Spicy Cold Buckwheat Vermicelli

This spicy cold noodle dish is called Nengmyun also spelled as Naengmyeon, naeng-myeon, naengmyun, or naeng-myun. This is THE dish for summer season in Korea as one of the most popular dishes in summer. Not just in summer, this dish is commonly eaten along with Korean barbecue dishes. There are other variety of Nengmyun dishes such as Mool Nengmyun (cold noodle with icy beef broth), and Hwe Nengmyun (cold noodle with spicy pickled raw Skate fish). The noodle also has many different types including buckwheat Vermicelli, kudzu vermicelli (darkest in color), or green tea vermicelli. The use of this type of vermicelli is the key distinguishable point of this spicy cold noodle Nengmyun from the other one called Bibim Gooksu. Bibim Gooksu uses all wheat noodles and the sauce is also a little bit different. However, although Bibim Gooksu is still very popular during summer season in Korea, Nengmyun is still what represents the cold noodle as the name itself stands for “chilled noodle.” Unlike the Gooksu noodle, Nengmyun noodles give you a colder feeling to it as you put them in your mouth. In addition, the sauce is runnier with different natural ingredients such as grated pear, little bit of cold beef broth and tiny amount of sake. The flavor of every ingredient in harmony gives you a nice kick of spice, vinegar, and natural sweetness in a cold temperature.

1. First, slice cucumbers and daikon radish.

2. Put them in a container and pickle with vinegar, water, and sugar. The ratio between vinegar and water should be around 3:1 unless your vinegar is more acidic than usual. Leave the container in your refrigerator overnight.

3. Now, this is a spicy puree that goes onto the noodle later. For this puree, you will be using a mixer blending 5Tsp red chili powder, 2Tsp soy sauce, 1Tsp red chili paste, 1Tsp sesame oil, 1/2 Asian pear, 2tsp sake, 2 red fresh Serrano peppers, 2tsp brown sugar, 2Tsp corn syrup, 1/6 onion, 1Tsp minced garlic and Sprite or Seven Up.


4. Having finished the preparation, now cooking will start by first boiling eggs. Later this is to be cut in half. When boil eggs, put in a pinch of salt, which will later help you remove the shells more easily. Put the eggs in water from the beginning with cold water and cook for about 12 minutes altogether to have this nice and golden yolk that is not completely hard nor too runny.


Chilling the eggs in cold icy water before removing shells helps not only to chill the eggs but to easily remove the shells.


5. Now you will be boiling this buckwheat cold noodles called Nengmyun in Korean. When you go to a Korean super market, you will easily find noodles that look like this below.
In boiling water, cook only for 30 seconds and stir around to make sure the noodles do not stick to each other. Cooking over 1-2 minute will make the noodle too soft and mushy.

6. After your 30 seconds of cooking, quickly dump the noodles into a net and chill it icy cold. Make sure you leave no warm spots.

7. After draining the noodles, put them on a bowl for adding condiments.

Add the pickled daikon radish and cucumbers from step #1.

Add puree from step #3. In addition, you can add additional vinegar, and mustard. Sprinkle brown and black toasted sesame seeds for a final touch.

Enjoy!

Sukiyaki Hot Pot

Sukiyaki is a Japanese style hot pot consisting of meat (usually thinly sliced beef), or a vegetarian version made only with firm tofu, slowly cooked or simmered at the table, alongside vegetables and other ingredients, in a shallow iron pot in a mixture of soy sauce, sugar, and mirin. Before being eaten, the ingredients are usually dipped in a small bowl of beaten raw eggs.

Generally sukiyaki is for the colder days of the year and it is commonly found at bōnenkai, Japanese year-end parties. There is a Japanese saying that says when you and your friends eat out of a same pot, your bond with them will become stronger. Let's then invite our friends or disfunctional family members and eat Sukiyaki together.

Ingredients: dried Shitake mushrooms, cabbage (preferably Chinese cabbage), thinly sliced beef, Japanese sweet potato noodles (konnyaku: jelly style noodles contained in a plastic bag with water), firm tofu, fish cake, Enoki mushrooms, bell pepper, onion, green onion, regular button mushrooms, eggs, soy sauce, salt, chicken base, mirin, brown sugar, sesame oil, ginger powder

1. Put dried Shitake mushrooms in warm water and let if soften up for 30 minutes.


2. Take all your ingredients out of your refrigirator. :)

3. Chop all the ingredients into small pieces.
This is Enoki mushroom. Cut off the dirty root part and throw it away.
Firm tofu

Fish cake (Oden)
Put them on a single dish and bring it next to the pot.

