Just a reminder: How to chop onions

I bought a Progressive International Fruit and Vegetable Chopper back in February primarily to chop onions because chopping any kind of onion (even so-called "mild" onions, like green onions, scallions or Walla Walla Sweets) make me cry like a big baby. The tears get so bad I can't see where my knife is going. I don't think my family and guests want my O+ blood or my fingertip in their stirfry.

Right after it came in mail, I posted a comment on my Facebook page telling everyone about it. One of my friends, who's a chef and caterer, bemoaned my purchase. He issued a dire warning of how this devise would ruin my knife skills. He also said the food chopper doesn't cut the onions per se, it smashes them, which would release more juice and more tearing action.

Technically, that's true, but at least they're all smashed and cut and immediately go into a container that I can seal up and keep the fumes away from my eyes until I'm ready to dump the onions into my skillet or wok. The best thing about it is that I can still see what I'm doing afterward, too.

So the question I would invite you to answer in the comments below is this? Am I taking the "easy way out" by using a food chopper to chop my onions rather than chopping them by hand? 

Just a reminder: How to chop garlic

Sometimes it's good to refresh the basics.

Creamy linguine with leeks, corn and sesame leaves

A recipe for creamy fettuccine with leeks, corn and arugula near the back of the June 2010 edition of Real Simple magazine could have been written by one of those corn-obsessed Korean foodies.

Koreans try to sneak corn in everything: pizza, potato salad and even ice cream. Nutritiondata.com reports that one cup of corn kernels provides 25 percent of the recommended daily allowance of iron. Is there a hidden anemia epidemic to explain the kernel corn craze?

So the cup of those ubiquitous sweet corn kernels already gave this recipe Korean moxie, as did replacing the arugula with sesame leaves.

Here's my spin on the Real Simple recipe:

1 pound linguine (I use high-protein pasta by Dreamfields to reduce the glycemic level of this meal.)
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 leeks (white and light green parts, thinly sliced)
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup corn kernels
1/2 cup dry white wine (use drinkable wine, not cooking wine)
1 cup sesame leaves, julienned
3/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup grated pecorino Romano cheese
salt and pepper to taste (I used 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper)

1. Rinse the sliced leeks to make sure there's no dirt between the layers.
2. Cook pasta according to the directions on the box.
3. Heat the olive oil in skillet on medium high heat.
4. Add leeks, garlic, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1/4 teaspoon of pepper and cook for approximately three to four minutes, stirring occasionally until they are tender.
5. Add the corn and wine. Allow to simmer for two to three minutes until the corn is tender.
6. Add the cream and stir in.
7. At this point, add the pasta and season with a 1/2 teaspoon of salt and a 1/4 teaspoon of black pepper and stir to combine.
8. Fold in the sesame leaves and sprinkle with the grated pecorino just before serving.

Leek

Grilling like a Korean

For most Americans, their favorite Korean foods are grilled meat dishes such as kalbi and dakkalbi. The most authentic way to eat these foods is around a charcoal grill right at your table, grilling your own meat to your own taste.

I'm not recommending installing a charcoal grill in your own dining room (unless you have a really good exhaust system). If you want the next best thing, consider buying an electric skillet. Most of them have adjustable temperature controls from a "keep warm" setting all the way to 450 F. Marinade your meat and when your guests start getting hungry, set them around the skillet and let them grill their own meat with lettuce, garlic, onions and gochujang on the side to make some low-carb wraps.



If you own an electric skillet and have run out of recipes for it, go to Foodbuzz for some inspiration.

Gochugaru Butter

I'm continuing my compound butter journey with this butter called Gochugaru butter. Inspired by Offeric Maoz's Paprika Butter, I replaced the Hungarian Paprika with Korean red pepper flakes. This version is not for the faint of heart.

1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp kewpie mayonnaise
1 tbsp Korean pepper flakes
1 tsp lemon juice
salt to taste

The first step is to mix 1 tsp mustard with 1 tsp mayonnaise in a small bowl. Add the butter to the mustard and whisk together. Then add the Korean pepper flakes and salt and continue to blend while gradually adding the lemon juice. Blend well until combined. If you plan to use immediately, serve at room temperature. If you want to save it for another day, refrigerate it in the back of your refrigerator where it's cooler.

This would make a great topping to your favorite steak. It can also make a good compliment to grilled corn on the cob or roasted potatoes. I've also used it to spike my Chuncheon Alfredo.

Compound Butter

Unique Teacup from South Korea

Consider this beautiful, minimalist teacup for your home, designed by Luna Seo. Regardless of what kind of tea you enjoy drinking, it will look stunning in this mug sold by New York City's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

This ceramic mug features a small indentation along the cup's rim to catch tea bags. Easy to use, it prevents tea bag strings and tags from falling into the cup. Dishwasher and microwave safe.

