Culinary Adventures of a Drama Addict: Korea

de Wandering_Queen, august 21, 2020

76 21

Welcome one, welcome all on an exciting new adventure. Today, I will take you with me as I venture to make delicious foods that I’ve come upon thanks to dramas and TV shows. This will be a brand new series I have created with the intended purpose of introducing amazing food that you can make at home as well. What’s that you say? You can’t cook? No worries because I will not only give you tips and an abundance of encouragement, BUT I have personally selected recipes that are relatively easy to do — my guarantee to you all.

I, myself, am but a humble intermediate home cook/baker. I have only truly been home cooking for 6-7 years while I’ve been baking for fun for 13 years. I still remember vividly the chaos of trying to cook or baking something for the first time and screwing it up completely even when it appeared basic. For the longest time, I genuinely hated cooking. I found it to be a messy process that even when you follow the instructions, there are many ways you can screw it up. So I understand being hesitant in trying your hand in it, but nonetheless, I’m going to push you to try.

In the best-case scenario, you will get some delicious food to devour. What is the worst case? I mean, you could burn your place down or cut your finger off… Nevermind, I can’t guarantee anything. Try these recipes at your own risk.

First, before we step into that kitchen, there is a mindset that needs to be established. Preparing your tools and ingredients in their measurements can ensure a success rate of 50%. Here is why you want to always prepare things beforehand, especially if you are a beginner cook:

It reduces a lot of mistakes.
It allows you to be more relaxed during the actual process, so you aren’t rummaging the whole kitchen trying to find the next ingredients or tool.
You’ll have less of a chaotic mess in the kitchen which means less cleanup.
You manage your time better.

Professional chefs are trained rigorously in preparing ingredients (i.e. chopping/dicing) in a timely and clean manner for some of the reasons I’ve outlined. It is the art of mise en place (French translation: Putting in place). This includes putting your ingredients in order of when they will go into your dish.

What about the rest of those percentages? Well, a nice 10% is paying attention while cooking. This means setting timers, watching your dish, and keep an eye on the heat from your stove, while 5% is adjusting the taste. You always want to taste your dish while cooking to ensure it is the right flavor FOR YOU. Yes, the most important thing is that the dish is the right amount of sweetness, sourness, or spice for your tolerance level. The amount of salt and spices in the instructions are but baseline estimations that you can build off of. Last but not least, 35 % of your time will be spent on cooking the dish. You won’t find many recipes that require you to cook one dish on high heat for more than 45 minutes without checking and stirring it.

(Disclaimer: I’m not a professional chef, but this is just an observation I’ve made through the years. Everyone has a different style of cooking, cook in whatever way is comfortable for you.)

Now we can move on to the recipes. A couple of things to note. I linked all of the recipes, I personally used to make each dish with pictures as evidence. I include my personal tips from trials and errors as well as some alternatives due to lack of ingredients, quantity size, or dietary restrictions. So without further ado, let us BEGIN!

Corn Cheese (콘치즈)

Corn Cheese (콘치즈)
(RECIPE)

This dish requires little ingredients, clean up, and is simple to make!

Tip #1: Make sure to drain your can corn really well. You can also just let it sit on a sieve or strainer for a couple of hours to ensure it is dry.	Tip #2: This is such a great snack/appetizer to make with kids, but some kids don’t like bell peppers, so highly recommend you dice them as small as possible. Tell them they are sprinkles.
Tip #3: Use a non-stick 6-8 inch pan if you don’t have a small cast-iron pan for the stove. You are also welcome to bake it in the oven in small bakeware.	Quantity: This is a 2-3 person dish, but you can easily double this recipe without a problem. If you are a party of one, highly recommend you refrigerate it and eat it the next day by re-heated on the stove.
Substitutes: If you don’t have Japanese mayonnaise, you can just use whatever mayo you do have in hand. The taste and texture of Japanese mayonnaise are lighter, so go in with less first and adjust if your mayonnaise is thicker or has more sodium.	Dietary Info: This uses mayonnaise and cheese, not vegan friendly.

