Cooking The Books

East Meets West, Korean Johnson Tang (Budae Jjigae)

Plenty of the foods people around the world eat today were, over the centuries, born out of neccesity.  It may just have been a case of eating what they had at one time and the taste sticking, like war-torn Cambodians deep-frying spiders, or something more complex, like the inability to feed cattle through winter requiring the invention of curing for year long meat.  This dish's origins fall firmly in the first camp although it tastes as good as the products of the second, drawing heavily on them for its flavour too.

The story goes that following the Korean War times were very hard for many Koreans and so they turned to handouts from the US bases to help.  The Americans gave them their pre-packaged foods - like Spam, hot dogs and processed-cheese - and the Korean mixed these with local vegetables, spices and staples and Budae Jjigae/Johnson Tang was born.  The names also give clues to the dishes origins, budae jjigae meaning '(Army) Base Stew' and Johnson Tang taking the US president's name and appending the Korean for soup to it.

The taste for it lasted well beyond the need for handouts though as it is still popular today, which is understandable once you taste a mouthful.  It's a spicy noodle soup, sure, but look beyond the heat of the gochujang and the fermented overtones of the kimchi there are added depths - lingering smokiness from hot dogs and the salty-sweetness of Spam.  Out of all the ingredients the processed-cheese slice seemed the most random and I'd love to say how it added something, how it brought everything together, but in truth it was totally lost on my palate, although I'd blame it for the cloudiness in the broth.

Obviously with such origins there is no fixed recipe.  When it comes down to it this is a load of eastern vegetables and noodles with some western Spam and hotdogs, so don't feel too tied down to my version.  I'd try and keep the gochujang and kimchi, the processed meats and the ramen - as these are the guts of it - but once that base is down go for whatever veg is in the fridge if you want.  Whilst this may look like noodle soup it is served over rice, so with double carbs it is not one for the Atkin's diet.

Johnson Tang (Budae Jjigae)

Serves 4

Ingredients

250gr firm tofu

1 small can Spam

4 frankfurters

1 slice of processed cheese

750ml dashi (or chicken) stock

1 pack of ramen noodles, bin the seasonings

1 pak choi

2 spring onions, finely sliced

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

4 dried shittaki mushrooms, soaked for an hour in cold water

1 medium courgette

100gr (a large handful maybe) of beansprouts

125gr kimchi

2 TB gochujang

1 TB light soy sauce

Method

This is simple stuff, well simple once you've got together that mass of ingredients.

Cut the courgette into batons, take the stems off the mushrooms and cut into 1cm slices, roughly chop the kimchi, slice the Spam and tofu into similar sized pieces and cut the franks into 1cm slices.

Chuck everything except the ramen and the spring onions into a big saucepan, add the gochujang and the soy and pour in the stock, giving it all a good mix together.

Bring to the boil then boil for 5 minutes.  Add the ramen and give another 3 minutes.  Chuck the spring onions in, mix through then serve your Johnson Tang/Budae Jjiage over rice.

Oat/Oatmeal Buttermilk Pancakes (Can Be Gluten-Free)

After the run of Japanese food time it's time to hop across the Pacific to the good ol' US of A.

Like many others I took the new year as an excuse to alter my diet, specifically getting some porridge into my morning routine.  I'd heard porridge would stop those 10.30am hunger pangs, not to mention giving me a welcome glut of fibre first thing, and so fought through the wallpaper-paste texture and taste of it plain for a couple of weeks, before giving in and first adding maple syrup and then a banana.  By this point it was actually pretty damn tasty but I then realised it was even worse at keeping my hunger at bay than my previous breakfast of a couple of eggs on toast was, so that was the end of that one.

This left me with some porridge oats that needed using up so first I made a few Staffordshire Oatcakes, absolutely gorgeous things that are deserving of far more accolade, let alone knowledge of their existence, than they have outside of Stoke.  Do yourself a favour and make some, I doubt you'll be disappointed. 

