Korean flavours & microwaved crispy skin

Inspired by the same magazine shown in the previous post, I decided to make a sort of hybrid Korean / Mexican meal as is indeed very popular in Korea itself right now. (Apparently they love tacos)! A trip to H-Mart, our local Korean supermarket was required to buy the necessary ingredients. Two sauces, one called Doenjang, a soy bean paste and the other, Gochujang, a red pepper paste were bought to make a sauce called Ssamjang, a mix of these two ingredients plus rice wine, onion, garlic, ginger and chili. I decided to use pork as they do in Korea, a long, slow cooked shoulder and lettuce leaves to use like tortillas to wrap everything up like the popular dish Bo Ssam. I added some extras, however, like Japanese pickles and some beets and some extra crunchy bean sprouts to create a dish of contrasting textures and flavours. Neil, who usually doesn't like eating with his hands, (proper English gent that he is), ate about 6 of these little lettuce leaves piled with different combinations each time.

I actually used two pieces of kitchen equipment that rarely see the light of day, having to scramble about in the back of the cupboard to retrieve them, they finally got their moment for this dinner. The cheap plastic mandolin I bought is probably more work than simply slicing the required vegetable by hand. It has to be assembled and very carefully used for fear of slicing through fingers. The trick, I have discovered, is not to press down too much, very little effort is required to glide across the blade and receive wafer thin slices, even with beets, which are pretty tough little fellas. I love using two colours of beets, including the ubiquitous red, to see the beauty of the colours bleed together and create gorgeous patterns.

The mandolin does come with a safety guard which you pierce the vegetables onto, thereby reducing the chance of losing your fingers through being too close to the blades

The two sauces. These are used frequently in Korean cooking for every type of dish and preparation imaginable.

The sauce, Ssamjang, recipe at bottom.

The other piece of equipment I used was a salad spinner. I don't understand how these are supposed to work. If you use large leaves, they simply fling themselves to the sides of the basket, so all the water clinging to the leaves is still there without being expelled by the spinning action. You could, of course, keep shaking the bowl to re-manoeuvre the leaves, but this is sort of a contradiction of the whole 'labour saving' aspect. Maybe it would work better with smaller leaves, but my large lettuce leaves were still dripping after several vigorous attempts.

I seem to have some sort of weakness for the packets of brightly coloured and interesting looking pickles in the Japanese section of H-Mart. Not all of them live up to their pretty appearance, although some are more than edible, including the green pickled cucumbers which are an intriguing mix of crunchy, sweet and sour. The others are eggplants in two different preparations, (I'm sure that vivid cerise can't be natural) and in the middle, kimchee, the very famous Korean cabbage which has been fermented for several weeks. Its flavour is spicy, tangy and sour, interesting.

From top middle, clockwise: Lettuce leaves, beansprouts, assortment of Japanese pickles, and Kimchee, slow roasted pork shoulder, juices from roasting, beet, rocket and carrot salad with ricotta and Ssam Jang.

Each lettuce leaf was piled with a different combination of the ingredients allowing every mouthful to be slightly different. Not the easiest of things to eat, the leaves kept tearing and the filling falling out. Needless to say, we had juices dripping down our hands and forearms which I don't like.

Pork noodle soup

Japanese ingredients do seem to feature quite strongly in my cooking and the above are used quite often to make a quick soup for lunch. The noodles are an interesting find, being almost completely free of carbohydrates as they are composed of tofu and have a crunch to them similar to tobiko. They smell pretty awful and need draining, rinsing and par-boiling to make them anywhere near appetizing when you first open the packet. They are advertised as being suitable for stir-frying, but all I can imagine is a sticky mess, so I stick to using them only with liquids.

 The pork from yesterday, coated with more Korean sauces.

   
Recipe for soup is at bottom of post.

Recently, I read a magazine article that suggested putting duck skin in the microwave to crisp it up. It seems perfectly logical that intense heat from above would cause the skin to lose moisture, pop and become crispy so I tried it with the crackling from the pork. It works really well. As you can see, after 1 minute of intense activity the skin is hard, crispy and dry. I was able to snap it into small pieces to use as mock croutons on the soup and if it can be successfully ground to a coarse powder, it could have potential as a substitute for breading. Something to try.

Recipe: Korean Ssam jang (adapted from Gourmet Traveller magazine)

4 tsp Doenjang (see picture towards top of post)

4 tsp Gochujang (see picture toward top of post)

2 tsp rice wine

1 shallot, chopped small

1 garlic clove, chopped small

1 tbsp water

Mix together in a bowl. (You can add ginger, chilies and spring onions). To be used as a condiment, marinade or sauce.

Beet and carrot salad

3 small mixed beets, peeled and sliced wafer thin

1 carrot, peeled and sliced thinly

1 handful arugula

1 tbsp ricotta cheese

salt and pepper to taste

Mix everything together and leave to stand. The ricotta will turn pink if you've used red beets.

Pork and noodle soup

2 sachets Japanese soup (Miso or Wakamame or Osuimono is fine or dashi)

1/2 sachet Shirataki noodles

4 mushrooms, torn apart

1 tbsp bamboo shoots

1/2 cup shredded pork mixed with 1 tbsp each of Gochudang and Doenjang pastes

1 cup boiling water

1 handful beansprouts

crispy pork skin to garnish.

Place the two sachets of Japanese soup powders in a saucepan along with the drained and rinsed Shirataki noodles. 

Add the mushrooms and hot water and let boil gently for about 3 - 4 minutes to cook the mushrooms and noodles.

Add the other ingredients and serve.

If you want to use regular noodles like soba or Chinese egg noodles, boil until soft first and then add to soup.