I have a small stomach. So sometimes when I eat very delicious food, I am sad about not being able to eat more after I am full. Moreover, I am poor at cooking. But there is one food that even I can make well and eat even after I am full: it is ddeokbokki. Although I am neither a cook nor a professional cooking blogger, I would still like to introduce a fantastic food called ddeokbokki and provide its recipe.
Ddeokbokki is a Korean food. In comparison, it would be equivalent to hamburgers that you can buy anywhere in America, or pizza and pasta that you could easily find on Italian streets. However, ddeokbokki is not a main food like hamburgers, pizzas or pastas. It’s not dessert either. I’d say it is more like a snack food or a side dish. You can find ddeokbokki on every street in Korea and it is, most of the time, delicious. Although it is one dish, there are various kinds of recipes and pretty much everyone has their own secret recipe. If you’re interested in it and have the time, I recommend for you try a few different ways and choose your favorite. The key to the ddeokbokki is gochujang (Korean red pepper paste). Therefore, its taste really depends on the quality of the pepper paste you use. Success to your cooking is 90% guaranteed if you use good quality paste.
| * Ingredients: Ddeok (rice cakes), fish cakes, gonyak**, cabbages, onions, green onions, boiled eggs* Sauce: Gochujang (red pepper paste) and red pepper powder (in ratio of 2:1), crushed garlics, sugar or honey to taste* Prepare anchovy and kelp broth. You can use plain water too. |
* To rid of unique smell of gonyak, parboil it in boiling water beforehand.
0. Taste improves if you set aside the sauce for a day. (Secret 1)
1. Add oil to the wok and stir fry the sauce slightly (Secret 2)
2. Pour the premade broth into the wok.
3. When it starts to boil, add the remaining ingredients, the hardest first, i.e. rice cakes à fish cakes à gonyak à vegetables
4. It is ready when rice cakes are cooked, vegetables are wilted and the broth is boiled down.
5. Remove the wok from the heat and serve it with cheese or boiled eggs on top.
**To learn about gonyak, please refer to this. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konjac)
Ddeokbokki is the food that you can create with your own creativity. Depending on your taste and the vegetables you like, you can add whatever you want. It goes well with noodles, too. You can add some mozzarella cheese or sliced cheese on top. Strong cheese like Camembert is another good option. It goes very well with boiled eggs. These days, fusion ddeokbokki has been created with cream sauce or soy sauce, instead of red pepper paste. But for me, the original ddeokbokki with red pepper paste is the best.
Why don’t you try for yourself? You might get addicted to its shockingly spicy, sweet but not so plain taste.