I still had lots of maple syrup too though so thoughts turned to these pancakes, thick and risen like your standard American pancake but with the earthy taste of oats, the buttermilk giving them a slightly sour tang that is balanced by the sweet syrup.  Made for friends at the weekend they were a success all round.

Following this post I made these again, altering slightly to make a gluten-free version suitable for my gf's coeliac mum.  I used gluten-free oats and a presciption gluten-free white bread flour (Glutafin), I also added an extra egg as I was worried about them holding together with the lack of gluten.  They worked out really well and were loved by all, coeliac's and non-coeliacs alike.

Oat/Oatmeal Buttermilk Pancakes

Enough for 4 people

150gr porridge oats/gluten-free oats

500ml buttermilk

80gr plain flour/gluten-free flour

2 med eggs (3 med eggs if going gluten-free)

1/2 TB sugar

1 TB baking powder (gluten-free)

Scant ts salt

Method

When you get up mix the oats and the buttermilk.  It's good to let them soak for an hour or two but you'll get away with less.

Once the oats are softened, mix the dry ingredients together and then mix into the oats, along with the eggs.  Beat well to combine.

Heat a heavy frying pan or griddle over a lowish heat, too hot and they'll burn before they cook through, and grease well - I used vegetable oil and bit of kitchen roll.

Depending on the size you want pour somewhere from 1/3 to 3/4 of a ladeful of batter in.  The larger size gives you around a 10cm pancake, the smaller amount let me put three 6cm pancakes cooking in the same large frying pan.  Once in spread out with the ladle till about 8mm thick.  Cook until dry on top, around 2-3 minutes, but careful not to over do it.

Flip and give a couple more minutes.  They are then ready to serve.  I used two frying pans at once, to halve the cooking time, and kept warm in a 60 C oven inbetween.

I love them with maple syrup, and I imagine golden syrup would be gorgeous too, both of which would sit happily with some sliced banana.

Gyudon

I think this is three Japanese recipes in a row, which is most unusual for me - so unusual that I had to add a Japanese category for the first one.  Still, after spending £20 on ingredients for okonomiyaki I thought I should actually use them, rather than clogging up the fridge and cupboards with yet more sauces and condiments. 

Prior to the last recipe, whilst googling to find out what beni shoga was (it is the red pickled ginger in the okonomiyaki) I saw that it is an ingredient in gyudon, which took be straight back to my time in Kuala Lumpur, where we lived opposite the huge 6 story behemoth of Mid-Valley mall.  KL really isn't designed for pedestrians and near every day we would brave 6 lanes of traffic, pausing on the safety of a red painted strip in the middle, to reach the mall and have a meal.  Dicing with death was worth it though as, with its 6th floor food court and ground floor full of chain restaurants, you could literally eat day in day out for months with no need of repeating a dish.  One of those ground floor chains was Yoshinoya, a Japanese place famed for its gyudon, or beef bowl - a big bowl of rice, covered in thin slices of beef and onion stewed in dashi. 

 It's healthy and totally delicious, the bite of just-cooked onion and slightly chewy beef adding substance to the soothing, dashi soaked rice below.  Another bonus is the ease and quickness of preparation, a perfect mid-week meal.  Just chuck some rice on to cook and whilst it's bubbling away you've more than enough time to slice the onions and beef and give them their bath, just remember to get the beef in the freezer a while before as slicing it thinly without it being semi-frozen is nigh on impossible.

When choosing to recreate the dish said dashi was a problem though, along with the mirin.  Whilst I got to use another couple of tablespoons of beni shoga, so working my way through about 20p of the £20 cache of ingredients,  I needed to buy some dashi powder (£1.50), and some mirin (£3.50) - in the words of Homer Simpson "Doh!".  I'm sure I can find some other Japanese dishes to use these up though, hopefully without requiring too many more purchases - hopefully...

