Fishcake Stir Fry

Fishcake stir fry is one of the main Banchans (side dishes) when you go to a Korean restaurant. Little thin slices of those fishcake with grilled onions and garlic are blending in soy sauce and sesame flavor. I should include more Banchans from now on since they're the first dishes you will see at Korean restaurants when you order main dishes. This one is pretty easy to make and adds a nice savory flavor with your steamed rice. Follow the steps below.

1. Boil sheets of fishcake.



2. Once cooked, take them out and slice them into pieces.


Also cut onions into pieces.
3. These are the ingredients you need before stir frying: minced garlic, soy sauce, sesame oil, red pepper flakes, sugar and toasted sesame seeds.

4. Maybe a tbsp of minced garlic for a full pan fry portion.

5. Add the fishcakes and drizzle soy sauce on top of the mixture.

A touch of red pepper flakes.

Final touch with sesame oil and seeds. Sesame oil flavor will evaporate if put in too early.

Ok now, that was simple!

Steamed Spicy Soy Chicken

This Korean steamed spicy soy chicken is called Ahndong Jjimdahk. This is a very traditional dish dating back to Chosun Dynasty. There is a city named Ahndong in Southeastern part of Korea. The city has existed for centuries and it was one of the big cities in Chosun dynasty. In Chosun, hierchical cast system divided societal class between farmers/merchants and noble men called "Sadebu." Ahndong was a segregated region where inside the city wall, wealthy Sadebus lived. At that time Sadebus had superior food culture and recipes which became the backbone of traditional Korean cuisines along with royal cuisines originated from palaces. This steamed spicy soy chicken was cooked for special occasions and usually was served for important guests. This dish is somewhat similar to Dahk Galbi (Korean pan fried spicy chicken barbecue) but what distinguishes this dish is the use of chicken broth with predominant soy sauce base with sweet potato noodles which add a class in presentation and variety of flavor.


1. Prepare the fresh ingredients below: potato, onion, carrot, green onion, Jalapeño, shiitake mushrooms and chicken meat.


2. Boil water (3 cups) in a large pan for boiling chicken meat (roughly amount shown above) and creating chicken stock.

3. Add chicken meat green onions, pinch of salt, and ginger powder.

4. Take the meat out and save the chicken stock which will be added later.


5. Now, you will need to make a sauce using minced 2tsp garlic, pinch of black pepper, 2Tsp oyster sauce, 2 Tsp mirin, 2 Tsp soy sauce, 2 tsp sesame oil, and dried ginger powder.


6. Chop vegetables below including potato, Jalapeños, onion, and carrot.
7. Oil your pan, add all the vegetables and the boiled chicken and lightly stir fry on the pan for 2 minutes. We are adding chicken broth later and will do serious heating so don't worry at this point if the ingredients are not fully cooked.

Add dried red hot chili peppers.

Add the sauce you prepared in step #5.

Add 1 1/2 cup of chicken broth you prepared in step #4.

8. Continue to heat in high heat for 3 minutes and then add sweet potato noodles, onions, and Jalapeños. Stir around and let the noodles cook fully for another 2-3 minutes. The soup will eventually thicken as the noodle is fully cooked.

9. All done.

Enjoy!

Spicy Pork Stir Fry

This spicy looking red stir fried dish is called "Jae Yook Bokum" in Korean. It's basically pan fried Korean spicy pork. When making this dish, the spicy sauce is very important and it determines the flavor of the whole dish. After all, that is the only sauce you add to this dish. If you are not into hardcore spicy Korean food, you can soften it up by adding more soy sauce and less red pepper paste and red pepper powder to the sauce mix.

1. First you need some Korean red pepper paste (gochujang). In the picture below, I used about 4 tablespoons of it. I used a lot because I like it spicy. Do not follow this 4 tablespoon direction if you can't eat spicy food. Add maybe 1-2 tablespoons and later add more soy sauce.


2. To make it spicier, I added another 2 tablespoons of red pepper flakes to the mix. Yes, I am crazy.

3. 1 tablespoon of sesame oil.

4. 1 tablespoon of soy sauce.

5. 1 tablespoon of sugar.

6. 2 tablespoons of corn syrup. Skip this part if you don't like corn syrup.

7. Add some black pepper and the sauce is pretty much ready.

8. Ok now, you want to slice up your pork meat. I used loins just because I had some leftover from the other day. However, if you like something more tender, go with pork belly. Pork belly will make this dish very nice and rich.
9. Put the pork meats into a bowl and add 3-4 tablespoons of minced garlic. Yes, that night, I did not go out after eating this!

10. Add the sauce you prepared earlier. Just use enough sauce to throughly marinate all your pork.


11. Now, you will be chopping some vegetables and adding them to the mix above. I used an onion, a carrot, two Jalapeño peppers, a green onion, and a red bell pepper.



Just chop them all and add them to the mix.

12. Put this mixture into your refrigirator for about 30 minutes before you start to pan fry them.

13. Pan fry them for 7 minutes in med-high heat and throughly cook the pork.

Enjoy!

Japanese Curry Rice

Japanese curry? Yes. There is a Japanese version of curry that is somewhat modified from the original Indian flavor. Japanese curry is so popular these days, you can get their curry powder mix from any major supermarkets. One of the most popular Japanese curry brand is Golden Curry (picture shown below). It has really good flavor with a choice of spice level. The one I got was a spicy version and it was actually spicy. I know Japanese food is mostly not spicy but this is probably the spiciest of Japanese food I've ever had. Cooking curry is pretty easy. All you do is to stir fry the vegetables and meat of your choice if you want to include meat and add water and the mix into the pan.


Note that this curry stick is based on five servings.

Interesting color. It becomes brownish after cooking though this concentrate is dark green color.

So chop up some vegetables such as mushrooms, onions and potatoes.



Cook potatoes first because they take the longest to cook out of all other vegetables that I am adding. Cook for 3 minutes before adding other vegetables and cook for additional 3 minutes.


Now, add the curry concentrate stick. The recommended amount of water for this whole stick is 2 1/2 cups. I actually added about 3 cups and it turned out to be perfect.

As you cook the mixture, the stick will melt and become dissolved into the mixture. 5 minutes of heating will be enough.

Pour curry over rice (of course cooked steamed rice).
Enjoy!