4. Boil water.

5. Using soy sauce, mirin, chicken base, sugar, sesame oil, salt, and sugar, you are not going to make the soup base.

For my version with 3 cups of water, I added 1 table spoon of chicken base.

4 tablespoons of mirin and soy sauce. Keep tasting until it's right.

Add little bit of salt, ginger powder, 2 table spoons of sesame oil and sugar. Make sure you keep tasting until it tastes right to you. Some people like it sweeter, some people don't, for example.

6. Now put those ingredients into the soup base once it heats up.

This is the picture of Konnyaku, a Japanese sweet potato noodle bag. Make sure you put all the juice inside the bag into your pot as well.

If you go to an Asian market, you can easily find those thin cut beef slices. Some are even labeled as Sukiyaki beef. If there is none in your neighborhood, you can ask your butcher at a market to slice them for you or try to slice them yourself at home. When you do it, make sure you slice it when the beef is semi-frozen so it will cut easily.

So once you add them all, organizing them section by section (good presentation always makes your food more appealing regardless of the flavor... before eating at least that is.)

Keep heating up the pot until the ingredients are fully cooked, especially the beef.

For the raw egg side dish, you put an egg in a small bowl and beat it.


Then dip your beef or other ingredients into your raw egg before eating.
I'm sure some people do not find this appetizing. It's perfectly fine. In that case, you can use Japanese sesame sauce and vinegar sauce. For vinegar sauce, which is called Sambai-Zu, it is used for dipping vegetables. You mix with 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, 2 talespoon of rice vinegar, and sugar. For sesame sauce, which is called Gomadare, you mix with 6 tablespoons white sesame seeds, 200 ml dashi, 5 tablespoons sake, 1 tablespoon mirin, 1 teaspoon sugar, 3 tablespoons soy sauce.

Yakisoba with Tofu

There is really nothing quicker and dirtier than stir frying a Yakisoba dish. All you need is Yakisoba noodles, choice of your stir fry vegetables, and tofu. Of course, instead of tofu, you may add chicken or beef.

Cooking with sesame oil will add a good flavor to stir frying Yakisoba.

The reason I cooked carrots first is to make sure the carrots are fully cooked. I really do not like uncooked carrots. In this case, I sliced them thinly so it would cook quickly anyway but if you have thicker pieces, you might want to do this since carrots take a little longer to cook.
Then dump the Yakisoba noodle. It will soften up as you heat it. You want to make sure to keep stirring because this noodle easily sticks on the bottom unless you have vast amount of oil on the bottom.

Flavor with soy sauce, a little more sesame oil, and brown sugar. Or, you can just add sweetened Teriyaki sauce too if you want to make your life easier.
Add the vegetables of your choice. I added mushrooms, red bell peppers, and asparagus.


Then add tofu (firm).

It's done!

Sesame Noodle Salad

When I was in college, I walked into this new fancy and modern cafe on campus and saw they had pre-packaged sesame noodles like this.  Being a young guy with high metabolism, I thought it was something a girl would eat but my curiosity for its flavor made me get one.  To my surprise, this became one of my favorite snacks since then.  It’s pretty easy to make at home.   You just will need to buy the right dressing and the noodle.

1. This is the kind of noodle you need. It’s buckwheat noodles. You can purchase this from an Asian supermarket or at the Asian section of a big grocery store sometimes.

Noodles come in bundles and one is enough for one male portion (who eats quite a bit).

2. Boil the noodle.



3. While boiling, prepare vegetables. I sliced cucumbers and avocado. They will compliment the fresh flavor of the noodle salad.


4. After about 5 minutes, the water will start foaming up a lot. That's when you know they're ready. Nevertheless, I would still try eating a noodle to see if they're really ready.


Yeah, they expand quite a bit after boiling.


5. So, since this is a "salad" dish, you need to rinse it cold. Make sure the noodles are cold all the way.


6. Put it in a mixing bowl. (You don't have to) Get ready for mixing!


You will need a sesame dressing, sesame vinaigrette, or miso dressing. Any one of the three will taste great. You can use a commercial dressing or make one from scratch. Refer to my other post for the recipe of homemade sesame dressing.


Add some wasabi on top. Don't worry, your noodle won't be spicy after being mixed with other stuff. Add the dressing and some sesame seeds before mixing.



8. For garnish, I cut thin slices of nori (dried seaweed used for sushi rolls).

Enjoy! I think you'll really like this one.