Seoul Food | Budae Jjigae 부대찌개

Our fridge looked so Korean I couldn't not take a photo (ignore the spilled yoghurt, oops)

This is just a very brief post to share one of my favourite things to cook. Budae Jjigae, or "Army Base Stew" is one of these beautiful inventions made by people who miss their home's food, but can't quite get the right ingredients. So, during the war there was a lot of "American" food, like Spam and sausages, as well as filling, convenient foods like instant ramen and rice cakes.

I love budae jjigae because it's one of these "one-pot" recipes where you kind of just throw everything in and hope for the best. It's hearty, filling, and (when I make it at least. I've had some pretty volcanic jjigae before) just spicy enough to warm you up and give you some energy.

I'm pretty proud of this one, because it was the first time making a Korean-style stock rather than just using water or a stock cube, and also because I had to touch those dried anchovies. I'm notoriously squeamish about touching things, so when I saw that the recipe called for me to rip off their heads and scrape out the guts I was a little bit horrified. But I did it.

As ever, I used Maangchi's recipe, which worked a charm and it tasted just as good as the budae jjigae I've had as part of our school dinners (which are delicious). I usually make a huge pot with enough for maybe 6 people, so that there's enough for the two of us to have a second helping and I don't have to cook the next day...but usually we end up pigging out and there's only enough to eat a much smaller portion the day after, hahaha. It's too delicious ㅠㅠ

Seoul Food | Cheese Otaku

Been a while since I did a post like this, eh

Now this is a story all about how... we went and ate an absolutely enormous meal back in June. Hongdae is a great place for food of all kinds, so it's hard to get bored considering the amount of choice they've packed into one area.

We went to Cheese Otaku (치즈오타쿠), a Japanese-themed restaurant along the "barbecue street" where the star of the show is a gigantic platter (with different sizes starting at, I think, a 2 person serving) that sits in a custom slot in the table to keep the food warm, sauces at the right consistency, and to melt cheese. CHEESE!

I guess it should be obvious from the name that you get a lot of cheese.

Depending on the portion you buy, you also get a sizeable chunk of a whole chicken. Goodness me.

There's also fried rice, fried chicken, corn, and a million other things all on this sizzling platter. I can't remember if it came with fries or if we ordered extra. But they were there and they were rapidly consumed.

Seoul Food | Cooking Mate

This is a super-old post from last year that I totally forgot I'd started. Oops! I remember it was from somewhere around last Christmas, because the restaurant was playing some very dubious Korean covers of classic Christmas pop hits.

I'll keep it short and sweet, mainly because I can't remember anything except that I enjoyed the food. Heh.

Passionfruit Lemonade

Cooking Mate is a little restaurant in Hongdae, right on the corner of  the road leading from Parking Street up to Artbox (addresses? What is addresses?), next to where the man with the huge, adorable dog usually sets up camp.

There's usually a person stationed outside to let you in or sort out something if there's a wait. Since it's upstairs, I guess it saves you some time rather than going all the way up to find out there's a 2hr wait.

They also have little walkie-talkies, so when we went in we were announced FBI-style to someone upstairs. By the time our unhealthy selves had carried us up, they were all prepared and ushered us over to a specific table. It was fairly quiet when we went, because it was late, but I can imagine this place is pretty organised when it comes to seating customers.

Seoul Food | Abiko 아비꼬

One of our Korean friends had told us about this restaurant and sent us pictures, and it looked great. When I realised it was the curry house we'd walked past a couple of times and commented on the mouth watering smell coming from inside, it was settled, we had to go.

They sell all kinds of Japanese-style curry with rice or noodles with a few choices of different meat and spiciness. I love the little spice scale on the menu that lets you know what to expect, with descriptions that compare to other famous spicy foods in Korea like "Shin Ramyeon level spiciness", "spicy jjamppong", and "buldak" (super spicy chicken, literally "fire chicken" famous for being delicious but murderous). Seeing as Shin Ramyeon gets gasps from me, and the only time I've fought through buldak was with copious amounts of cheese and alcohol, we usually go for the "mild" option which is described as being "not spicy at all" but definitely still has a faint kick. Which says a lot about Korean spice tolerance I suppose, haha.