Gyudon Recipe

2 People

1 cup (230gr) of Japanese rice, I use Nishiki

1 1/3 cup (320ml) of water

200gr-300gr of rib of beef

1 medium onion

500ml dashi stock

6 TB soy

2 TB mirin

1 ts sugar

2 TB beni shoga (red pickled ginger)

Shichimi/Seven Spice seasoning (optional)

Method

First things first get your beef in the freezer for 30-45 minutes, till it firms up, then slice as thin as you can across the grain.

Place the rice and water in a saucepan, cover and bring to the boil then turn the heat right down and simmer, with a lid on, for 20 minutes.  Turn off the heat and leave, again with the lid on, for 15 minutes.

Slice the onions about 8mm thick then fry, in a little oil, for 2-3 minutes.  I like them to take on a little colour (so getting some flavour from Maillard) but they look better if they don't. 

Add the dashi, mirin, soy and sugar, bring to the boil and simmer for 4 minutes.

Add in the beef and cook for 1-2 mins just just cooked through.

Split the rice between two bowls, place half the beef and onions on top of each and then ladle in some of the cooking liquid, depending on how wet you like it.

To serve, place the ginger on top and, if you're using, give it a sprinkle of shichimi for some spice.

Okonomiyaki (and a short Abeno review)

Last week I went to Abeno and ate the above.  I've been meaning to go since it opened many moons ago, as the description of the okonomiyaki they sold -  a vegetable-based pancake that is cooked on a hotplate in front of you - sounded delicious and different to anything I'd eaten before.  Now I've been I could write a big blog post about the place, speaking of the ambiance & the decor, but there's enough far more committed London restaurant food bloggers about so I'll just say it was damn tasty, albeit it a little expensive. Then again all I wanted was a quick lunchtime bite and maybe it's not that sort of place - definitely good food though.

Abeno review out the way let's get onto the interesting stuff, like how to make it yourself.  As mentioned okonomiyaki are a Japanese pancake, the base is lots of cabbage and it is studded with seafood and held together with batter that's been flavoured with dashi.  If this doesn't sound great enough already whilst cooking it is layered with thinly sliced pork belly or streaky bacon that browns and cooks into the top of the pancake.  Once cooked the okonomiyaki is finished with okonomiyaki sauce (thin ketchup-brown sauce like stuff), mayonnaise, powdered seaweed and salty dried bonito flakes. With each bite the quartet of toppings give way to crisp and fatty pork which in turn yields to soft batter, crunchy with cabbage and sweet from seafood.  Not subtle but a cacophony of flavours that worked well enough to have me down at the Japan Centre within 2 days of my restaurant visit to buy ingredients for a home repeat

Whilst Chinese supermarkets tend to be pretty cheap that's definitely not the case with Japanese ones and I walked out about £20 lighter of pocket, and with a little more sympathy towards Abeno's prices. Obviously that will make quite a few okonomiyaki - 8 to be precise, with lots of sauce leftover but not quite enough bonito flakes - but this isn't a particularly cheap dish, especially when you consider this didn't include the toppings, as they are purchasable in normal shops.  For toppings I went with prawn, squid and pork but once you have your base of batter and cabbage anything goes really - the London Mix in Abeno having bacon, sausage, cheese and an egg.   Whatever you go for I'd recommend keeping the pork or bacon as the crisp rashers fried into the batter add so much texture and flavour.

You can make the batter with flour, dashi and grated yam but the pre-made okonomiyaki flour - whilst punchy at over £4 for 400 grams - seems much easier, containing the dashi and the yam starch so all you need to do is take a scoopful and add water and egg.

Okonomiyaki Recipe

Makes one that I happily devoured, but with other dishes would feed two

Ingredients

50gr okonomiyaki flour

80gr water

1 medium egg

150gr white cabbage

3 raw king prawns

50gr squid (or 3 more king prawns)

3 rashers unsmoked streaky bacon, cut in half

1 TB of beni shoga pickled ginger (red sticks rather than the pink slices in sushi)

To Top

Okonomiyaki sauce

Squeezy mayonnaise

3gr Dried bonito flakes

Powder nori seaweed

Method

First off mix the okonomiyaki flour, water and egg into a batter.

