Trying out new recipes

Last Friday I decided that I would spend the afternoon cooking some new-to-me Korean dishes. The idea was to cook enough to last over the weekend and into this week.

The first dish was an oxtail soup. The version I was trying to make is the milky version. The bones are cooked for many hours and 'should' result in a broth that is milky in colour. Mine didn't turn out milky at all. I think I need to adapt my recipe in a couple of ways

1. Soak the meat to draw out as much blood as possible

2. Allow the tail meat to stay in the pot for a longer amount of time

3. Research more...

I made 2 big bowls worth of broth. Having already finished the first bowl over the past few days, tonight I used broth from the second bowl. It appears to be more strong in flavour than the first bowl and it was phenomenal with some pork and shrimp wontons in it. I should have taken a photo of it, but I'll have it again tomorrow and will try to take one then.

Another dish was stir-fried fish cakes with veggies. Fish cakes come in many shapes and sizes. I ended up with thin sheets of fish cakes. I thought I was buying slightly thicker ones, but these worked well too.

It uses fish cakes, bell pepper, oyster sauce, peanut oil, black and white sesame seeds, carrots, onion and garlic.

The veggies were chopped and fried in a little bit of peanut oil

The fish cakes were sliced and then added to the veggies

Add oyster sauce and sesame seeds et voila!

Next was a cucumber salad. This would have been prettier had I used Asian cucumber, coarse pepper flakes and a wavy vegetable slicer. Ingredients: cucumber, shallot, garlic, red pepper powder, black sesame seeds and rice vinegar

Slice, dice and mix

Not the prettiest dish I've ever made, will try again with the aforementioned changes.

Then it was on to an acorn jelly dish.

Soy sauce, honey, sesame oil, red pepper powder, scallion and garlic were combined in a bowl.

Acorn jelly was sliced (a wavy cutter would have made this prettier too!)

Lettuce, cucumber, onion and carrots were mixed in a bowl. The sliced jelly and sauce were then added.

 It resulted in a nutty dish. Again, not very pretty. I think using a different type of lettuce would be better.

I served these banchan to accompany our soybean soup and rice. I had also bought some Korean pancakes from the supermarket incase any of my dishes turned out to be inedible!

I love this soup!!!!

While I was shopping at H-mart, the local Korean supermarket, I picked up this jug. I like that it is glass, pink and has nice sayings on it. I use it to make my corn tea, a good digestive.

The next day I made a chicken dish using chicken wings, red pepper paste, red pepper powder, soy sauce, sugar, potatoes, onion, garlic, chili pepper and scallions.

The pepper powder, paste, soy sauce, sugar and minced garlic were mixed in a bowl.

In a dutch over the chicken, sauce, 2 cups of water and chopped onion were brought to a boil and allowed to cook, covered, for 20 minutes before adding the peeled and cubed potatoes. Another 20 minutes boiling with the lid on before allowing 5 minutes with the lid off to reduce the sauce.

This was Matt's favourite dish. A great sauce, something we're going to try on the grill when the weather is better!