Serving it Up Korean-Style

This weekend marked the beginning of my Korean culinary experiments! After finishing up the marathon shopping trip with Terry on Saturday, I returned home with MASSIVE hunger pangs! My bare cabinets were bare no longer, and it was time to silence the hungry beast in my belly. So what's a girl to cook??
I decided to take Terry's suggestions and cook up some rice with barley and Korean black beans. Following Korean cooking protocol, I rinsed and drained the grains and beans three times in tap water, then left them to soak for 1/2 hour. I drained them once more, and then loaded everything into my studio-size rice cooker.
The next trick was figuring out how much water to add to the pot. Harrison, nice guy that he is, had stopped by my apartment yesterday to pump up my bike tires and introduce me to the wonders of the rice cooker (seriously, is he too good to be true, or what?). He showed me the age-old Korean measuring technique that his mother used, and that his wife uses still today. No measuring cups needed. OK folks at home, give this a try next time you're making rice in a cooker. Cup your hand over the rice so that your fingertips and the palm of your hand rest on the top of the rice. Now fill the pot with water utnil your knuckles are almost submerged with water. That's it. I'm here, in part, to glean the secrets of ancient wisdom, right? So be it. I cupped the rice with my palm, filled the pot just so, popped down the lid, and let the machine take over.

Meanwhile, I scoured my painstakingly collected Korean recipe "box" (I am in love with the computerized recipe database Big Oven... check it out at http://www.bigoven.com/) to find some general guideline for making a soybean-based soup. With Terry, I had purchased Korean-style miso (soybean paste, called "denjang" in Korean), as well as garlic, Korean chives (think really, really big spring onions), tofu, "gochujang" (a spicy paste made of red peppers), and enoki mushrooms. A few minutes later, the rice cooker was steaming itself into a frenzy, and the fragrance of onion and mushrooms permeated my tiny apartment.
I quickly set the table, and prepared the final ingredient, chopped seaweed, which at Harrison's suggestion, I would eat atop my rice bowl. I spooned everything into little round bowls and, after documenting the big moment :), took a big spoon of my "guk" (soup)... The verdict... a little spicy, with an otherwise mild flavor... and the mushrooms... delicious! And the barley rice with black beans and seaweed? The taste was pleasant, the seaweed added just the right balance of flavor to the very subtle grains. I had to adapt a bit to the purplish hue that the rice took on from the black beans, but in all, I felt quite pleased with myself :) Not bad for my first Korean cooking adventure! Bon appetit!