s h i n s h i n e

Curry Rice (카레 라이스)

UPDATE July, 2014 - This curry rice post was published back in March when I was planning for the cooking video shoot. I just embedded the video to the original blog post.  Hope you enjoy!

* Link to my 'Cooking with Shin' series on DramaFever
* Link to DramaFever's post on this episode
* Link to the YouTube site

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It's time for me to rely on an one-pot dish for the next few days.  Korean curry - much like Japanese curry in its mild flavor - is my childhood comfort food.  This was one and the only curry I'd known in my childhood.  Until I came to the states, curry to me meant this yellow curry mix out of this particular packet, only varied in its spicy heat degree.

It comes seasoned in powder form, so you'd think you can mix the powder in boiling water and it'll just be that.  But different families have different versions, and each person has a favorite must-have ingredient in her curry.  When it's time to eat, some people mix it all up with rice, some in portions, and there is the minority who are 'dippers' - those who dip a spoonful of rice in curry every time.  Have it with rice or noodles - udon noodles are great for this.  Always make the whole packet for 4 servings even if you're cooking for one or two, because you can refrigerate it and reheat the next day.  Like many stews and soups, it tastes better the next day.

I consider onion, carrot and potato to be the holy trinity of curry vegetables.  If I have any meat, I'll start with that.  I probably add a few too many whole garlic cloves, but curry-infused soft garlic cloves are a hidden treat.  If I feel extra-diligent, I add red bell pepper and broccoli later for their bright color pop and a bit of a bite in this otherwise meltingly soft curry.  

Recently, since I saw a more expensive version of the curry packet that has a higher content of turmeric, I started adding a pinch of turmeric to my curry made with a basic curry mix.  It does give a boost to its savory-sweet fragrance and bright yellow color.  If I'm using meat or chicken, I'll coat the meat with turmeric before I start cooking.  If it's just vegetables, add it with onion or even with water later.

 

Curry Rice (카레 라이스)
Yields: 4 Main Servings

INGREDIENTS:
0.5~1lb.         Beef stew meat, cut to bite-size chunks
                        (feel free to substitute with chicken or eliminate meat)
1 teaspoon    Neutral-tasting cooking oil (such as sunflower seed oil)
1/2                 Medium-sized onion, cut to large dice
6-8 cloves      Garlic, peeled
1                    Russet potato, peeled and cut to bite-size chunks
2                    Carrots, peeled and cut to bite-size chunks
1                    Bay leaf
4 cups           Water
1 packet        Korean curry powder (or 4 servings of Japanese curry blocks)
1/2                 Red bell pepper, core and seeds removed, cut to large triangles
1 cup             Broccoli, cut to small florets

2 cups            Cooked rice (1/2 cup per serving)

Optional)
1/2 teaspoon  Turmeric powder

DIRECTIONS:
1. If using, mix beef with turmeric powder.  Set aside.

2. Prepare the vegetables.  I consider onion, potato and carrot to be the holy trinity of Korean curry vegetables.  Feel free to include other vegetables such as mushrooms and cauliflower, cleaned and cut to bite-size chunks like other vegetables.

3. In a heated stew pot, drizzle oil and add turmeric powder-coated beef.  Over medium heat, cook until beef turns brown.  Stir occasionally to brown all sides.  Remove beef and set aside.

4. Sauté garlic and onion in the pot.  There should be enough beef fat left to cook garlic and onion, but feel free to drizzle more oil if necessary.

5. When all garlic and onion pieces start turning translucent, add potato, carrot and meat.  Stir to coat all around, then add a bay leaf and water.  Bring it up to a boil then simmer for 30 minutes to an hour, until potato pieces are completely cooked.  Skim off foam on the surface as necessary.

6. Mix in Korean curry powder from the packet.  Add red bell pepper and broccoli.  Bring up to a boil and cook until red bell pepper and broccoli are cooked, but not completely soft.  Remove from heat and serve with rice. You can also serve it with noodles and make it curry noodles.

Store in the refrigerator.  If you plan to store it more than a couple of days, keep it in the freezer.  Defrost in the refrigerator overnight then heat it on the stove.  If you go from the freezer to the stovetop, make sure you bring it up to simmer over low heat with a splash of water added to it.

