[Korean] Gun bam (baked chestnuts)

Baked chestnuts are an easy and wellbeing snack for fall and winter. This story has some tips for picking out good chestnuts.

Ingredient:

Fresh chestnuts!

Method:

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Rinse the chestnuts in cold water.

Pierce the skin of the chestnuts before you cook them, or they'll explode in the oven! Different people prefer different ways of cutting through the shell. Here is an easy and effective way (cut down the middle):

Put some foil on an oven tray. Put your chestnuts onto the tray and add a little bit of water. You can add a little more water half or three-quarters of the way through cooking if it has evaporated. Cook at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about 30 minutes.

...

30 minutes later:

When they've cooled a little bit (but while they're still hot), you can easily remove the shells and eat the chestnuts.

[Korean] Tangsuyuk (sweet and sour pork)

Tangsuyuk one of the most popular dishes in Chinese restaurants in Korea (#1 is jjajangmyeon). This recipe is a typical version.

Ingredients:

Sauce-

2 Tbsp ketchup

6 Tbsp sugar

4 Tbsp vinegar

3 Tbsp soy sauce

2 cups water

corn starch water (3 Tbsp each of cornstarch and water)

Handful of each of: pineapple cubes, diced onions, carrot segments, diced green (or other color) pepper, moki mushrooms (the English on the package says "black mushrooms", if that helps. If you've never seen them before, you might think they look more like seaweed.)

Meat-

300g pork

Breading-

1 Tbsp soy sauce

1 egg

1 Tbsp dry white wine

a little salt and pepper

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup corn starch

1/2 cup cold water

Method:

First make the sauce. Boil the ketchup, sugar, vinegar, soy sauce, and 2 cups of water together (we'll add the corn starch water later).

Now prepare the vegetables.

When the sauce boils, add the vegetables.

Let the vegetables cook while you fry the meat. Mix the "breading" ingredients together and cut the pork into strips. Heat some canola oil (or other oil that can take high heat) in a pan, dip the pork in the batter, and fry it. 

Fry the pork until it looks like it does in the picture below, but don't get too excited. You're not done yet! We're going to let the pork cool for a little while and then put it back into the pan.

Now, add the pineapple chunks to the simmering sauce (you can add apple slices too/instead if you like).

When the pork has cooled a little, fry it in the pan again. Frying it twice is a key point. Your tangsuyuk will be better if you don't skip this step. 

Fry the pork until it looks like this:

The sauce should be ready now, so mix in the corn starch water slowly and the sauce will thicken.

Put the fried pork onto a plate and pour the sauce onto it,

and it's done!

Eat this with or without rice. Popular side dishes for this dish are Korean radish kimchi and raw onion.

[Korean] Yubu mandu (fried tofu dumplings)

Yubu mandu is a dumpling with skin made of fried tofu. You can eat it alone or in a soup with other things. The picture above shows yubu mandu in a fish cake soup.

Ingedients:

fried tofu pouches (As many as you need. Probably about 6. See below for picture)

1/2 tofu brick (9 oz.)

1/3 pound beef (any cut is fine)

1 finger-loop of Korean vermicelli

1 large green onion stalk, minced

2-3 cloves minced garlic

1 Tbsp soy sauce

1 tsp sesame oil

salt and pepper to taste

Method:

First, soak the vermicelli in water to make it soft (it should take about 15 minutes).

Meanwhile, mince the beef, green onions, and garlic, and mix with the tofu, soy sauce, salt, pepper, and sesame oil. When the vermicelli is soft, mince that too and mix it in with everything else. It should look like this when you're done.

Now, cut one side of the fried tofu pouches open. The pouches look like this:

You can find these in the freezer at a Korean grocery.

Stuff the tofu pouches with the filling you made. Use as many as you need. Be careful not to tear the tofu pouches while you're filling them.

Usually you tie the open end of the tofu pouches with parsley sprigs, but if you don't have any of those or something similar you can just be gentle with the mandu while you're cooking it. Cook the dumplings by boiling or steaming them until the meat is done (probably 10 minutes or so). You can cook them and eat them alone, or put them into a soup.

If you want to make a soup, yubu mandu goes well with Korean fish cakes. To make this kind of soup, first you'll need to make the stock.

Boil some anchovies, Korean-style radish, green onion, dried kelp, shiitake mushrooms and a little pepper for about 10-15 minutes. 

After you boil these together, take out and discard everything except the mushrooms and add various fish cakes (there are many to choose from at any Korean grocery. They will be in the freezer) and vegetables.

Shown here: green onions, shiitake mushrooms, mock crab, three types of fish cake, cabbage, carrots, mugwort, and yubu mandu.

Add some soy sauce (about 3 Tbsp, or to taste)

...and dry white wine (around 1 Tbsp).

Now let it cook! Boil everything together. 

The fish cakes should swell to 1.5-2 times their original size.

Once the fish cakes have swollen, your soup is ready to eat. This dish is good on its own, with rice, or as a drinking side dish.