Choh Gochoojahng (aka Cho Gochujang)

Before I get into choh gochoojahng, I just want to say it never ceases to surprise me how many hits I get from people looking for "how to cook sand fleas."

And if cooking sand fleas isn't exactly something I want to be known for, I am super tickled to know how many accidental readers out there share my culinary curiosity and sense of adventure.

That said, Little Asian Mama and Medium Asian Papa are visiting this weekend, and they always come bearing something delicious to eat. Tonight, it's hweh (aka hwae), or Korean style sashimi - specifically mirugai (geoduck) and halibut (gwahng uh in Korean) tonight.

If the Japanese enjoy their sashimi with shoyu and or wasabi, Koreans dip our fish in something called choh gochoojahng. Literally vinegar (choh) red chili pepper paste (gochoojahng), this dipping sauce is hot, sweet, tangy and savory from the gochoojahng, sugar, vinegar and garlic, respectively.

This is also the sauce you get when you order hweh dup bahp (Korean style chirashizushi), and it's delicious for dipping raw cucumber, lettuce leaves, and mild chili peppers as well.

CHOH GOCHOOJAHNG (aka cho gochujang) 

- 1/4 cup gochoojahng

- 2 Tablespoons water

- 1 to 1.5 Tablespoons sugar, depending on how sweet you like your food

- 1.5  to 2 Tablespoons white vinegar

- 1/2 Tablespoon soy sauce

- 1 teaspoon finely minced garlic (1 small clove)

Just put all the ingredients in a bowl and slowly stir or whisk to thoroughly mix and incorporate all the ingredients.

You want to go slow because the gochoojahng is really pasty at first and if you try to stir or whisk too quickly, you'll end up sloshing and spilling all the other liquid before the gochoojahng starts to thin out.

Now off to make a little ssahmjahng (seasoned fermented soybean paste) and prep all the greens for the rest of dinner. Another distinguishing feature of Korean hweh is that we often wrap our fish with things like lettuce, perilla and other tender leafy greens, a thin slice of garlic, and a dab of the sauce.

Healthful and so delicious. Next time you've got raw fish on the brain, you might want to go Korean style. :)

shinae

Hotter Than It Looks Thai Inspired Curry Base

Last night, we had shrimp, shrooms, and snow peas with which to make dinner, and The Man said he wanted something spicy, to which I mused aloud how I've noticed that people who tend to say, "Oh, that's spicy!" in response to eating something hot usually don't have a high tolerance for capsaicin heat.

To which The Man responded, "OK. Make something HOT."

So I did. :P

HOTTER THAN IT LOOKS THAI INSPIRED CURRY BASE

Serves 4 with about 1 pound of protein and 1 pound of veg added, served with steamed rice

*Caveat: For most people, this recipe will be unbearably HOT. You can easily turn down the heat by reducing the chilies. If you've a mild palate, start out with one fresh chili - maybe even a milder one like jalapeno - seeded and deveined and 1 teaspoon crushed chili flakes

I was originally going to write this up as a complete recipe including the proteins and veg (which I do outline for you further down this post), but I realized this morning that this makes a good and adaptable base to which you can add whatever proteins and veg you fancy.

Add 4 or 5 cups of unsalted chicken, seafood or veg stock, increase the salt and lime to taste, and you'll have a delicious soup!

- 1/4 yellow onion, finely minced
- 1/4 cup very finely chopped cilantro and/or basil (This is a great use for all those stems!)
- 2 Tablespoons finely minced ginger
- 2 Tablespoons finely minced garlic
- 3 serrano chilies, finely minced (seeds, veins and all) Thai bird chilies would be great, of course, but I had serranos. Chiles de arbol would also work well here.
- 1 Tablespoon crushed red chili flakes (Crushed red chili flakes are a way to add a fairly clean and unadulterated heat to your dishes without adding too much competing or distinct chili flavor.)
- the zest of 1 lime (or 3 kaffir lime leaves - I just used the lime zest because I didn't have the leaves handy. Lemon balm is also a great sub for kaffir lime leaves. Lemongrass would also add a similarly floral citrus element.)
- 2 Tablespoons oil
- 1 to 2 teaspoons curry powder, depending on how strong a curry flavor you prefer
- 1 Tablespoon fish sauce
- 1 Tablespoon lime juice
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1 can of coconut milk (they're usually somewhere between 13 and 15 ounces)

1) In a preheated medium high pan, saute the aromatics - onion, garlic, ginger, chilies, chili flakes, and lime zest - in the 2 Tablespoons of oil until the onions are translucent. Add the curry powder, stir to incorporate, and let the curry bloom for a minute or so.

