Category Archives: Seafood

Stir Fried Dried Squid Strips (Ojingeochae Bokkeum)

May 2, 2007 Category: Seafood, Side Dishes (Banchan)
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Stir Fried Dried Squid Strips (Ojingeochae Bokkeum)1

Have you had these slightly spicy, chewy and sweet stir fried dried squid strips (오징어채 볶음) before? Wow, it is a real long name in English isn’t it?

I remember when I was in primary school, I shared my lunch with other friends. The lunch box usually consisted of steamed rice, a couple of side dishes, and sometimes soup as well. Sharing your lunch box with friends mean sharing various side dishes with each other, so we can have more variety of food.

One day, I tasted these stir fried dried squid strips from one of my friend’s lunch box and it was so delicious. After school, I had to mention about this food to my mom and also asked if she can make some for my lunch box as well.

I don’t know what it is so special about this side dish but I am sure every kid loves it. I have to say it is very morish too.

Stir Fried Dried Squid Strips

(AU$4.10 – available at a Korean grocery shop )

By the way, plain dried squid strips are often served as a drinking snack, especially with some beer at a bar in Korea. However I prefer to have this as a side dish with rice. I love the sweet and spicy taste. Do you?

Ingredients (takes less than 15 minutes total)

Note : The ingredients are enough to make 5 to 7 single side dishes.

  • 141 g dried squid strips
  • 2 tsp vegetable oil

-Sauce (mix these in a bowl)

  • 4 tsp Gochujang
  • 2 tsp soy sauce
  • 2 tsp honey
  • 1 tsp minced garlic
  • 1 tsp red wine (or rice wine)

Methods

Stir Fried Dried Squid Strips (Ojingeochae Bokkeum)2

  1. Soak the dried squid strips in cold water for about 10 minutes.
  2. Drain the water and slightly squeeze the squid strips.
  3. Pre heat the wok for 10 seconds on high heat and add the vegetable oil.
  4. Turn the heat down to medium heat and add the sauce.
  5. When the sauce is heated, add the dried squid strips.
  6. Mix the sauce and the dried squid strips well.
  7. Simmer it for about 20 seconds (until the sauce nearly disappears).
  8. Serve it on a plate (you can sprinkle some roasted sesame seeds on top).

Stir Fried Dried Squid Strips (Ojingeochae Bokkeum)3

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Stir Fried Chicken Wrapped with Iceberg Lettuce

January 26, 2007 Category: Eggs and Poultry, Seafood
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Stir Fried Chicken Wrapped with Iceberg Lettuce1

Here comes a two thumbs up recipe. I didn’t quite know what to expect for this dish, because I just found the recipe in a book I bought about a month ago. What is more, I didn’t have the right amount of ingredients as it said, so I had to change a lot. Lucky I have a good imagination. I guessed what I could add more of by looking at its colour. :)

When I had the first bite of the chicken wrapped with iceberg lettuce, it was a full of surprise. It was really delicious. Of course, the fact that we were so hungry helped us appreciate the food more, so anything could have been a two thumbs up food to us, yet there was something special about it.

Stir Fried Chicken Wrapped with Iceberg Lettuce2

It tasted slightly salty yet the occasional walnuts added a savory taste and crunchy texture. I added too much chicken breast compared to the other ingredients, so the rare shrimp was a nice surprise too. (By now you know how much I love shrimps, prawns, and that kind of food, right?) Michael complained a bit about the iceberg lettuce, because it was too hard to fold compared to other kinds of lettuce, but he admitted that it gave a nice crispy and fresh texture.

Ingredients for 3 people

(Prep time – 20 minutes, Cooking time – 10 minutes)

  • Chicken breast – 800g
  • Shelled shrimps – 100g
  • 2 green chilies (supposedly not spicy)
  • 2 red chilies
  • 1/2 a medium size onion
  • Iceberg lettuce
  • Shelled walnuts – 2 tbsp
  • Some olive oil

Sauce (mix these well in a bowl)

  • Soy sauce – 3 tbsp
  • Refined rice wine – 4 tbsp
  • Oyster sauce – 1 tbsp
  • Grated apple – 5 tbsp (one medium apple gives about 6 tbsp)
  • Minced garlic – 1½ tbsp
  • Ginger powder – 1 tsp
  • Potato starch powder – 1 tbsp

Prep

Stir Fried Chicken Wrapped with Iceberg Lettuce ingredients

  1. Cut the onion into small cubes.
  2. Take the seed out from the green and red chilies, thin slice them diagonally.
  3. Rinse the chicken and shrimps in cold water, cut the chicken into small to medium cubes.
  4. Separate the iceberg lettuce, rinse the leaves in cold water, and cut them into a size easy to use as a wrap.
  5. Put the chicken and shrimps in a bowl, add the sauce and marinade it for 15 minutes.

