Iron Chef Korea

Remember all that kimchi I made last month? The time has finally come to crack it open and have a taste. I realize that in all the time I've operated this blog (153 posts over 3 years), I have never thoroughly described this food. So before we begin our cooking show adventure, let's take a look at the main ingredient.

Kimchi is a cabbage dish that is lathered with paste. Its base flavors are red pepper and garlic, though as we've seen there's also a distinct influence of several ocean flavors, such as anchovy and shrimp. Most importantly, kimchi is allowed to ferment from anywhere between a week to a full three years, giving it that almost alcoholic pungance. Cooking with this strong of a flavor is a delicate matter, as kimchi will clash with many ingredients and overpower the rest. However, following a few time-tested Korean recipes got us through.

My partner in crime for this endeavor was the very same one with whom I went to Taiwan, on whose own, better written blog you can find another account of this process as well as strikingly similar pictures. We each took half a head of kimchi and planned a pair of dishes each, one traditional and one of our own creation.


The Appetizer (traditional, me)


For the first dish, I went with the admittedly simple but decidedly delicious dubu kimchi.  Translating literally "tofu-kimchi," this is basically just cubes of tofu and a pile of heated kimchi.  However, there are secrets about this dish that have made avowed haters of both kimchi and tofu change their minds.  One is the choice of tofu.  As with produce, meat, or any other ingredient in food, slumming it with the packaged, chain-brand products is the express lane to disappointing taste and texture.  For the real quality tofu, and in a dish that is literally half raw tofu there's no other option, one should get the branded bricks from any of the stalls or pick-up trucks around your officetel.  The second secret is the process of heating the kimchi.  For a long time I speculated about what restaurants were doing to make this normally cold and sort of slimy vegetable so hot and savory.  As it turns out, medium-heat frying pan sauté with extra diced garlic and green onions is the trick.  Of course, just a few drops of sesame oil make all the difference in flavor.  Presentation is key when dishing out two piles of something, so I took my time layering the tofu like a pro hof.  The result is the perfect pairing: cool, nutty tofu and crunchy, warm kimchi.  It was a complete, restaurant-worthy success.

The Salad (original, Josh)


The next menu item was a veggie scramble starring Korean sweet potato and textured with bean sprouts.  A small handful of the radish slices from my kimchi jar spiced it up a bit, as well as some diced green onions and minced garlic.  All of this was stir-fried together with baby bokchoi.  The egg was almost thrown in just for good measure, more to loosely hold it together than anything.  When the scramble was complete, Josh threw it on top of a bed of mixed greens to transform the whole creation into an Asian salad unlike any you've had before.

The Soup (traditional, Josh)

The most fundamental of kimchi-based dishes, in my opinion, is the kimchijjigae, or kimchi stew.  Josh did this one up by the books, literally.  A hearty helping of kimchi, onions, tofu, and even the properly sliced wedges of ddeok to make it taste just like grandma's.  Unfortunately, due to burner constraints we didn't have the luxury of letting this one simmer the hour that was called for.  It was well on its way, but the flavors were a bit immature.  That was not the case when I ate the leftovers the next day.  Absolutely perfect!

The Meat (original, me)

The last dish was my extremely under-developed plan of kimchi-wrapped meat of some kind.  I wound up buying ultra thin fillets of pork neck.  I literally just folded a single leaf of cabbage around a half fillet.  The problem that presented itself was that I now had raw meat which needed to be cooked thoroughly inside a translucent, scorchable leaf.  The solution became extremely low heat, and that worked out nicely.  Contrary to my concerns, the kimchi began to brown just as the meat was done.  In that respect I was lucky to have gone blindly for such a thin cut of meat.  There was also concern that meat would be dry or tough, but it seems that the leaves were adequate insulation against those negative aspects.  Over all, it was most and tender, tasty but not overpowering.

We paired our spread with a few pre-packaged side dishes, but otherwise these results were entirely from our own hands. There is a deeply satisfying feeling from carrrying any act to its resolution. My very hands did the slathering, the packing, the wringing as I waited, the chopping, the stirring, and the shoveling.