Destination: Seoul is a MoMA-exclusive product collection highlighting lifestyle products from South Korea.

A meal fit for a Buddha: Posotbap (버섯밥) Mushrooms and Rice

Buddhism has flourished in Korea for more than 1,600 years. The Korean Buddhist temple cuisine born of this fusion of Buddhist dharma to North Asian culture has created a cuisine unique from other Buddhist sects yet recognizably Buddhist.

There are certain constraints, however. Meat, Fish and animal products — including eggs, fish roe, etc. — are forbidden. But many people don't know that traditional Korean Buddhist cuisine excludes certain vegetables as well.

These verboten vegetables include onions, green onions (scallions), baby garlic, leeks, and chives. Buddhists believe these particular herbs and vegetables stimulate the sexual appetite, which is forbidden for celibate monks.

Some of the hallmarks of Korean temple food its simplicity: use of seasonal herbs and vegetables and judicious seasoning. Temple food might seem bland compared with more popular Korean dishes such as samgyeopsal or dakkalbi, but experimenting with Korean temple cuisine can help you get your recommended five servings of vegetables per day.

Since Buddhist cuisine is vegan, here's a vegan recipe that features one of my favorite ingredients: mushrooms.

Since the Buddha was born in India, I'm using basmati rice in this version.

Posotbap (버섯밥, mushrooms and rice)

1-2 cups  rice (makes 2-4 cups cooked)
8 ounces shiitake mushroom or other mushrooms, finely diced
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
water (according to instructions on your rice cooker)

Clean off the mushrooms with a damp kitchen towel and wipe off as much dirt as possible. If you are using dried mushrooms, soak them in warm water for 10-20 to rehydrate. Once the mushrooms are rehydrated, squeeze as much water out of them as possible before dicing. Save the mushroom water and put it into your rice cooker to cook your rice.

Heat the vegetable oil in a skillet over medium heat until hot. Add the mushrooms and soy sauce and sauté for six minutes, or until the mushrooms are cooked through. Add the sesame oil, mix well, and set aside.

Put the rice in the rice cooker. Pour the mushroom water — if you used dried, rehydrated mushrooms — into your rice cooker and top off with regular filtered water, if necessary. Set the cooker to cook white rice.

After the rice is cooked, fluff it with a wooden spoon and then serve into bowls. Top with mushrooms and serve with vegetarian banchan, Korean for side dishes, such as Buddhist temple-style watercress.

Shiitake

Keep Calm and Cook On Poster @ Etsy.com

If you're having a difficult time finding something fun and creative to put on your kitchen wall, consider this poster from the KeepCalmShop.

"This vintage inspired 13x19 poster is a whimsical play off of the original. Our Whimsical Collection of Keep Calm is meant to bring a sense of humor and inspiration to continue doing the things we love."

The "original" poster said "Keep Calm and Carry On." It was a British propaganda poster produced by the British Ministry of Information but was only distributed in limited numbers. The original image is now in the public domain and ripe for publishing and parody.

Check out "Keep Calm and Cook" and other parodies at the Keep Calm Shop on Etsy.com. 

Sesame Butter

After my Yujacha Butter experiment, I decided to explore the world of compound butters a bit more. This recipe is called Sesame Butter with both sesame seed oil and sesame seeds mixed together with a little salt and sugar.

2 tbsp toasted sesame seeds
1 cup of unsalted butter, room temperature
2 tbsp dark sesame seed oil
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar

Put all the ingredients in a non-reactive bowl (preferably glass or ceramic). I used one of my Korean ceramic jjigae bowls.  Mix well with a wooden spoon until all the ingredients are completely combined.

This butter complements steamed vegetables such as green beans, carrots, cauliflower or broccoli.

Sesame Butter

Check out Seoulgrid.com/Macaroni Market

Seoulgrid.com is a website/blog dedicated to "deliver the latest news in nightlife scenes in Seoul. This includes exposing the greatest restaurants, clubs and bars, as well as giving you information on the hottest parties and events." They just set up their own YouTube channel to pick up where the blog leaves off.

Their inaugural post "explores Macaroni Market and Boutique Club Function in Itaewon." Macaroni Market is a strangely appropriate name. The word macaroni goes back to the 18th and 19th century when the word referred to a well-traveled young Englishman who adopted foreign customs and manners. Macaroni Market is one of many restaurants and bars in Itaewon bringing foreign foods and vibes into Seoul's nightlife.

Recipe: Lemon Soju with Szechuan Button Garnish

This is a refreshing cocktail built by blending fresh lemonade with soju (a Korean rice liquor). Rimming the glass with petals pinched from Szechuan buttons takes the citrus zing to a new level that’ll not only pucker your lips but make them tingle too!