Finely chop the cabbage (5mm) and spring onion, chop the prawns and squid into 1.5cm bits and add it all, along with the pickled ginger, into the batter then stir till combined.

Heat a large (this thing is going to be near 20cm wide) frying pan over a medium heat then wipe well with oil. or just add oil if you think your frying pan won't handle a mere greasing.

Pour in the mixture and spread to a pancake around 20cm diameter and 1.5-2cm thick then arrange the rashers of bacon on top.  Cook for 3-4 minutes.

Carefully turn over and cook for 4-5 minutes.  The Japanese have special large okonomiyaki spatulas for this, which they use a pair of, but I resorted to two plates instead.  First off place one over the okonomiyaki and then turn the frying pan over.  Another plate was then put on top and the okonomiyaki flipped on to that (to get the raw side up again) before placing the upside down frying pan on top and flipping over.  A bit of a palaver but I didn't trust keeping it in one piece using spatulas.

Turn over again and give the first side another 2-3 minutes, until golden brown and cooked through.

Get onto a plate, bacon side up, then swirl with okonomiyaki sauce & mayonnaise then sprinkle with the bonito flakes and some powdered seaweed.

 

Some Japanese Fried Chicken This Time - Karaage (or is it Kara-Age?)

I recently posted about Korean Fried Chicken and in the comments Mr Noodles suggested I needed to make some Japanese Karaage for the blog.  Not wanting to miss out on any excuse to fry some chicken here it is, I think it will be the first in a few fried chickens, adding to the Chicken 65, Southern Fried and Korean Fried Chicken that are already on here to make a complete(ish) guide to the Fried Chickens of this world.  Feel free to suggest some more.

I've already stated that it is the coating that makes fried chicken and the karaage method calls on a starch for this purpose.  Cornflour (or cornstarch as it's known in a lot of places) gives a coating that is harder and more durable than wheat flour or batter - knobbly and lumpy and keeping its crunch for a long time.

In karaage, before coating the chicken takes a reasonably short marinade in sake, soy, ginger juice and sesame oil.  The bath is short so the salt in the soy doesn't toughen the meat but it's long enough to impart its flavour on the smallish morsels.  For health purposes you can use breast if you want (but it's not very forgiving and turns dry rapidly) or you can omit the skin if you do choose thighs.  This is deep-fried food though, so forget trying to be healthy and leave the skin on, it will crisp up delightfully, giving another layer of texture between the crunch of cornflour and the juicy thigh meat underneath.

Karaage (Kara-Age) Recipe

A good snack for 3-4 people

Ingredients

7-8 Chicken Thighs with skin, or without if you must

3 TB Japanese/light soy

3 TB sake

8cm ginger

Few splashes of sesame oil

Cornflour to coat

Method

If the thighs still have their bones in take them out, they're handy for making a chicken stock.  Cut each thigh into medium chunks, maybe 4-6 per thigh depending on its size.

Roughly chop the ginger and then blend in a mini-blender with the soy, sake and sesame oil.  Strain the marinade through muslin to remove all the ginger fibres then marinate the chicken in it for 45 minutes.

Remove the chicken into a sieve, shaking to remove excess marinade, then dump into a bowl with a couple of handfuls of cornflour, coating well.

Heat oil to 180C and fry the chicken, in batches so the oil stays hot, until it floats - around 3 minutes.

With the oil still at 180C add the chicken back and fry till golden, this time around 2.5 minutes.  For this second fry I'm happy to put the chicken in all together as it is still hot from the first fry so doesn't bring the temp of the oil down like cold chicken does.

We ate this dry, but it would happily take mayonnaise, chili sauce or Japanese katsu sauce (or a squeeze of lemon or some ponzu) as a dip.