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.

Eating Hanoi

The other day, Allison introduced me to this blog, flooded with pictures that make you want to sell your children to move to Asia to eat. The images reminded me of my recent travels to Beijing and through parts of Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos). Although my trip was a brief (and first) experience in Southeast Asia, no where near EatingAsia's scope of the local food, I will attempt to recount some of the eating highlights of my visit. This might be a three part post, but I'll save you the pain and start with the country I had the most food pictures/amateur knowledge of: Hanoi. Hanoi's food supposedly pales in comparison to the food in Saigon (which I didn't visit), but...I likee.

A friend who grew up in Hanoi emailed me a list of Vietnamese dishes she insisted I HAD to try while I was there. I printed the email, held it close to my heart and prayed to it at night. Rarely did I find a foreigner eating at any of the street food shops, maybe because of the little stools? Don't be fooled! Normal sized people can sit on them too and not fall.

The streets in Hanoi are small and are specialized in such a way that an entire street of stores sell more or less the same item, which made finding the places listed fairly easy. I only wish I had googled some of the items to figure out what they were beforehand so I wouldn't regret having not tried them!

THE HANOI BIBLE:
- Pho (Pho Suong, ngo Trung Yen, Dinh Liet st; or Pho Cuong, Hang Muoi st, or Bat Dan st, or Pho Hang Giay st). Dont go to fancy restaurants for Pho!!!
- Nem chua ran (Fried fermented pork) ngo Tam Thuong, Hang Bong st. or Hang Chai, near Thanh Quan junior high school. They also have delicious corn and fish
- Cha ca La Vong (Grilled fish), Cha ca st
- Pho cuon, Pho xao - Fried Pho and Pho spring rolls (West lake, Nguyen Khac Hieu st)
- Bun cha - noodles with grilled pork (Hang Manh st)
- Bun oc - noodles with snails (Ngo Cho Dong Xuan)
- Lau ga - Chicken hot pot (18 ngo Hang Chi, Hang Hom st)
- Lau bo - Beef hot pot (Phung Hung st)
- Lau de - Goat hot pot and grilled goat - Dung Rau restaurant, Lang Ha st
- Xoi xeo (sticky rice) - Xoi Yen - Nguyen Huu Huan st
- Doner Kebap - Hang Bac st
- Fried birds - I think its right next to the street Dinh Liet - just ask people around, i cant remember the name of the street
- Banh cuon - this is the perfect breakfast for me - Bao Khanh st
- Bun thang - Hang Hanh st
- Hoa qua dam (mixed fruits) - To Tich st
- Kem Trang Tien (special ice cream of Hanoi) - Trang Tien st
- O Mai (check this out Hang Duong st - Hong Lam shop, u'll love it)
- Banh com ( Hang Than st)
- Snake meat - Le Mat village, Gia Lam

Onto some pictures...

Cha Ca La Vong

Pho cuon

Pho cuon, Pho xao

Bun Cha (photo courtesy of gastronomyblog)

Xoi Xeo (photo courtesy of gastronomyblog)

Banh Cuon (photo courtesy of unemployed-at-last)

Bun with Fried Tofu (Tam Thuong St)

Hoa qua dam (mixed fruits w/ condensed milk)

Che

Rice balls with black sesame filling in ginger syrup

Kem Trang Tien (special Hanoi ice cream)

I want to go back. Now.

mouthfeel

just a quick post to sing the praises of gregoire's crispy potato puffs (and to continue the fried spud love). the aioli that comes with the puffs is good but on my most recent visit, i realized that it has distracted me all of these years from the best part about the puffs -- the crispy, smooth mouthfeel.





taken from wiki: Mouthfeel is a product’s physical and chemical interaction in the mouth. It is a concept used in many areas related to the testing and evaluating of foodstuffs, such as wine-tasting and rheology. It is evaluated from initial perception on the palate, to first bite, through mastication to swallowing and aftertaste. In wine-tasting, for example, mouthfeel is usually used with a modifier (big, sweet, tannic, chewy, etc.) to the general sensation of the wine in the mouth. Some people, however, still use the traditional term, "texture".
Mouthfeel is often related to a product's water activity, hard or crisp products having lower water activities and soft products having intermediate to high water activities.

