korean squid

[tissue]

I can't get enough of korean stir fried squid in that red sauce. It's a lot milder than it looks.

[mongo_jones]

I can't get enough of korean stir fried squid in that red sauce. It's a lot milder than it looks.

if we're thinking of the same dish it depends on where you go. i've had a fairly incendiary version at hodori on vermont/olympic in los angeles. my wife makes a pretty fiery version herself. now, if i could only get the squid away from her and do some indian experiments with it...

[adobohead]

That sounds good...I'll have to order it next time I'm out for Korean.

[torakris]

are we talking about ojhingu bokum? Sorry if the spelling is off....

Basically squid stirfried with chilies and some other vegetables with a kochujang sauce?

If so I love this stuff ! Madhur Jaffrey has a great recipe for it in "A Taste of the Far East" with chiles, kochujang and powdered chile pepper. I usually leave out the powdered chile as the dish has quite a bit of heat without it.

I could go for some right now!

[tissue]

I can't get enough of korean stir fried squid in that red sauce. It's a lot milder than it looks.

if we're thinking of the same dish it depends on where you go. i've had a fairly incendiary version at hodori on vermont/olympic in los angeles. my wife makes a pretty fiery version herself. now, if i could only get the squid away from her and do some indian experiments with it...

I go to Hodori quite regularly and it's not that bad. Hehe..

[mongo_jones]

I can't get enough of korean stir fried squid in that red sauce. It's a lot milder than it looks.

if we're thinking of the same dish it depends on where you go. i've had a fairly incendiary version at hodori on vermont/olympic in los angeles. my wife makes a pretty fiery version herself. now, if i could only get the squid away from her and do some indian experiments with it...

I go to Hodori quite regularly and it's not that bad. Hehe..

oooh my spicy-food eating capabilities are being challenged! believe me, as a bengali, i am able to eat a lot of very spicy food. perhaps the squid i had there was an aberration. on the other hand if you think hodori's yook gae jiang isn't spicy either then we may have a different definition of spicy.

[mongo_jones]

are we talking about ojhingu bokum? Sorry if the spelling is off....

Basically squid stirfried with chilies and some other vegetables with a kochujang sauce?

If so I love this stuff ! Madhur Jaffrey has a great recipe for it in "A Taste of the Far East" with chiles, kochujang and powdered chile pepper. I usually leave out the powdered chile as the dish has quite a bit of heat without it.

I could go for some right now!

my wife has started using my chilli powder to make her version--it is markedly spicier now. she does not, of course, concede that this might mean that bengalis can eat spicier food than koreans.

[Louisa Chu]

My Korean-American friend/roomie/fellow Cordon Bleu Grace says that yes, it is the ojingo-bokum - squid stir fried in red pepper paste - the gochujang - and lots of garlic - and almost always with some kind of secret ajuma ingredients. Ajuma is the familiar term for an older married woman - a more polite form of address would be ajumarni. Ajumas know how to throw down the good home cooking.

Grace also says that if you like the squid, you should really try the octopus sometime - nakji-bokum - a much more refined and tender dish. It's usually served with a cold or warm bean sprout broth - bean sprouts served as a side dish separately, with unseasoned dried laver, vinegar marinated yellow radish, and white cabbage kimchi - and of course rice.

And what's even better is the live baby octopus. About the size of one's thumb, you dip or not dip - in a vinegar/red pepper paste sauce - pop it in your mouth, then - and this is crucial - chew fast - otherwise the live baby octopus will sticker to the inside of your throat. Grace likes to dip in her own custom mix of gochujang and cider - which is then called cho-gochujang.

[mongo_jones]

who else thinks grace needs to get her own egullet membership?

[Louisa Chu]

mongo - man, I'm trying. Grace is an encyclopedia of Korean food - plus she cooks like an ajuma, but looks like she could be the Korean-American Nigella.

And I should clarify - cho-gochujang is the name for any vinegar/hot red pepper paste sauce - cho being the Korean word for vinegar, as it is in Chinese. Grace just prefers to do cider over the vinegar.

[mongo_jones]

mongo - man, I'm trying. Grace is an encyclopedia of Korean food - plus she cooks like an ajuma, but looks like she could be the Korean-American Nigella.

And I should clarify - cho-gochujang is the name for any vinegar/hot red pepper paste sauce - cho being the Korean word for vinegar, as it is in Chinese. Grace just prefers to do cider over the vinegar.

excuse me, but my wife is the korean-american nigella. and she's upstairs making kim-chi as we speak. from shrimp she raised herself in our bath-tub and fermented with her own sweat.