2) Add the remainder of the ingredients and stir to incorporate thoroughly, turn the heat up to high, and bring the curry to an active boil for a minute.

3) Add in your protein and veg and bring the curry back up to a boil for a minute or so, turn the heat down to medium high, and let it simmer, uncovered, for 5 minutes, or until your protein is cooked through. Bite sized pieces of seafood will take no time at all (3 to 5 minutes), white meat chicken a little bit longer (5 to 7 minutes), and dark meat yet longer (7 to 10 minutes).

4) Give it a stir, adjust the seasoning if needed - a little more salt or fish sauce if you want it saltier, a little more lime juice if you like extra tang, maybe a pinch more of sugar to round out all the flavors - simmer another minute or two, and that's it! Serve with steamed rice.

For last night's curry, I added:

- 1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined (I used 31/40 size), lightly sauteed
- 1/2 pound button or crimini mushrooms, quartered and sauteed
- 1/2 pound snow peas, stems removed and lightly blanched and shocked if you have the time. If you don't, it's not a huge deal, but blanching and shocking does help them retain color and crunch
- 1/2 red bell pepper cut into 1/4-inch strips, sauteed
- a .8 oz can (the short one) of bamboo shoots, drained

But you can of course use whatever veg you like and have handy, following the general measurement guidelines of 1 pound of protein and 1 pound of veg for 4 servings.

You don't have to saute/blanch the protein and veg as outlined above, but I like how it helps them retain their color and texture when they simmer in the curry.

Enjoy! :)

shinae

Complete album HERE.

Quick Habanero-Garlic Hot Sauce...

Notwithstanding The Great Soapy Tabasco Fiasco, I do love the distinctly vinegary flavor of Tabasco.

But sometimes, I want that vinegary hot sauce flavor with a little more punch and heat. And I don't want to have to age it in top secret oak barrels for eons before I eat it, either.

Enter this Quick Habanero-Garlic Hot Sauce that's ready to eat in just a few hours. True, the flavor is a little brighter and cleaner and not as developed as the fermented and aged  Tabasco. The texture is of course a little thinner, too.

But it hits those vinegary hot sauce notes, and has the added zip and flavor of garlic and onion. AND you can make it as hot as you like. The great thing about habaneros is that they provide lots of good heat with a delicate and bright chili flavor that isn't muddy or overpowering in the least.

Spoon it in/on anything you'd normally eat with Tabasco, add it to your ketchup, or to your noodle soups, and enjoy! :)

QUICK HABANERO-GARLIC HOT SAUCE

- 1 1/3 cups distilled white vinegar
- 1 Tablespoon + 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 Tablespoon sugar
- 2 cloves garlic, cut into 4 or 5 slices each
- 1/4 of a white or yellow onion, thinly sliced
- 2 or more habaneros, depending on your heat tolerance, sliced into 4 or 5 slices (I used 7 today, but we're chili heads.)

In a clean mason jar or repurposed pickle or jam jar, combine the vinegar, salt, and sugar and stir until the salt and sugar are thoroughly dissolved. Add in the garlic, onion, and chilies, give it a few more stirs, put the lid on, wait a couple of hours, and it's ready to eat.

Store it in the fridge if you like the brighter flavor, or age it in the cupboard for a couple of weeks, giving it a good shake a couple of times a day if you like that more aged flavor.

Happy Hotsaucing!

shinae

Full post and album HERE.

A Better Pickled Pepper...

I don't remember exactly when I discovered pickled jalapenos, but I'm pretty sure it had something to do with KFC and a bucket of extra crispy dark meat because my mom used to love the extra crispy kind. That was years before I learned to appreciate the crispyfatty goodness that is fried chicken skin, but I still don't care for KFC's breading, which must be equal parts 11 secret herbs and spices, flour, and SALT. That shizz is wayyyyy too salty. But I digress...

Having grown up eating and loving tangy, spicy pickled stuff, I took to pickled jalapenos like white on rice, and I can't remember a time we didn't order pickled jalapenos with our KFC unless we had the misfortune to stumble on a location that didn't sell them.

I could crunch on these all day...

But as much as I loved the things, I had two beefs with them:

1) unlike my beloved kimchi, they were squishy, AND
2) unlike my beloved kimchi, they squirted.

So I took to slicing the jalapenos and quick pickling them and ended up with what I think is a zestier, crunchier and prettier pickled pepper that isn't soggy, doesn't squirt, and can be eaten an hour after making. It's yummy with fried chicken and Mexican food of course, but it's also one of my favorite accompaniments to noodle soups.

