Day 29

I spent a wonderful and exhausting weekend in Seoul!  I hiked at Namsan park and saw great vistas of the city, shopped at the famous Myeongdong, and went to an excellent club in Gangnam.  (Yes, the same Gangnam as the infamous Oppa Gangnam Style.)  Sadly I didn't get many pictures because my camera died, but I'm planning to go back soon and explore more.  The highlight of the weekend, however, was photobombing and scaring the living bejeezus out of a group of Koreans taking a selfie.  (For older folks, that's colloquial for "self-taken photograph to be uploaded to a social networking site.")

Here's a few photos from this weekend.  These are from Namsan, the mountain/park in Seoul:

Seoul is enormous.

The boys overlooking Seoul from Namsan.

Is it creepy to take photos of random Korean children?

They're just so darn cute!

Also cute: cat in a ball.  Gotta get one of these for my Benny-bear!

From Myeongdong, the famous shopping district:

Fried silkworm pupae.  One of the worst smells I have ever encountered.

What the heck is this advertising?

Umbrellas!  So cute!

I simply MUST find this Stitch phone case for my phone.  I LOVE IT.

Sadly, I have no Gangnam photos because it was dark and even my fancy new phone doesn't take good nighttime pictures.  My grandmother is insisting that I return to Costco and get a selfie to prove I was there, so that's the next order of business for me.  There happens to be a Costco semi-near Gangnam, so I'll kill two birds with one stone.  Soonish.

In other news, I have now been in Korea for four weeks!  I feel like I've settled in nicely.  I've got a bank card, a library card, and point cards at all the places I shop.  I know the bus routes, subway routes, and how to make the taxi driver go where I want.  I have a favorite convenience store and a favorite restaurant where the owner/chef makes the jjampong (spicy seafood soup) a little less spicy for me without me needing to ask.

I also have a favorite food, which I've mentioned before: dakgalbi.  After about two weeks of eating dakgalbi almost every night, I think I've finally got my recipe down.  Some recipes call for half a million ingredients, but this is the simplified budget-friendly easy version.  This stuff is seriously tasty, so I highly recommend you try making it.  It's surprisingly easy and nearly impossible to screw up.

TRADITIONAL KOREAN DAKGALBI RECIPE

What you'll need:
- chicken breasts
- 1-2 onions
- 1 carrot
- 2-4 cloves of garlic
- 1/4 - 1/2 cabbage
- white wine
- ginger sauce (or powder)
- curry powder
- oil
- a wok
- gochujang (fermented spicy red pepper paste)
- tteok (Korean rice cakes, pronounced "Touke" with a hard T sound, sounds like a cross between "tuck" and "toke.")

Most of this stuff is probably already in your house.  There is no excuse for not owning a wok and a garlic press, because you can get a wok for $7 at Ikea and a garlic press for a few bucks at any grocery store.  The only 'problem items' are the last two, gochujang and tteok.  Let me be clear: you CANNOT make dakgalbi without these items.  So where are you gonna get them?

If you have a Korean or Asian grocery store near you, try there first.  If you're like my family and don't live in an area with a sizable Asian population, fear not!  Hmart is here to solve your problems.  For $11 you can get a kilo (2.2lbs) of gochujang, and for less than $6 you can get a kilo of tteok (rice cakes).  Shipping costs $9 regardless of weight, so you might want to stock up--this stuff is awesome.

Click here to view gochujang (spicy red pepper paste) at Hmart.com.

And click here to view tteok (rice cakes) at Hmart.com.

Okay, now that you've got your gochujang and tteok, let's get cooking!

Let's start with the tteok.  I really, really like tteok so I add a ton of it.  I recommend you do the same.  I generally add ~20 pieces when I cook a single serving for myself.  In Korea you can buy fresh tteok, but this isn't fresh and we need to prepare it. Relax, it's easy: throw them in cold water.  Honestly, that's all you do.  Get a pot of cold water and toss them in for 20 minutes.  Leave them to soak while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

In addition to the boring round tteok, I've also got cute shapes!  Hearts and stars and... dumbbells, maybe?

Next, chop the cabbage into long, 3/4-inch wide strips.  Did you cut them wider or thinner?  No worries, it'll taste the same.  Oil the wok (a tablespoon or two should do) and then toss in your cabbage.

I realized after I soaked my tteok that I was out of cabbage and had to go out in the rain to buy some.  :(

Cabbage in the wok, tteok soaking in the pot.  (That's almost a poem, right there.)

Next, chop up your onions.  I just make 1/4-inch wide slices and cut them in quarters, nothing fancy.  Also cut the carrot into thin strips and toss 'em on.

My carrots and onions are in big slices because I am lazy and very hungry.

Sauce time!  Start with these guys:

Curry, ginger sauce, white wine, and gochujang.  Not pictured: garlic and onion.

Spoon about 3-4 tablespoons of gochujang into a bowl.  Grate or finely chop some onion.  (Mine's not that finely chopped because as previously mentioned, I am hungry and lazy.)  Add 1-2 teaspoons of white wine and ginger sauce--I never measure, just pour a little in.  Don't forget to throw in a clove or two of pressed garlic.  

Don't measure.  Follow your heart.

Stir that hot mess up.  Mm-mm.

Cut up that chicken into bite-sized pieces and throw it in.  I used half a chicken breast because I am working on portion control.  Chicken and tteok are the only real substance in this meal, so if you're trying to fill people up, use more of those.  The veggies, while healthy, are not filling at all.

Delicious raw chicken.

Drain the tteok and throw it into the wok.  No need to rinse or dry, just toss 'em in.  Mix the chicken into the sauce so scoop the whole mixture on top of the veggies and tteok.

Most everything in here is white before the sauce goes on.

Now turn up the heat to medium and let's get cooking!  Pretty soon it will look like this:

Stir it every few minutes.  Don't worry if some pieces burn, they taste great.  You will immediately think, "Oh no, I need more sauce!"  But fear not, intrepid chef.  The cabbage will cook down and there will be plenty of sauce.

Your dakgalbi is done when the chicken is fully cooked (use a wooden spoon to check) and when the veggies are cooked the way you like.  I like my veggies a bit snappy, so I don't cook it as long as others might.

Yummmmmmy.

See?  I told you it'd be plenty of sauce.

So how does this recipe differ from other dakgalbi recipes?  There's a few notable differences.

1. Traditionally dakgalbi is made on a gas burner at your table, right in front of you.  This is great because the chicken and tteok cook faster than the veggies, so you can eat things as they cook.  Your food never gets cold and you can throw rice onto your leftovers and make another tasty dish.  I make it in a wok and throw it in a bowl, so it does get cold--or it would, if I ever ate it that slowly.

2.  Many dakgalbi recipes call for more ingredients.  Other recipes I've seen have included things like brown sugar, refined rice wine (whereas I use normal white wine), soy sauce, potatoes, sweet potatoes, chicken stock, red pepper flakes, mozzarella cheese (less traditional but tasty), sesame oil, etc.  The list goes on and on.  I am a chef of the cheap-simple-easy persuasion and if it tastes great, I'm happy.

You might be wondering, Is this really traditional?  The answer is yes.  Why?  Because anything Korean is automatically 'traditional.'  Honest to goodness, it's a thing here.  The hip new thing to do with dakgalbi is to use the leftovers to make a pizza-shaped rice patty, then melt mozzarella on top, but it's still 'traditional.'  Even foreign foods have been hijacked into 'traditional' Korean foods.  My favorite soup, jjamppong, is called a Chinese soup, although you'd never find it in China, and it's traditional Korean food.  So don't sweat the terminology.  It's authentic(-ish).