Korean-Style Egg Sandwich

I'm a fan of Korean dramas and movies and I also love their food.The Koreans are not well-known for Western style food but lately their sandwiches are becoming popular street food. One of them is the tamagoyaki sandwiches on trimmed white bread. The most recent street food fad in Korea is Egg Drop sandwich. Some have ham and cheese or fried bacon and cheese before topping with fluffy scrambled egg on grilled in butter thick slices of brioche loaf bread. Singapore has its own Egg Stop sandwich shops with similar ingredients. 

In the Korean drama Hospital Playlist, currently streaming on Netflix, a father and son are eating their Egg Drop sandwiches. I wanted one after watching the episode. I opted for the simplest ingredients - chopped broccoli slaw mix, chopped green onion, and spicy ketchup. I didn't add mayo mixed with honey because it would be too sweet for me as the bread is already a bit sweet. Also, the spicy ketchup is sweet enough but with a bit of kick. If you can't find the Malaysian spicy sauce, you can make your own. Recipe of sos cili is here.

I like the simplicity of the meatless sandwich specially with thick slices of homemade challah baked in a loaf pan. Perfect for meatless Holy Week for those who are still observing.

Korean-Style Egg Drop Sandwich
1 tablespoon butter, divided
2 thick slices challah or brioche loaf bread
1 jumbo size egg, well beaten
¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
1 tablespoon broccoli or cabbage slaw mix
½ tablespoon chopped green onion
1 tablespoon Malaysian spicy ketchup
mayonnaise mixed with honey 1:1, optional

• In a small skillet, heat ½ tablespoon butter and fry both slices of bread only on one side. Set aside; keep warm.
• Mix egg, salt, cabbage slaw mix, and green onion.
• Add the other half tablespoon of butter on the same skillet then add the egg mixture. Cook on medium low heat, stirring, just until egg is set; takes less than a minute. Do not let it get brown and crusty.

• Smear the untoasted side of bread slices with ketchup/sos cili. Fill with egg mixture. Wrap the bottom of the sandwich with waxed paper. Drizzle honey mayo on top if desired. Enjoy!

Napa Cabbage And Radish Kimchi

I always have cabbage kimchi in the fridge. I love it in fried rice and with roasted Korean sweet potatoes. I have never made it though because it's always available from the Korean grocery store. The other day, I ran out of Kimchi and the store surprisingly also didn't have any and I was in the mood to snack on the pan-roasted sweet potato I have. I binged (yeah, I don't google anymore) the recipe right there at the store and decided I'll make for the very first time. I already have the seasoning ingredients in my cupboard; all I had to get was a piece of Napa cabbage and 2 pieces of very tiny baby Korean radish. It is an easy recipe to make in a day. The recipe I chose doesn't have fish sauce. I can definitely say the flavor is exactly like the store-bought which doesn't have fish sauce either.

Read more »

Korean Steamed Eggs

We had lunch at a Korean restaurant last weekend and although the food wasn't that great to write home about, there's one dish I liked, the steamed eggs. Not only was it a good dish but it was on the house too. They probably knew it was our first time in their place or everybody gets a free steamed egg dish.

The egg dish is simply flavored with probably chicken broth and had a very light texture like a custard. It had on top sliced scallions, bits of carrots, and red pepper flakes. I liked it enough to look for recipes online which are plentiful, and recreated it, adding a sprinkling of hot red pepper powder for a bit of bite. What a great side dish, or it can be a main dish served with a small bowl of steamed rice.

Read more »

Bulgogi Burgers

I was going to make hamburger sliders and thought why not season the beef mince with bulgogi seasoning. This way they won't need ketchup, mustard, tomatoes, pickles, and mustard which make eating regular hamburgers very messy.

I served the hamburgers in mini pita halves together with red and green lettuce. I also had one of my favorite Korean side combination: pan-roasted Korean sweet potato and kimchi. I had a really great lunch today.

Read more »

Hotteok

>

Korean food has been a top favorite of mine since the 80s. When I went in 1987 I only had excellent restaurant food but sadly never tried their street food. I'm still discovering lots of yummy Korean dishes with the help of food blogs and of course YouTube where I saw a favorite street food called hotteok, a fried pancake filled with brown sugar. They look very similar to the Filipino piaya but with different dough ingredients. 

Read more »

Jap Chae

My love for everything Korean hasn't diminished one bit specially food. One of my favorites is Jap Chae, a noodle dish made with sweet potato and cornstarch glass noodles, vegetables, and strips of beef steak simply seasoned with soy sauce, salt, sugar and roasted sesame seed oil. I have made this noodle dish many many times before and I haven't gotten tired of it. It's so delicious just like Korean dramas, movies, and music too. 

Read more »

I ♥ Korean

lunch today: store-bought vegetables and noodles wrapped in thin fish cakes, 

homemade rolled omelet, a bottle of soju

I've always loved Korean food; I cook it as often as I could. When my family and I lived in Hong Kong in the late 80s, we used to go to Korean restaurants on Sundays but haven't been to one that serves authentic Korean food for many years now because they are too far from our house. Yesterday, we drove to the nearest and had buffet lunch but I was only able to take a few blurry photos to be able to concentrate on the great food.

buffet lunch yesterday at Il Mee in Annandale VA

I'm also loving their movies and TV dramas too. A few years ago I started getting hooked on Korean movies and very recently Korean TV dramas AKA Kdramas. Although I've watched Korean, Chinese period series, and Japanese dramas more than 22 years ago, I barely understood what was going on because of the lack of English subtitles [but I still watched them].