Korean Toast (길거리 토스트)

Korean Toast (길거리 토스트) (RECIPE)

This dish is anytime anywhere and uses whatever you have a type of meal!

Tip #1: The thinner you slice your ingredients, the better they cook.	Tip #2: If you have a large skillet pan, you can easily cook your egg, meats, and toast on the same pan
Tip #3: To get a square shape, make sure as you drop it in the pan, you keep pushing it into the shape until it stops running.	Quantity: Two person sandwich. Easily double the recipe or reduce it to a one-person meal.
Substitutes: You can easily substitute for whatever veggies you prefer. I use turkey bacon instead of ham.	Dietary Info: This can be made vegan using egg substitutes and using gluten-free bread.

TTEOKBOKKI(떡볶이)

TTEOKBOKKI (떡볶이)(RECIPE)

RABOKKI (라볶이) (RECIPE)

One of my personal favorite snacks/meals to have!

Tip #1: Water level is important, you want it to be roughly the same size as the number of rice cakes you’re going to put in. Your water needs to reduce in order to carmelize to get the right level of yum.	Tip #2: Boil your water first, mix in your gochujang then throw in the rice cakes, fishcake, and veggies except for the green onion. Save them for the last couple of minutes.
Tip #3: If you can’t handle spice, don’t add in any of pepper flakes. If the tteokbokki is still too spicy, add some sugar to take the heat off and a little bit of water to dilute it if needed.	Quantity: Other than the gochujang which should be measured against the ratio of water to the rice cake, for a single serving, go with how much you can grab with one hand. For every 1 cup water to 1 cup rice cake, you basically want to add two-three tablespoons of gochujang. The rest is 100% adjustable.
Substitutes: There is vegan and gluten-free gochujang you can buy.	Next Level: Add in ramen noodles and frozen dumplings to really make this a meal. The same process as regular simple tteokbokki but just add ramen and dumplings.

GIMBAP/KIMBAP (김밥)

MINI GIMBAP/KIMBAP (꼬마김밥)(RECIPE)

GIMBAP/KIMBAP (김밥) (RECIPE)

This is considered a time-consuming meal, but boy is it worth it!

Tip #1: Your rice is your foundation. So to make sure your rice is nice and fluffy, after cleaning it let it sit in water for 30 minutes. In those 30 minutes, you can have all your ingredients cut and prepared. If you are pressed for time, just clean your rice 3-4 times.	Tip #2: Don’t need to buy a bamboo mat, just roll it by hand. Make sure that your first roll is snug against the other end of rice, once it is secure, you can take your hands off of it and see that it is tightly done before continuing to roll the rest of it.
Tip #3: Buy pre-sliced ingredients. If you don’t have the time or don’t want to waste time, you can buy pre-cut danmuji, carrots, and other veggies that are julienned. For the carrots, however, get one that doesn’t look dried out.	Tip #4: The recipe I used calls for using salt to bring out the moisture in the carrots and cucumber, you can skip this and just heat in a pan and dash it with the salt if you don’t have time to wait those 10 minutes.
Tip #5: Try not to refrigerate them. I mean, you can, but these taste better at room temperate, and unfortunately, they don’t taste good the next day, so don’t make too much if they aren’t going to be finished.	Dietary Info: You can make a roll without rice. My little sister and sister-in-law both went on a keto diet so to accommodate them, I simply rolled the warm veggies and wrapped them in plastic, so they remained sealed. Still tasty.

My only goal in this article and new series is to give you guys that push to try dishes from all those dramas you love. Success is the accumulation of our failures, efforts, and will to keep trying. So I hope you don’t get discouraged if, on your first attempt, you didn’t quite nail it. Picking up any skill is a matter of continuous practice. So keep fighting! Remember to leave a comment down below on what dish you’d like to try or even better, post in the feeds the dishes you made! I’d love to see that!