[Louisa Chu]

mongo, props to your wife then - sounds like she's got a whole Martha thing going on too. But I think this might involve some kind of Iron Chef/Nigella cook-off/eat-off - I'm sure that will bring in some pretty hot ratings on FoodTV. And Grace is making her infamous tohpohki for me as we speak.

[mongo_jones]

mongo, props to your wife then - sounds like she's got a whole Martha thing going on too. But I think this might involve some kind of Iron Chef/Nigella cook-off/eat-off - I'm sure that will bring in some pretty hot ratings on FoodTV. And Grace is making her infamous tohpohki for me as we speak.

tohpohki?

shurely not dok-bok-ki? my wife's making it too. we seem to live in some strange parallel universe. you're not an indian man are you?

[Louisa Chu]

shurely not dok-bok-ki? my wife's making it too. we seem to live in some strange parallel universe. you're not an indian man are you?

Most assuredly it was tohpohki - chewy little flat, oval rice cakes; thinly sliced fish cakes; lamyan; spicy red sauce - with thick sliced yellow vinegar marinated radish on the side.

Are you sure you're not a Chinese-American girl living in Paris?

[mongo_jones]

shurely not dok-bok-ki? my wife's making it too. we seem to live in some strange parallel universe. you're not an indian man are you?

Most assuredly it was tohpohki - chewy little flat, oval rice cakes; thinly sliced fish cakes; lamyan; spicy red sauce - with thick sliced yellow vinegar marinated radish on the side.

Are you sure you're not a Chinese-American girl living in Paris?

we're talking about the same thing. however, each of our korean-american native-informants transcribes it differently in english. "tohpohki" is what it sounds like though when "dok (the rice cakes) bok (from the verb "to fry") ki" is spoken idiomatically. or so my wife says.

[Pan]

I hope Grace decides to join eGullet because I'd be interested to ask her what she plans on doing in the culinary world. Sounds like a fun roommate!

[Louisa Chu]

Pan, Grace is an amazingly fun roommate. Miran and I were talking about how Grace used to go on these Korean food marathon binges - where she'd have to have topoki every day for a week for example - and then couldn't stand to see the stuff for months. Because I want to see and try everything, she's varied her daily requirement of Korean food so that I've had everything from silkworms to squid to PX stew.

What she plans to do in the culinary world? She says she can't really say yet.

I still think the world needs her as a Korean-American Nigella.

[Pan]

What's PX stew, and how do Koreans cook (?) silkworms? Are silkworms hard to find in Paris?

[trillium]

my wife has started using my chilli powder to make her version--it is markedly spicier now. she does not, of course, concede that this might mean that bengalis can eat spicier food than koreans.

The Bengalis I've known didn't really impress me with their spicy food eating capabilities (The Tamils and Singaporeans could take them down every time) and they insist on putting too much sweet in savory dishes (ok maybe I should clarify that they were Ghoti or will that just make it worse?). So...I'd tend to side with your lovely wife. That being said, the Korean chilli powder we've bought has been really wimpy in the capsaicin department but we thought maybe we just bought a dud bag.

regards,

trillium

[Louisa Chu]

Pan, not surprisingly, PX stew's a holdover from the Korean War days - Spam, hot dogs, bacon, etc. - done up in a kimchi stew. Grace has made it for me here with French saucisse - er, hot dogs. You'll find PX stew cafes around Korea. Silkworms - Grace promises to take me to her favourite silkworm street vendors in Seoul - where they serve mounds of fresh, hot, crispy, meaty silkworms in a big paper cone - like frites! - but not - really, really not. Here in Paris we get them in a can - from Hana Market in the 15th arrondissement - imported from Korea, poptop can, stick 'em in the microwave - voila! - quick and easy hot silkworm snack - miam miam!

[mongo_jones]

The Bengalis I've known didn't really impress me with their spicy food eating capabilities (The Tamils and Singaporeans could take them down every time) and they insist on putting too much sweet in savory dishes (ok maybe I should clarify that they were Ghoti or will that just make it worse?). So...I'd tend to side with your lovely wife. That being said, the Korean chilli powder we've bought has been really wimpy in the capsaicin department but we thought maybe we just bought a dud bag.

regards,

trillium

trillium,

how much is she paying you?

seriously, bengalis may not eat the spiciest food of all indians (that honour probably goes to andhra-ites with their weapons grade chilli powder) but tamils? also, not all bengali dishes are spicy--in fact probably a minority of them are but the bengalis i know can eat spicy food with the best of them. both my parents (1 ghoti, 1 bangal) eat raw whole green chillies (the little skinny spicy ones) with every meal.