When I saw the first episode of my first Kdrama, Boys Over Flowers, streamed from Netflix, I didn't know I was going to be addicted. Boys Over Flowers has 25 hour-long episodes which I finished in 3 days, that's over 8 hours a night of marathon viewing, but I can't seem to stop clicking on the next episode once the previous one ended. I have since watched 6 more Kdramas, plus the earlier Japanese Boys Over Flowers version and its full-length movie for a total of approximately 140 hours of TV and laptop viewing in 5 weeks, my eyeballs are hurting already.

All the Korean F4 boys are so cute, but I love the "leader", Gu Jun Pyo, croissant hair and all, played by Lee Min-ho.

Jun Pyo eating fish cake on a stick

Move over, Asano Tadanobu, Sakaguchi Tak, and Kaneshiro Takeshi, I have a new flavor of the year, Lee Minho.

in City Hunter 

in his tight pink pants (City Hunter)

a fan's drawing of Minho

Korean Sesame Glutinous Buns

Have you ever cooked or baked something following the recipe from just drawings or pictures, sort of  a rebus baking/cooking. I bought a packet of Korean ready to bake mix glutinous buns with black sesame seeds. The packet doesn't have instructions in English, but at least the ingredients are written in English. I have guessed from the photo on the package that the buns may be tapioca flour because they look like pão de queijo. These sweet version of the buns are indeed made with tapioca starch, wheat flour, sugar, fat-free milk solids, and other ingredients. The buns are slightly sweet and salty, are crunchy on the outside with airy and chewy crumb. Really really really yummy. 

From the illustrations and the corresponding amounts in grams and milliliter, it's easy to understand how much eggs and liquid to add, the weight of each bun, oven temperature, and how many minutes to bake the buns. Here is my "translation" based on the above:

1. In a bowl, whisk together 60 grams of egg/s and 70 ml water [or maybe milk]
2. Stir in one 250-gram packet of mix until fully combined.
3. Divide dough into 40-gram pieces, [you'll have about 12 pieces] and place on a sheet pan. Spray with water.
4. Bake in a preheated 180°C (356°F) oven for 30 to 40 minutes or until golden.  

There, that was easy. (^__^)

Korean Broiled Pork Spareribs

A FoodFriday entry

Taegi Kalbi Gui
6 piece pork spareribs with bones (1½ pounds), cut into 4 inches long, 2 inches wide
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon gochu jang paste (hot fermented chili paste)
1 teaspoon ginger juice
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 teaspoon sesame seeds
1 teaspoon Korean sesame oil

• Rinse the pork in cold water and pat dry. Rub the pork with sugar. Mix the soy sauce, gochu jang, ginger juice, garlic, sesame seeds, and oil and mix well. Mix the pork and marinade. Cover with plastic film and leave in the refrigerator overnight.
• Put the ribs in a roasting pan. Broil in the oven for 30 minutes, 15 minutes on each side, or until brown and crisp. Or barbecue over charcoal for 20 minutes.

Stuffed Baby Chicken In Broth (Young Gye Beck Sook)

I had this Korean chicken soup in Seoul many years ago, I have made it maybe a couple of times before. In restaurants it's cooked and served in individual earthen pots, which means one chicken to a person. When I learned it was a whole chicken I asked one of the people I was travelling with to help me finish it but the chicken was super tiny and delicious I ended up eating the WHOLE thing, including the rice!

Young Gye Beck Sook
adapted from THE KOREAN KITCHEN by Copeland Marks

1 very small chicken or cornish game hen, about 1½ pounds
1/3 cup sweet rice, washed and drained
10 garlic cloves, peeled
2 pieces fresh ginseng, each 2 inches long
½ inch fresh ginger, peeled and sliced
5 jujubes (Korean dates)
5 whole chestnuts
2 teaspoons sea salt, or to taste

roasted chestnuts, dried Korean jujubes, garlic, ginger and fresh ginseng and sweet rice

• Rinse out the body cavity of the chicken with cold water. Sew up the neck part to seal in the ingredients. Stuff the chicken with the rice, 5 of the garlic cloves and ginseng. Sew up the opening.
• Put the chicken in a pot and add water just to the top of the chicken. Add the ginger, the other 5 garlic cloves, jujubes, chestnuts, and salt and bring to a boil over moderate heat. Skim off and discard foam, reduce heat to low, cover the pan and simmer for 1 - 1½ hours. About halfway through the time, turn the chicken over to cook on the other side. Serve hot in a large tureen.

Jap Chae (Korean Noodles, Steak and Vegetable Stir-Fry)

I regularly cook Korean style dishes like steak or chicken bulgogi and this noodle dish, Jap Chae. Most Korean recipes have very strong garlicky, sweet and salty flavors that we absolutely love. This noodle dish is specially good, the vermicelli is chewy, very different from the Chinese and Filipino noodles although it resembles our mung bean vermicelli but is a lot thicker. It is made of sweet potato and cornstarch flour and the dry noodles have a greenish tint.

Jap Chae
3 ounces Korean vermicelli ( no substitution)
3 tablespoons light olive oil
1 large onion, sliced
½ pound sirloin steak, sliced into 3 x 1 inch strips
1 carrot, julienned
1 green pepper, sliced thin
½ teaspoon sea salt
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon Korean sesame seed oil (no substitution)
¼ cup tree ears, soaked in warm water and rinsed well

• Bring 4 cups of water to a boil, add the vermicelli and cook for 3 minutes, drain and rinse with cold water, set aside. The noodles should be translucent.
• Heat the oil in a large pan or wok, add the onion and stir fry for 1 minute. Add the beef and cook for 1 minute. Add the vegetables and cook for another 2 minutes. Add the salt, sugar, soy sauce, sesame seed oil and tree ears, toss the mixture then add the vermicelli, mix well. Serve while hot.

I didn't have carrots and tree ears, I used orange bell pepper for color instead. The taste is still the same though, it's the seasoning and the noodles that make this dish wonderful.