Korean Chinese Cuisine

These days I have been nostalgic for Korean Chinese cuisine. Whassat', you ask? The origins of Korean Chinese food trace back to the port city of Incheon, South Korea, where the country's ethnic Chinese lived. They used local Korean ingredients in the tried-and-true recipes of their motherland. This stuff is so good. Growing up near L.A., I used to eat it all the time and get belly-burstingly full. My sister and I would touch the tops of our torsos and exclaim, "I'm full up to here!" There are a few elements of Korean Chinese cuisine that bring it all together in a special and delicious way, and I find restaurants like this missing in Sucker Free City.


1. Side dishes

• (A.) Raw onions served in bite-size pieces. It's an acquired taste. Cover with vinegar and dip in:
  
• (B.) Black bean sauce
  
• (C.) Dakwong aka danmuji aka pickled daikon radish


• (D.) Kimchi. I'm not sure if it's a different type of kimchi, but it's different -- not as fermented as the variety usually served in Korean restaurants, milder and saltier

2. Tangsuyuk (a "Koreanized" version of sweet and sour pork, or beef, or chicken). This ain't like the sweet and sour pork you order at House of Hunan, buddy. The crispy, battered meat strips are really crispy, and the meat is excessively chewy. It's served with vegetables in a thick, sweet, vinegary sauce.

When I was little, servers would often bring out steamed buns at this point. We'd grab those steaming hot, sweet rolls and tear it apart to dip pieces of it into the tangsuyuk sauce, and any other sauce. Maybe it's a kid thing. Or maybe it's an adult thing, suppressing the urge to lick up every single drop of the sweet, sour, spicy tangsuyuk sauce.

3. Ggampoong seh-oo (sweet and sour shrimp, but sweeter and spicier). I can't even find a picture of this but it's good. Also served in an irresistable sauce.

4. Jjampong - ohmygod! Wheat flour noodles in a spicy, chili oil soup, swimming in a bowl with seafood. This stuff is so good. It will make you sweat and cry. It will clear out your sinus problems, swimmers ear, allergies, and cancer.




5. Jjajangmyun (aka zjja-jjiang-mIEN! in Mandarin) - noodles in a sweet black bean paste, sliced cucumber on top mandatory. I don't know why we'd order this toward the end of the meal.



6. Obligatory dessert served gratis. 'Cause free stuff (aka suh-bis-uh aka "service" aka the exchange of favors, gifts, and commodities in a fluid, communal understanding) is the Korean way. Usually it would be glazed sweet potato or glazed banana slices. And fortune cookies.





There's something very down-to-earth and even working class about this food. Can't you just imagine the Chinese and Korean workers sitting cross-legged with one leg folded upwards, hovering around steaming bowls of jjampong while the ship bells rang in the Incheon harbor?

Damn, I'm hungry.

Macaron Discipline

"What color did you make them?" We let them go naked. It's classier that way. Plus, food coloring is kind of expensive.

Jenn and I attempted making macarons a few weeks ago. Pain in the arse, but satisfying to produce such precious, adorable things. God, did I really just use those words?

The experience led me to conclude that: 1) You shouldn't try stiff-peaking egg whites by hand, even if you have man strength like i do. Get a mixer and spare yourself the embarrassment. 2) Macaron making is all about following rules, and wondering how the suckers would have turned out if you hadn't followed the rules, but being too chicken to not follow the rules. That said, I'm not going to post a recipe, there's plenty of contradicting recipes, step-by-step guides, folk-lore, fairy tales for macarons on the web already. Go confuse yourself. I'd rather just share with you some of the more irritating, rash-inducing, butt-sweat-producing rules that we felt we had to follow to make these mofos:

• Age the egg whites at room temperature overnight. If anyone else has experienced the dizzying, stifling stench of aged egg whites, especially after a hot summer night, holler.


• Sift the ground almond and confectioners sugar. I hate sifting anything.


• After piping the cookies into perfect circles, let them sit for an hour so they can develop "skins." After making macarons, you realize how disgusting they kind of are. Rotten egg whites, skins...


• Of course, measure everything, very exactly. If you're Chinese, there's something fun and novel about practicing your anality and crazy math skills when making cute French pastries, but it soon gets old and you realize the Chinese pretty much based their cuisine around eyeballing stuff, and it's worked for them for centuries; that having to measure things so exactly is masochistic and a little meaningless.

Making macarons is time consuming. Plan for it well; don't drink beer and try to have guests over at the same time. I left Jenn to tend to the macarons at midnight because I couldn't stand it anymore. I had to sleep. Poor girl was up until 1 or 2 in the morning making sure the babies went into the oven and came out at the right time. They were pretty tasty in the end. But were they worth the trouble? I dunno.