All posts filed under: Say Kimchi

Say Kimchi: Cucumber Kimchi (Oi Kkakdugi 오이깍두기)

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A couple of months before I moved to Korea, my nephew had his first birthday. At that time, my younger brother was living in Korea and sent home some traditional Korean clothes for my nephew to wear to celebrate his big day. Consequently, we had a Korean/Asian themed birthday party for him incorporating some Korean traditions and food. One of the traditions that Koreans do for a child’s first birthday is to display on a table several items including a spool of thread, a book and money. Each item means something different for the child’s future: money equals wealthy, thread equals like life, and books that they will be a great student. With my nephew, we didn’t have everything that we needed, so we substituted other items and gave them different meanings. It was great fun watching him picking different things up.

Fusion Tuna Gimbap (참치김밥)

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“A picnic is more than eating a meal, it is a pleasurable sate of mind.” -DeeDee Stovel When I moved to Korea back in May 2012, one of the first foods my brother introduced me to was gimbap. It’s basically a seaweed roll (gim = seaweed, bap = rice) stuffed with tasty ingredients: egg, ham, crab stick, carrot, perilla leaf or spinach, danmuji (yellow pickled radish), and cucumber. Additionally, tuna, bulgogi, or kimchi can be included. You nearly always get a side of danmuji to eat with it. However, danmuji is one of those foods that I hate with a passion, outside of gimbap and bibimbap, so having it as side dish to my gimbap never happens. However, it works really, really well in gimbap, giving texture and bite to the seaweed roll. My favourite kind is the chamchi or tuna gimbap and I’ve been known to eat two chamchi (tuna) sangak gimbap (triangle gimbap) at a go! These gimbap are in the shape of small triangles and usually are filled only with rice and tuna …