I was baffled by the countless number of unidentifiable, packaged vegetables and small plastic containers surrounding the pre-cooked portion of white rice. Luckily, there was a young English teacher seated next to us confidently assembling his meal. I copied his every move- scooped the rice into a large bowl, carefully placed the provided meat and vegetables on top of the rice, added a squeeze of thick, red pepper paste and a few drops of sesame oil and then stirred it all together with a spoon. The flavor was mild and dominated by the rice. Not nearly as exotic as I had anticipated. I increased the heat by adding in the remainder of the red pepper paste and congratulated myself for trying something new. Another short term goal accomplished.
Today I am intimately familiar with Korea's national dish, and even recommended it to my cousin Jennifer during a recent layover in Seoul. I recognize that the previously unidentifiable vegetables on the plane were probably brackens, Chinese bellflowers, reconstituted shiitakes, seaweed and bean sprouts. The red pepper paste is called kochujang, and is a pantry staple of ours along with doenjang (fermented bean paste), ssamchang (doenjang seasoned with kochujang, sesame oil, onion, garlic, green onions, and brown sugar) and jajang (a black bean paste that is awesome fried up with noodles and vegetables).
Recently, Sami and I took an "Experiencing Royal Culture" class at the National Palace Museum in Seoul. The four day curriculum was created for native English speakers and Koreans interested in either becoming tour guides or practicing English. During the third class, we learned how to cook royal bibimbap. We were treated to a cooking demonstration before cooking ourselves. Sami and I were paired up with a sweet elderly Korean woman. The woman spoke very good English until she became flustered and then she lost it all. She was not really one for teamwork either. Maybe she thought that the white couple she was paired with were not capable of preparing bibimbap meant for a king. She would have been perfectly content to do all the work herself, but being since I like to cook and wanted to learn, I elbowed her out of the way and began to hoard the station with my much larger frame.
Cooking and assembling the meal was really quite simple. The only difficult aspect was cleaning the dishes afterward. Koreans are fond of having dozens of small dishes littering the table at all times. Each vegetable also had to be seasoned and cooked separately which naturally increased the size of our dirty dish pile.
The vegetables we used for our Royal Bibimbap were:
-3 dried shiitake mushrooms
-1 cucumber
-100g Chinese bellflowers
-100g brackens
-100g bean sprouts
Of course, Chinese bellflowers and brackens are not commonly eaten in the U.S. (although they may be lurking in your backyard) so feel free to substitue any vegetables you like such as carrots, asparagus or potatoes. Chinese bellflower is actually a pretty perennial (only the roots are eaten by Koreans) and brackens are the young fiddleheads of a common species of fern.
Other ingredients we used were four bowls of rice, 100g of ground beef, 100g of fish fillets a little seaweed and two eggs.
The best thing I took from the cooking demonstration was a simple traditional meat sauce:
(For every 100g meat, if you are into the whole measurement thing)
-1T soy sauce
-1/2T sugar
-1T crushed garlic
-2t chopped spring onion
-1t sesame oil
-1t sesame seeds
-pinch of black pepper
We put this sauce separately on the ground beef and the dried mushrooms (which had been reconstituted in water). Since we were working with cooked ground beef, we only threw the sauce on for a few minutes before re-heating in the pan. Ditto for the mushrooms. I suppose if you were marinating a big Omaha steak you may want to leave it on a little longer. I have since used the sauce on a flayed pork loin. I only had it marinating in the sauce for 15 or 30 minutes- just until I was finished with whatever else I was making. It turned out pretty good.
As I mentioned, we were instructed to marinate and cook each of the vegetables separately, the "traditional" way.
The brackens and bellflowers were cleaned, thinly cut, washed in salty water and quickly parboiled before being fried. The beansprouts were given the same treatment, but left intact. The cucumber was cut in half lengthwise, finely chopped, salted and squeezed dry through a cheese cloth. The bellflowers and brackens were sauced with a sauce exactly like the meat sauce except the measurements were a little different (and don't ask me why but they used a different kind of soy sauce: soy sauce for soup).
Sauce for Chinese bellflowers and brackens:
-2t soy sauce for soup
-2t crushed garlic
-2t green onion
-1t sesame oil
-pinch of black pepper
The bean sprouts were sauced with the following:
1/2t chopped spring onion
1/4t crushed garlic
1/2t sesame oil
1/2t sesame seed
pinch of salt
The cucumber was not seasoned besides the initial salting and all vegetables were fried separately except the bean sprouts- those were only boiled.
Lastly, the fish fillets were seasoned with salt and white pepper, egged, floured, fried and thinly cut.
The remaining meat and vegetables are then placed on top of the rice to create a colorful pattern known as taeguk- a variation on the yin and yang. The traditional colors of taeguk are red, blue, yellow, black and white. I don't really see it when I look at a bowl of bibimbap, but I guess you have to use your imagination.
Finally, we got to eat our creation. There was lots of kochujang to go around and, I must admit, our bibimbap was even tastier than airplane food.
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