Spicy Lobster

Last week, lobsters were on special and it is not very often you get them at a cheap price. So, my Korean friend made an easy-to-make spicy lobster dish. Adjust the level of spiciness to your liking. The procedure for cooking lobster can be found in the lobster with pasta recipe.

Serves 2-3
Preparation Time : 10 mins
Cooking Time : about 10 mins
Printable Recipe

Ingredients

1 lobster
2 shallots, cut into thirds
1 red chili pepper, sliced
1 jalapeno pepper, sliced
1 tbsp red pepper paste
1 tbsp honey
salt and pepper
black sesame seeds for garnish

Procedure

1. Cook lobster in a large pot filled with water over high heat. Cook until it changes colour, about 8 mins per pound. Remove meat from lobster shells.

2. In a skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Stir fry shallots, red chili pepper, jalapeno pepper until fragrant, about 1 min.

3. Add lobster meat and stir in red pepper paste and honey until coated. Season with salt and pepper. Serve and sprinkle with black sesame seeds.

Tteokbokki

Along with Sukiyaki, we had a little taste of Korea. This dish is made by a Korean friend. Tteokbokki might be hard word to pronounce to most people. This means in good English - spicy ricecake casserole. It is a popular street food in Korea and really enjoyed eating it. Some of the ingredients here can usually be found in Asian market.

Serves 3-4
Preparation Time : 20 mins
Cooking Time : 15 mins
Printable Recipe

Ingredients

10-15 rice cake sticks, cut in half
1 onion, diced
2 green onions, cut into thirds
2 fish cakes, cut into 1/4-inch
3 garlic, chopped
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp honey
1-2 tbsp red pepper paste
chili powder (optional)
1 hard-boiled egg per person
Black sesame seeds for garnish

Procedure

1. In a medium bowl, soak into hot water for about 20 minutes to make it slightly sticky.

2. In a medium pot, boil 1 cup of water and add rice cakes, fish cakes, onion, green onions, garlic.

3. Add in soy sauce, brown sugar, honey, red pepper paste and chili powder. Cook until rice cakes become soft and chewy, and sauce becomes thick.

4. Turn off heat. Serve in a bowl and sprinkle with black sesame seeds. Add a hard-boiled egg to the dish.

Korean BBQ - Kalbi and Bulgogi

On that day, on Korean BBQ night, we had about 6lb of meat and luckily, our calculations were right and all the meat were all gone. Mainly, we had Kalbi which is marinated shortribs and Bulgogi, boneless meat, this can be flank steak, loin or boneless ribs. Here is the recipe from my Taiwanese's Korean friend.

For 4 lbs of meat
Preparation Time : 5 mins
Marinating Time : 1-2 days
Printable Recipe

Ingredients

4 lbs meat such as short ribs, boneless meat
6 cloves of garlic, minced
1 medium onion, cubed
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup sesame oil
1 tbsp honey (optional)
1 tbsp ground pepper

Procedure

1. In a large bowl, combine garlic, onion, brown sugar and black pepper.

2. Add soy sauce, sesame oil and honey to the mixture.

3. Put meat in a large ziploc and then pour the marinade. Toss to marinate the meat.

4. Marinate for 1-2 days.

5. Preheat grill to medium-high heat.

6. Cook meat for 2-3 meats on each side. To eat like a real Korean, wrap the meat with romania lettuce, roasted garlic and seaweed. Serve with rice with Korean red sweet and spicy sauce (Gochujang).

Korean Food - Day 1 night

After the journey to Namsan Park, we went down to Myeongdong. This huge place is a shopping district with mid priced retail store and it is busy busy busy at anytime of the day. It takes a few hours to quickly visit everything.

One of the busiest restaurant is Myeongdong Gyoza. This place is basically "queue-sit-order-pay-eat-and go". This is the quickest service I had ever seen. Once you pay, you get your order in less than a minute.

Their menu consists of only 4 items each cost eaxctly 7,000 Won. Kongguksu consists of noodles in a creamy cold soy-based soup. The second item is bibimguksu, cold noodles in a spicy sauce. Mandoo is basically gyoza/dumplings. Finally, we both order the kalguksu, wheat flour noodle with four pieces of dumplings top with beef in a chicken broth. Along with the main dish, you get rice and for sure, kimchi.

At Myeongdong, we found a KrispyKreme doughnuts, we used to love it, but it ran out of busy in Montreal. Here, you can see the whole process of making doughnuts in front of your eyes.This is about it for the first day in Seoul.

Korean Food - Day 1 afternoon

After the Korean breakfast, we went for sightseeing at Namsangol Hanok Village. This village consisted of five Korean homes Each house represents social ranks of the society from peasant to the King. Traditional crafting is one thing to look for. These craftsmen use only straws to craft all sort of things such as shoes, baskets, storage, etc.

Further inside the village, they offer a large bowl of uncurdled tofu for only 1,000 Won. The tofu is cooked in a traditional Korean way.

I won't write too much of my journey in Seoul as you have experienced it yourself. After 2 hours of visit, my bro and I stopped by a snack stall just outside of the village. Deli-Manjoo are small yellow corn-shaped cakes with a custard filling. My tastebud is telling me that it is a pineapple custard, but I'm not too sure. It only cost 2,000 Won for 12 pieces.

Next, we went to Namsan Park where the Seoul Tower lies, it was about an hour of walk from the village.

Once you are on the top of Namsan Park, there is a whole wall of locks around the Tower. You can basically a lock for 500 Won at a stall, write any kind of message on it and lock it on the fence if you manage to find spaces.

At around 3 pm, there is a spectacular Martial Arts Performance and weaponery performer near the Seoul Tower.

Korean Food - Day 1 morning

My brother and I had a great time in Seoul, South Korea from June 25 to July 6. We were in Seoul because I got an invitation to an international conference which lasted for 4 days. Since we set foot to this country, we also took our vacation, visiting tourist attractions and restaurants. We never tasted real Korean food before and we took the challenge to eat only at restaurants serving Korean food. We managed to avoid American fast food and Italian restaurant which are common in this country. Since my brother and I are not Korean, we chose restaurants where they have a decent English menu and good-looking food pictures. We went to restaurants suggested by Seoul's traveller guide by Lonely Planet. Korean food is all about spicy food, we don't usually eat that much spiciness. I will be posting about restaurant food for the next few days, no recipes will be posted.

We were living at Anam Hostel for 10 nights for only 12,000 Korean Won (about 12$ CAN) the night. The room is very small, about 5 by 2 meters, one bed, one library shelf and a desk, that's about it. The first visited restaurant is near our hostel and it was 7 am. We woke up very early because we can't sleep due to different time zone. We started our day going to this restaurant serving Korean traditional food. We asked the people around us which is the best dish that they serve here. They all pointed at the rice noodle balls soup as seen in the first picture. We basically order two of them.

Along with the rice noodle balls, there are lots of ingredients are added. I remember there were some fat minced pork, hot peppers, vegetables in a fish broth with hot paste.

Like in all Korean restaurant, small side dishes are served with the main dish. You can ask for refills as many times as you want. Here, there were white carrots in spicy sauce, tiny salted fish, seaweed, jalapeno along with a very sauce, rice and kimchi. We both tried kimchi which is basically a spicy fermented cabbage, we didn't like it at all. Sorry for the kimchi lovers. We basically ate all the less spicy and non-spicy side dishes along with the soup.

There were also large white raddish pieces which is slightly spicy.

Keep reading my post, there will be more tomorrow. If you see any errors about the content, feel free to comment.