s h i n s h i n e

Tofu Tuna Pancakes (두부 참치전)

Here is one more dish we made in the City Harvest class in addition to japchae (잡채).  This is something I make when I'm feeling lazy because there is no need to take out the cuttingboard.  Still, it's delicious and it makes me feel good about eating lots of tofu and tuna.  I think I'm also proving a point as well as making a sweeping generalization that Koreans can make tasty savory pancakes out of just about everything.

Speaking of tofu, I also like this recipe for leaving tofu to do what it does best, being crumbly, soft and moist.  With so many good tofu dishes I grew up with, it's sometimes hard to accept that there are many bad tofu recipes that seem to just force tofu onto people.    

Usually, I don't mix in chopped onions because a big reason for this recipe is that it doesn't require a cuttingboard.  But since we were cutting lots of onions for japchae in class anyway, I thought we could add some here too.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To make 14-16 tofu-tuna pancakes, about 4 side-dish portions)

1 block (14 oz.) extra-firm or firm tofu
2 cans (5 oz. each) tuna, no added salt or low sodium in water
Optional) 1/2 C onion, peeled & small diced (about 1/2 medium-sized onion) 
2 eggs
1/2 t salt
a pinch black pepper, freshly ground
1/2 C all-purpose flour (or equal amount of sweet rice flour or mochiko)

1/4 C vegetable oil 

Dipping sauce) soy sauce : lemon juice = 1:1

Direction:

Rinse tofu in cold water.  Wrap tofu in paper towel and squeeze out excess water as much as you can.

Add tofu, tuna, chopped onion, eggs, salt and pepper in a bowl and combine with a fork to a crumbly mix. 

Add flour and mix just until there are no lumps of flour. 

Heat a pan over medium-high heat and drizzle 1 T of vegetable oil.  Place 1/4 C of the tofu-tuna batter on the pan.  Press and shape it into a flat pancake with a fork.  When the edges become golden brown, flip to the other side. When both sides become golden brown, the pancake is done.  Repeat with the rest of the mix.

Serve hot with dipping sauce of soy sauce and lemon juice.

TIPS!
Using flour will get you the crispy pancake you're looking for, but you can also replace it with sweet rice flour, or mochiko (찹쌀가루 - chap ssal ga ru). You can still get the outside of pancake crispy, but the inside of pancake made with sweet rice flour will be slightly sticky.

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KOREAN WORDS
참치     (cham chi)        tuna
생선     (saeng seon)    fish (to eat)
물고기  (mul go gi)       fish (alive in water)

Baked Mandupi Chips (Wonton Wrapper Chips)

Here is a quick recipe ahead of the Memorial Day weekend in the U.S.  The other day I found just ripe avocados, tomatoes and limes at a grocery store and decided fresh salsa and guacamole would be my dinner.  I didn't need to buy chips, because I had mandupi (만두피 - wonton wrappers) in my freezer.

If you are like me at all, you'd have a pack of frozen mandupi always ready to go.  You can make dumplings (만두 - man du) with them, but you can also lay them out on a sheet pan and bake them like chips.  If you're just having the chips, I imagine you could add grated garlic or cheese or both - actually I should try this next time.  If you're using them as a scooper for dips, drops of oil is all you need before baking them.

To bake mandupi chips)

Wonton wrappers (만두피 - man du pi)
Canola oil
Salt
Optional) toasted sesame seeds 

Preheat the oven to 350 F degrees.  Cut wonton wrappers (만두피 - man du pi) in half.  Brush both sides of the wrappers with canola oil and spread them on a baking sheet.  

Optional) I sprinkled toasted sesame seeds after brushing the chips with oil, however most of the seeds didn't stay on chips.  But the ones that do stay on chips, they look pretty good.  You can decide for yourself.

Bake them for 8 to 11 minutes until the edges of the chips turn golden brown (8 minutes, like the ones on pictures above) or the whole chips turn light brown (10-11 minutes).  To season, sprinkle with salt right out of the oven.  Transfer to the rack and cool to room temperature. 

Any leftover can be stored in an airtight container or a sealed plastic bag for a couple of days. 

