Category Archives: Snacks

Spring Rolls in Laver (Gimmari in Korean)

Gimmari on the magazine

If you go to the ddeokbokki special shops or mini vans or carts that sell ddeokbokki, you can see this Gimmari there 90% of the time. You can have Gimmari as it is or ask the shop owner to mix it with ddeokbokki. I always prefer option no.2. It is so yummy. I like Gimmari more than anything else from the ddeokbokki dish.

I was going to make this Gimmari with ddeokbokki today, but as you may know, I used up the rice cakes for ddeokbokki the other day (The rice cakes were so fresh, I couldn’t resist cooking them). So I had to cook Gimmari on its own and had it on its own. It was very crispy and filling, also simple to cook (Though I burnt my wok again, more work for me, yeah~ -_-;;).

Ingredients for 16 rolls

(Expected preparation time – Less than 20 minutes, Cooking time – Less than 10 minutes)

  • Laver 8 sheetsGimmari ingredients
  • Glass noodles 1 fistful
  • 1/3 a carrot (small size)
  • 10 stalks of garlic chives

-Sauce

  • Soy sauce 1 tbsp
  • Salt 1tsp
  • Sesame oil 1/4 tsp
  • Pepper 1 sprinkle

-Coating Batter

  • White flour 1/2 cup
  • Starch powder 1/2 cup
  • Salt 1/4 tsp
  • Water 3/4 cup

Preparation

  1. Put some water into the pot.Gimmari prep1
  2. Boil the water. While it is boiling thin slice the carrot, cut the garlic chives into little finger lengths.
  3. When the water starts to boil, add the glass noodles. Boil it until the noodles are cooked. – It cooks nearly instantly by the way.
  4. Drain the water.
  5. Cut the noodles into little finger size with scissors.
  6. Put the noodles, carrots and garlic chives into a mixing bowl.
  7. Add the sauce. Mix it well with your hand or chopsticks.
  8. Sieve the flour, starch powder, and the salt.
  9. Add the water and stir it well.
  10. Cut the laver into halves.
  11. Put the noodle and vegetable mix onto the laver.

Gimmari prep2

12. Roll the laver.
13. When you finish rolling, put the rolled laver into the coating batter bowl (I put 4 rolls at a time. If you put too many in, they can squash each other.)

Cooking

1. Pour some oil into the wok. (for deep frying)
2. When it starts to boil, add the Gimmari (rolled laver).

Gimmari cooking

3. When it cooks, put it onto the plate. (on Kitchen paper towel to soak some oil)
4. When all the Gimmari cooks, re-fry them all. (It is crispier that way.)
5. Serve it on the plate.

Gimmari cutted

I made a total of 16 rolls and it was enough as 2 people’s meal (I was surprised about that). We had 11 rolls total for dinner and left 5 rolls for later snacks. It was good for the first couple of bites, but it became a bit oily. That is why, as I said at the beginning of the post, Gimmari tastes best with Ddeokbokki. I missed you, Ddeokbokki! A lot!!

Tips for Sticking Laver

  • If you put some water on the edge of the laver after rolling it, it will stick better.

For your curiosity I used these noodles.

Chinese noodles

Also, I didn’t use the rolling mat. I thought I would, but I didn’t need to.

Related Posts

Stir Fried Rice cake with Gochujang Sauce (Ddeokbokki in Korean)

Hot Wings

Butter Cookies

When you have egg yolk left from some kind of cooking, these butter cookies can be a good simple solution to use it up.

About three week ago, I made sweet and sour chicken. Do you remember that? After making that meal, I had two egg yolk left over. So I decided to bake some cookies. But it only gave me 10 cookies. Today I increase all the ingredients 2 times more to get 2 times more cookies.

It turned out that I only got 15 cookies, and they tasted a bit different to the original ones (in a good way according to my husband. He prefers crispy ones.) I expected them to be the same, but obviously they were NOT.

