mary eats

Next Tuesday, June 6, Phillies in Haebangcheon is celebrating their one-year anniversary. Todd is laying out quite a spread with some free drinks and cheat eats. Stop by and celebrate with everyone’s favorite kiwi. Festivities kick off around 2pm. Noksapyeong station exit 2. Head straight taking a left at the first intersection (past an army post and a wall of traditional Kimchi pots) Continue 200 meters, Phillies will be on your left

Football and pizza fans are in for a treat. Sortino’s, Itaewon’s newest and arguably tastiest Italian eatery, is hosting World Cup games, providing diners with his crispy pizzas until one in the morning. Games start June 9th. Iteawon station exit 3. Walk straight, past the fire station. Sortino’s is in a second-story space on your right. 02-797-0488/9

Buddha’s belly, a hip spot for cheap Thai food in Kyeonggi dong has opened a new location in Itaewon. The alley behind the Hamilton Hotel sees in the new location in a second story space above Usmanina. Itaewon station, exit 1. Turn right at the KFC, then left at the end of the alley. Buddha’s Belly will be on your left

Finally Antonio Patella, Seoul’s most fabulous Italian import, has left Puccini (Itaewon dwellers will remember his excellent service at La Travola) to open his new Italian Restaurant, Vinoteca Ristorante Itlaiano Antonio in Gangnam. Directions soon.

Happy eats!

Mary

PS The picture is from Jenny’s, a hongdae eat you shouldn’t miss

While 30-minute meals are not my usual night in the kitchen, I can appreciate a quick fix. Not only do I have the factors of stress and time working against me every day, but man, if you could see the size of my kitchen. It’s smaller than any NY studio’s. I’m willing to put money on it.

Here I’ve adjusted a Martha Stewart recipe to reflect the flavors of Korea. The five mainstays of Korean seasoning, garlic, soy sauce, chili flakes, sesame oil, and green onions are the flavor base. Aside from the cilantro, everything needed, can be purchased at your neighborhood shop.

Rice with Tofu, dried Mushrooms, and Swiss Chard Adapted from Martha Stewart, serves 4.

1 1/2 cup short-grain rice (if using brown adjust the water to 3 cups)
1/4 cup dried Shiitake mushrooms, broken into smaller pieces
8 oz extra-firm tofu, cubed
1 Tbsp minced garlic
1 Tbsp minced ginger
1 tsp dried gochu (crushed red pepper flakes)
1/4 tsp salt
2 good handfuls Swiss chard de-stemmed and chopped (you can use any dark green from spinach to collard greens)
1/2 cup chopped green onions
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
2 Tbsp Soy sauce
1 1/2 Tbsp rice vinegar
1 t toasted sesame oil.
1 cup mungbean sprouts

1. In the bowl of your rice cooker, add the rice, water, mushrooms, tofu, ginger, garlic, chili and salt. Give it a good stir to combine. Close the rice cooker and cook until machine beeps. About 30 minutes, longer if using brown rice.
2. If your rice cooker is big enough stir in the spinach, if not layering it on top works fine too. Cover and let steam 10-15 minutes, or as long you can wait. Stir in scallions, cilantro, soy sauce, vinegar, and sesame oil. Dish onto plates and garnish with mungbean sprouts. These beauties offset the rice and tofu with a lively crunch.

Today my review of Irionala comes out in the Korea Times. You can read it here
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What I didn’t say? Not a whole lot. I wish someone had taken me to a place like this when I first arrived in Korea. Instead, I hid from Korean food, only having Kimbap once or twice in a year.

Traditional Korean restaurants (I am speaking of most restaurants unaffected by the growing fusion trend) work on a different level than many are used to. There are diner style restaurants, serving up ramyeon, kimbap, and omelets with rice. But for dinner tucker, a restaurant is chosen based on the animal character decorating the front awning.

Looking at a picture of cows grazing in a field? Bulgogi (marinated sliced beef). Cute pigs wrapped up in a slice of bacon? Samgyeopsal (bacon like grilled pork belly). Plump, blue fish flying elegantly out of the cool waters? Hwae (raw sliced fish like sushi but without the rice). A gigantic inflated crab, clinging to the side of the restaurant’s wall? Steamed crab.