RELATED POSTS
  

KOREAN WORDS
기름    (gi reum)    oil
소금    (so geum)  salt

Simple Japchae (잡채) - Glass Noodles with Vegetables

I recently started volunteering for City Harvest, which focuses on food rescue and education in New York City.  I started out by substituting a chef who couldn't make it to the first couple of an 8-week education program for senior citizens.  The 2-hour class consists of healthy cooking plus nutritional education.  Although there is a very well-organized set of recipes and lesson plans for each week, I got to choose my own Korean menu for this week.

I wanted to make something festive, fast and representative of Korean food.  I made adjustments to the tradtional way of cooking japchae - which is to season and cook every ingredient separately then mix together at the end to bring out each ingredient's flavor - to make it with fewer steps as well as healthy with less oil.  With everyone's help, we were able to make japchae for 15 people who attended the class along with tofu-tuna pancakes (두부 참치전 - du bu cham chi jeon), which is my simple home recipe.  For most of them, it was the first time they made and tasted japchae, or any Korean food, so it was very gratifying for me.  We made enough for everyone and then some, but at the end there was no leftover because everyone wanted to take some home, which made me really happy. ^_^  

My City Harvest class has been a lot of fun with lots of laughter every week.  Along the way, we all agreed that I'd continue to finish the rest of this program.  The chef who was supposed to lead this class would take on another series of classes, since they are always looking for volunteers to help with various programs related to food rescue and education.  Maybe you want to get involved too?

Here is what we enjoyed this week, adjusted for 2 portions.  

To make 2 Servings of Japchae)

Ingredients:

4 oz. sweet potato starch noodles (당면 - dang myeon)
warm water to soak dangmyeon 

2 dried shitake mushrooms (표고 버섯 - pyo go beo seot)
1 C warm water  

2 T soy sauce
1 T rice vinegar
1 clove garlic, peeled & grated
1/4 t ginger, peeled & grated
a pinch of freshly ground black pepper

2 t canola oil
1/2 medium-sized onion, peeled & sliced
1 small carrot, peeled & sliced
1/2 bell pepper, seeds removed & sliced

2 stems scallions, trimmed & cut to 2-inch length
1 C spinach, stems picked & washed

1-2 t sesame oil

toasted sesame seeds for garnish 

Directions:

Soften dangmyeon by soaking in warm water. 

Rinse dried shitake mushroom in cold water, then soak them in 1 cup of warm water for 30 minutes or until soft.  Squeeze out water from mushrooms and slice them thinly. Reserve the water.

While the dangmyeon noodles and shitake mushrooms are getting soaked, make seasoning marinade by mixing soy sauce, vinegar, grated garlic and grated ginger.  Add in shitake mushroom-soaked water once the mushrooms are soft.

Once dangmyeon becomes soft enough to handle, drain the water.  Soak dangmyeon in seasoning marinade.

Heat up a pan and drizzle with canola oil.  Sauté onion, carrot and bell pepper slices.  Once the onion slices start turning translucent, add shitake mushrooms and stir.  

Add the noodles with the marinade liquid to the pan.  Cook until the noodles are soft and the liquid is reduced to coat the bottom of the pan.

Add scallions and spinach.  Stir to cook scallions and spinach soft, which only takes a minute or so.  Remove from heat.  Taste and adjust seasoning.

Right before serving, mix in toasted sesame oil.  Garnish with sesame seeds.  Serve hot.

TIPS!
If you're cooking the amount specified in the recipe above, soaking dangmyeon (당면) in warm water half-way then cooking it soft in the pan will work fine.  However, if you're making for a lot of people and need a lot of soft dangmyeon (2+ lbs.) fast, cooking the noodles separately in boiling water will work out much faster and easier, which is what I did for the City Harvest class.  Once dangmyeon noodles become soft, drain water. Soak the noodles in the marinade liquid.  Mix in the sautéed vegetables.

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KOREAN WORDS
시금치 (shi geum chi) spinach
전분 (jeon bun) starch 

Sweet Red Beans & Green Tea Tart

 

Soy pulp cookie shells (green tea and orange), sweet red beans and yogurt filling, topped with nigori sake syrup

 

The other day I made a batch of soy milk and soy pulp.

With the soy pulp, I made two kinds of butter cookies - orange (recipe minus cranberry) and green tea (replace mugwort with green tea powder). 

