Seafood Ddukbokkie - Spicy Korean Rice Cakes with Seafood

When I went to Frankfurt last weekend, I had the chance to visit an Asian grocery store which is one of the biggest I know around the Hessen area. I was so happy when I saw fresh Korean rice cakes available in the store, I directly grabbed two packets and put them in my shopping basket.

A few months ago I made Rabokki, Korean rice cakes with ramen noodles, seasoned with Korean hot pepper paste. Unfortunately I had to use dried sliced Chinese rice cakes for the Rabokki, instead of the usual Korean cylinder-shaped rice cakes. It was good, but I knew that fresh rice cakes would make the dish taste even better!

This time I wanted to make the more popular Ddubokkie - simply rice cakes without the ramen noodles. Personally I find most Ddubokkie recipes too sweet and too bland, so this time I simply cooked the Ddubokkie to my liking - hot and savoury, instead of hot and sweet.

Seafood Ddubokkie

• 500 gram fresh (cylinder-shaped) Korean rice cakes, cooked in boiling water for 2 minutes
• 1 tablespoon cooking oil
• 200 grams seafood (prawns, clams, squid, etc)
• 100 grams chicken fillet, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 100 grams fish cakes, sliced
  
• 3 bird's eye chillies, seeded and sliced
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
  
• 2 tablespoons oyster sauce
• 2 tablespoons Gochujang (Korean hot pepper paste)
• 50 ml water
  
• 1 tablespoon hot pepper flakes (or to your taste)
• Sugar to taste
• 2 tablespoons chopped green onions

Instructions

• Heat oil in a skillet. Add garlic and fish cakes and stir fry for one minute.
• Add chicken, seafood, bird's eye chilli slices and fish sauce. Mix well and cook over medium heat until the chicken pieces are slightly brown.
  
• Toss in all the other ingredients (except green onions) and cook for around 3 minutes. Coat the rice cakes well with the sauce.
  
• Lastly, add green onions, mix well and turn off the stove.
  

Tangsuyuk: Korean-Style Sweet and Sour Pork

Two days ago I received the Korean cookbook which I ordered from Amazon.de. It's in German and written by three Korean women who have settled in Germany for a few decades. The book is beautifully illustrated by Tina Kraus and I was very thrilled by the cookbook since I am a real sucker for good, colourful illustrations - if you are more into photos, then this book is not really for you, but if you love something delicious and artistic at the same time, I highly recommend this cookbook :).

The cover says what the cookbook is about:
The Korea-Cookbook - Pictures, Stories, Recipes

The cookbook costs €19,95 which I think is quite decent for 160 pages of delicious recipes and heartwarming illustrations.

A sample of two pages from the cookbook.

Usually I love to look at Maangchi's site, Aeri's Kitchen or Beyond Kimchee when I want to cook something Korean, but I still love 'old-fashioned' (cook)books which I can hold in my hands - in fact I do have a collection of them...:)!

Originally the recipe in the book is called Dwaejigogitwigim - Fried sweet and sour pork, but after doing some research, I couldn't find any recipes with the Korean name Dwaejigogitwigim, instead most (Korean/ and non Korean) people refer to Korean-style sweet and sour pork as Tangsuyuk - that's why I decided to stay with this name, or are there any Koreans out there who would like to enlighten me with the difference between Dwaejigogitwigim and Tangsuyuk? I'd be very grateful :)!

Korean-Style Sweet and Sour Pork - serves 4

Adapted from Das Korea-Kochbuch

• 600 grams pork, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 2 cups tapioca starch
• Oil to deep fry the pork

Marinade sauce

• 3 cm ginger, minced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 3 teaspoons sugar
• 2 teaspoon sesame oil
• Black pepper to taste

Sweet and Sour Sauce

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
  
• 3 slices of canned pineapple, cut into bite sized pieces
• 1/2 onion, sliced
• 1 carrot, sliced thinly
• 1 sweet pepper, cut into cubes
• 1 spring onion, sliced
  
• 1 tablespoon tapioca starch, mixed with 3 tablespoons water
• 400 ml water
• 3 tablespoons vinegar
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
  
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

• Marinade the pork pieces with the marinade-sauce for 2 hours (I only waited for 20 minutes).
• Cover each pork piece with tapioca starch before deep frying.
• Sweet and Sour sauce: Heat oil in wok and stir fry the onion and carrot until slightly brown.
• Add water and the rest of the sauce ingredients (except the sweet pepper and spring onion). Cook for 1 minute.
  
• Add the sweet pepper cubes and spring onion slices just before you turn off the heat. Mix well.
• Serve the sauce on top of the deep-fried pork pieces.

This recipe is very delicious, the only thing that could have been better is the pork bites, they could have been crispier. I think the batter from the Korean Fried Chicken would be perfect for the pork.

Spicy Beef Bulgogi with Shimeji Mushrooms Bento

How do you like my new tiffin bento box which I bought from Amazon.de? I am in love with this box because it looks very simple yet sophisticated and elegant :).