While that all appears straightforward enough, the problem lies in that all these restaurants serve meals in sets. Everyone in your party eats the same thing. No kiddie menu for the little ones, and no salads for the vegetarians.

Finding a Korean restaurant that caters to the dining needs of a group of picky eaters is tough.

What I like about Irionala, and restraurants in their vein, is that everyone finds something to eat. Vegetarians can munch on salad, namul, veggie cakes, and pumpkin soup, while bloodthirsty carnivores are treated to galbi patties, sliced beef and pork, pork, pork. Kiddies, are treated to their favorite, noodles. In the end everyone wins.

Almost.

My only gripe is that some of the dishes are prepared with out the love. Small, overlooked steps in the kitchen translate to unsatisfied diners. Bland soups could use a dash of salt. Unimaginative salads could replace the iceberg lettuce for some darker greens. Fried dishes could omit half the cooking oil used, ending up with better results.

Would I go here again? Most likely. And it would be first on my list for introducing visiting family and friends, or newbies to the peninsula.

Pharaohs reviewed May 17 in the Korea Herald

My review of Pharaohs come out in today’s Korea Herald, and here’s what I didn’t say.

Hassan makes some darn fine food, but his restaurant suffers from chef’s syndrome. Here, the theory is “my food is so good that front of the house operations can take a backseat.” Well, it doesn’t work. While Pharaohs is my choice for falafel and all treats Egyptian, I rarely eat in, opting rather for take out. The place is about as inviting as a cave of bats.

Pharaohs is too small for more than one employee, but there is no denying that a second server would iron out the service seams. Hassan works his tail off keeping the place afloat. There was a time when you could find his bed, propped up against the wall. But the 16-hour days are taking their toll, and while Hassan would serve you the shirt off his back on a doily lined tray, he cannot do it alone.

This shouldn’t stop you from going. Now that the weather is nice, there is quaint terrace for which to sip your demitasse coffee. Finding decent food in this city isn’t hard, but finding perfect hummus is, and nothing, not even a bat cave, stands between me and hummus.

For as long as I have been cooking, I have looked forward to the arrival of spring. The Olympia Farmer’s Market would finally reopen, full of calcium rich greens and not much else. Then in a few weeks the first sign of the forthcoming bounty appeared: bright green spears of asparagus, bundled and stacked high like a Campbell’s soup display at Safeway.

Culinary magazines from Bon Appetite to Martha Stewart, along with national and local newspapers continue to set off yearly national frenzies. Recipes and nostalgic essays dominate April issues and weekly food sections. I can’t help but get caught up in the drama. This isn’t only about cooking. The spring crop marks an end to dreary Pacific Northwest winters, and carries an air of hope and change.

My kitchen promptly went from heavy, starchy, one-pot mains, to light soups, frittatas and cold crudites. By the time the Asparagus season had ended, I was well into a spring fever, so to speak.

To the untrained eye, spring in Korea doesn’t bring much besides monstrous genetically engineered strawberries. No one vegetable carries an emotional weight here like Asparagus. Spring vegetables come in the form of mountain weeds, or namul. Memories of asparagus were like a lost dream- hazy.

Over the last three years I’ve done without, but lucky for us, Seoul’s answer to Dean and Delucca, the Galleria, has begun to stock the most delicate spears of asparagus I’ve come across.

Most chefs prefer pencil thin spears, and I’m no exception. Crisp with fresh flavor, they deserve to stand-alone. Naturally, I was skeptical. Kevin, on the other hand was gung-ho. I could tell that they were, obviously, real asparagus (with the amount of fake or copied goods here I wouldn’t be surprised), but the quality, the flavor, would it be there?

Raw, they gave off a crisp snap, a grassy aroma spritz through the air. I wanted a simple treatment, but a little more than the basic blanch with a dousing of olive oil.

Enter prosciutto.