Ingredients:

1 cup organic sugar + 1 cup of water= simple syrup
1 cup Lemon Juice
1 1/4th to 2 1/4th cups Cold Water
1 ¾ cups Soju
Szechuan Buttons

1. Heat up one cup of water, add 1 cup of sugar until the sugar is dissolved.

2. Pinch the small petals off of the Szechuan buttons.

3. Blend the lemon juice, soju, simple syrup and 1 1/4th cups of cold water.

4. Taste. If it’s stronger than you’d like, stir in up to an additional cup of cold water.

5. Rim the glass with the Szechuan button petals & serve!

*I used organic brown sugar in my simple syrup, so that's why my lemonade looks more brown than yellow. You could use less sugar in your simple syrup (1 cup water, ¾ cup sugar) for a more tart & healthier cocktail.

This recipe was originally published on the Marx Foods Recipe blog.

If you want to do your own Szechuan Button experiments, you can buy them online at Marx Foods. If you have a green thumb and would like to try your hand at growing this perennial flower yourself, you can purchase seeds from The Seed Bank Store in Petaluma, Calif online or at their store located in the historic Sonoma County National Bank on 199 Petaluma Blvd.

Szechuan Buttons

Soju

Recipe: Yuja Butter

Lately, I've been experimenting with compound butters. A compound butter is a butter that has additional flavors, herbs, etc. added to it. The garlic butter you find at a lot of restaurants and steak houses is a classic example of a compound butter.

Yujacha Butter (yields approx 1 cup)

½ cup yujacha
½ cup butter at room temperature
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar or cider vinegar (I used cider vinegar)
1 tablespoon ginger juice


In a small bowl stir yujacha, balsamic vinegar and ginger juice with the softened butter until fluffy. Place into a nice bowl. Cover and and let set for at least 1 hour before serving. Serve with scones, muffins, fruit cake or nut breads.

Originally posted on Zenkimchi.com/FoodJournal


Citron Honey Tea

Compound Butter

Fukuoka Soy Sauce Brewing Company develops salt-free soy sauce

Photo by Paul Preacher, courtesy of sxc.hu

Scientists at Japan’s Fukuoka Soy Sauce Brewing Company released a report about their efforts to create a salt-free soy sauce and its positive results in reducing high blood pressure in hypertensive rats.

The salt-free soy sauce is made by fermenting soybeans with Aspergillus oryzae, which is a fungus commonly used to make miso, sake and sochu.

The fungus is called 누룩균 in Korean and is commonly used to make doenjang, gungjang and some varieties of soju as well.

Fukuoka holds the Japanese Patent 2964370 for this salt-free soy sauce recipe. 

For more information, go to Enzymes show the way to healthy salt-free soy sauce

12 Days of Tteok: Hosting your own Tteokbokki Festival

In preparation for the Korean New Year in 2010, I prepared 12 recipes drawing upon sauce ideas from around the world to pair with Korean cylindrical rice cakes, called garae tteok. It was partly inspired by Seoul's annual Tteokbokki Festival held on May 7-9, 2010. If you weren't able to make to Seoul in time for this year's festival or can't afford to visit Seoul because of the recession,you can organize your own Tteokbokki festival at home. You can read my blog posts for inspiration or come up with your own.

I found a fun website full of Creative Commons music. It's called Jamendo. The instrumental you hear in this video is called "You Are A Mirror" by Silence is Sexy from their album "This Ain't Hollywood". http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/40460. If you make YouTube videos and have found it difficult to find great music to match your great YouTube video, take a listen to Jamendo's selection. You can sign up via your Facebook account and start surfing.

Korean beef jerky is jjang!

Robert Kim of Artisan Snacks Corp. has created a Korean spin on beef jerky, calling it Go-ggi. That's an appropriate name, resembling the Korean word for meat.

Mr. Kim's Go-ggi has the right combination of sweet, salty and spicy one would expect from some good kalbi (grilled beef ribs) or bulgogi, (sweet, savory stewed beef). It's also sliced thinner than most American beef jerky.

For those who might think only Americans can make beef jerky, where do you think the Native North Americans got it from? Asia, of course.

Mr. Kim was kind enough to send me a sample of his Korean beef jerky. When the package arrived, I had a taste and even shared some with my husband, in-laws and some friends who love Korean food. They all loved it.

The sample came with a condition: I must mail him my own version of Korean beef jerky. It started when I wrote to him, "When I saw the article in the NYTimes, I thought about my own Korean-style beef jerky I used to make with my food dehydrator."

You can find it in New York City-area stores. For the rest of us, the online store is the place to go to find this tasty Korean beef jerky.

Wild Ramps Pesto

Wild Ramp Pesto from Food52 on Vimeo.

Ramps are eagerly awaited as an harbinger of spring. Wild Garlic, aka Ramps, are in season in the Northern Hemisphere and food bloggers all over North America are posting recipes showing people how to use them in their own cooking. Part of the appeal is that they are easily found in the wild, if you know what to look for.

