Dol sot bibimbap tutorial

By popular demand from the girlfriends! Here is the pictorial tutorial on Picassa (say that fast 5 times).

Korean eggplant noodles–Kaji Kuksu

It’s about the best thing that could happen to a spaghetti noodle, in my opinion! Yes, this humble recipe looked rather uninspiring for me from the page of Korean Vegetarian Cooking, but I had all the ingredients and a touch of curiousity so the conditions were ripe.
My adaptation:
Cut an eggplant into 2″ long slices, then parboil for 2 minutes in boiling water till the skin begins to change colour. Remove with slotted spoon, then into the purply water add 250g or 1/2 lb of wheat noodles–I used whole wheat spaghetti. While that cooks, finely mince a clove of garlic and slice 3-4 scallions, roughly seperating the green and white parts as you slice. Heat a wok or skillet and when hot, add vegetable oil and a dribble of toasted sesame oil, for fragrance. (Cooking will take under 2 minutes in total) Immediately add the parboiled eggplants, stir, then add 3-4T of (light) soy sauce, minced garlic, and the white of the scallions. Turn off heat and add the green scallion slices, just so they heat through and turn bright green. Drain the pasta when ready, slice with kitchen scissors a few times (to make the pieces approximate the size of the eggplant slices and easier to handle with chopsticks). Gently fold in the pasta, then turn out onto a serving platter. Sprinkle with plenty of sesame seeds–I forgot that in the dish photo, but when serving I added black and pale yellow seeds for contrast. Delicious! This is my new favourite pasta dish!

Cucumber noodles

It’s getting warmer here in Brussels and time to make something other than my dear old favourite, dol sot bibimbap. Thus I pulled out Flavors of Korea: Delicious Vegetarian Cuisine and made cucumber noodles. For one to two servings, prepare the cucumber first: peel and julienne a large (seedless) cuke, then add to a mixture of 2T of rice vinegar, 1T soy sauce, a minced clove of garlic, 3 minced scallions, 2t gochujang (Korean chili paste), 2t toasted sesame oil, a good pinch salt. Let the flavours soak in while you boil the noodles, drain, rinse with cool water, then mound on a platter with the cucumber mixture on top. Serve with a protein-rich garnish of hard boiled egg. I used spelt tortellini as it’s my favourite wholegrain pasta to put in Asian dishes, the whole wheat pastas I find locally come off as very Italian.

Gochujang

The addictive Korean spicy bean paste is in the Kam Yuen supermarket at Place Brouckère, so I bought two more tubs to tide me over till the next time. Bonnie texted me on Sunday to spread the good news!

Summer bibimbap

Elise in Korea shared her fresh bibimbap recipe in a comment, it’s so good it should be a full-fledged post:

I also like ‘fresh vegetable bibimbab’, which is good for summer: just combine the ingredients in a big bowl and put a lot of cut up lettuce, shredded/sliced raw carrots, cucumbers, etc. Easy and yummy!!!

Dol sot bibimbap with Bonnie

My amiga Bonnie is a Canuck and another former resident of Korea. Like me, she’s fallen in love with the cuisine so on Saturday night we indulged in some dol sot bimbimbap (hot stone ‘bibimbap’ / mixed rice). Hers featured the traditional fried egg on top, which I added too soon so you see the yolk got cloudy as it cooked too thoroughly.

Dol sot bibimbap

Shek O beach

My friend Gabby and I hiked the Shek O area today. Shek O has the prettiest beaches in Hong Kong. We wandered around the mountain a bit then after a few hours went down to the beach. At one point we were alone sitting in a pagoda and 5 big dogs appeared. Gabby got nervous, she doesn’t like dogs, so we got up and walked down the path away from them, which put us on a new hike route. We had planned to hike the romatnically named Dragon’s Back (mountain) but after this detour we never made it. Instead, we hiked the Hong Kong Trail, which is cool if just for the name. There were very few people on the hike, it was so nice and peaceful.

We saw dozens of butterflies of all different sizes and colors, including a black one as big as my hand. It was 26C when we made it to Big Wave beach at Shek O. The beach has soft sand, perfect to walk in after a long hike (on concrete paths). There were surfers and wakeboarders there and a bunch of French couples. Two people were paragliding over the mountains and beaches.

It was such a great hike, the best so far, I feel just great… my mind is clear, and I’m hungry. I made Korean food for dinner–my favorite.

Hiking Victoria Peak

Juuuuust came back from a solo hike up Victoria Peak, aka The Peak. It was such a city escape, at times I couldn’t believe I was on Hong Kong Island. Pictures coming up soon…

New skate routes!

Surfing ’round the Internet last night I found a great site, MapMyRun, and if one clicks on the various trails mapped out you’ll find routes on pavement that are skate-able. Check this one out: a skate path along a channel up north in the New Territories. I like the ‘Mixte’ option at the bottom of the map where you see the map and satellite imagery overlaid.
Magic Cucumber 10k
Find more Runs in Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Wicked Game

Things are going alright in Hong Kong, although househunting is still a challenge. My department at the university is really swell, I have a great job. They are going to partially subsidize my doctoral class at the Open University Hong Kong, and I think I just secured my pilot study. Already! It looks like I can access my money, and I got an advance to tide me over while I await the 3-day wire transfer of ‘big’ money from Belgium. I found places to get nice hot meals of stir-fried tofu, vegetables and rice conveniently on campus for under E2. The department *might* have funding to cover my purchase of a Sony Flybook for use during my commutes. Now is that not spiffy? But I don’t have housing yet, that still must come.

Here it’s monsoon season and most evenings there are thunderstorms with flash flood rains. Last night I watched the rain pelt down on the ground, already flooded, silhouetted in lightning flashes and car lights from my room twenty floors above.

Still it’s lonely here, to be abruptly separated from loved ones. The languid sound of the tropics is calling me… This popped into my head and I can’t get it out.