Dateline: May 18, 2021 A Produce Drawer Goes to Korea

I had a lot of produce that needed to be used up.  Several bunches of collards and Tuscan Kale, as well as a couple of small beets and an unidentified root veggie that came with a Misfits box.

This was an experiment.  And it turned out great!  We both couldn't stop eating it.  There was a bit of heat, but not too much, just enough to satisfy and the crunchiness of the beets and scallions went a long way toward that end as well.

A definite keeper in the rotation!

Ingredients

2-3 bunches of collards and kale or any other leafy veggies, cut into ribbons

1 large red onion, cut into thin wedges through the root end

1 bell pepper, cut into bite-sized pieces

2 small yellow beets, peeled and sliced into thin half moons

1 bunch scallions, sliced into 3" pieces

3 cloves of garlic, sliced

2 inch piece of ginger, peeled and sliced thinly

1 jalapeno, halved, seeded, and sliced

2 T gochujang

2 T Korean soybean paste

1 heaping T Korean Chili flakes

1 T rice wine vinegar

1 T Mirin

2 T white wine

1/2 lb Korean rice cakes

Vegetable Stock, as needed

Method

1.  In a small bowl, put the gochujang, soybean paste, rice wine vinegar, mirin, and white wine.  Mix well.  Should have the consistency of oatmeal.  Add water or vegetable stock if necessary.  This is the sauce that will be added into the stir fry later.

2.  In a sauce pan, bring salted water to a boil.  Boil rice cakes for about 3-4 minutes, then drain and rinse.

3.  Heat a wok up, add some oil and fry the rice cakes until they have a few dark spots on them.  This will take longer than you think!  You need to evaporate the water off them before they will start to brown.  When browned to your liking, remove from wok and hold in a bowl.

4.  Add more oil to the wok, and add the garlic and ginger.  Then add beets and bell pepper and fry them until they soften up a bit and the beets lose their hard crunchiness. Add the onion and collards and coat with oil and cook until the collards wilt a bit.  Add the sauce and mix well.  If needed, add some of the vegetable stock to facilitate the coating of all the veggies in the sauce.  Add in the rice cakes and scallions.  Mix well.  When veggies are cooked to your liking and rice cakes are nicely coated in the sauce, serve.

 

Dateline: March 21, 2021 Korean Squid and Scallion Pancake

The squid had to be used, and I was pressed for time....why?  Because my nap took longer than I thought it would.  So I only started to prep this at about 6 pm and we had a 7 pm zoom call.

I used Melissa Clark's Scallion Pancake with Squid recipe.  Pretty straight forward, I had all the ingredients and didn't need to finagle anything!  The squid was beautiful, once again from Fresh Direct.  Bodies were cut into rings and tentacles were cut in half.  Batter ingredients were measured and prepped and pan was heated by 6:45, so in went half the batter and it cooked up nicely.  Then came the hard part!

I used a straight-sided pan, which was very stupid of me.  A sloping sided pan would have allowed the spatula to get under the pancake much more easily.  The pancake broke up and had to be turned in pieces.  Not a problem in terms of taste, but presentation of a lovely dish was out of the question.

The taste was quite nice, in fact, very good!  In the future I would add more liquid than the called for 2 cups.  The batter was very thick and that may have caused the turning issues as it wasn't going to flow into itself and create a solid surface.  The dipping sauce was very good and accented the seafood quality perfectly.

finished messy product, but the taste was great

These were quite filling, we ate 1 and half of the second one and were both quite full.  I realized looking at the photo I did add a sliced red finger pepper for something interesting, as well as 1 chopped leek.

Dateliine: May 9, 2020 So much time, I'll make kimchi

I had some cute tiny bok choy, some broccoli, and some regular cabbage. Kimchi can handle them all.

I have a favorite kimchi recipe.  Luckily, I have almost all ingredients on hand, so making kimchi is not an issue.  I did have to improvise some, I didn't have daikon, used regular globe radishes, didn't have asian pear, used granny smith apple, carrots, onions, and scallions all good to go.

schmearing mixture

salted greens waiting to be schmeared

The schmearing mixture smelled great!  So I tasted a little radish moon.  Yummy, but quite a kick.

The greens have been salted and are waiting for their 2 hours to be up before the paste gets schmeared all over and in between the leaves and all around the little broccoli heads.  I've got about 45 minutes to wait.

now just wait 4 - 7 days