I made this bento meal for my husband yesterday. If you have seen my Marie Antoinette bento post, you'd notice that all the main and side dishes in this bento are exactly the same as the ones in my Marie Antoinette bento. This is because I made both bento boxes on the same day.

This time I used Maangchi's Beef Bulgogi recipe, but we wanted it spicy, so I added a few tablespoons of gochujang and chili pepper flakes to the bulgogi marinade. I also added minced pear for natural sweetness.

Spicy Beef Bulgogi with Shimeji Mushrooms
Adapted from Maangchi

• 500 grams thinly sliced beef
• 200 grams shimeji mushrooms
  
• 4 tablespoons soy sauce
• 3 tablespoons water
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 pear, minced
• 1/2 tablespoons honey
• 2 tablespoons gochujang (Korean hot pepper paste)
  
• 1 tablespoons chili pepper flakes
  
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
• 2 green onions, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 onion, sliced

Instructions

• Mix all ingredients together (except the shimeji mushrooms) and marinade for 2 hours (I did mine in 30 minutes and it was fine too...!!)
• Grill or stir fry the beef bulgogi for a few minutes.
  
• Add the shimeji mushrooms and cook together with the beef for another 2 minutes.
• Serve with rice and toasted sesame seeds.

REMINDER



My Bento Contest will end tomorrow, 20th December 2011, at midnight GMT+1. You still have one day to go if you want to participate in the contest.

You may send me an older bento photo as well, as long as you have never submitted this photo to another contest.

If you haven't got a confirmation e-mail from me within 24 hours after submitting your bento photo, you should let me know by sending an e-mail to cookinggallery@yahoo.de - in case that your submission goes to my spam filter...

So far here are the bento photos from all the contestants. I think they're all really creative, I am sure we'd have a hard time choosing the winners...! Enjoy looking at the lovely bentos :D)!



You can also go to my Flickr Page to read more about the contestants' bentos :).

Doejibulgogi - Korean Spicy Stir-Fried Pork Bento

Korean Spicy Stir-Fried Pork or Doejibulgogi or Jeyuk bokkeum is my husband's absolute favourite Korean food. When I was still studying in Sydney, my husband (then boyfriend) visited me quite regularly and when he was there, we would go to the various food courts in China Town and tried different kinds of delicious Asian foods. We got to know Doejibulgogi in one of those food courts. We loved it that we always got kimchi and cabbage salad as side dishes for free everytime we bought something Korean - we were just poor students back then ;).

Since finding Korean restaurants in Germany is like looking for a needle in a haystack, I've converted to watching cooking videos from YouTube instead ;) and tried to make
Korean dishes myself at home. My references usually come from one these talented ladies: the cool Maangchi, Aeri from Aeri's Kitchen and Anna Kim from Korean Cuisine.

Spicy Stir-Fried Pork
Source: Aeri's Kitchen

• 2½ cups pork (Shoulder or Loin)
• ½ onion
• 2 green Onions
• 1 green hot pepper
• 1 red hot pepper

Pork Ingredients

• 1 Tbsp cooking wine
• ¼ tsp salt
• ¼ tsp black pepper

Sauce Ingredients

• 5 Tbs gochujang (hot pepper paste)
• 1 Tbsp red pepper powder
• 1 Tbsp soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp minced garlic
• ¼ apple, minced
  
• 2 Tbsp sugar
• ½ Tbsp sesame oil

Check out this video from Aeri to see how to make Doejibulgogi.

We also had some shrimp temari sushi, Korean cabbage and carrot salad, cherry tomatoes, cucumber sticks, mini pepper and soy sauce-soaked hard-boiled egg. It was a great lunch...!

Rabokki - Korean Rice Cakes with Ramen Noodles

I think most people who love Korean food are familiar with Ddeokbokki - cylinder-shaped Korean rice cakes cooked in hot pepper sauce. It's a popular Korean snack food.

Rabokki is another version of Ddeokbokki. Both are basically the same thing, but Rabokki includes ramen noodles. I got the Rabokki recipe from My Korean Kitchen - very unfortunate that the blogger stopped writing because I love her recipes...!

I couldn't find cylinder-shaped rice cakes in my local Asian market, so I had to make do with sliced rice cakes. I also added ramen noodles, store-bought Korean mandu, cabbage, fish cakes, egg, onion and green onions.

Ingredients - serves 4
Adapted from My Korean Kitchen

• 1 tablespoon oil
  
• 1 pack instant noodles
  
• 300 grams rice cakes
  
• 1 onion, sliced
  
• 4 leaves of cabbage, sliced
  
• 1 stalk of spring onion, sliced
  
• 8 instant dumplings
• 100 gram fish cakes
  
• 1 hard boiled egg
• 1 sachet dashi powder
• 4 tablespoons Gochujang (Hot Pepper Paste)
• Sugar, to taste
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
  
• 1½ cups of water

Instructions

• Heat oil in a skillet. Add garlic, onion and fish cakes and stir fry for one minute.
• Add water, dashi powder and hot pepper paste. Mix well.
• Toss in all other ingredients (except green onions) and cook for around 8 minutes.
• Before you turn off the stove, add green onions and mix well.