinach, popeye didn't eat canned spinach in cartoon.
Spinach in spring is the more delicious than other season's.

Spinach has oxalic acid, so if you eat a lot of raw spinach, it isn't good for you.
Oxalic acid is combined with calcium and turn to stone in the body. It's good to eat cooked spinach.

Ingredients : Spinach 500g, Salt(1TS & 1ts), crushed garlic(1ts), sesame oil(1ts)

1. Clean the raw spinach and blanch it salted(1TS) boiling water.
2. Wash blanched spinach in cold water for 2~3 times.

3. Squeeze it well and season with salt(1ts) and crushed garlic. If you put lots of garlic, the taste of spinach will gone away.

4. Add sesame oil and enjoy.

Sea mustard soup with dried pollack

Koreans often eat sea mustard soup bon gre, mal gre. Womem eat this soup after childbirth for long time. Traditionally, this soup is one of the birthday menus.
There are a lot of iodine and calcium in sea mustard. This helps to clean blood.
According to old books, there is storty that whale ate sea mustard after childbirth.
Also we can make lots of variations with different ingredients, for example, beef, dried pollack, chicken, fish, clam and so on.
I made soup with dried pollack in this time.

Ingredients : dried sea mustard(300g), dried pollack(500g), sesame oil, soy sauce, water

1. Macerate(soak) the dried sea mustard in water for 1~2 hours.

Wash the sea mustard and cut into bite size.

2. Cut the dried pollack into bite size and soak them in water for a little while.
Squeeze them and put the pot with sesame oil.

3. Stir-fry dried pollack for 2~3 minutes and add sea mustard on them.
Stir-fry them for another 2~3 minutes.
4. After stir-frying, pour water(2~3 liters) and season with soysauce.
5. Boil it until sea mustard turns soft.