Cute decorations!

We went to the one in Hongdae but we've since found out that it's a chain and there's one really close to us, so that's dangerous ;) The food is really great and the service has always been very sweet. I'm fairly sure the menu is in English, Korean and Japanese, so that's pretty fun, but even if I've remembered wrongly and there's no English it's yet another case of it being 90% 'Konglish' so as long as you can read hangeul it's fine ;p

We got a set menu each, which gets you a curry rice or curry udon

Since we were in Hongdae we took the opportunity to get our hair cut at our usual, so here are some unnecessary selfies celebrating how great the people at Hair and Joy always manage to make us feel :p

I also bought the cutest lipstick that smells and feels like it's made from Ponds Cold Cream Cleanser. Also very adorably, it's called "Dear My Wish" which makes no sense at all. Unusual for Etude House, which usually has pretty sensible names for its products in my experience? Oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Seoul Food | Yogiyo!

Recently, online and out-and-about, I've been seeing these adverts for a company called "Yogiyo", featuring one of my favourite k-pop groups, Akdong Musician (AKMU for short). The ads are usually too fast for me to comprehend much of what's going on, especially on Youtube where they're only really granted the 5 seconds it takes until I'm allowed to skip the darn thing, and on the subway where the videos don't really have speakers.

But from what I could gather, there was AKMU, there was Yogiyo, and there was delicious food. I was sold.

So far, in our 15 months of living in Korea, we've not managed to muster enough courage to order delivery to our apartment over the phone. There's too much that could go wrong, what with our pronunciation being less than perfect in person, let alone over the treacherous chasm that is a muffled phone line.

Enter Yogiyo, effectively the JustEat of Korea, which has a handy and simple-to-use mobile app (provided you can read hangeul and type words into your Naver 한영 dictionary.)

We set up an account and tentatively made an order for juk, which I'd been craving and completely unable to find a restaurant for (despite walking up and down the same strip of road for an hour with Naver Maps as my only 'friend').

We got a confirmation text containing an ETA on our order, and sat down to watch some TV.

After one episode there was a tap at the door and lo a man in a motorcycle helmet, presumably one of the culprits of those pesky bikes that zip around terrorising the streets and pavements of South Korea, was at our door with an insulated box. He handed me the order, I handed him cash, we exchanged thank-yous and we were done. Next-to-no human interaction, just the way I like it.

Seoul Food | Salon de Mon Chou Chou

TREAT YO SELF part 2 continued with a trip to Bucheon for some sweet, sweet Crycheese burgers (I'm noticing a worrying burger trend with this weekend) before nipping off to Garosugil in the Seoul district of Gangnam. You may have heard of it. <eyerollemoji.jpg>

So, we got our fancy on (or, at least, our attempt at fancy) and tried to not look TOO out of place at Salon de Mon Chou Chou, a famous brand from Osaka, Japan.

Nicolette was sat opposite me, so expect more photos of her than myself or Nick.

It was very faux-chic, almost distressingly so for a country girl like me, in all its white and gold Rococo-esque splendour, filled with painfully trendy Gangnam-ites delicately sipping unusually-named teas and eating hugely expensive desserts.

Naturally, we Instagrammed the heck out of it.

Seoul Food | 백반 Baekban

Because I don't post about food enough (ha), I thought I'd share with you the incredible dinner my head co-teacher treated me and Nick to sometime back in late January. I'm not sure if this would really be called 'baekban' but I'm also not sure what it's actually called, so until I find out, this is the placeholder name I'll be using.

I read two different meanings for baekban, "hundred side dishes" and "cooked white rice". Either way, it's pretty accurate.

This is a more traditional Korean-style meal, with loads and loads of little dishes scattered around for everyone to pick and choose from. It's absolutely ridiculous and a lot of fun. Usually most places just wheel in a trolley and rapidly throw bowls into empty spaces with skill and accuracy, but this place took a different and presumably more time-efficient method.

