melonpan

personally i wouldnt know since ive never had dishwater.

dont forget battered deep fried cake

cake dammit.

looks proper! looks positively delish!

What is bagoong? it is either filipino jeot or jeot is korean bagoong. you choose. i believe that bagoong, like jeot, comes in either shrimp or anchovy. used in cooking filipino stews and dishes... bagoong is delicious like jeot is. i love it all.

the stars were just aligned right that night. how cool is that? hope im that lucky one night... ill keep doing the good deeds until then.

ill do it of course for gomtang and seolleongtang, but not for sundubu. some jjigaes yes too. ill give it a try for sundubu though!

i do it to make things i cant buy. where can you buy good quality raspberry lychee jam? or a pink grapefruit marmalade that isnt toooo sweet and with peel that is cut/shred to _just_ the right size? not to small, not too big... i buy from the farmers market. yes, it isnt quite as cheap as picking your own, but its not so bad. i certainly dont do it to save money. i am not sure if i would enjoy it as much if i had to make batches and batches for the family farm. also, some of my friends seem to appreciate me jam. but i mostly make it to please myself. typically over a year, ill make and give out anywhere from 40-80 jars of various jams depending on my mood and how low i am.

the caspia sea yogurt has been a frustrating topic for me. i bought two packages last year (theyre rather pricey too, $12 per packet for: 3 starter cultures and some packets of collagen. they also sell the collagen at a high price so i think the yogurt is worth almost nothing prolly). gave one packet to my mom gave another to sister and as for me and my three starter cultures? managed to keep a culture going for 3 months. and when that started to go bad, i kept another batch going but it went bad after 2 weeks. am hoarding the last one... anyway, then i went to the stores and i couldnt find it in the stores anymore. made all sorts of frantic calls (i hated it at first. hated it. it wasnt tangy, and i do love my tangy yogurt but somehow that mild bland flavour got addicting.) to all the local japanese markets. apparently only one vendor was delivering it and they refused to deliver anymore. not enough sales here. then two weeks ago, i saw it again. bought up 6 packages. hope it lasts a year. oh. i have to send some to mom too cause she says she loves it. she loves it. i went again today to the market. all sold out. i hope that they continue to supply l.a. with this stuff.... its great! i think they need to market it to korean folks too. i am sure that koreans in the la area would buy it up too. wish i had the right connections and marketing capabilities to make it happen. oh well.

heathen!

i wonder what your mil is saying. i mean its one thing to say that homemade stuff is better than commercial stuff (so so true of so many things today), but is it really different? im not trying to be difficult esp since youre having difficulties with translating between us and your wife but i am just curious since i dont know anything about aekjeot.is there some sort of consensus as to what aekjeot is? is it simply seafood jeot that is strained? is this what the homemade stuff is, and is this what people expect commercial stuff to be? anyway, i dont expect an answer (i will leave you in peace, chef zadi! ). i just wanted to put this out there. lastly: has anyone ever put bagoong in their kimchi and korean soups?

hmm. okay. found something. just hadn't crossed paths with it yet. "aeg-jeos" or aekjeot <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=%EC%95%A1%EC%A0%93&svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&sa=N&tab=iw">액젓</a>, <a href="http://www.well-beingnow.co.kr/aceimage/0283.gif">pic of anchovy aekjeot</a> and <a href="http://img.emart.co.kr/front/WebRoot/uploadImg/itemImg/17/8803931810517_350_b.jpg">shrimp aekjeot</a> maybe it is the same stuff as regular jeot but just strained, clarified? not much different than jeot?

hubbys uncle strongly claimed that if you drink water that has soaked dried up onion skins, the hangovers disappear. huh. okay, on <a href="http://kr.rd.yahoo.com/ks/know/relknow/*http://kr.ks.yahoo.com/service/ques_reply/ques_view.html?dnum=GAD&qnum=44147&affinity=no">this page</a> they state that bukeo guk (pollack soup - <a href="http://kr.ks.yahoo.com/service/ques_reply/ques_view.html?dnum=GAD&qnum=4480309">recipe in korean</a>) is the best for hangovers. it goes on to say that bukeo has methionine (an amino acid) and so it helps to break down alcohol to help the liver along and it also helps stimulate the production of urine which helps your body more quickly rid itself of aldehydes. <a href="http://kr.ks.yahoo.com/service/ques_reply/ques_view.html?dnum=FAJ&qnum=58775">this site says</a> pig blood soup has lots of iron and protein and it also includes soy bean sprouts and radish and so they somehow break down the toxic alcohol. soybean sprout soup is the best for hangovers. soybean sprout soup contains asparagine which is another amino acid which stimulates aldehyde dehydrogenase. the root tips of the soybean sprout contains the most asparagine [so you really shouldnt break those off!] clam soup has taurine and betaine. they help protect the liver. oysters have lots of vitamins and minerals. vegetable extract juice, radish, cucumbers, chives, spinach, lotus root, chirk (chilk? dont know the english), pine leaves and insam (aka ginseng) ... there are a few more things on that page; maybe another day... i have no personal experience with any of this. i only had a hangover once and i didnt know any better to try to treat it. that day that i went through it, i was certain that i was going to die. it was as horrible hangover.

wah, really? is it dark? is it pungent? can you describe how it tastes? how do you use it? in kimchi? jjigae?

ah yes! oligo sugar! haha. now i feel all better. it was bugging me...i wonder when and if the aloe yogurt will arrive here. id love to try it!

