One Pork Spare Rib on a Bed of Kimchi, Served with a Side of Peas.

For dinner one night, I thought I'd go back to the principle and actually mix kimchi with Western foods. I had a pork spare rib from the night before, so I decided to fry it up and lay it on a some chopped up kimchi, like you would eat German sausage on sauerkraut.

First, I had to chop up the kmichi in to small pieces like I did for the kimchi hotdogs. For that, I used my scissors-in-the-jar technique!

A Christmas-y Treat!

This one isn't about kimchi (because I ran out, actually), but I have been eating two famous Korean confectionery products. They are Choco Pie by Orion Confectionery and 몽쉘 (pronounced similar to mong shell but the packaging is all in Korean) by Lotte Confectionery. They are round, cake filled sweets with semi-hard chocolate on the outside so you can hold it. Both products are similar in size and shape, but different in filling and texture.

Because it's nearly Christmas time, I thought I'd try brandy (!) flavoured custard with chopped up Choco Pie and 몽쉘.

It worked really well together - the custard on the spoon with a chunk of the cake snack provided some contrast to the slightly dry cakes, and combining the two products in the one dessert provided a little variation between each spoonful!

The Choco Pie actually has a slight vanilla taste, with a plain cake and marsh mellow. The 몽쉘 is actually chocolate cake with a cream centre. It is decorated on the outer shell with chocolate sauce where as the Choco Pie's outer shell is just plain.

I think next time I'd like to add actual brandy (this just contained flavouring) or even try it with (finely chopped though) ice cream instead.

Speaking of ice cream.... I'll just leave this here....

Kimchi on a Roll!

I made simple bread roll with fried kransky, and finely chopped up kimchi that I used much like a relish. On the side, I had some squash and one quarter of the kransky that wouldn't fit on the roll.

The kimchi hotdog I did very similarly turned out better, I think the whole would have been better with pork mince patty or the kransky already cut in to bite sized pieces. But it doesn't matter. I always say, "It counts as a vegetable!"

잘 먹겠습니다

Korean-American burgers at Eat Street Markets!

In Brisbane over these past few months, the river-side suburb of Hamilton has been host to some food and indie goods markets called Eat Street Markets.

The markets themselves covered a wide area, probably at least 5,000 meters squared! (According to my rough Google Maps estimate.) Inside, there are various stalls build out of shipping containers selling every kind of cuisine imaginable, from American ribs, Asian, Mexican, South American, probably more that I didn't even see! There were also independent artisans selling their craft - homemade greeting cards, decorated lamps or something like that.

The actual food! 

(Since that's what we're here for...)

I found this great place called Korma Sliders which of course does Korean inspired "sliders" - mini, often gourmet style burgers small enough to eat 2 or 3 in one sitting.

There was a choice of 3 different meats - chicken, beef, or pork in Korean sauces - bulgogi for the beef, honey-miso for the pork belly (of course pork belly, it's Korean!), and spicy barbecue on the chicken. 

The beef was cooked well, nice and tender and juicy, and in small enough pieces that you could still take bites out of the burger without loosing the rest of contents. The bulgogi marinade seemed fresh like they'd made themselves - not that I'd truly expect otherwise. It came with a kimchi-slaw for the salad which is like ordinary coleslaw, but with kimchi possibly in place of the onion. The various flavours worked really well together to a make a fantastic little burger. 

I got the bulgogi beef slider.

As a side dish I got sweet potato fries with aioli, topped with kimchi-cheese! That is, literally kimchi and grated cheese.  

This was a fun dish because fries, cheese, kimchi! The kimchi was pretty good, fermented a while and not sweetened with sugar. I went to a Korean restaurant the other day and the kimchi didn't taste great even though it was a Korean restaurant. My friend (hi Zoe!) suggested that it was because they added sugar to it for the Western customers. So, luckily this place didn't do that, it was rich and deep. with garlic. The grated cheese was cheddar I think and it melted into the fries and the kimchi complementing each other. My only complaint was that the fries themselves were not crisp, but then, I think sweet potato fries are harder to get crispy than normal potato fries.

Hopefully, I can try the other flavours and burgers if I get back to the Markets again! (But so many other foods to try...)

Boom Boom Steak!

We went back to Boom Boom at the Myer Centre because it happened to be convenient, and this time I got the Western Style Steak dish.

As you can see (or if not, I'll describe it), it came on a sizzling hot plate like the chicken dish from last time, topped with some sort of gravy and decorated with fried onions - paired up with baked beans. (An Australian classic?) The steak itself was tender and seemed to be a decent cut without much superfluous fat or gristle. The onions weren't cooked as much as if they'd been barbecued - only lightly browned. That seems to be common in Asian cooking that I've found. Still, at least the onion wasn't raw, so I was able to tolerate that much onion in the one meal. The baked beans were just that, I'd be surprised if they even made them in store - and honestly, why should they, they're a Korean restaurant not a Western cafe.

The salad , chips, bread, and Coke that the meal came with is exactly the same as last time, as you'd expect  so I'll just refer you to the previous blog!

Without the unusual amount of cheese and chicken in the one dish as the previous time (having just a medium sized steak), I was able to leave without feeling sick as if I over-ate. The steak itself was good enough, and the salad was nice, though they still need to improve their chips and bread. Of course... they are a Korean restaurant not a steak house where you'd expect good chips. 

Korean Restaurant Boom Boom

We went to the Korean casual dining restaurant in Brisbane's Myer Centre, Boom Boom. Next to the cinema complex and a video game arcade, this restaurant caters to a young and "hip" audience with posters of the Korean spirit alcohol soju, featuring attractive models and the day's specials on the walls in brightly coloured chalk or paint.

They had a special menu with "Western styled" meals for $20 including chips, salad, a soft drink and the main meal. I got a Cheese Chicken Teriyaki meal. It was a stir-fry meal with vegetables and chicken served on a sizzling hot plate.

Cutely, they shaped the carrot into a little X.

For some reason they gave everyone in the restaurant a free can of Chil Sung Cider, a popular Korean soft drink similar to lemonade. (I kept the can of Coke for later since I didn't want to drink too much soft drink in the one day since it's not healthy.) Like many Korean restaurants, side dishes (Banchan or 반찬) were included to share - kimchi, a Korean pickled seaweed dish (counts as a vegetable!), and I think corn pasta.

 

 

  The bread crusty rolls with garlic butter nice enough - indeed crunchy and salted, but a little dry. The chips on the other hand were pretty bland, without much flavor and missing that nice crunch you'd want. But that was just an extra for the Westerners. 

The actual stir-fry meal was nice, the vegetables were cooked well and there wasn't too much sauce compared to the meal. The chicken and cheese went well together but of course by the end of the meal it become quite rich and sickly. I suppose if I had a larger appetite that wouldn't be a problem. The salad was simple enough, just lettuce and some sort of mayonnaise all chopped up into bits small enough to eat with chopsticks. 

The dinner was nice enough for the price, it would be good for a dinner with friends before or after a movie or a few drinks with food.

A light stir-fry meal.

A quick blog for a quick meal I think tonight. Just snow peas, sliced chunks of broccoli, and of course kimchi. Drizzled with sweet soy sauce.

I fried the snow peas and broccoli first in a high heat to help keep them crisp while they cook, then added the kimchi. Finally I added the sweet soy sauce which actually helped the kimchi quite a bit - it gave it a sweet taste with a hint of that great fermented-chili taste I love about kimchi.