but yes, koreans eat way spicier food than bengalis, but there's no reason why my wife should hear this from me. we both had our tongues blown out of our mouths by the thai food in bangkok though.

where are you from?

regards,

mongo

[trillium]

how much is she paying you?

dammit, I could have been paid for that?!? next time...

seriously, bengalis may not eat the spiciest food of all indians (that honour probably goes to andhra-ites with their weapons grade chilli powder) but tamils? also, not all bengali dishes are spicy--in fact probably a minority of them are but the bengalis i know can eat spicy food with the best of them. both my parents (1 ghoti, 1 bangal) eat raw whole green chillies (the little skinny spicy ones) with every meal.

I dunno. Maybe the Bengalis I know are just wimps. Whole green chillies? Forget it. They're too busy putting jaggery where it doesn't belong. Andhran food....yum.

but yes, koreans eat way spicier food than bengalis, but there's no reason why my wife should hear this from me. we both had our tongues blown out of our mouths by the thai food in bangkok though.

where are you from?

Yeah, in general, from what I've noticed, SE Asian food can make the toughest Indian sweat, but I've never had a serious heat loving southerner (from India) eat at our house. When a Bombayian eats at our house he suffers, but it doesn't stop him from eating, just slows him down a little.

I'm originally from the Pacific Northwest but I've lived with a chilli-loving Singaporean for the last 10 years and I guess it's rubbed off. We grow our own because the shops don't carry the right kind and they're never hot enough. He's complaining because now in Portland we don't have those scorching summers like we did in the midwest and the chillies aren't as hot. When it's not chilli growing season, we usually have those little green SE Asian guys, little reds, long reds and medium reds in the freezer, dried medium and long red, at least 3 or 4 sambals and plenty of rempah (fresh tumeric, chillies, galangal and shallots with a touch of belecan) and pickled big green guys, plus Nonya "curry" powder from S'pore made to his mum-in-laws specs. When it's just us, I'm the wimp in the house, but then someone from a spicy food eating place comes over and screams bloody murder about the hot and it makes me feel better. My mum claims that living with him has robbed me of my tastebuds, she literally cries sometimes when she eats with us, and he's actually toned down the hot for her.

regards,

trillium

[sacre_bleu]

are we talking about ojhingu bokum? Sorry if the spelling is off.... 

Basically squid stirfried with chilies and some other vegetables with a kochujang sauce?

If so I love this stuff ! Madhur Jaffrey has a great recipe for it in "A Taste of the Far East" with chiles, kochujang and powdered chile pepper. I usually leave out the powdered chile as the dish has quite a bit of heat without it.

I could go for some right now!

Please, can some kind Korean soul contribute a recipe? (Not necessarily the Jaffrey version.) I've tried to duplicate this at home, and I have the kochujang, etc., but I can't seem to get the proportions right in the sauce.

[jschyun]

excuse me, but my wife is the korean-american nigella. and she's upstairs making kim-chi as we speak. from shrimp she raised herself in our bath-tub and fermented with her own sweat.

I sure hope you have two bathrooms. Or at least a separate shower.

[skchai]

Sacrebleu, not having access to the Jaffrey recipe, all the ones I could find were in Korean and even then written in the typical laconic Korean housewife's cookbook style. No precise quantities or directions. Sort of like the pre-Victorian English cookbooks, but even less precise. For instance, the recipe in my "Housewife's Life" cookbook calls for green onions, garlic, soy sauce, corn starch, salt, sesame oil, and vegetable oil. No quantities are specified, not even references to "a goodly scoop" or "a teacupful".

But given that a wide range of Korean dishes use similar seasonings, you might infer that reasonable portions are approximately 2 tsp. of chopped garlic, 2 tsp. of chopped ginger, 2 Tbsp. of soy sauce, 2 Tbsp. chile bean paste (gochujang), and 2 tsp. of sesame oil for about 2 squid. Flatten and skin the squid. Cut off tentacles and slice head into 0.5" strips. Cut all parts into 2" long pieces. Cut about three or four thin green onions into about 2" cylinders as well.

Stir-fry green onions in some vegetable oil with chopped garlic and ginger for about a minute. Premix and add all the rest of the ingredients, except sesame oil. Stir-fry briefly until squid is just cooked, which will be very soon. Swirl through sesame oil to make glossy. That's it!

If you want a more "saucy" dish, add about 1/2 cup water when you put in the rest of the ingredients, then thicken at last minute with about 1 tsp. of cornstarch mixed with a bit more water.