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KOREAN WORDS
강황        (gang hwang)    turmeric
감자        (gam ja)             potato
양파        (yang pa)           onion

Recap of 'Discover Mandoo: Korea's Dumpling' @ The Korea Society

It's already been 2 weeks since I led a dumpling workshop at the Korea Society.  It's late, but I wanted to at least make a note before it became a distant memory.

 The Korea Society provides me with a unique opportunity where I can combine a short presentation, cooking demo and simplified hands-on cooking participation.  Last time I was at the Korea Society, I held a workshop under the theme of Korean drama and Korean food.  We watched a portion of the Korean drama Kimchi Family (발효가족 bal hyo ga jok) and made gardenia kimchi from the drama clip.  By the way, a 10-minute video clip from the event is finally available here.

This time, I went with the theme of Korean dumplings.  I started by sharing some fun stories behind Korean dumplings.  I drew examples from a folk song from the 1200's that mentions a dumpling store (although the song itself is quite racy and is not about any dumpling store), dumpling recipes from the first cookbook written in Korean language in the 1600's, and commercials from when steamed buns were first mass-produced in Korea.

Then I had a short demo of making kimchi dumpling and rolled dumpling (also often known as naked dumpling) along with making dumpling wrapper from scratch and different shapes of dumplings that were shown in the cookbook discussed during the presentation.

After that, it was time to do-it-yourself!  People got their hands on making kimchi dumplings and rolled dumplings, we cooked them and enjoyed a bowl of kimchi dumpling soup and rolled dumplings with a dipping sauce.

After some dumplings along with a specialty drink of cinnamon-ginger (수정과 su jeong gwa) soju cocktail, people were relaxed and ready for a dessert.  I went back to demo how to make basic steamed buns and everyone had a taste of a mini steamed buns with sweet red bean filling.

The event sold out pretty fast and we ended up adding a few more people than originally planned.  I had a lot of fun planning and preparing for the event, but I'm always reminded what great help I get at the Korea Society throughout the planning stage and during the workshop.  It's always a pleasure to work with nice and smart people.

Hopefully I can unfold these dumpling stories and recipes on my blog over time.  Maybe the video clip will come sooner than the last time.  For now, I'm working on the next projects on my plate but I'm also keeping my distance from dumplings for a while.  Not that I got sick of it, I think I was actually getting addicted(?) after eating all kinds of dumplings and steamed buns for about a month straight.  Like everything in life, I believe in moderation.

 

But I guess that doesn't mean I am staying away from sweets.  The day after the dumpling workshop, I made green tea mochi rice cake (찹쌀떡 chap ssal ddeok) with the sweet red beans and pine nuts leftover from the event.  This may have been the first time I made a conscious choice of making a dessert gluten-free.  Gluten or not, it was delicious.

 

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Black Garlic (흑마늘) in Rice Cooker

Black garlic is regular garlic treated with heat that gets its name from the color.  It is often misunderstood as fermented, but it is "deeply caramelized garlic... [from] a slow sugar break down over time."  Although I've seen it touted as a popular health food full of antioxidants in Korea since its introduction in 2004, and often mentioned as a chefs' choice ingredent, it still seemed more exotic than common in the U.S.  I finally realized that black garlic has reached mainstream at least in my little world when I saw black garlic everywhere around me, it seemed, within a few months.  I was happy to see it used as a sauce on a beautiful crayfish dish at Moments in Barcelona last November, and I was equally amazed when I saw it being sold at Trader Joe's in Manhattan.  I hear you can also find black garlic in Dean & Deluca, too.

 

Companies that specialize in black garlic production have a long, careful process of keeping garlic heated at a constant temperature of about 60C/140F degrees for weeks, then for some, drying it out for another few weeks.  And you can see the process reflected on the hefty prices.  But with its popularity in Korea, it's easy to find clips on the internet about how to make black garlic at home using a rice cooker.  Since rice cooker is a staple kitchen item in Korea, this means that basically everyone can make black garlic at home - IF anyone wanted to.