Ingredients (for 15 cookies)

  • Flour 180 ml
  • Brown sugar 80 ml
  • Butter 60 ml (I defrosted it for a couple of hours before I used it.)
  • 4 egg yolks

Steps

Preparation for butter cookies
  1. Sieve the flour.
  2. Beat the egg yolk.
  3. Mix the sugar and butter together.
  4. Melt no.3.
  5. Mix the flour, egg yolk and no. 4 together well.
Mixing flour and melted butter sugar

6. Place spoonfuls of the mix onto the oven tray.

Baking Butter Cookies

7. Set the time for 10 minutes in 160 ˚ C.
8. When it is baked, cool it down, then serve it on the plate.

Butter Cookies

Sticky Rice Cakes (Chapssalddeok in Korean)

Chapssalddeok is mainly made of glutinous rice, red beans, and sugar. It reminds me of a snow bowl. It is very similar to Japanese mochi. (maybe even the same)

This is a picture of Chapssalddeok. (About 2000 won – US $2.10 ; You can buy them at the big supermarkets like Homeplus, E-mart, Hanaro mart, etc or rice cake shops in Korea)

MOCHI

I forgot to take a picture of its inside part because I was so busy eating them. :)
Its inside looks the same as sweet rice cakes (Gyongdan). This is also a common present for grade 12 students in Korea, because we have the SAT equivalent test in Korea, and Chapssalddeok has a sticky character so people wish them to stick with (get in) some kind of good university by giving the present.

Related Posts

Strawberry Rice Cakes for My Valentine

Sweet Rice Cake (Gyongdan in Korean)

Colorful Rice Cake (Mujigae Ddeok in Korean)

What Rice Cake, for Cooking, Looks Like

Fried Honey Cake (Yakgwa in Korean)

Pepero Day

Tomorrow, November 11th is Pepero day in Korea. Pepero is a snack that looks like long thin sticks with a chocolate coating. It is very similar to Japanese Pocky.

Pepero day became like Valentine’s Day in Korea. It is popular with young people and couples and they exchange pepero sticks each other as a gift (as a symbol of romance or friendship). You can learn more about this day from wikipedia.

I haven’t bought any pepero for about a year, but I bought 6 packs already this week. Since every supermarket in Korea has allocated a large space for the pepero for this special occasion, it is unavoidable. That’s my excuse anyway. :)

This is a picture (below) of the pepero I am currently enjoying. The price (700 won) is the same for the both packets. But the amount of the pepero is dramatically different. The Red pack is the original one, though I liked the black pack pepero better, because it had a stronger chocolate taste.

Peperos Peperos naked

This is a picture (below) of another kind of pepero. I think they only make this on pepero week. (Sorry, there isn’t an inside picture from this box. I already ate them. :) ) There were only 3 sticks of pepero in the box, which tastes like rolypoly by Haetae or choco twister by Delfi. (Price is 1000 won)

Pepero long stick

Related Posts

Fried Honey Cake (Yakgwa in Korean)

Sweet Rice Cake (Gyongdan in Korean)

Extrema Cheese Bite Fondue Pizza

3 days from today, Oct 25th, it is my sister’s birthday. She finishes school at 11pm (starts 7:20 am). Being in grade 12 in Korea, it involves just too much work and stress.

Anyway, I figured we are not going to celebrate her birthday on her birthday, because she needs to be at school the whole day. So we celebrated earlier, last night, by letting her choose dinner. She wanted to have pizza and I had a 15% discount coupon from Pizza Hut, but it was for pick up or delivery only. (By the way, there is no extra charge for delivered pizza, in Korea – it’s already really expensive).

We decided to have “Cheese Bite fondue pizza” (It is a kind of pizza, like cheese crust pizza). Pizza Hut launched this pizza a couple of month ago. I haven’t had this kind before but my sister had it once, and she said it was really yummy. I checked it on the internet, it looked really cheesy and fancy. This is the picture of cheese bite fondue pizza from their web site.

Pizza hut picture ad

So we ordered Extrema cheese bite fondue pizza. This is the picture of what we got.

Extrema cheese bite pizza

And this is one piece of this pizza.

one piece of pizza

Where does all the fancy cheese disappear? I was a bit disappointed.

It is 27,900 won (US $29.40) for family size, with my 15% discount coupon it was 23,710 won (US $24.95). I think it is really expensive for its quality.

The crust has some sweet potato as well which I didn’t realize before I ordered. I hardly tasted the cheese because of this.

This is a picture of the fondue (It didn’t have much taste).
So in general, I didn’t liked the pizza I ordered.

Fondue

Related Post:

Using box coupons from Pizza hut