They wheel in a second table-top and it slots on over the existing one. In one fell swoop, all of the food is on and ready and you don't have to worry about spilling stuff on a customer in the rush.

It was super nice and we got to have some quality time with our busy co-teachers and coworkers, even if it was only for a little while. ^^

Seoul Food | 보쌈 Bossam

Preparation!  준비하다

It's a very poorly-kept secret that Nick's favourite food is bossam. It's a slow-cooked pork that you usually eat by wrapping it in a lettuce leaf (쌈) with a bit of that really great sauce I'm always banging on about (쌈장) and maybe some garlic and rice or kimchi or whatever you want really.

It's kind of similar in taste to Filipino sinigang, with a texture similar to pulled pork (pre-pulling), but it can also be a little expensive so we thought why not try cooking it ourselves, seeing as it's so easy to do?

I used a combination of recipes as well as advice from Korean friends, and ended up using:

- 1 onion
- 4 cloves of garlic
- a sizable chunk of belly pork (maybe 300g?)
- a pinky-sized chunk of garlic (basically what I had left from another recipe), chopped finely
- 2 bayleaves
- a sprinkling of peppercorns
- enough water to cover it all
- half a bottle of soju

That last ingredient, soju (Korean rice wine, about 12%) is very important and the aspect most impressed on me by all my sources. Basically, when you boil pork for that long...it stinks. Like, really bad. So, in Korea they add soju which for some reason kills the smell. I'm not sure of the science behind it, but it works and the alcohol cooks off. Due to soju being pretty flavourless (it's like a milder-tasting vodka) there's no flavour left on the meat either!

I suppose you could use white wine (or possibly 'cheap' vodka, which isn't as cheap or nice as soju) and I also saw suggestions stating that a spoonful or two of instant coffee will also do the trick just fine.)

Then, pretty much, you put the slab/s of meat into your boiling water, bring it back to the boil for about 10-20 mins, then turn the heat right down to just about a simmer. Then you leave it. Maybe stir it occasionally, but generally just leave it for about 40 mins to an hour.

So far, I've got the texture down pretty much spot on, but the flavour is lacking and I'm assuming that's just down to experimentation. I tried again a second time and used less water than before, and adding more salt and garlic and it was a lot better. But still not as good as what we've had!

Here's to more experiments in the future :p

Aw yeee

Seoul Food | 찜닭 Jjimdak

So the other day we were helping Ziggy out with some post-production stuff, and so she treated us to dinner (too kind, too kind!) and shared with us the joys of a meal that I'm pretty sure I'll be going back to a lot in the winter.

Jjimdak is a big chicken dish that reminds me a little bit of chicken adobo, but a little tiny bit spicy and...well. More Korean. Throw in some glass noodles (Japchae noodles? Pancit?) and it's soooo good. Very hearty, warm, and filling.

As usual, the banchan dominates the majority of the table

It's enormous, especially for the price. We could definitely have comfortably had one if not two more people eating with us, but we're pigs.

We had bubble tea afterwards, despite my co-teacher's reprimanding that it's super bad for you and will most likely kill you (maybe a slight exaggeration). I'm sorry. I just can't get enough of that chewy boba.

Bonus photo: Dunkin' Desmond.

Seoul Food | Linus & SugarDaddy

I won't count my previous post as a Seoul Food entry, because I forgot to take down the names of ANY of the places we went to, haha. But they were great anyway.

In this post we went to TWO places, because apparently all I ever do in my spare time is eat a lot with a total disregard to my gently-expanding waistline.

This time, we were in Itaewon at Linus: supposedly the best American-style BBQ place in Korea. Not having been to any other American-style BBQ places in Korea, I'm not sure how high a praise this is, BUT it's right next to the US army base and is packed with Westerners, so it can't be all that bad.

We were running a bit late because of how long it takes us to get from school to Seoul, and this place is POPULAR. So there was no time to waste, and we let our friends order for us. The food, conveniently, arrived only a few minutes after we did, so that was some lucky timing!