'naddamean?

3 Dutch Ovens, So Much Chili

All Seriously Food bloggers were present at a camping trip to Big Sur this month, to which we brought along some beefy chili. Chili can be made while blindfolded and drunk, and equipment-wise, requires only the possession of one big ass pot:

1. Sweat onions
2. Brown ground beef and cubed sirloin
3. Stir in canned diced tomatoes & its juice, tomato paste, beer, coffee, beef broth, a tad of brown sugar, and whatever spices & herbs you like (standard is cumin, coriander, bay leaf, chili powder, cayenne, salt, and cocoa powder [gasp!]) Eyeball these ingredients; there's no point in making a science of it.
4. Add canned kidney beans and diced fresh peppers (jalapenos are fine but there's room to get creative).
5. Simmer down

Reheating on a portable stove at camp

This chili is delicious, and I didn't take it as an insult that I had a lot leftover. I brought some to work and ate it in front of my laptop, I moved it around in the fridge, I cried a little. Then, of course, I made chili cheese fries.

Spud frying

(Yeah, go ahead and use pre-cut, frozen fries)

These beauties were enjoyed with a cool beer and two cold men, who agreed that they were the best c.c. fries that any of us had ever had.

Weep, poutine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poutine), weep.

Food Writer Francis Lam

I don't know much about him, but I do know that he's Chinese (props), he went to culinary school (credible), and he brings a fresh attitude, bordering on vice-magazine-like irreverance, to Gourmet mag. Lam's articles are short and outwardly directed, but his writing clearly reflects his youthful and hysterical personality.

Maybe it's immature of me to find so entertaining his use of phrases like, "butt cheap," "my bad," and article titles such as, "When Eating is Awkward," and "A Mississippi Minute, Lauren-Rhymes-With-Foreign Edition: Some people just talk in poetry." But, really, it's best to read about food from someone who doesn't take themselves all that seriously (at least, yet). Lam writes about things most of us wouldn't really think to, like what to do with leftover chicken fat (fry it in oil and make cracklins!), why pretty peas don't taste good, his fateful encounter with the dubiously named Tropical brand cheese. He's entirely relatable, I'd want to hang out with him; and really, wouldn't we all rather hear about food from someone we'd want to hang out with? Aw, just look at him.

(image courtesy of some other blog called up your architecture)

Check out his writing at Gourmet.

Summer, Oh Summer

I've been drooling at other bloggers' posts on peach tarts and ice cold drinks, all reminiscent of hot summers (exactly what has been nonexistent here in SF). Thank god this weekend was actually nice and warm and stayed warm for more than one day. Allison picked up some peaches from the farmer's market saturday, so we thought it would be a good idea to celebrate and make a summer tart!




We adapted a recipe from epicurious but altered it a bit--omitted the crystallized ginger pieces since we didn't have it on hand (plus the gingersnap cookies we used had pieces in them!), used peaches instead of nectarines, and made our own peach jam with some white peaches. The combination of the lemon zest in the mascarpone and the gingersnap cookie crust complemented each other really well. I think we were a little nervous/frazzled baking together so we had some mishaps but soon, very soon we will be rubbing our bosoms together in baking bliss. (Original recipe here)

Ingredients:
25 gingersnap cookies, coarsely broken (about 6 ounces; about 2 1/4 cups pieces)
1/4 c unsalted butter, melted
1 8 oz container mascarpone cheese
2 T sugar
1 T good quality honey
1 T grated lemon peel
1/4 t vanilla extract
1 to 2 big peaches, halved, pitted, cut into thin slices
1/4 cup peach jam, warmed

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Finely grind gingersnaps in processor. Add butter and blend until crumbs are evenly moistened. Press mixture over bottom and up sides of 9-inch-diameter tart pan. Bake crust until color darkens, pressing sides with back of spoon if beginning to slide, about 8 minutes. Cool completely.
Beat mascarpone cheese, sugar, honey, lemon peel, and vanilla extract in a medium bowl until smooth. Spread filling in prepared crust. Cover loosely and refrigerate at least 2 hours and up to 1 day.
Overlap peach slices atop filling in concentric circles. Brush with jam. Voila!