In an effort to find a new use for my old rice cooker, I've gathered information on the internet and followed the most common direction as listed in the recipe below along with my own way of drying it out for a week.  I also found other minor details with different opinions on the internet.  Some said to leave the garlic in the rice cooker for 10 to 15 days.  Some say never to open the rice cooker, others say it's okay.  As it is widely seen as a medicinal food item in Korea, I've also seen a recommended dose of 5 cloves a day for adults but then, as much as a whole bulb of garlic a day from another blog.

What I failed to notice from various blog posts and clips of TV programs in Korea which came back to haunt me soon after I pressed the 'Keep Warm' button on my rice cooker was the smell factor.  (See ! WARNING ! at the bottom of this post.)

Before I scare you with the smell during the process, I'm happy to tell you that the end result of homemade black garlic really is delicious.  It is sweet, savory, tart, and earthy.  Each garlic clove is a pleasantly soft, chewy jelly that reminds me of a cross between caramelized onion and balsamic vinegar.

I've been savoring 3-5 cloves a day, unwittingly following the random advice floating around on the internet, because it just happens to be the right amount to get my appetite up before meals.  I've thought about adding it as an ingredient for another dish or cooking up a black garlic dish, but the few I have are too precious to experiment with, at least for my first batch.

After all, I decided it's worth making black garlic at home.  I'll probably leave it for about 2 weeks in the rice cooker for my next batch (and gradually increase the duration each time) and see if the taste and texture develop differently.  I just won't be making it too often, since the whole process takes about 20 days or more for one batch.  I'm also glad that I found a new use for the old rice cooker.  It is now my precious black garlic maker which sits on a table next to the window.

 
 

BLACK GARLIC IN RICE COOKER

Ingredient
Whole garlic bulbs (preferably organic - why not?)

Equipment
Rice cooker with 'Keep Warm' function
Scented candle

Directions
Place the rice cooker in an area with good ventilation (near a window).  Peel the outer skin of garlic so that you can see the separation of garlic cloves.  Put whole garlic bulbs in one layer in a rice cooker.  Close the lid on the rice cooker and press the button 'Keep Warm.'  Leave it as is for 9 days.  

After 9 days, turn off the rice cooker, take out the garlic bulbs and rest to let them come to room temperature.  Peel - it's an easy process since the cloves are mostly separated from the skin at this point - and place the cloves on a parchment lined baking sheet.  Cover with another parchment and air-dry in a cool area for a week.  As a side note, I ended with about 80% of what I started with because I kept eating the garlic in the drying process.

Keep them refrigerated in a container.

! WARNING !
The fuming smell of raw garlic tested my will to go through with this process for the first couple of days.  It started about an hour after I pressed 'Keep Warm' with a deceptively nice garlicky fragrance.  Then it turned into something of a fuming, angry garlic monster that filled every air pocket in my apartment by the end of the first day.  I tried to 'manage' it by leaving the window a tad open for ventilation at all times (mind you, this was January and this winter season wasn't so kind to us) and by keeping a scented candle on when I was home for the first two days.  That helped, but I really wondered if it was worth going through with this just to get a few black garlic cloves.

Yet I made it through because I just wanted to try it at least once.  I'm glad I did, because the smell subsided noticeably after 3 days.  It seemed that every 3 days, there was a shift in the state of garlic just from its smell.  After the first 3 days, the smell became more manageable (I assume partly because my whole body was infused with garlic smell by this point although no one would tell me so).  After 6 days, I started to wonder with anticipation how good the black garlic would taste just from the change in smell.  On the 9th day, I just knew it was time to dig in - I could smell that savory, tart, sweet balsamic vinegar in the air and I no longer needed a scented candle.

Window ventilation and a scented candle are necessities, not mere suggestions.

One more thing... this process leaves the rice cooker with an undeniable garlic stench.  It might actually compliment rice if you make rice in it afterwards.  But if you sometimes make cakes from your rice cooker like I do, it's nice to have an old rice cooker that can be designated as a black garlic maker.

I also recommend that you don't host any parties or invite over your significant other, especially if it's a relatively new relationship during this process.  Maybe next time I make black garlic, I'll start right before I leave for a long weekend getaway.

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KOREAN WORDS
흑색        (black)         black color
마늘        (ma neul)    garlic
보온        (bo on)        keep warm