The platters were around 25,000 won each, so we shared 3 between the 6 of us. Mine and Nick's consisted of some cute slider buns, mashed potato, slaw, beans, and a variety of slow-cooked pork. There are fries in the photo above because we mixed and matched the sides with each other to get a variety. THE FRIES WERE SO GREAT.

The buns were warm and soft, and a little greasy (which is gross, but I kind of like it, haha) and all of the sides were great! The meat was REALLY tender, too. Apparently the owner gets up at 5am every morning to get it all cooking, which is some incredible dedication to the cause.

In all honesty, the meat was lovely, but after several trips to Bodeans back in London I was expecting a whole lot more flavour from it. There were sauces, warmed like baby milk, available to pour on as we pleased, which was a nice touch, but I still felt like there was something missing.

Having said that, I've never had real US BBQ so maybe this is more like what Southern food is like! In my experience, many meals get localised for whatever country they're in (such as the Chinese food in England that tastes nothing like Chinese Chinese food, and the Korean Chinese food which is again very different to both!). Although by that logic this is Korean Style American Food. Who knows! It was very good, and the sides were commendable (I'd defo go back for some fries), but it's not my favourite place to eat at the moment.

Next stop was a Canadian bar not too far away (where the alien word "tipping" was seen on a wall ;p) for a fundraiser for a local Animal Shelter. I have a feeling fundraisers like this are a lot more important here, because there's generally a lot less funding for unwanted pets, and there's not enough room or money for all of them. I think there's actually a time limit for how long they can stay in any one shelter, and after that...I don't really want to think about it.

So yeah, this was a pretty important cause, and seeing as I don't have the space or money to give some poor cat or dog its forever home (yet), I was more than happy to try and help pay towards caring for them. I got to play Foosball, which I was a lot less awful at than I was originally expecting, but I DID manage to score an own goal.

There was a bake sale in one corner, a raffle in another, and some live music in a third. In all honesty? We were kind of weirded out by the first act we saw. A Western guy, singing in alternating Korean and English. Cool enough, but there was a definite air of Jack Black about him that wasn't working for any of our group, I don't think. This was bundled in with the confusing fact that he kept insulting the Westerners and chatting up the few Korean ladies in the room... maybe I just didn't get his humour but sadly Nick and I were pretty glad when one of his guitar strings broke and his set ended, to be replaced by a Canadian band playing Irish music. We felt quite Fus Ro Dah.

After a while, we headed up and out, back towards Linus and into Sugar Daddy. It's a really sweet little cake shop, and it was pretty quiet when we went. It's actually sort of directly above Linus, with an outside patio area to enjoy your cake in on a cool night. The interior is adorable, it pretty much just looks like a kitchen that happens to have a food display case in it. Pine shelves crammed with baking supplies, and cute 3-tier cake stands.

They have lots of interesting flavours, from standard red velvet, to a more exotic mint choco, and Nutella, which had a Ferrero Rocher pressed into the icing on top. There are some slices of cheesecakes and pies up for grabs too! I'm not too sure how varied the stock usually is, as we came pretty much right at the end of the day, and I feel like everything is baked freshly each day, maybe even different flavours each day. But, for a cafe, they had a good variety and a nice range of teas and coffees for reasonable prices, and the man running the place was lovely.

Seoul Food | CoffeeBay

I just wanted to dedicate a little post to CoffeeBay, a little cafe down the road from us. It's a small chain with several stores in a few different countries in Southeast Asia, but it's the service that makes me want to go there rather than the Starbucks or Angel-in-Us or Paris Baguette, all of which are actually a lot closer to our apartment.

The prices aren't much different to 'Bux et al, around 3-4000 won for a coffee in a variety of flavours, some cakes and sandwiches for 2-3000 each. Maybe a little cheaper, but hey. The food and drink itself is pretty nice. Nick and I usually go for a Chicken Focaccia where the chicken is a lot like Coronation Chicken. So good. They also have a squid-ink sandwich, and it's great. The portions are pretty good too, we tend to take a much more Korean style here and get one thing to share.