Koreans have been using wild garlic aka san-maneul (샌마늘) in their cuisine for hundreds, even thousands of years.  They make a good addition to kimchi, korean pancakes, and salads.

Foraging for edible herbs in the forests and mountain areas has become a pastime for many Americans as well. There's even a YouTube channel dedicated to the topic called Eat The Weeds if you want to learn how to find these herbal gems for your own kitchen. The recipe in the video is a good place to start to introduce this vegetable into your diet. Ramp pesto is a safe recipe to begin introducing this simple herb to your family's palate.

Tteokbokki Festival in Seoul

Hyun-Woo Sun of Send Me To Korea grabbed his video camera and visited the Tteokbokki (떡볶이) Festival this past week at the AT Center in Seoul. Vendors from all over Seoul served up over a dozen variations on this classic street vendor food.



If you want to check out a version with little narration, check out Hanatour's version of the same visit. You may recognize Hyun-Woo Sun of Send Me To Korea in this video, too.

If you want to host your own Tteokbokki festival at home, invite some friends over and cook them 12 different versions of Tteokbokki.

Where does your food really come from? Food, Inc. documentary

I sat down and watched the 2010 Oscar®-nominated documentary Food, Inc. via Netflix. This documentary touches on so many issues revolving around the who, what, when, where, why and how of how our food gets from the farm to the market. However, as I was watching the documentary, I found myself thinking over and over again that one of the paradigms documented here is the classic battle of quality versus quantity. That balance or battle between quality and quantity is a battle we face every time we make a purchase: clothes, shoes, kitchen supplies, cell phones, etc. We constantly make choices with our wallets about what we consider most important. In some areas, quality comes first, in other areas being able to buy more for less is important. Each family uses different weights and measures when making these daily decisions.

At one point in the film, someone points out that the "bad calorie" foods are usually made from either corn or soybeans. Both of these crops are heavily subsidized by the US government to an extent that other food crops, such as broccoli, cauliflower and pears are not. That subsidized corn meal is fed to also fed to animals like pigs and cows. Since farmers pay less for corn than grass, the corn-fed beef is cheaper than the grass fed version sitting near it in the grocery store meat section.

If you want natural, organic, non-engineered meat, fruits and vegetables, you will have to be prepared to pay more for quality as you're getting less in quantity. Considering the extent of the obesity epidemic in the USA, reducing the quantity of food consumed could only do us some good.

Food, Inc. is a pretty comprehensive documentary but it does have its bias. Bias isn't a bad thing as long as you're straight-forward about it. Their bias tends to be anti-business and pro-government, even though they point out that government meddling in the marketplace by the artificial subsidization of the corn and soybean market is a large factor in the mess they are criticizing.

You might not be able to change the system in Washington, DC but you can change the system at your own dinner table. You have three meals per day of opportunity to re-evaluate and change the way you eat. No government bureaucrat can tell you how or what to eat. Nor should you allow any government bureaucrat to assume such power over you. And part of being a good neighbor, in my opinion, also means that voting to allow the government to tax the foods you don't like is not part of the solution either. As Gandhi said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." Start your own revolution in your own grocery cart and don't get nosy about what other people put into their grocery store baskets.

Green Tea shows promise in reducing glaucoma risk

Researchers based at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Eye Hospital found that green tea consumption may protect the eye from oxidative stress, which can cause DNA damage, tissue cell damage and many kinds of eye diseases.

The Glaucoma Foundation defines glaucoma as "a group of eye diseases that gradually steal sight without warning." The Chinese researchers believe the results of their green tea study may show promise against a type of glaucoma called open angle glaucoma. There are two kinds of glaucoma: open angle glaucoma and closed angle glaucoma. Open angel glaucoma is the more common and the more insidious because the pressure in the eye develops slowly and often suffers do not have any symptoms until there is significant damage.

Although this study was done in rats, the promising results may result in future human trials.

For more information about this study, go to: Study finds green tea could reduce glaucoma risk

Basic Drinking Facts and Etiquette in Korea

Jeff Martin, an ex-pat currently teaching English in Busan South Korea posted this brief tutorial about how to drink (and how not to drink) in Korea. For more video commentary about life in Korea, check out his YouTube page.

Non-spicy capsaicin compound may help aid weight loss

Researchers at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) found that a non-burning version of capsaicin, called dihydrocapsiate (DCT) may boost energy expenditure and aid weight loss.

The UCLA study is the first to look into the potential benefits of DCT over capasin.

For more information, go to Chilli compound may boost energy burning and help weight loss.

Pizza Tteokbokki

This was one of the videos posted for the "Experience Korea" cooking video contest hosted by the Korean Presidential Council on National Branding and YouTube. After my 12 days of tteokbokki, I thought you might want to see a 13th tteokbokki recipe.

My humble kalbi video certainly faced stiff competition.