Korean-style cold and spicy noodles

This dish is very similar to the Korean dish called Nangmyon. However, I use different noodles. Instead of buckwheat, because they are typically not gluten free, I use sweet potato glass noodles which are normally used to make Jjapchae. I am always craving this, and whip it up at say... 9 PM when I should be thinking about sleeping but get too excited about traveling and I work up an appetite packing.

Ingredients:
1 T vegetable bouillon (not necessary)
2 servings of sweet potato noodles, or whatever you prefer
1 heaping T Korean hot paste (sunchang is normally gluten free)
1 T soy sauce
2 tsp white distilled vinegar
2 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp pureed pear, or sugar
1 T sesame seeds

Boil the bouillon in several cups of water in a large pot. Boil the noodles until tender, then drain and rinse in cold water. Reserve the liquid from pot in order to modify flavor of your noodles. While the noodles are cooking, mix the rest of the ingredients in a large bowl. Once noodles are rinsed, add to the bowl with the spicy mixture, and mix well. If you need to dilute your noodles due to spice, add the bouillon water from boiling your noodles. I usually ice this water before adding to noodles.

Some add cucumbers and fried egg to this. Well, most do. However, at 9 PM, this is what I'm giving myself!

Roasting Seaweed

I've posted a while back about how great of a snack seaweed is. I love it with a bit of rice. In some households, kids eat chicken fingers all day. Well in mine growing up, my brother and I were all over seaweed and rice. I guess we both still are! You can buy little packets of it in the store, but it's incredibly expensive, especially when it takes all of 5 minutes to do in your own kitchen and it tastes so much more fresh.

This is all you need:
A package of seaweed... as much of it as you like.
A brush for food
sea salt
sesame oil
large pan... my mom just used her stove top

Lay out each piece of seaweed, paint on thin coat of sesame oil, then sprinkle with the amount of salt to your preference. I love salt so I throw it on very generously. You may want to hold back and just sprinkle a very light amount. With the pan heated on high, use your fingers or a tong to lay a piece of seaweed in there for about 3 seconds (until it starts to crinkle a little) then flip for a couple of seconds and continue until all seaweed is done. You can chop it into fourths, which is what I prefer since I like a mouth full of seaweed, or into sixths which is what is normal. Serve it alone or with a teaspoon of rice per piece of seaweed for a light lunch or snack.

tubu kimchi

If you ever have slightly soured kimchi laying around and you don't know what to do with it, make tubu kimchi! This dish is incredibly healthy, tasty, and easy. The tubu is packed with protein and the kimchi is just vinegared cabbage with spice, come on, that's a healthy dish.

Just toss in a tablespoon of sesame oil into a skillet and add the kimchi, once the pan is hot. While heating, cut up a block of tubu and place on a plate. Next to the tubu, place the kimchi. I eat this with brown rice, simply because of the salty flavor of the dish, but it's not completely necessary. Yum!

home made noodles AND mandu (dumpling) skins + filling

The one thing I really miss is mandu. Mandu are Korean dumplings, basically wontons or whatever you want to call them. The only reason I can't have them is because the wrappers are made of wheat flour. My grandmother used to make all of our noodles homemade, so my mom and I decided to make our own noodles AND mandu skins.

The noodle/mandu skin mix:
4.5 cups GF all purpose flour
1.5 cups cold water

Use a fork or masher to mix the water into the flour 1/2 cup by 1/2 cup so that you don't get the mix too wet. Once you knead it enough, get it into a ball and place on cutting board. Knead it more and add flour if you need to if it's too wet. It needs to be kind of dry to where it is cracking off.

If you want to make noodles you would flatten it out to about an 1/8 inch thick then fold it over in halfs and cut it width-wise, shake flour over it, and freeze them until you need them.

If you are making the skins, you would roll it out into a long bratwurst shape and cut off 1 inch pieces. Flatten each piece into a very thin, round paper. (Make sure you do this right before you put the mix into the papers).

The Mandu Mix
3 Tofu Squares, fresh from tub at market and squeezed very dry
10 cups kimchi, chopped and drained well (after drained, it will be less than 10 cups)
8 oz cooked japchae noodles, cut (noodles are important to absorb excess moisture)
2 eggs
3 T sesame oil
1/4 cup red pepper powder
1 T black pepper
^^ Mix everything together in a large bowl.

Place a tablespoon full of mix into the center of the circular, flattened-out dough. Dip one finger into water and wet the outer edge of the skin. Fold up a side of the dough and seal it to the other half and press. Set aside until all are complete. When ready to steam, place over simmering water and cook until dumpling is heated, about 10 minutes. If you add meat to this dish, make sure to cook it for about 20 minutes. If you don't cook these immediately, put them in the freezer in a sealed plastic bag and you can pull them out and steam them easily.

Asahi, breath of fresh Korean air :)

Ahhhhhhh, relief. The worst part about Korean food is that everything seems to be made with soy sauce or hot pepper paste or tashida or bean paste, all of which contain wheat. I wanted to take my mom out, and her favorite food is Korean. We went to mine and Jake's favorite Korean restaurant down the street, Asahi. This place is funny because its name is Asahi Restaurant and Sushi Bar, so one would think it's a Japanese restaurant and sushi bar. Quite the contrary! Anyway, I would normally just order the tubu kimchi without soy sauce. As I was ordering however, Kimberly the waitress, informed me that she can make anything at the restaurant with Gluten Free soy sauce if need be, and that nothing is made with tashida! Oh my goodness, you can imagine my excitement. I had her give me another few minutes seeing as I can now actually have a choice as to what I wanted to eat. I have been craving my favorite Korean dish, JJampong, which is super spicy and made with lots of seafood, and had her use Japchae noodles instead of the regular handmade noodles. Japchae noodles are great because they are usually made with Sweet Potato starch. This was soo good! I can now go to the restaurant whenever I want and get whatever I want with whatever I want in it without the fear of getting sick later. I don't know if Kimberly knows this, I think she does, but she totally made my night. I have always suggested to anyone who wants good Korean food to go to Asahi, but now I am even more enthusiastic about how wonderful it is. No artificial ingredients and very gluten friendly!

