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.

Korean Fried Chicken

I adore fried chicken, whether it's nuggets of chicken 65, a leg or two chopped up on a mee goreng in Malaysia or even a KFC (sorry chickens). I think the crisp coating is the perfect way to pep up what can be an underwhelming meat. With fried chicken the light flavour of the bird works perfectly, adding the texture that all meat eaters love whilst allowing whatever is on the outside to shine, and let's admit it - the coating is the high point.

With this in mind when I heard of the double-frying method of Korean Fried Chicken - the first rendering fat from the skin, the second crisping up - that left the skin delicate and thin and with crunch that didn't go, I had to find a recipe and give it a try.  Add to this a fiery sauce, packed with flavour from the fermentation of the chilli, and it stayed on the to-do list for far less time than most dishes.  I read a few American websites, where it seems to be a popular dish, and played with them until I got this, whether it's traditional I don't know but it is damn tasty.

There's one slightly awkward to get ingredient in this and that is the aforementioned Korean fermented chili sauce, or gochujang, and unfortunately it's the main ingredient in the sauce.  It was easy enough to find in London though (in the Korean section upstairs in Gerrard Street's New Loon Moon), or you can buy it online and according to this you can even make it.  It really is worth trying to get some as the flavour is quite distinctive, although if you're more fussed about trying the crunch than the sauce I guess you could try using sriracha instead but the taste won't be the same. Alternatively just cook the wings using this method and dip them in whatever sauce you fancy.

Korean Fried Chicken

1kg - 1.25kg of chicken wings

Plain flour to dust

Batter

1/2 cup plain flour

1 TB cornflour

1 cup water

1/2 ts salt

Sauce

1.5 to 2 TB gochujang

1 TB light soy sauce

1 ts sesame oil

2 ts rice vinegar

1 ts sugar

1 clove of garlic

Method

For the sauce grind the garlic to a paste with the back of a knife, a pinch of salt helps here.  Mix this with all the other sauce ingredients and you're done.

Next off you need to prepare the wings. I may make myself look like a bit of an idiot here but I always wondered where fried chicken shops got those tiny little drumsticks from, I thought the chickens they came from must have been tiddly to walk around on such stumpy legs.  It was only whilst preparing these that I realised they were part of the wing and suddenly the talk of Korean fried chicken aficionados ordering upper- or lower-wing made perfect sense.  If like me you've never prepared a chicken wing this photo may help, and it clears up the stumpy leg confusion too.

Once the wings are split you can chuck the tips, or save them for stock, then take the upper and lower wings and dust with flour, shaking well in a sieve to leave only the finest dusting.

Mix the batter ingredients into a thin batter then coat the wings in it, again shaking to remove excess - it's all about a delicate coating here.  Once this is done fry in 150C oil for 8 minutes.

Remove into a sieve and - you guessed it - shake vigorously to remove any lose bits, Korean chicken doesn't have the spare batter that southern fried chicken does.

Turn the heat up and let the oil reach 180C then fry the wings for another 3-4 minutes, or until golden and cooked through.

Remove the wings and drain well on kitchen paper then place into big bowl with the sauce, tossing until the wings are thinly coated all over.

Eat.