This dish takes me back to hole-in-the-wall restaurants in Korea where people are sitting elbow to elbow, slurping noodles, while escaping a gloomy day of rain. There’s a level of comfort that can’t be found in a gourmet, five-star restaurant. It’s a dish you can make for just one for a dinner in front of the TV, or for a group of people on a night spent in. The dish is familiar, comfortable, and very homey.
These noodles are a marriage between a stir fry and noodle soup. A broth is made by boiling the shrimp in water which is later added to stir fried aromatics and oyster sauce. The stir fried bean sprouts also let out a little bit of juice which really deepens the flavor and gives it a sophisticated lift that is desperately lost in instant noodles.
continue reading »
September 15 2009 | Asian and Noodles and Recipe and Seafood and Thoughts | 6 Comments »
Korean summers are excruciatingly humid and hot. Temperatures will rise above the 90s and for a few weeks monsoon season hits so it rains cats and dogs. Fortunately, throughout my life I have only spent a handful of summers there. I love being there and it’s where I call home, but summer is just not its best season.
One great thing about summer in Korea though is the cold noodle soups. They’re cool, refreshing, and very flavorful. The most common and popular cold noodle soup is probably, naengmyun, 냉면. It is made with buckwheat noodles and a cold broth garnished with julienned cucumbers, asian pear slices, half a hard boiled egg, and pieces of steamed pork belly. It’s a bit complicated to make naengmyun from scratch, which is why they sell packages of naengmyun “kits” in Korean/Asian supermarkets. Everything is included, so all you have to do is boil the noodles and pick your garnishes.
continue reading »
August 23 2009 | Asian and Beans and Legumes and Budget and Korean and Noodles and Recipe and Soup and Thoughts | 4 Comments »