Asparagus spears with prosciutto and onion. Adapted from epicurious.com

24 thin asparagus spears, trimmed
1 Tbsp. Olive oil
2 slices prosciutto diced
1 small yellow onion, sliced thin
Salt and Pepper to taste

Prepare asparagus to your preference. Personally I’m fond of long spears, but if you are all about convince, slice into 1 inch pieces.

Over medium heat in a large frying pan add the olive oil and prosciutto. Unlike bacon, proscuitto does not emit drippings. You can forgo the olive oil, but I found it helped keep things from sticking.

Give the ham a few quick stirs, then add the onion and asparagus. Stir to coat, then leave the pan alone for a minute to braise-so to speak- the mixture. What you’ll end up with-if your heat isn’t turned up too high- is a satisfying golden crust on the ham, onion, and asparagus.

Give a few shakes of the salt and pepper, toss, and plate. You can eat it hot or at room temperature.

Toque, reviewed in the Korea Times May 12, 2006

Seoul dwellers have in the last two weeks, jumped straight from winter into summer. Sure there was a small period of time where lighter jackets were donned, mittens and gloves forgone, but one still would need to turn the heater on at night. I guess spring fluttered away with the cherry blossoms. Today’s high in Seoul, 81. Soon the monsoon will begin, and desperately muggy nights will fight with my will to sleep.

This brings me to a culinary point; it’s time for summer salads. Not the kind tossed up with greens galore, but protein based, parsley flicked, meal in a bowl business. The first of the season? A quinoa tabbouleh.

I have always been a sucker for tabbouleh, but unless someone has been hoarding all the cracked wheat, I just can’t find it here. It isn’t like quinoa is available either (we have it shipped over from home). I guess if you were pressed you could use short grain brown rice, or even black lentils. Be sure to cook whatever grain al dente.

No matter how I try I cannot resist tossing in something extra, taking the dish from tabbouleh to something else entirely. Tonight’s pick, cubes of tart feta. Next time, maybe some garbanzo or broad beans.

If you have time (or if you can resist tearing through the bowl), letting the salad marinate overnight, imparts a lemony flavor into every last inch of the salad. Delightful.

(Sadly, our digital camera pooped out in India, who can blame it really. That country is exhausting. I’m left to document meals with film, meaning you’ll have to wait for a photo)

Quinoa Tabbouleh

2 cups quinoa, thoroughly rinsed.
32 cherry tomatoes, diced (if you have access to Roma tomatoes, by all means, use 4)
1 1/2 cups flat leaf parsley, chopped
4 Green onions, white and light green parts thinly sliced
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
Freshly ground pepper
Salt

Cook quinoa in 2 cups of water in a pot (bring quinoa and water to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer 30 minutes) or a rice cooker.

Spread cooked quinoa out on a plate to cool

In a large bowl mix tomatoes, parsley, lemon juice, olive oil, pepper, and salt. Mix in quinoa and season to taste.

Articles by Mary Crowe

Samenamul, reviewed in the Korea Times April 28, 2006
Samenamul

March is baby octopus season in Korea.

For me, there is no season in which to indulge in this rubbery eight legged sea creature, because, frankly, octopus is disgusting. It isn’t the final product that is off putting. Mesmerized by sushi conveyer belts, I often find the white slice, with a kiss of purple, visually stimulating. It is in its living state, where the pale gray, mucus orb clings to the side of aquarium walls outside restaurants that turns my stomach and triggers my tounge to pop out of my mouth while exclaiming “blehach.”

I, however-and known to most- am trying to broaden my Korean culinary horizons. So when Kev came across an article in the Korean Times promoting chugg jjoo mi restaurants, I knew my nay saying wouldn’t stand a chance.

Mini-octopi are revered in Korea for their superior flavor. I’m not sure how this is detected under a smothering of kochujeong (red pepper paste). You could cover anything from a shoe to fois gois in this sauce and only taste one thing. Kochujeong-if your taste buds haven’t been singed off.