Cooking

Stir Fried Chicken Wrapped with Iceberg Lettuce cooking

  1. Pre heat the wok, and add some oil.
  2. Add the marinade meat and stir it well until 90% of it cooks.
  3. Add the chilies, onion and walnuts stir them well.
  4. When it is cooked, serve a spoonful of the meat and vegetables on a lettuce leaf.
  5. Wrap it and dig in. (it is hard to fold if you put in too much meat.)
  6. Enjoy the surprise. :)

Stir Fried Chicken Wrapped with Iceberg Lettuce3

It is a really easy to prepare and to cook meal. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Related Posts

Spicy Chicken and Noodles

Deep Fried Chicken in Garlic Sauce (Ggan Pung Gi in Korean)

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White Prawn and Mussle Stew (Saewoo Honghap Tang)

January 22, 2007 Category: Seafood, Soup and Stew
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White Prawn and Mussle Stew (Saewoo Honghap Tang)1

This stew is something you might like on a cold night, along with Soju. The soup was so flavourful and moreish, you can not dislike it if you love Korean food.

When I had the first spoonful of soup it gave me a feeling as if I solved some kind of a mystery, though the hit of the chili powder on your throat is something you always need to watch out for.

I cooked this stew on a portable burner, something I very much enjoy doing lately when I cook. I think the food tastes best when it is kept hot during the meal, and it makes you feel as if you are eating at a restaurant.

Ingredients for 4 people

(Prep time – 10 minutes, Cooking time – 10 to 15 minutes)

White Prawn and Mussle Stew (Saewoo Honghap Tang)ingredients
  • White prawns – 380g
  • Mussels – 300g
  • 4 shiitake mushrooms
  • 1/3 a zucchini
  • White radish – 150g
  • Crown daisy (ssukgat in Korean) – 66g
  • Bean sprouts (kongnamul)- 100g
  • Water 5 cups
  • 11×15cm size dried kelp
  • 1 green chili (spicy)

Sauce (mix these in a bowl)

Prep

  1. Clean the mussels individually with a rough cloth or brush and trim the hair with scissors.
  2. Rinse the prawns. (I didn’t cut or trim any parts of them and still survived. :) )
  3. Clean the vegetables (peel the skin as needed. Discard bad beans.)
  4. Thin slice the zucchini and white radish.
  5. Discard the stem from the mushrooms.
  6. Take out the seed from the chili and thin slice it diagonally.

Cooking (You will need two pots)

1. Boil the water (5 cups) and when it starts to boil add the mussels.

2. When the mussels open their shells, sieve the water through a cloth strainer to get rid of the sand that comes out of the mussels (use this water in step 3).

White Prawn and Mussle Stew (Saewoo Honghap Tang)prep

3. Put the boiled water into a pot, add the dried kelp, and boil it for 2-3 minutes.

4. Take out the kelp (you can throw it away), add the radish and sauce. Stir it well.

5. Add the rest of the vegetables, prawns, and cooked mussels into the pot and when it starts to boil, you can start eating the cooked ingredients.

White Prawn and Mussle Stew (Saewoo Honghap Tang)cooking

6. Enjoy your meal.

White Prawn and Mussle Stew (Saewoo Honghap Tang)2

Terms from the title

  • Saewoo – General terms for shrimps or prawns
  • Honghap – Mussels
  • Tang – Boiled soup or stew

Related Posts

Spicy Mussel Stew (Honghap Jjim in Korean)

King Oyster Mushrooms and Prawns on Rice

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Oyster pancakes (Gul Jeon in Korean)

November 24, 2006 Category: Seafood, Side Dishes (Banchan)
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Oyster pancakes on the magazine

Apparently, oysters taste best and have the most nutrition in the winter season (From November to early March) in Korea. I bought 2 packs of oysters (total 400 g) for the price of one the other day and we enjoyed it a lot. They are usually about 2500 won (US $2.60) for 200g pack. Oysters are often referred to as “the milk of the sea“, because they contain lots of calcium. They are also very popular as a stamina food for Korean guys. ;)

Ingredients
(Expected preparation time – 23 minutes, Expected cooking time – less than 10 minutes)

Ingredients for oyster pancakes

  • 1 egg and 1 egg yolk (to make the pancakes yellower)
  • Refined rice wine 1/4 tsp
  • Pepper – 1 sprinkle
  • Salt – 1 sprinkle
  • White flour – 2 tbsp
  • 1 red chili
  • 4 stalks of garlic chives
  • Oyster 150g

PreparationOyster preparation

  1. Soak the oysters in cold water for about 15 minutes. (add some salt)
  2. Drain the oysters and dry them in the air.
  3. Put the flour into the plastic bag and add the oysters. Shake it.
  4. Finely chop the garlic chives and thin slice the chili.
  5. Beat the egg, add the pepper and salt, then mix them well.
  6. Add the vegetables and oysters into the egg bowl. Stir it.