Chicken Focaccia

We first went with Nick's parents and probably were quite a nuisance. They don't speak much English and we can't speak much Korean (at the very least, our pronunciation leaves much to be desired), but they tried their hardest. From staff members coming round to our side of the counter so we could point to adverts and foods in the cooler, to people writing messages to us in Google Translate, they did their best to give us the best service they could.

After we'd had our feast, they brought over 4 boxes with no more explanation than a slightly embarrassed nod, smile and the word "service". This was before we found out that "service" is basically the Korean/Konglish term for a free gift or bonus as a thank you for shopping with a certain company or eatery. In the boxes were 4 lovely mugs that I could actually see up for sale and...well they weren't cheap! How lovely~

Red Velvet cake and Red Velvet lattes to share

Thanks to the lovely service that one time, we went back again a few weeks later for an after-school treat. The service was, again, great, but less fiddly now that we knew what to do and what we wanted.

They had a little whiteboard up which had a Facebook logo drawn onto it, so I looked up the suggested page and of course I liked it.

About 10 minutes later, this turned up:

A mini honey bread with whipped cream and salted caramel sauce. Whaaaat.

The owner basically tried to explain that it was a thanks for liking their page. How cute~
I'm sure there's other small cafes nearby that are similarly wonderful or cute, but this place has kind of stolen my heart. The music is good, the decor is clean and modern, and the atmosphere is very relaxing. Definitely a favourite. So there you go, good service and free gifts are the way to a customer's heart, apparently :p

Seoul Food | The Beastro

Dinner time with friends! In Hongdae once again, we ran to The Beastro after school. With a pun, they're off to a good start already, and they're serving up big ol' American meals. It's a pretty fancy looking place, really clean and modern in the sort of way I'd want my future kitchen to look. Warm wood tones on white walls and black metal. Simple and clean.

Similarly, the menu is pretty simple. A handful of choices in starters, sides and mains, and yet it still took us an age to decide. It reminded me of Honest Burger at home. They have a small selection, but gosh darnit do they do that selection well.

First things first, drinks. I went with the artfully named "Piss and Vinegar", and, well, it tasted like just that. I kid. It was honey and vinegar and whiskey, and reminded me a lot of the "Witches Brew" my nan used to make for me whenever I had a bad cold when I was little. Pretty tasty and good for sipping at slowly. I was pretty blown away by Nick's choice though. "Pretty in Pink" was a cutesy pastel pink affair in a martini glass, with some lovely lychee flavours. I can't quite remember what was in it, other than this incredible witchcraft jelly. The witchcraft being that there were little pockets of fizzy drink INSIDE the jelly. I don't understand how. But I want more.

Seoul Food | 한국맥도날드

Hanguk Maekdonaldu. That's Korean McDonald's to the rest of us.

Yeah, we went there.

Despite trying to avoid McDonald's (and fast food chains in general) at all but my lowest moments at home, as soon as I'm in a foreign country I can't wait to try. I blame Hong Kong McD's and an article I read in the Guardian (or something) once that highlighted all the weird and wonderful international variations of the humble Big Mac. In HK I tried chicken nuggets and fries. Standard enough. But lo, I was presented with a ridiculous array of dipping sauces to choose from (blue cheese, thousand island, various bbq and sweet&sour combinations), and seaweed sprinkles for my fries. AMAZING.

So anyway, yes. I now trawl the world looking for more fast food oddities, apparently. That, and clogged arteries. With this in mind, since arriving in Korea I've been intrigued by the row of American fast food chains at our local train station. KFC chicken COVERED in chunks of garlic, Dunkin' Donuts with a variety of weird flavours, and McDonalds proudly displaying a Bulgogi Burger in its window.

I LOVE BULGOGI.

