Japchae (Korean Noodle)

Allie had been a good good friend of mine. Having stayed in Vancouver for a few years, she will be returning to Korea at end of this year. Before leaving, she invited Helen and I to her house for a authentic Korean homemade dinner. She showed us how to make Japchae, a very popular Korean noodle dish. The recipe is at the bottom of this blog entry.

Allie also served some black rice which her husband brought all the way from Korea during his last visit. I have never see or heard of black rice until now. It tastes the same as the normal rice, looks different (of course) but have a rougher texture. It is known to have high nutritional value.

Allie also made a Seaweed Tofu Beef Soup. Allie told us that this is very popular among Korean ladies. It did not occur to me to ask her then why it is popular among ladies only. Any Korean reader here knows why?

She also prepared an Apple, Tomato, Romaine and Chicken Salad. She used Balsamic Vinegar as dressing. The chicken used is roasted chicken. I like this, more because of the apples used in it.

Lastly Allie prepared some “Thousand Year Eggs”. This is not Korean but Chinese.

I love the Japchae the most. It is kind of similar to the Chinese Dry Glass Noodle except that it uses a sweet sauce. Korean dishes commonly uses corn syrup and sesame seed oil which gives that sweetness in the dishes. There is quite a bit of steps in making this but it is worth the work. Try it out.

Despite her busy schedule preparing for the move home, she found the time to share this meal with us. I am going to miss having her around the neighborhood.

Here is the recipe for making Japchae.

Ingredients

• Potato noodle, boiled for about 6 minutes and rinse in running cold water
• Rice cake, boiled and rinsed in running cold water
• Green, Red and Yellow sweet peppers, thinly sliced
• Shiitake mushroom, thinly sliced
• Beef, thinly sliced
• Spinach, blanched
• Seasonings include soy sauce, sesame oil, cooking syrup and brown sugar

Please click on the link below for the instructions.

Instructions

Fry the peppers and mushroom with some oil. Remove from pan and set aside.

Blanched the spinach and toss with some sesame oil and set aside.Fry some beef slices which had been marinated the bulgogi style and set aside.

Fry the potato noodle and rice cake which had been boiled with some sesame oil.

Make a sauce using soy sauce, cooking syrup, sesame oil and brown sugar. No exact measurement and Allie just eyeballed them.

Add the sauce into the noodles.

Return the beef, spinach and peppers and toss to mix well.This noodle is slightly on the sweet side. The rice cake is very chewy.

Allie, thank you for sharing your cooking with us.

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