Easy Korean Food

*Foodgasm.*

I know… beautiful isn’t it? Spicy, warm, flavourful… and I made it all by myself.

OK… that’s a lie. I cheated a *little* bit. What the heck do you want from me? I can barely PRONOUNCE kimchi chigae, much less make it.

In Toronto, Korean restaurants are a lot more plentiful than in New York, but they’re still not everywhere, and besides: the only meal I would NEVER make for myself is sushi, and that’s not for lack of skill, but for lack of Japanese mob connections so I can get the best, freshest fish out there and not die of food poisoning.

My mother, aka, my food guru (see “about me” for details) won’t attempt most things outside of the Western world. She says she trusts those who do it right to make Indian curries, pad Thai, and Chinese stir fry. While I love restaurants as much as the next person, I would much rather spend my money on shoes (and the occasional nice meal) than on Korean takeout when the mood strikes, which it does surprisingly often.

In high school, one of my very best friends was Korean, direct from Seoul, and the two of us spent many an afternoon Senior spring at a Korean restaurant in the next town over. Ever since we split up for university, and especially now that the weather has been getting colder, I found myself missing my kimchi chigae.

I hopped around a few Korean restaurants for awhile, but this was hard on my pocket, plus none of the soups I tried were exactly what I was looking for: there is a lot of variation on this dish, and once I’d had the one from BK Grill, I didn’t want anything else.

Then, as I was perusing my old entries, I found this, back from when this was just an ickle baby blog: Bon Appegeek. Well, even I said it. I was going to try to make Korean food.

There’s a small emporium below my house. It’s one of the strangest stores I’ve ever seen: situated next to a Korean BBQ and Karaoke, they have dry cleaning, video rental, snack food for sale, and they sell all sorts of Asian specialty foods in the back. I’ve only ever been in once before for some gum, but on my way home from school, I sauntered in and walked right up to the display with Korean foods.

The first thing I saw was kimchi: I grabbed two different jars, one of cabbage and one of radish. Then I took some black beans in soy sauce and sesame oil, a typical banchan. This was when the man behind the counter started staring at the little white girl.

“Can I help you?”

“No… I’m good.”

“OK… you tell me.”

That was when I found it: soup mix. And not just any soup mix: kimchi chigae soup mix. I can’t read Korean, but the instructions were on the back in both French and English, so I grabbed a packet and approached the till with my choices.

“You know how to make this?” the Korean man held up my soup.

“I’ll be fine,” I answered, smiling.

“You need tofu…”

“I have it already.”

He stared some more. “You know what this is?”

“Kimchi chigae.”

His eyes darted to his wife, who was standing in another part of the store. “Even some Koreans, they can’t make this.”

“I’ll be OK.”

He packed up the rest of my items in silence, took my money, and as he handed me my change, he said, “If you want me to get anything in here, anything you like, you tell me.”

I smiled. I had won over the Korean food emporium guy. But I took it one step further.

“Kamsahamnida (thank you).”

I turned and walked out without another word, hoping that what I had actually said was, in fact, thank you, and not one of the many curse words I had learned in high school.

When I got home, I made my soup the way I like it: I cooked soba noodles in some salted water, then fried them in sesame oil with a cubed block of silken tofu with all the water squeezed out. I followed the instructions on the packet, adding my noodles and tofu, half a jar of kimchi as well, and a little bit of soy sauce. My soup mix was amazing, and I was pleased to see that there were, in fact, three packets of soup mix. Looks like I’m having kimchi chigae for awhile now.

Hey… if I can do this, maybe I should tackle those Japanese mob connections…