Bulgogi is basically, as far as I can tell, marinated and grilled pork. It's pretty tasty and one of South Korea's most famous dishes (bar kimchi)

Anyway, we went in and ordered in 100% Korean, albeit that of a very young child. Don't take this victory from me. (7본 주세요. 2게 주세요.) We were then asked to move to the side so they could continue to take orders, and not long after, a tray appeared and food was placed on it. Yay, fast food indeed!

I picked it up, went to walk away, only to have the server say 아니요! 아니요! At me in a panicked tone, and an older man come up to me and take the tray holding HIS order from me, with a side order of glare.

Oops.

Anyway, we apologised profusely and our actual food arrived not long after.

Obligatory ill-timed photo of Nick consuming sustenance.

I have to say...it wasn't that incredible. Pretty much just a normal burger with an okay bulgogi sauce on it. The fries were a little nicer than at home, and thanks to McCafe and SK's love of recycling the cups were hard plastic that you hand back in at the end, so it can be washed and reused rather than dumped in a landfill. But nothing else on the menu was particularly...Korean. No kimchi burger or rice side dish (that I could see), so I was a bit upset, mixed with the usual "ugh, what have I done" feeling that usually accompanies a trip to McD's.

Not the end of the world, but hey. There's always Lotteria~ ;)

Seoul Food | 닭갈비 Dalkgalbi

Sort of.

Dakgalbi is one of these great, hearty, all-in-one dishes. I discovered it via teaching my 4th grade classes, as one of the lessons on past tense involves the phrase "I ate dakgalbi". Every time it was mentioned, there was inevitably a chorus of "oohs" and "aahs" and "AAH DAKGALBI!!"

High praise indeed.

After some research, I found it's pretty much kids/student/peasant/drunkard food. Easy to make, easy to eat, and most importantly: cheap.

It's marinated chicken with cabbage, carrot, garlic, topokki, onion, and possibly sweet potato, cooked in a sweet and spicy sauce. You can eat it straight out of the pan, and if you're super hungry, you can then chuck in a load of rice and make spicy stir fried rice with the leftover sauce and bits of veg. Topokki (pictured below) is an interesting food that I've had a few times in school, it's basically a little rice cake sausage. Kind of like a VERY thick noodle, so if you've had udon before, it's like that in texture, but maybe 2-3x thicker. It sucks up all the flavour of whatever you put it in, similar to tofu but in a much more appetising way (for me, anyway).

But yes, it sounded incredible and I had to have some.

So here it is.

The "sort of" comes in the form of "we don't buy chicken very often because I hate deboning, breasts are expensive, and pork/beef is so much tastier". So this is a beef tuna* variant. But considering I followed a dakgalbi recipe exclusively up until the point where it said chicken, I won't bother renaming it.

I think this would be great in autumn or winter with a small group of friends, and I can also see why it's so popular as a snack when out drinking.

*we actually ate this two days in a row. Mainly because it was great, but also because I forgot to take a photo of the beef, so needed to recreate it for blogging purposes. Alas, we'd used the last of the beef. Tuna it is then. Not as good as chicken or beef in this situation, but it was still pretty good.

Seoul Food | 비빔밥 Bibimbap

I think this was the first Korean dish I ever ate, courtesy of our "research" undertaken at Bibigo in Soho before coming to Incheon.

It's great, healthy (-ish. You can never tell with the Salt Queen) and makes a little bit of meat stretch a long way.

Anyway, Nick brought home a little book about Korean cuisine in our first week, and there are a few recipes in the back. We use this one a lot, because it's fairly quick and easy, as well as tasty. My presentation is by no means as wonderful as the traditional Korean style, but I hope it still looks fairly appetising. Apparently the toppings are from old Buddhist traditions, with each bit of food representing a different colour, which is really lovely and actually a pretty smart way of getting a balanced meal.

The recipe calls for burdock root and bracken as a topping. I have no idea what these are or what they look like, nor do I know the Korean names for them, so alas I have struggled to buy them. So my bibimbap is generally made with carrot, zucchini, onion of some form, and a separated egg or two, fried up and sliced.

It's by no means authentic, but it's tasty, so maybe try it sometime~