Jap-Chae 잡채

So as promised from last week. Another Korean dish this week.

Today it will be Jap-Chae (잡채). The dish is not that hard to make, and it is nice to be enjoyed in the summer or winter, making it perfect for both sides of the world.

Japchae is a stir-fried dish that combines sweet vermicelli noodles made from the starch of a white sweet potato, thinly slices of beef, and various vegetables. It is usually prepared with carrots, green onion, spinach, shiitake mushrooms and green peppers. Beef may be added as an option but may be left out to be served as a vegetarian dish. The noodles are gray when raw and turn almost translucent when cooked (thus given its popular nickname, glass noodles). When cooked correctly, they retain a chewy texture.

My mum has actually mastered this dish so I had asked hr for the recipe. It is sorta weird though, because I'm not Korean yet my mum knows how to make Korean food. I guess you can call it being multicultural.

Anyways, back to the dish.

Ingredients

12 oz noodle (Dang Myun)
4 oz beef
5 shitake mushrooms or Chinese black mushrooms
1 carrot
1 onion
1 egg
⅓ lbs spinach
5 tbs oil
1 tbs sesame seed oil
2 tbs soy sauce
Salt & black pepper (pinch)
Sesame seed (pinch)
1 tbs minced garlic
1 tbs chopped green onion

Method

1. Soak mushrooms in water for 15 minutes. Cut off stems then cut the caps into thin strips.
2. Cut beef into thin strips and marinate it with the mushrooms in a seasoning of: soy sauce, sugar, minced garlic, sesame seed oil, chopped green onions, and a pinch of ground pepper.
3. Cut carrots and onion into thin strips (julienne).
4. Cook spinach in boiling water for about two minutes. Cool spinach in running water. Squeeze the water out of the spinach. Season the spinach slightly with salt and sesame seed oil.
5. Batter and fry the egg in a pan with a pinch of salt. Once cooked and cooled, cut the egg into thin slices.
6. Cook the noodles in boiling water for about 2-4 minutes or until soft (You may want to cut the noodles in half before hand if they are too long). Rinse in cold water and drain.
7. Start cooking the beef and mushrooms with a bit of oil.
8. When beef is cooked, add carrot, onion, spinach, and noodles and stir-fry.
9. When vegetables are cooked, add the sliced egg and use salt and soy sauce to season the dish to your taste.
10. Put it all in a dish and sprinkle some sesame seeds for the final touch.
Can be served hot or cold.



The dish isn't hard to make. The most trouble you will have may be actually finding the correct type of noodles for the Japchae. The easiest way to find it is to go to your closest Asian grocer and try to look for it, it is probably easier to look for sweet potato vermicelli noodles than for dang myun so I suggest doing that. Also this can be a vegetarian dish by leaving out the meat, so it is easy to accommodate for all eaters.

I hope you guys enjoy that, it is a simple Korean dish that is perfect for those of you who can't handle spicy things.

Another Korean dish next week? I think so (:

Hotteok 호떡

So I'm suddenly craving hotteok 호떡. You may not know what it is....well it is a popular street food in Korea and is usually eaten in Winter. Which is perfect for now because it is cold.

The dough for hotteok 호떡 is made from wheat flour, water, milk, sugar, and yeast. The dough is allowed to rise for several hours. Handful-sized balls of this stiff dough are filled with a sweet mixture, which may contain brown sugar, honey, chopped peanuts, and cinnamon. The filled dough is then placed on a greased griddle, and pressed flat into a large circle with a special tool with a stainless steel circle and wooden handle as it cooks.

It is sort of like a pancake with fillings...if you want to put it that way. It is apparently best not to indulge in this snack because of its high sugar content...but I have a sweet tooth so it is sort of inevitable that it will happen.

My fingers are getting colder and colder, so I'll move on to giving you guys the recipe for this snack.

Ingredients
2 3/4 – 3 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
1 cup milk (low fat or full)
Filling
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp sugar
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon

Method
1. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together 2 1/2 cups flour, baking soda, salt and sugar. Stir in milk and mix until smooth. Gradually add in the remaining flour until dough is very stiff.
2. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and gently knead until dough is just barely tacky to the touch, and feels fairly smooth and elastic (about 1 minute).
3. Shape dough into a ball, cover it with a clean dish towel and let rest for 15 minutes.
4. In the meantime, combine all filling ingredients in a small bowl and set aside.
5. Once rested, divide the dough into 6 equal pieces.
6. Work with one piece of dough at a time. Roll it out on a lightly floured surface into a circle about 5-6-in. wide. Place 1 tbsp filling in the center of the dough, then bring up the sides and pinch them together around the filling to seal tightly.
7. Roll out the dough ball with filling inside, lightly flouring both the surface and the rolling pin to ensure that nothing sticks and tears open the dough, until you have a disc about 1/4-inch thick. Slightly thicker is ok, but the cake should be quite thin. Repeat with all remaining pieces of dough.
8. Put about 2 tbsp of vegetable oil in a large pan and turn up the heat to medium-high. When oil is hot, place 1 or 2 of the hotteoks (depending on the size of your pan) in the pan and cook until golden brown. Turn once, then cook the second side until it is golden brown as well, about 3-5 minutes overall.
9. Repeat with remaining hotteoks.
Serve hot.



I hope you guys enjoy that snack. And I'll be back with another recipe next week. I promise to make it Korean (: