Jeyuk Bokkeum- Korean Spicy Stir Fried Pork

I recently went to Toppoki, a Korean restuarant in Birmingham, and it gave me a gentle reminder that Korean food is something I really should get to know better. The food at Toppoki was delicious, and I wanted to recreate some of the dishes we had, one of which was this vibrant coloured and flavoured pork dish.

There were many possible recipes I could have used for this, but a friend pointed me in the direction of Maangchi for good Korean recipes. I hadn't actually heard of her, it seems I have been missing out. If you are interested in Korean cooking, I would recommend looking at her website. I also like Beyond Kimchee.


So, I went with Maangchi's recipe. There are two ingredients that you probably can't pick up at your average supermarket, but if you have access to a decent Asian super market you should be ok. The ingredients in question are gochujang, a chilli paste, and gochugaru, Korean chilli flakes. Both are an exciting fearsome red colour, spicy, but not as hot as they look.

 I used pork belly for this dish, but to be honest I think in future I would prefer something leaner. I love the fattiness of pork belly, but the fat wasn't crispy, like when you cook it quick and fast, or soft and melting, like when you cook it slowly. It was still good with pork belly, but I felt I would prefer it this way.
Despite that, it was a very good dish- hot, quick and tasty.
Link to Maangchi's recipe

Ingredients for the jeyuk bokkeum- pork, onion, green chilli, spring onion, sugar, soy, garlic,gochugaru and gochujang

Ingredients mixed together

Finished dish

Cranberry, Pecan and Chocolate cookies

225 grams cups oats

75 grams desiccated coconut

225 grams plain flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

350 grams light brown sugar, packed

250g  unsalted butter

125 ml  maple syrup

2 tablespoons golden syrup

2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda

60 ml boiling water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

100 grams pecans

100 grams dried cranberries

100g chocolate chips-milk or dark                                                              

 

Instructions

Preheat oven to 150 C , and line two baking sheets. Combine oats, coconut, flour, salt, cinnamon and brown sugar in a large bowl and stir to combine. Combine butter, maple syrup and golden syrup in a saucepan. Heat over medium heat until butter melts, stirring, then remove from the heat. Mix the bicarbonate of soda with the boiling water, then stir this into the butter and syrup mixture along with the pecans, cranberries and vanilla extract. Mix the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients, and then stir in the chocolate chips.

Take golf ball sized lumps of the mixture, and lightly roll into balls. Place on baking sheet, and flatten slightly, leaving a 5cm gap between then cookies. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Allow to cool on the sheets for 5 minutes, and then transfer with a fish slice to a wire rack.

 

Raspberry and Ginger Bars

As much as I love cooking and eating curd, I don't get through it especially fast, so I usually need to find a recipe to use it in bigger quantities than I would put on toast. I am usually happy to use it as a cake filling, but I felt like doing something different with this raspberry curd that I made recently.
These raspberry and ginger bars were the result- I was really happy with them! They have a base made of crushed ginger biscuits, similar to a cheesecake base, and then topped with raspberry curd. The raspberry curd is baked on top of the base for a few minutes to firm it up, so you can slice the cake neatly. The curd is still soft though, and is a nice contrast to the crunchy base.
This would work well with other curds- lemon is an obvious choice, but I would also consider this pineapple curd, as this would pair well with ginger too. Playing around with the biscuit base is something I'd like to do too- for raspberry curd, I think a dark chocolate base would be really lovely too.

Ingredients
200g ginger nuts
2 tbsp caster sugar
90g unsalted butter
1/2 quantity of raspberry curd- or a medium jar of a shop bought curd.

Preheat the oven to 200 C, and line a 20cm x 20cm square tin. Crush the ginger nuts, either in a food processor, or by hand (put in a bag and use a rolling pin to reduce them to rubble). Melt the butter, and stir into the biscuit crumbs, along with the sugar. Press into the base of the prepared tin. Bake for 15 minutes, and turn the oven down to 160 degrees. Leave for a few minutes to allow the oven to cool down to the lower temperature, then spread the curd on the base. Return to the oven for 10-12 minutes. Allow to cool, and put in the fridge to set for a few hours before slicing.

Raspberry Curd

I recently made some raspberry ripple blondies- normal blondies, with raspberry purée swirled through (I intend to post the recipe for this soon). They were an improvised recipe, so I was playing around with quantities. I ended up leaving out about half the raspberry puree I made, so decided to turn the rest into some raspberry curd, something I have been intending on trying making for a while.

The method is simple, and is almost identical to this pineapple curd recipe:

175g raspberries (I used frozen ones)

Juice of 2 lemons

200g sugar
100g butter, cut into cubes
3 eggs and 1 egg yolk

Mash the raspberries with a fork (or quickly blitz in a processor or blender). Push through a sieve to remove pips. In a heatproof bowl, mix the raspberry puree, sugar and butter, and sit over a pan of lightly simmering water. Give it a stir to help melt the butter and dissolve the sugar. While this is happening beat together the eggs and yolks. Once the butter has melted and the sugar dissolved, whisk in the beaten egg mix. Keep whisking for about 10 minutes, until the curd mixture has thickened, and feels heavy on the whisk.

Pour into clean jam jars- this makes about two medium jam jars worth of curd.

 

Other than on toast, I would like to try this as a filling for a sponge, made with some ground almonds and lemon or orange zest. I think I would also like to make a raspberry equivalent of lemon bars with it too.

Green Mango Salad with Crispy Shallots

I am fortunate enough that I live within walking distance of a Thai grocers, and am able to buy ingredients that I couldn't get in the average supermarket.
From my last trip, I came back with a green mango. If you haven't tried them before, they are pretty sour but still have a distinctive mango flavour- I really like them in refreshing salads like these.

Green apples like Granny Smiths are often suggested as a substitute for green mango. Although the salad wouldn't be the same, I still think it would be an enjoyable dish. In addition, although the Thai (holy) basil is nice, I wouldn't let the lack of it stop you making it- just bump up the quantities of the other herbs.

We had this as a side dish to some very sticky and rich Vietnamese Caramel Pork- it was nice to have something so refreshing alongside. I think this salad would also be wonderful as a main, with some cooked and cooled glass noodles and prawns added.

Salad Ingredients
1 green mango, peeled and finely sliced
1/2 a cucumber, made into ribbons with a vegetable peeler, or finely sliced
1 red pepper, finely sliced
1 small-medium carrot, cut into matchsticks
Small bunch of spring onions, finely chopped
small bunch each of: mint, coriander and thai basil, leaves finely chopped

Dressing Ingredients
3 tbsp fish sauce
3 tbsp lime juice
sugar or honey, to taste-start with 1 tsp
red chilli, finely chopped, to tast

Crispy Shallot Garnish
about 6 shallots- peeled and finely sliced
oil for deep frying

I suggest starting with the shallots- heat the oil in a small saucepan, about 2cm deep. Add the shallots, and cook until they are a dark golden brown and crisp. They will need stirring, as the shallot slices on the edges of the pan tend to brown quicker. Remove from the oil (I find a tea strainer works very well) and put on some kitchen roll to remove the excess oil.
In a large bowl, mix together the salad ingredients. Mix the dressing ingredients together, and combine with the salad.
Turn the salad out onto a large plate, and top with the crispy shallots.

A collection of Elderflower Drinks II

I had another flush of seasonal food excitability about a month ago, and went out to pick a lot of elderflowers. I came back with maybe 100 heads of elderflowers, plus a whole lot of bugs. Two years ago, I made elderflower cordial from this recipe- it was really good, so I made some more- I think I had just over two litres of cordial, which I mostly mix with gin, fizzy water and lemons for a very refreshing drink. I am considering trying to turn some of it into sorbet too.

As well as the cordial, I made three alcoholic drinks:

Gooseberry and elderflower vodka- a few elderflower heads, a punnet of gooseberries, and about 8 tablepoons of sugar, and topped up with vodka. I made this last year, and it was really successful, so I felt it was worth repeating. I am going to leave this to steep for a tear again.

Elderflower liqueur- from the Wild Cocktails book- This had 20 heads of elderflowers, some sugar and vodka. You then cut up two lemons, and use it to help keep the elderflower heads under the vodka. This was left to infuse for a month. The elderflower flavour of this is incredibly intense. I have tried it out in the book’s suggested recipe of an ‘Elder sour’, but found it a bit too sour- I think it needs a touch of sugar syrup so it tastes more balanced- at least for my tastes.

Cherry, elderflower and honey gin- A more improvised recipe- I had used up all my sugar making the cordial, but had some orange blossom honey- I am hopeful the honey flavour will come through too. I crushed the cherries (about a punnet, but left the stones in, as they add to the flavour. Like, the gooseberry vodka, I just added a few heads of elderflowers. This was just topped up with gin, and I will try it over the next few months until I get a strong enough flavour.

Pineapple and Coconut Cake

In my last blog post for pineapple curd, I mentioned using it as a filling for a coconut cake- here is the result:

Taste-wise, it was lovely- obviously I am not doing anything new with the pineapple-coconut flavour combination, but it came off well as a cake. For the cake itself, I used a Nigella recipe for a coconut cake. The original recipe uses a coconut buttercream as the filling, and I just switched it with some of my pineapple curd. I haven't tried the original, so I can't compare, but I did like my version's contrast of sweet coconut with tangy pineapple. I was a little apprehensive about part of the recipe- you soak the desiccated coconut in 150ml water, and then put all of it into the cake batter- I wasn't sure if adding so much water would make the cake heavy. But in reality, it came out as a very light sponge. I kept the topping the same- just an icing made with Malibu- but I sprinkled on the zest of a lime, which was my own touch, and one I would keep for this recipe.


Cake
25g unsalted butter, softened
225g caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
4 eggs
200g self-raising flour
25g cornflour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
50g desiccated coconut, soaked in 150ml boiling water

Filling
About 6 tbsp pineapple curd (see recipe)

Topping
2-4 tablespoons Malibu
125g instant royal icing


Preheat the oven to  180C / 160C fan, and line two 20cm sandwich tins. At this point, I boiled the kettle and soaked the dessicated cocount- you need to give it time to cool before adding it later. Cream the butter until pale and fluffy, and cream in the sugar. Beat in the vanilla extract. Mix in one egg, along with a tablespoon of self raising flour. Repeat with the 3 other eggs (again, with a spoonful of flour with each one). Sift in the remaining flour with the cornflour and baking powder, and fold in. Finally, fold in the coconut and water. Divide between the tins and bake for about 20 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean. Let them cool for about 5 minutes, then gently remove them from the tins, and let them cool completely on a wire rack.

Place one n the cakes on a plate, and spread over the curd. Put the over cake on top. Sift the icing sugar into a bowl, and mix in the Malibu. Spoon and smooth over the top of the cake. Enjoy!