Cooking oyster pancakes

Cooking

  1. Pre heat the pan.
  2. Add some oil.
  3. Scoop out one oyster at a time with a spoon.
  4. Turn them over when one side is cooked.

Cooking oyester pancakes2

5.When both sides are cooked, serve them on a plate.

Oyster pancakes

Other Pancakes Recipes

Enoki mushrooms Pancakes (Paeng-ee Beosut Jeon in Korean)

Seasoned sesame leaves pancakes (Kkaenip Jang Ddeok in Korean)

Squid pancakes (Ojingeo Buchimgae in Korean)

Tuna Pancakes (Chamchijeon in Korean)

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Seafood Black Bean Noodles (Samsun Jajangmyun in Korean)

November 23, 2006 Category: Noodles, Seafood
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seafood jajangmyun on the magazine

I mentioned earlier on one of my posts, Korean Black Bean Paste Noodles (Jajangmyun in Korean) that there are several types of Jajangmyun, and this Samsun Jajangmyun is one of them. Samsun (三鮮) means 3 fresh ingredients and most Korean Chinese restaurants use seafood. So another Korean name for it is Haemul Jajang. (Haemul means seafood in English.)

The cooking method is nearly the same as Korean Black Bean Paste Noodles (Jajangmyun in Korean), just some ingredients, and treating those ingredients, are different.

Ingredients for 2 people

(Expected preparation time, excluding shellfish soaking time- 5 minutes, Cooking time – 20 minutes)

  • Noodles for 2 people (I always use Kalguksu noodles)Ingredients for seafood Jajangmyun
  • Shrimps 90g
  • Little-neck clam 200g (Bajirak in Korean)
  • 1 small squid
  • 1 onion
  • 1 medium potato
  • 1/4 a zucchini
  • 1 leaf from a cabbage
  • Black bean paste (Chunjang in Korean) – 2 tbsp
  • Olive oil – 2 tbsp
  • Sugar – 2 tbsp (I used dark brown sugar)
  • Cooking syrup (corn syrup) – 1 tsp
  • Refined rice wine – 2 tbsp
  • Water 2 and 1/2 cups
  • Starch water (Mix of starch 2 tbsp +water 2 tbsp)

Most restaurants add sea cucumber, but I am not a big fan of it. So I didn’t add any.

Preparation

  1. Rinse the shrimps and squid in cold water.
  2. Soak the shellfish in cold water for about 1 hour. (add some salt in the water)
  3. Cut the squid into pieces. (I cut it in ring shapes.)
  4. Cut the onion, potato, and zucchini into small cubes.
  5. Cut the cabbage into medium pieces.

Cooking (You will need a wok, a frying pan and a pot.)

1. Boil the water (2 and 1/2 cups) in the pot, and parboil the seafood (shrimps, shellfish, squid)

2. Drain the seafood, but we will use 2 cups of broth from the boiled water.

Parboiled Seafood

3. Preheat the wok.Seafood Jajangmyun cooking 1

4. Add some oil and the potatoes and stir fry it.

5. Add the zucchini, onion, and cabbage, stir it.

6. Preheat the frying pan and add the olive oil and black bean paste.

7. Stir no.6 on medium heat for 1 minute.

8. Scoop out the black bean paste without the oil. Add it to the wok.

9. Mix the vegetables with the black bean paste.

10. Add the cooking syrup, sugar, and rice wine into the wok. Stir it.Seafood Jajangmyun cooking

11. Add the broth and boil it.

12. Add the seafood.

13. Add the starch water into the wok. Stir it. (It is the final stage of making the sauce.)

14. Boil the water in a pot.

15. Add the noodles when it starts to boil.

16. Boil them for about 3 minutes. (You can start doing this at stage 10)

17. Rinse them in cold water.

Rinsing noodles in cold water

18. Put them into a bowl.

Noodles in a bowl

19. Add the sauce on top of the noodles.

20. You can serve it itself or decorate it with some cucumber slice, egg or green beans. In my case I used some radish sprouts.

Seafood Jajangmyun

21. Mix the sauce and the noodles well with chopsticks.

22. Dig in. (It is ideal to have them with yellow pickled radish. Apparently it helps digestion. Also mix it up quickly before the noodles get swollen.)

This is a picture of the noodle package I use for this meal.

Kalguksu noodles

Related Posts

Korean Black Bean Paste Noodles (Jajangmyun in Korean)

Instant Black Bean Paste Noodles

Shellfish and Chewy Noodle Soup (Bajirak Kalguksu in Korean)

Sweet and Sour Chicken

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