At the end, I had just a bit of dough left.  I wondered if this would work as tart shells.  So I filled mini molds with dough scrap.  I had only enough to fill 1 mold with orange dough and 2 molds with green tea dough.  And one last tiny cookie.

I baked them in the 350F degree oven for 10 minutes and they came out looking like tart shells!

It must have been my lucky day.  After the shells came out, I looked into my refrigerator and happened to have the right things - leftover nigori sake syrup, sweet red beans I bought for patbingsu (팥빙수 - shaved ice with red beans), and Greek yogurt I always keep.

I filled the tart shells with a mix of sweet red beans and Greek yogurt (2:1 ratio) and topped with the sake syrup.

Yes, it was good.  The classic paring of green tea and sweet red beans also works here.  You will only notice soy pulp from the nuttiness in the cookies.  Greek yogurt makes it creamy and adds a nice tang and tones down, sometimes cloying, sweetness of red beans.  Nigori sake syrup (sake: sugar = 1: 1 then cook it down to thick consistency over low heat) works as a seal for this as a grown-up dessert.  

Accompanied by vanilla-rooibos tea for an afternoon treat.

Enjoy the rest of your week!

RELATED POSTS
    

KOREAN WORDS
콩비지  (kong bi ji)    soy pulp
팥        (pat)             red beans

Rice Cooker Nutella Cake

If it wasn't obvious before, this, another, rice cooker cake recipe should make it obvious that I'm going through a rice cooker phase.  At this point my rice cooker has replaced the oven for my cake needs.  So bear with me in this obsessive time period, where every other post from this blog seems to be some cake out of a rice cooker.

And how can you go wrong with Nutella in any dessert?  Yes, you can enjoy a moist, soft Nutella cake out of a rice cooker.  As usual, its flavor will come alive if you have enough patience to let it sit in the refrigerator overnight.  You can add more excitement with the spread of Nutella, orange jam and rum and keep the cake moist longer at the same time.  My friends and I enjoyed the orange scent coming through this Nutella cake, but you may find the orange scent overpowering or be disappointed by just a hint of rum in your mouth, depending on your preference.  Taste and adjust the ratio of the Nutella spread, but please, don't spread and drive.

 
INGREDIENTS: 
4 eggs, whites and yolks separated
1/3 C sugar
1/4 t salt
1/3 C vegetable oil
1/3 C plus 1/4 C Nutella 

1 C all-purpose flour
1 t baking powder

1/4 C orange jam
1/4 C rum 

DIRECTIONS:
Sift together flour and baking powder.  Set aside.

Whisk egg whites.  When egg whites turn white and foamy, add 1/2 of the sugar and continue to whisk.  When sugar has been incorporated and the meringue starts turning glossy, add the rest of the sugar and continue to whisk.  Stop when the meringue is firm and silky-glossy.  When you lift the whisk, the tip should gently fall, which is about soft-medium peak.

Add egg yolks and salt and thoroughly and carefully combine.

Whisk together oil and 1/3 C of Nutella thoroughly so that it becmes one smooth, glossy mix.  Add to the egg mix.

Then add flour into the egg mix.  With a wooden spoon, gently incorporate 1/2 of the flour mix first.  Add the rest and fold in gently just until there are no lumps of flour.  Do not overmix.

Pour the batter into the greased rice cooker bowl.  Tap the side of the bowl to release big air bubbles.  Place the bowl in the rice cooker.

Press 'Steam' (a.k.a. 'Multi-Cook') for 40 minutes if your rice cooker has the option.  Alternatively, 'Cook' twice, i.e., press 'Cook' and when it's done, press 'Cook' again.  You might have to wait for the rice cooker to cool a bit before starting the second run in case of some older/simpler rice cookers. 

When it's done, flip gently on a plate.  Let it cool to room temperature.

If you're adding the Nutella-orange-rum spread, mix 1/4 C of Nutella, orange and rum together to combine well.  Slice the cake horizontally through the middle.  If the cake top is unforgiveably uneven, carefully trim the top with a serrated knife to help the coating of the spread to be more even.  Spread half of the mix on the middle of the bottom layer, then cover with the top layer.  Spread the rest of the Nutella-orange-rum spread on the top layer of the cake.

RELATED POSTS
  

KOREAN WORDS
밥통  (bap tong)   rice cooker
밥     (bap)          rice
통     (tong)         container