If you look real close, you can see the orange in the veins.
These suckers estan muy picantes.

CRUNCHY QUICK PICKLED JALAPENOS
Makes about 25 ounces

- about 1/3 pound of jalapenos, 5 or 6 large ones, sliced on the diagonal in roughly 1/8-inch thick pieces (tips on how to pick them here)
- 1 medium carrot, sliced on the diagonal in roughly 1/8-inch thick pieces
- 1/2 a medium onion, sliced into roughly 1/4-inch thick slices
- 1 or 2 garlic cloves, crushed or sliced into 2 or 3 pieces

- 1+1/3 cup distilled white vinegar
- 1 Tablespoon + 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 Tablespoon + 1 teaspoon sugar

- 2 Tablespoons neutral oil
- 1/2 Tablespoon Mexican oregano
- 1 bay leaf

1) Prep a minimum 24 ounce jar or tight-lidded plastic container by washing with soap, rinsing with hot water, and drying thoroughly.

2) Pack your vegetables into the jar or container, layering the peppers, onions and carrots in alternating layers. Add the garlic wherever you like. Because it's crushed, the flavor will quickly and easily steep into the vinegar.

A repurposed 25 oz. kosher dill jar...

top view :)

3) Make the brine in a medium bowl by mixing the vinegar, salt and sugar and stirring or whisking until all the salt and sugar are dissolved.

4) Pour the brine over the vegetables.

5) Bloom the oregano and bay leaf by heating the oil to medium hot and then stirring in the herbs - just a quick stir or two should do it. The oil should be hot enough that the herbs sizzle when they touch it.

6) Pour the oil with the herbs into the pickle.

If you're using a jar, screw the lid on tight and give it a few gentle shakes to distribute the oil and herbs and get some of the brine on the veg at the top of the jar. If a lidded plastic container, give the vegetables a few gentle packs by pushing down with a spoon. This packing motion should distribute the oil and herbs throughout the brining liquid. In any event, the oil will float back up to the top, but its flavor will be imparted to the brine before.

oil floats :P

7) Keep in the refrigerator. Pickles will be ready to eat in an hour and will keep at least a couple of weeks.

With last night's winner winner chicken dinner... :)

I usually re-use the brine once after all the pickles are eaten by adding a little more salt and as much veg as will fit into the container.

I think you'll like this (not quite) peck of pickled peppers. :)

shinae

Don't Know What You Got - Spicy Thai Seafood Stew...

Growing up in a culturally diverse place like Orange County (CA), one starts to take for granted the markets in Little Saigon and Koreatown, which are always brimming with fresh, if not live, seafood. One tends to forget what an incredible deal it is to find live Dungeness crab on sale for $3.99/lb or live Maine lobster for $8.99/lb. One forgets how hard it is generally to find fresh, live, seafood until one moves to a place in the desert where a lot of one kind of people move to escape from all the alien people of other kinds who eat weird things like fresh seafood. And also to find parking spaces big enough for their VERYBIG trucks.

For the time being, I live in just such a place.  And between the big box chains, a single Trader Joe’s and the Wednesday so-called farmer’s market, the only live fish I’m likely to find is swimming in a guppy bowl at Petco. And since I don’t eat those, I am SOL for fresh seafood during the week.

But on the weekends, we make the 90 minute drive to visit my parents in OC, and when we make a grocery run, I feel like a kid in a candy store perusing all the produce, spices, condiments and proteins - especially the ones from the sea – that I’ll never find at the Ralph’s or Super Walmart down the street.

Truth is, even if I still lived in OC, I wouldn’t buy the crab and lobster all that often. In my own quirky logic, I think there is a discipline to being easily pleased. And that such discipline is practiced in part by making an occasion of indulgence and a habit of restraint, even when it comes to the food about which I am so passionate. But occasions do arise, like Mother’s Day a couple weeks ago, and there seemed no better time to indulge in some seafood so fresh it was still breathing, crawling and pinching.

My mom had bought some baguettes from the boulangerie earlier in the morning, so a rich broth in which to dunk that crusty bread was definitely in order. I made a tom yum inspired soup as a base so I could ladle off a bowl for Joey, who loves tom yum but hates seafood (hopefully this is a temporary malfunction of an otherwise well developing young palate), and steamed the goods in the broth, making this Spicy Thai Seafood Stew.

I also made some Spicy Basil Fried Rice with Shrimp but forgot to take measurements. Oops.

