That is a persimmon that stacy painted! it used to hang above the kitchen sink in our apartment. So everyone in the apartment has dispersed and i am in vallejo, living with the moms and step dad. my life is slowly becoming more average and boring.
i’ve searched far and wide and i still cannot find the cord that connects my camera to my lappy so that i can transfer pictures…so i’ll have to figure that out soon. luckily i still have lots of older pictures.
How about more korean food, huh? Here’s how i make “Ddukbokhee”. Why the two ‘d’s? i dunno. but what it is, is little rice cakes in a spicy broth. I got the basic recipe from the same lady i did the last post, here at her Korean Cooking xanga.
You can use fresh dduk or rice cakes or you can buy the frozed shrink wrapped kind. These ones are shaped like little dumbells…i think so they’re easier to pick up with chopsticks?
So the ingredients include…
- Dduk
- Red pepper flakes or kot chu garu (not the kind you put on pizza but the korean kind that are like red confetti, except spicier)
- chile paste or kot chu jang (it’s in the red tub…it’s kinda sweet and mostly spicy)
- 1 carrot, sliced up pretty
- a few sheets of fish cake (odeng). i like the flat ones that you get at korean stores. you can be fancy with this and slice them into diamond shapes.
- green onions
- minced garlic
- one small piece of dried seaweed
mkay, you’re probably looking at this picture and wondering why there’s blackberry jam in this. well it’s not blackberry jam, stop judging stuff by it’s cover. hahaha jk, it’s the pepper flakes in a jam jar cause the flakes come in a huge bag and this keeps the flakes fresher? i dunno
Hokay, so first you make the broth. Add some water and the pepper things along with the seaweed pieces and garlic. Heat it all up so the paste dissolves. so maybe you’re wondering why there’s random pieces of seaweed…well it’s there to add flavor i think. like some umami thing. i don’t know if it really makes a difference but i have a lot of it from my grammy so i stick it in there anyways.
So once all that is good and hot, add the fish cakes, carrot, and green onion and stir it up till the carrots get softer. then add the dduk. I made the mistake of not thawing the brick of rice cake sooo…it kinda got weird. but yeah try to thaw that business out a little first.
some people like to add sugar or honey. oh, and a tip would be to not stew the rice cakes around too much because they can get mushy and all the starch from the rice cakes kinda makes the broth congeal…and that’s not fun.
sprinkle with toasted seasame seeds and eat!
