In the Korean Kitchen: A morning in the Korean Food and Culture Academy

For a long time I have been talking about doing a Korean cooking class before I  pack up my bags and leave Korea. I love cooking in all its forms, and it would be a crime if I arrived back in the UK without being able to share some of my Korean favourites with my friends and family. So a few weekends ago I finally got a group of friends together and we spent the morning at the Korean Food and Culture Academy learning how to cook up some tasty Korean goodness.

On arrival, we were greeted by our lovely cooking teacher Ellie Hyewon Lee: a specialist in Korean and Western food, she has 10 years teaching experience and has worked on many Korean Dramas as a food stylist. Friendly and impressively knowledgeable, she showed us to our individual prep areas where all of our ingredients and equipment were carefully laid out waiting for us.

Our carefully laid out prep area.

First on the menu was seafood and green onion pancake (해물 파전), a tasty snack which is commonly eaten here in Korea, especially by groups of exhausted  hikers, who usually wash it down with a bowl or two of Korean rice wine (known in Korean as mak-geo-li, 막걸리, the stuff hangovers are made of).

Our pancake mix, ready to go!

Some enthusiastic mixing going on here!

The ingredients for our pancake were as follows:

Korean pancake mix, which Hyewon kindly informed us we could make ourselves by mixing regular flour, seasoning and a little corn starch.

Green onion

Chilli-peppers

Mixed seafood (usually from a frozen bag)

1 egg

Water (equal parts to the flour)

Method:

A little chopping, followed by a lot of mixing.

Putting our ready-to-go pancake mixture to one side, it was time to move onto the star of the show: Dak galbi (닭갈비), which is the Korean name for a mouth-watering,spicy stir-fried chicken dish. One of my all-time favourite Korean dishes, I will definitely be missing it when I go back home and was happy to find how easy and quick it was to make.

Our dak-galbi ingredients.

Ingredients:

Diced chicken (traditionally chicken ribs should be used, but Hyewon explained to us that nowadays the whole chicken can be used)
Onion
Sweet potato
cabbage
Green onion
Carrot
Instant ramyeon noodles (optional

After finely chopping all of the vegetables, it was time to make the spicy red sauce. This consisted of:

- 1 tbspn of Korean chilli paste (in Korean: go-chu-jang, 고추장)

- hot  pepper flakes (it is this and not the hot pepper sauce that determined how spicy the dish will be)

-1 tablespoon of sugar syrup (can be substituted for regular sugar)

-2 tablespoons of soy sauce

- minced garlic

-sesame oil

After combining these ingredients and stirring the resulting sauce into our chicken and vegetables, we moved over to the gas range, where the magic would happen.

Dak Galbi sizzling away deliciously.

Left: seafood pajeon, sadly a few of us burnt ours because we were too busy talking to Hyewon, oops! Right: Dak galbi

Posing with our creations!

When both dishes were ready to eat, we made our way through to the dining room to enjoy the delicious Korean feast we had prepared with our own fair hands! In addition to the main dishes we had prepared,we were also were served a variety of Korean side-dishes (known as 'banchan', 반찬, in Korean) and rice as an accompaniment to our meal. 

Ready to tuck in!

Cooking the two dishes cost us 60,000KRW (about 30 quid, if my mum is reading, which I know she is).

However, as an added bonus for the additional fee of 5,000KRW (about 3 quid, mum) they let you get all glammed up in full traditional gear and strut around pretending you are Korean royalty, which I very much enjoyed. as my friends will tell you.

For a full price list and menu CLICK HERE


The picture of Korean sophistication.

This style of hanbok with the long front is the style befitting Korean Royalty. I think I play the role well ;)

Overall, it was a great morning, we  cooked some lovely dishes and learned some very interesting information about Korean Cuisine. Definitely a must-do for anybody living in Korea and interested in cooking. Some of my friends loved it so much they are even planning a second visit!

Gyeongju Part 3: A Modern Take on Traditional Lunar New Year and Yunnori

As you will know if you read my earlier posts (probably just my mum), in early February my friend and I decided to visit the historical city of Gyeong-ju to celebrate Lunar New Year  (설날). One of the highlights of this trip was joining in the celebrations with the guesthouse owners and other guests. 