SPICY THAI SEAFOOD STEW

For 4 adults, I used:

- 1 whole Dungeness crab, shelled and quartered for fast steaming

- 4 very large Cherrystone clams – Wash your clams well.  Sand in your food sucks bivalves.

- 16 medium sized Manila clams

- 2 pounds of crawfish (live ones are in season now, but a pound of good sized shrimp will work even better now that I think about it)

  

- 1 Tablespoon butter

- 1 teaspoon oil

- 1/2 cup chopped shallots (6 or 7)

- 1 garlic clove, smashed

- 6 or 7 thin slices of fresh ginger

- 2 or 3 Thai bird chilies, in 1/4-inch slices (or more if you like it XXX spicy like I do :))) )

- 2 to 3 stalks lemon grass pounded to release the oils and cut in 2 inch segments (If you can’t find lemongrass, a teaspoon of lime or lemon zest will work in a pinch.  Not quite the same, but a good approximation.)

- 6 or 7 stems cilantro, chopped in 1-inch pieces

- 1/2 teaspoon curry powder

- 4 cups unsalted chicken stock

- 2 tablespoons fish sauce

- 1 teaspoon sugar

- 2 tablespoons fresh squeezed lime juice

- 1 cup coconut milk

1) In a large pot, sautee shallots in butter and oil over medium high heat until they become translucent and some bits are golden brown.

2) Add in garlic, ginger, chilies, lemon grass, cilantro and curry powder, and sautee another 2 minutes or so to give those elements a roasted flavor.

3) Add in chicken stock, fish sauce, sugar, lime juice and coconut milk, and bring to a gentle boil. Then turn heat down to medium and simmer for about 5 minutes. At this point, the broth is ready to serve as a soup.

4) Add seafood, turn heat back up to medium high, and cover to steam, about 15 minutes, depending on what you're steaming and how much.  

When your clams are open, and the shellfish have just turned a bright red/orange color, you are good to go. Protein from the sea usually cooks very quickly and can go from tasty to rubber in no time.

Everything I photograph in my mom's kitchen looks
sooooo ORANGE.
And no, I don't want to Photoshop it. :)

You may find that you need to adjust the broth for the natural salt that will come from your seafood.  If so, try adding 1/4 cup of water and a pinch of sugar to mellow out the salt.

Serve with some crusty bread or some steamed jasmine rice or the fried rice I don't have a recipe for:  

Off to make tonight’s empanadas. :)

shinae

Picking Produce - Jalapenos

My love of chilies - it's probably got something to do with the fact that I'm half Korean. Or maybe not.  There are, after all, lots of chili heads whose native cuisines have very little heat built into them... 

Whatever its origins, my love of hot and spicy foods has been with me since I was a kimchi gobbling toddler. When I was younger, I would eat some kind of hot sauce or chili with just about any savory food without much regard for whether it really suited the dish. But the past few years I've found my palate mimicking my life - editing, simplifying, and trying to appreciate things within their own unique contexts. No sriracha on my pizza, no sambal on my burger, and a lot less Tapatio on my pasta when I'm at a loss for red chili flakes.

That said, when a dish allows for the introduction of heat without some fundamental assault on its flavor profile, I still tend to like it extra spicy. And while there are chilis that do certain jobs better, the jalapeno is my go-to for a mild, multi-purpose flavor and a healthy capacity for heat - if you choose the right ones.

Hot, hotter, hottest.

When I want really hot jalapenos, I look for two things on the outside: STRETCH MARKS (pictured) and a SUNBURN (not pictured). By stretch marks, I mean those striations you can clearly see on that third pepper. And by sunburn, I mean patches of near black coloring usually found near the stem.

This sucker needs some Palmer's Cocoa Butter...

Another indication of higher heat levels is an orange-ish tinge to the veins found on the inside when you cut the pepper open.  If you're looking for something milder, pick the ones with a lighter, more verdant green like the kind you find on a fresh green bell pepper.  And if they feel relatively heavy for their size, that higher water content usually also results in a milder chili.

orange

veins

Now, this isn't scientifically proven to my knowledge.  But on the other hand, if you consider my cooking career a now decades long experiment in which nearly every jalapeno with stretch marks and sunburn has turned out to be much hotter than its more aesthetically pleasing counterparts, that's a lotta points of observation proving my hypothesis. 

Off to finish cooking tonight's Indian-inspired dinner with a healthy serving of cucumber, cilantro and extrahot jalapeno raita...

shinae


P.S. Do *NOT* rub your nose or eyes after handling a hot chili - no matter how wretched your springtime allergies - like I did last night even though I know so much better... :|