Samo Jjuggumi, a tiny restaurant hidden in the alleys near Sadaemun station (really, most all Korean restaurant description start off like this) is noted for it’s light hand when it comes to the fiery condiment. The restaurant serves only two dishes, chuggumi-kui, octopus grilled and seasoned with kocujeong (kui means grilled) and chuggumi chongol, a fiery soup with veggies and tofu. We opted for the former.

Yet another experience began with us, the only people in the restaurant, unable to speak Korean and the staff clueless with English. Sign language proceeded and the procession of side dishes began. The grill arrived, a hubcap looking apparatus, and the ajuma bent over yapping away in Korean, I sure saying something like “don’t touch this it’s very hot.” We watched while she flopped pieces of raw octopus onto the grill. The heat caused the meat to shrink and curl up over itself. So, this is what it looks like to have your food cooked alive.

Trying to get over the horror at watching the dead pieces move and wiggle about the grill, we popped bits into our mouths and began to chew. Brows rose, then furrowed. Smiles went into frowns and back into smiles, chewing chewing chewing, about to swallow, no wait, more chewing. Man, the stuff is chewy.

Natural flavor? Couldn’t taste it. But when wrapped in red lettuce leaves smeared with dwangjeong (soy bean paste) it wasn’t bad. Is it something I would greatly anticipate every spring for? Unless each order came with a chocolate Easter bunny, not a chance.

Who knew sweet potatoes could cause so much trouble!

Soju is Korea’s Vodka. The national liquor. While Korea produces dozens other whistle wetters, soju’s cheap price has made it the most popular. Don’t assume that Soju is Korea’s answer to Sake. Made from the sweet potato, it is closer to Shochu. (the Japanese sweet potato liquor).

My first few experiences with the stuff left me in a grim state. The previous night’s events became impossible to recall, my eyelids, too painful to open. Body parts appeared detached and unresponsive, whisky and soda had never left me like this before.

All this from a bottle the size of a coke and less than 1 US dollar. I’d say soju far better deserves Absinthe’s reputation (and legislation). Stories told in the expat bars and house parties could fuel a sequel to Burrough’s Naked Lunch. (A co-worker stole a cab after an all night soju bender, then spent a month in a Korean jail).

In three parts I’ll introduce you to Korean libations. Kev has been kind enough to taste test with me and what follows is a short description, plus our tasting notes.

Soju: The green monster. Purists down it by the shot glass, others mix it with soda, juice, and fresh fruit. At 50-90% proof, it only takes a few shots to get the party going.
M: Heavy, but a little sweet. I feel like I can breath fire, one shot is ok, but don’t know how many more I could do.
K: Rubbing alcohol. It doesn’t have much taste. Kinda like a vodka shot
Note* One friend uses soju to clean her computer.

Beakseju: From the bottle “Korean traditional wine, brewed wine unique method and 12 herbs. Bek se means 100 years, it doesn’t refer to the age of the wine but the health benefits this wine offers.” Beakseju is a rice wine mixed with ginseng, licorice, ginger, cinnamon, and herbs.
M: Smells medicinal, like ginseng. Not horrible. Kinda intriguing. But one shot is enough.
K: Herby. Tastes like the earth.

Sansa Joon: From the bottle “Sanza is a fruit bearing broad leaf plant belonging to the rose species. Red and a pleasant scent. Good for treating weak stomachs, backaches, and cut.” I had originally chosen sansa joon for its aesthetically pleasing bottle (I’ll be using it as a vase later) but now that I know it cures backaches, look out!
M: Floral smell, but not white wine floral. Light on the tongue, best ice cold. It would be good mixed with soda water or sprite.
K: Sweet.
UPDATE: last night Kev and I drank Sansa Joon with friends at a Korean restaurant. Ice cold, it was refreshin. I think I’ll get this stuff again.

Bekseju plus soju.
Many Koreans like to mix soju and beakseju. As far as we know it is called a 50-50 (oh-ship, oh-ship) bomb.
M: still tastes like medicine.
K: Very beakseju-y

Next up: Chungha, plum-wine and Makkoli.