Cooking my first Korean dish
I've been given the task to handle dinner for Wednesday. I also took care of dinner on Monday so doing this twice a week is a BIG DEAL for me. Yosh!! :D
First things first, I have NEVER EVER attempted to cook Korean dishes despite my appreciation for the cuisine as long as it's not crazy hot and not pork, I'll eat it. But I always knew that if I ever attempted to make one, it would most certainly be Bibimbap. The first time I had Bibimbap was with a friend of mine and we ordered this dish from a Korean fastfood place. It was INSTANT GRATIFICATION IN A BOWL! Wow! Whenever I had a craving for a comforting Korean dish, I'd order Bibimbap.
Bibimbap basically means "mixed rice". It's a rice meal mixed with meat, veggies and an egg topped with 'gochujang' which is a hot pepper paste.
I went through several cooking videos on YouTube but some of them had very exotic ingredients and I currently live in an area where these types of food cannot be easily found in a regular supermarket. Good thing, Duston's place of work is located near an Asian food store so that's how we got 'gochujang'. I found this video which not only had available ingredients but the instructions were not flashy and very easy to follow.
Click to viewThe video is only 5 minutes and 45 seconds long so I thought I could nail this thing in just a little over an hour but that didn't happen. I think it took me a little bit more than two hours to get everything ready on the table. But this is my first time so I guess that's expected. I had the laptop on the kitchen counter while I was prepping my ingredients. My daughter wanted to watch so I gave her some carrots and she played with them like drumsticks. Yey!
I did my best to imitate everything she did here except the timing. I got a little bit frazzled but I just kept going. Can I also say that having the convenience of a multi-stove top is AMAZING? Wow. All my life I thought I will never get to experience cooking with a multi-stove top. When I was living in the Philippines, two stoves were the maximum. If my family needed to cook more food, we would have to cook some of them at my aunt's stove. Timing is EVERYTHING. So with the convenience I am experiencing now, yes I do get frazzled. I was cooking the carrots and zucchini at the same time while waiting for the water to boil where I can drop the spinach in.
Spinach. This is a kind of green vegetable that I do not typically handle when I was in the Philippines because spinach is not really cheap. It's the kind of veggie you usually only find if you order a salad in a restaurant. I found out that aside from just washing it thoroughly, there is no need to cut the stems which I normally do whenever I cook leafys. I discard the stem because they're hard to eat but this is clearly NOT the case with spinach. You can blanch the whole thing in boiling water for 30 seconds and everything is soft and chewable. Lesson learned.
I had to do a few changes like the meat for instance. Instead of using beef, I opted to use vegetarian meat crumbles instead which tastes like beef minus the bulk. Also I was considering the fact that we all had Reuben sandwiches for supper last Sunday so it takes about four days to digest beef. I don't want us to be stuffed with beef. The vegetarian options one can find in the supermarkets here are very generous. In the Philippines, there is only ONE vegetarian brand we liked and even that we could not enjoy regularly because it was more expensive than beef and chicken. I've also discarded the use of cooking wine for obvious reasons.
I managed to get everything done around 6PM. YATTA!
And here it is...TA-DAH!!!
I'm actually missing one ingredient here. Can you guess? Hehehehe! xD The reason I missed it because I completely forgot about it! ARGH! Me and my frazzlement.
When I tasted the food, I KNEW IT! YESSS! THAT WAS THE FLAVOR I REALLY LOVED ABOUT BIBIMBAP!! YESSSS!!! Can I say cooking with sesame oil is a great new experience? I feel spoiled. I really LOVE how the flavor just popped with the food. It was wonderful. I am adding sesame oil to my friends list. <3 Oh! I also include 'gochujang' to the list as well.
Daddy and the hubby enjoyed the meal. Duston liked it so much that he had seconds! I'd have seconds too if I only knew how to calculate the amount of ingredients expected for a family of five who will have seconds. For this mealtime, Mama did not have supper since she was out with Tana (my sister-in-law) and already had supper outside. So the meal I made was still enough to feed five without seconds but I ran out of spinach.
Still not bad for a first-timer, ne? Next time I know what time I should start prepping the ingredients and calculate the amount better. I am actually feeling quite proud of myself for pulling it off. It had the right flavor I expected it to be plus the added incentive that I was able to achieve that flavor myself. YEY!
I already have another rice meal in mind the next time I cook supper for the family again. Haha! This is fun. I am really getting the hang of this. Alhamdulillah that we are able to afford to buy ingredients and the convenience of a very convenient kitchen.