A Practical Guide to Korean Food and Korean Fusion Food

I did some Korean ingredient hunting yesterday in the Sunnybank area, where lots of Asian immigrants live. It is not where I live nor close to where I live. I like to get ingredients there because I used to live close to Sunnybank in the past. I used to shop there most of the time and there are lots of free car parks available compared to the Valley area.

I only visited two Korean grocery shops, one is called Kim’s market and the other one is called Kimchi store.

Kim’s market is fairly big and well organized with a larger variety of Korean ingredients than Kimchi store. However some items such as Gochujang, Kimchi etc in Kimchi store are slightly cheaper than Kim’s market.

Here are some good things and some bad things I found about getting Korean ingredients:

Yay~!

• I found some fresh rice cakes, with which I can make yummy ddeokbokki. I believe fresh rice cakes make 10 times better ddeokbokki. Also even better! They are cheaper than in Korea.

Yay? or Nay?

• My Korean grocery shopping time is very shortened. I don’t need to hesitate anymore to choose a product. They only have one brand per item. If they have two, then I am lucky.
• Enoki mushrooms, Shiitake mushrooms, King oyster mushrooms are available but those are 4 to 9 times more expensive than Korea, depending on the species. Should I just be happy about that? At least I know that if I really want them I can get them.

Nay~!

• Both shops sell fish cakes and crab sticks but they were frozen. I’ve never bought frozen fish cakes nor crab sticks in Korea. Have you ever bought frozen crab sticks or fish cakes? I don’t think they are supposed to be frozen. What do you think? Whether they were frozen or not, there were no traces of expiry dates on either item. So I decided to not to buy them unless they show me the expiry date.
• I haven’t seen any perilla leaves (aka sesame leaves) yet. However Kimchi store even had a label “Precious perilla leaves available” in the fridge, but there weren’t any actual product in it. I asked a lady at Kim’s market if she sells them and she said it is hard to get nowadays because it is out of season. Whaaat? I got them all year around in Korea! I guess the farmer must grow them in an open field not a green house.

With a big disappointment, I came home and made this Dakgalbi. I didn’t have many ingredients so it was really simple but good enough to make me feel comforted.

Address

• Kim’s market – 158 Station Rd, Sunnybank, QLD 4109, (07) 3345 1400
• Kimchi store – 6 Zamiz St, Sunnybank, QLD, 4109, (07) 3423 8989

We arrived in the sunshine state early morning yesterday. Weather is beautiful here. Slightly humid but comfortably warm. The mixed smell of summer and autumn and less pollution make me feel like I am on a holiday. We are in a temporary house at the moment, so it will take some time until I start cooking. In the meantime, I would like to present my Seoul restaurant reviews.

We had stayed in Seoul for the past few days. The purpose was sightseeing since Michael and I have never been to some of those popular tourist destinations like Insadong or Kyongbokgung. Yet the funny thing is that we didn’t actually visit any of those places, except Insadong (our hotel was located in a very heart of Insadong), and all we did was sleep and eat.

I researched popular Korean restaurants in Seoul and I picked some of them to visit. They all got mentioned on the TV or news papers several times and I wanted to visit them to show you around. Somehow, after visiting those restaurants for each meal, we got so tired and couldn’t do much of the tourist things.

I will start posting about them soon, hopefully from tomorrow. I hope you are still entertained by my archives.

Have you noticed that I made a forum? (The link is in the menu next to the Archives)

What do you think about having a forum on this blog?

Now you can interact with each other more by sharing information and your love for Korean food. Since I can’t answer everything you ask, hopefully someone who knows better than me can answer for you too.

Here is the link, but you can also click the forum butten near the header. One more thing, you need to register to post in the forums.

http://mykoreankitchen.com/forums

At the moment I have made 6 forum categories (sections), but if you have more suggestions for forum sections, leave me a comment.