koreans dont really use a fish sauce that is like vietnamese fish sauce. rather they use something called jeot which can be made from a number of things, but usually from shrimps or oysters that are brined (sae-u jeot and gul-jeot)... i have also seen squids added to kimchi although i do not think it was in a jeot form but i could be wrong on that particular point. maybe jschyun knows a bit better than i do about this stuff. still, the point is, that the fish sauce used its not a liquidy thing like nuoc nam or nam pla. you can actually see whole (baby) shrimps and oysters. that is not to say that nuoc nam wouldnt work. im sure it must have been tried in the past. i wonder how it tasted. sheena greena do you make it often with nuoc nam? do you often cook korean food with nuoc nam? i made a search and see that sometimes people make jjigae with it... interesting. but new to me.

ive seen a lot of the sugar syrups marketed specifically for yogurt, including aloe and blueberry... i dont know the name of the products offhand. but they come packaged similarly to the squeeze bottles that kuromitsu comes in... maybe its not sugar. probably something else like glocose or dextrose... what is it that japanese people use instead of sugar? i never tried it, but i think japanese people are more open to trying sweeteners other than sugar compared to americans. i was tempted to try the aloe one... next time i drop by the market ill try to find it.

just tried a new (to me) place: omogari they specialise in kimchi and kimchi jjigae, what they call the "omogari". since we were new the the place, we decided to go for what they specialise in and we ordered the omogari and their iron plate kimchi fried rice. for banchan we were given: muk (acorn based jelly) gul jeot (salted spiced raw oysters) kim (roasted salted seaweed sheets) baechu kimchi eomuk (fried fish cakes) cold steamed broccoli put gochu (korean peppers) duenjang, chamgireum (soybean paste and sesame seed oil) gamja jeon (fried potato slices) we did not eat the eomuk (i have banned it from my life - it always has a freezer burn taste no matter where i go) and skipped the broccoli (why? why? there must be a lot of koreans out there who like it. but i dont understand the appeal of over steamed, naked, cold broccoli). all the other banchan else was excellent. we cleared everything. and while we did not get more helpings of any of the banchan i could have had another round of the guljeot (cold and tasted of the ocean) and the excellent kimchi (de.li.cious). with the fried rice we were given a small bowl of kongnamul guk (soybean sprout broth). simple, but really, you cant go wrong with kongnamul guk so i wont give them bonus points for it being good. the fried rice was satisfying. we were asked if we wanted spam (we did) and i think they cooked it with other meat (probably pork but i dont remember); it was all good. there were no off tastes and nothing tasted even slightly rancid... i know, you must wonder what kinds of places i frequent, but i have been to average homestyle restaurants and many times i can taste the old oil gone slightly off and or meat that must have been from two nights before. and as a whole the dish did not strike me as overly oily, which is also another problem that fried rice can have. everything about the kimchi fried rice was very good. like something i would have made myself. just VERY well done. i was really happy with it, if you cant tell. the omogari was excellent too. it was tangy, sour and spicy. the kimchi was perfect for stewing. the only complaint was that they were a little bit stingy with the pork and that the pork was not fatty enough. dining partner doesnt mind pork belly but i think the trend these days is to use meats more lean... but i concur, that it wouldnt have hurt to use more fatty pork for this dish. still, it was delicious. it is a jjigae that any korean would be happy with. the house rice is also something just slightly different than the usual. it is white rice, but they add a few grains. i think they add just a little bit of lentils to the mix and something else that colors the rice reddish black. so its slightly attractively colored. something new and catches you off guard. hmm. just writing about this (this late afternoon lunch took place five days ago) and boy, i sure want to go back tonight. i guess i will... omogari 901 s western ave los angeles, ca (323) 734-4500

cardamom used somehow...?

welcome!

just an additional note. the "dunkass" restaurant is kind of considered japanese. its taken from the japanese tonkatsu. the way koreans would spell it would be don-ggaseu. i think there are donggasseu places and there are also more broader places called 'gyeong-yang-shik jip' or literally 'light western place', where you would find the koreanised ideal of western foods which include spaghetti, curries, hambak steak and tonkatsu type dishes...i kind of like the name dunkass though. it would also be an appropriate name for a doughnut shop no?

you know, i never thought about it, but yeah, when you eats the powdered donuts they are kind of "cool". huh. and i read patricks explanation. gave it a thought for a good solid minute and ill buy it! coolness! through and through

ive never heard of the shaken doshirak. i think its a how you say.... hmm. i cant come up with the word. i think the word is novelty. its a novelty thing.

rice with various side dishes. some korean families eat this way: mom will make one large entree a night and maybe a large amount of a typical banchan. the entree is partially eaten along with leftover entrees from two, three and four days ago (now served up as banchan) and banchan from two, three and four days ago. some of this will pop up in dosirak. sometimes mom will make stuff specifically for lunch, sometimes momll take from leftovers. anyway, in doshirak, youll include a lot of banchan, and sometimes a small amount of entrees like bulgogi, fish and seafood dishes, deep fried meats and or veggies, western specialties (hot dog dishes), spam stuff, spaghetti, kimbaps, omlettes, dumplings, leftover curries, chinese food, japanese food... lots of stuff goes. its lame to say it, but korean food that packs well is pretty much the answer. you dont want something too fussy and you want something with rice. <a href="http://cook.miznet.daum.net/Cook/cook/cook_theme.asp?Bbs_Code=B7">heres a page on "simple and pretty" doshirak</a>

again, ill say that i dont make kimchi, but i wanted to ask, when you taste the kimchi that you are making, does it taste salty? it shouldnt be overly salty. if it doesnt taste salty then maybe it is something else you need to tweak to make it turn out the way you want.