Duk-kook (Korean Rice Cake soup) or Just Plain Old Beef Stew

Duk-kook is the traditional Korean soup eaten by Koreans on the Lunar New Year. I grew up on it, and still love it. It's packed with lean protein, veggies, and a some rice cakes, which can be found at any Asian market. You can enjoy the stew itself with plain old rice and it's delicious, but I like it with rice cakes because the texture is great.

5 QT crock pot
3 lbs boneless chuck roast
water up to 1 inch above meat
about 12 cloves of garlic (my blood is probably 50% garlic...)
2 bunches green onions
1 egg
Korean radish or any fat radish
Korean rice cakes (duk)
salt
pepper
Korean red pepper
drop of Gluten Free Reduced Sodium soy sauce
drop of sesame oil

Cook the meat on low in the crockpot overnight, with the water up to 1 inch above it, along with the garlic cloves. Remove meat the next morning, as well as the soup, put in separate containers and refrigerate for a few hours, until the fat in the soup rises to the surface, then use a slotted spoon to scrape the fat off of the surface of the soup and add the meat and soup back to the pot, after tearing the meat into pieces with your fingers. Slice radish and any other veggies into soup, and cook on low for 3 hrs. For the last few minutes add in rice cakes and cook on high, then add in 1 egg, pinch of salt, pepper, red pepper, and green onions and 1 drop of GF soy sauce and 1 drop of sesame oil, if desired. It's ready to eat once the duk rises to the surface and is soft and chewy and the egg is cooked.

Kimchi fried rice (kimchi bokumpop)

You can probably tell we're using a lot of rice lately. It's simply because I made a ton of rice the other night thinking more of it would get eaten, but my health-crazed friends stuck to all the meat and veggies more so than the rice. My mom and I aren't ones to waste food (oh yeah, my mom came to surprise me the other night so I'll be posting a good bit of Korean food on here because she takes it upon herself to cook all the time). I love this rice because it's spicy and I love to eat cabbage because I feel like I'm being good to my body since I'm bad at taking in veggies when in other dishes :)

Ingredients:
4 cups cooked rice
1 cup chopped kimchi
1/4 tsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp gluten free, reduced sodium soy sauce
2 eggs

In a frying pan, use 1 tsp soybean oil and stir-fry kimchi, then add cooked rice and add soy sauce and sesame oil. Stir all together, then move rice around so there is a hole in the center of the pan. Add a little oil to the pan into the hole, then crack the eggs, and cover the hole with rice and let sit for about 7 minutes. Stir it up and it's ready to eat!

samgyupsal (korean lettuce wraps)

One meal we can always count on having when everyone in the family is around, is samgyupsal. It's the korean sandwich, ultimately. Everything includes lettuce (red leaf or romaine), un-marinated meat which is normally fatty pork but I used beef because I can't stand pork, sauteed green onions, gochujang (korean hot paste), kimchi, and sesame sauce for dipping the meat, and of course, rice. On a piece of lettuce, a pinch of hot paste is placed, then a spoonful of rice, kimchi, meat dipped into the sesame sauce, and green onions. Then you wrap the lettuce up and shove the whole thing in your mouth without hesitation. The messier and the bigger your mouthful, the better :) Usually served along with the meal is soup or fish or squid or anything else you'd like to eat along with it. Whatever you want, goes!

mmmmmm (kim)POP!

Just as everyone has some form of a taco in their country (wrap, spring roll, lettuce wrap), everyone has some form of sushi (sandwich, rice bowl, kimpop). I LOVE kimpop. My mom used to pack these for me when I was kid to take to school since I wouldn't touch a sandwich. You can put whatever you want in these. My family always uses hot dogs (free of artificial gunk), eggs, cucumber, and pickled radish. I also like to add kimchi into mine and it makes it uber delicious. They can be packed with protein for a good, healthy snack, or however you like it. For my sister-in-law, who isn't a fan of meat, we just use cucumbers and eggs and it's just as wonderful. You can also use brown rice instead of white rice, a combination, or no rice to be a little more paleo.

Ingredients:
8 cups cooked rice
1/3 cup distilled white vinegar
1 T salt
1 T sesame oil
2 T sesame seeds
12 sheets of plain seaweed (remember, this makes 12 rolls so you can half all of this)
8 hot dogs, sliced into long skinny pieces and sauteed in pan until slightly cooked
8 eggs, whisked in bowl and fried into thin sheets
1 cucumber (sliced into long skinny pieces)
1 "Dakwan" radish sliced into long skinny pieces (pickled radish you can find at any oriental market)

Mix all ingredients from rice down to sesame seeds together. Spread a big spoonful of rice onto seaweed sheet until sheet is covered, but don't use a ton of rice. Add rest of ingredients lengthwise in 1 row on sheet, then roll and slice into about 1/2 inch pieces and heat your heart out!