For more info about Dreamer Guesthouse and their amazing staff CLICK HERE

On arriving back at our room after a exhausting day of being touristy, the Guesthouse lady asked us if we would like to join the NY party with the rest of the guests which would involve making Tteokguk (traditional Korean NY food of rice cake soup) and playing Yunnori (traditional Korean NY game) for the small fee of 5,000won (I think... it was a while ago and I might have made that up.)

Anyway, before I talk about that, first off I will try to explain the baffling concept of 'Korean age', and how it's different to how we as Westerners think about age:

1) Firstly, for some reason Korean's believe that when a child is born they are already 1 years old. So you are born and straight away you are 1. I don't know exactly why, because even if you counted the 9 months in the womb you still wouldn't be 1, but that's how it is.

2) Secondly, Korean people add 1 year to their age on New Year, not on their birthday. So everybody adds one year to their age on New Year.

3) Thirdly, whether they add 1 more year on Solar New Year (the NY that Westerners celebrate) or Lunar New Year (known as Chinese New Year to most), is up to them. 

If you're interested in working out your Korean age, but the idea of it is just too much to get your head around, CLICK HERE for a link to a handy 'Korean Age Calculator'.

The point of this story being that the reason that making and eating Tteokguk together is a tradition is that when Korean people eat the soup they believe they age one more year. So instead of asking 'How old are you?', it is a traditional custom to ask 'How many bowls of Tteokguk have you eaten?'.

Now you are probably wondering what Tteokguk is exactly. It consists of thinly sliced rice cakes in a delicious  broth made from beef, pork or seafood, seasoned with garlic, onions, seaweed and peppers and served with an egg.

I would like to tell you how to make it, however there was a very protective Korean lady hogging the kitchen (for the Expats reading this, you know what kind of character I mean!)  so I still have absolutely no idea, ha. On the upside, despite the fact that I'm not usually a fan of rice cakes, it was really tasty, not too heavy and not as spicy as other Korean foods. Thankfully, I didn't look or feel any older after it eating it though...

If you fancy giving Tteokguk a try CLICK HERE for a recipe

After washing down our Tteokguk with the obligatory soju and mekju (beer), the Korean guests all set to work making a home-made Yunnori board, that looked something like this:

Each team/player (depending on how many people are playing) has markers and places them on the starting position. 

Next they throw the 'yut' sticks, that look like this:

If 3 sticks land flat side down, but 1 stick is flat side up it is called Do, and the player/team can move 1 space.

2 sticks flat side up is called Geh, and the player/team can move two spaces.

3 sticks with the flat side up is called Geol, and the player/team can move three spaces.

4 sticks with the flat side up is called Yut, and the player/team can move four spaces.

And finally, if 4 sticks are land with the flat side down, this is called Mo and they can move five spaces.

Additionally, if the player/team land on the corner spaces they can then take a shortcut across the board, the objective of the game being to be the first player/team with all of their markers crossing the finish line.

Now here comes the twist:

the Guesthouse owners had a much more exciting take on the game planned for us, and so they did what Koreans do best... turned it into a drinking game!

So in addition to the regular Yunnori board there was also spaces colored in red. If a player/team landed on these spaces they would have to pick a piece of paper out of a 'mystery bag' and do the forfeit on the paper.

Some of the forfeits included:

1) Singing a song

2) Down a drink in one

3) Drink a dirty pint made by the other team (think about some kind of beer, soju, soy sauce, kimchi, oyster sauce, coffee cocktail, yum!)

4) Let the other teams draw all over your face.

5) Take a group photo trying to look cute/ugly/sexy.

6) Write your name in the air with your bum... (weird... but hilarious)

But if you wanted to play you could make the forfeits anything you wanted, but the sillier the better in my opinion. The organisers made a point of separating the foreigners, so that we had to team up with the Korean guests. You would think would be a little awkward, but when you've shared a kimchi/soysauce/beer and soju cocktail together you can't help but be feel a bit closer!