Kimchee Jigae

This fiery Korean soup is absolutely wonderful. It is very important not to add the butter until the very end. This technique ensures it will not seperate but emulsify properly into the soup, adding flavor and richness to it.

Kimchi Jigae

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cooking Time: 30 minutes

Serves: 3-4

Ingredients:

1/3 lb pork belly, sliced thinly

1 small onion, sliced

1 1/2 cup kim chee

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 1/2 cups water

1/2 tsp dried ginger

1 tbsp cooking sake

2 tsp korean chilli paste

2 tsp miso or deonjang

2 tsp light soy sauce

2 tbsp dried chilli flakes

8 oz tofu, sliced into cubes

2 scallions, sliced

1 tbsp butter

Cooking:

Heat a small pot, and add pork belly and onions, and sautee until the prok belly begins to express fat. Add the kim chee and garlic, and continue to sautee until fragrant.

Next add the water, ginger, cooking wine, chilli paste, miso or deon jang, chilli flakes and soy sauce.

Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook for 15-20 minutes, or until the pork belly and kim chee are tender.

Add the scallions and remove from heat. Right before it's served, add the butter. Don't do this too soon, or the milk solids and oil will seperate and the butter will make the soup oily.

Serve and enjoy!

Doenjang Jigae

Deon jang is the Korean equivalent of miso. In truth, it seems no different than any other form of miso. However, unlike traditional Japanese miso, which relies on dashi and wakame for its flavorings, deonjang jigae relies on vegetables.

Deonjang Jigae

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cooking Time: 45 minutes

Serves: 4-5

Ingredients:

1 potato, cubed

1 summer squash, cubed

1 onion, chopped

5 cloves garlic, minced

1 green chilli pepper, minced

7 dried anchovies, minced

1 scallion, sliced

4 ounces tofu, cubed

6 tbsp soy bean paste (deon jang, although miso will do)

Cooking:

Add potato, squash, onion, garlic, chilli pepper, and anchovies to a small pot and bring to a boil, and then reduce to a simmer. Simmer for 45 minutes, or until potato is soft. Add the deon jang, carefully mixing some of the stock into the deon jang to bring it up to temperature beforehand, and mix it into the soup. Add scallion and tofu. Cook for two minutes, and then remove from heat and serve.

Miso

Miso soup: if you've ever gone out for sushi you've probably had it. You might have thought it was good. Well think again: restaurant miso is a fraction as good as you can make it at home, with barely more work than it takes to heat up some Cambell's soup.

Miso

Prep Time: Negligible (20 minutes to make dashi, if you have to)

Cooking Time: 5 minutes

Serves: 6

Ingredients:

1/3 - 1/2 cup miso paste

4 cups dashi

a pinch of wakame strips

cubed tofu

Preparation:

Soak wakame in warm water.

Cooking:

Heat dashi. Once hot, remove from heat and add wakame, tofu, and miso.

Now hold on, there's a little more to this than it sounds. Firstly, you're probably wondering what wakame is. Well, it's another kind of seaweed found at your local japanese/asian market.

As for miso, that's a little more complex. Miso comes in hundreds of varieties. The most basic is with or without dashi. Since dashi takes virtually no work, I recommend going without. Beyond that, I'll direct you over to this article, which covers miso paste better than I could.

Akira

Natto

The scariest of Japanese foods might be natto. Natto has relatives, like tempeh and tofu, but natto is whole soybeans fermented. Somehow, the process makes them gooey, and when you stir it with your chopsticks it forms long, gooey strings, like mozzarella on hot pizza slices.

But it doesn't taste like mozzarella. It tastes like bad tempeh, an overpowering aroma of soy attacking your nostrils, prying open your olfactory nerves, and rushing to your brains.

Overall, it's not that bad.

If you bury it in soy sauce.