Last Sunday, I went on a Korean market tour with 3 gal pals – Hyunjoo Albrecht, Linda Lim, and Karen Shinto. You may know Karen, the food stylist who tried to stab me with chopsticks on my Asian Dumpling cookbook photo shoot. Hyunjoo is a Korean food expert and Linda is a lifestyle marketing expert and avid cook and eater.
Korean food is a mystery to me as I’m a little rusty with my Hangul (!!) and most Korean ingredients are labeled in their language full of neat circles and straight lines. There are only a handful of Korean ingredients involved in the cuisines of the Land of the Morning Calm. For example, garlic, soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, and chiles are the dominant seasonings. Gojuchang is a fermented chile paste that has an addictively smoky, earthy flavor that I’ve enjoyed on numerous occasions in bibimbap rice preparations. However, whenever I’ve gone to a Korean market and had to face with a wall of Korean chile paste tubs, I can’t figure out which to select and blindly choose the highest priced gojuchang. Don’t get me started on cryptic vegetable labeling such as “Korean radish” and “edible leaves.” I’m a mess in a Korean produce section and the banchan side dishes section of a Korean market.
Korean food is up and coming, per the Wall Street Journal and Gourmet in articles this month. For years I’ve been looking for someone to help me demystify the cuisine and recently met Hyunjoo, the person behind Cookingkorean.com. She would be my guide. Linda and Karen were game and the four of us met early Sunday morning in Sunnyvale at Hankook market (1092 E El Camino Real, cross streets are Wolfe and Lawrence Expressway, Sunnyvale, CA 94087).
Vietnamese-Korean Culinary LinkagesIf you’ve hung around enough Korean American communities, you’ll notice that there are a number of unusual Vietnamese-Korean culinary connections. It basically winds down to pho noodle soup. Koreans love the soup and I’ve enjoyed a decent bowl in Los Angeles Koreatown on Western Avenue. At a Korean-owned pho shop, you can get a side order of kimchi and the bowls are relatively big, reflecting the Korean penchant for large quantities of food. On the flip side, a small number of Vietnamese pho shops have taken to serving their noodle soup in fancy Korean metal bowls, which keep the soup tongue-scalding hot.
Koreans use fish sauce to make kimchi as the condiment lends a nice briny, savory undercurrent. Vietnamese people have made kimchi for decades. It’s not a big thing but my mother has a hand-written recipe dating back to the 1970s. Oh, and beef is well loved in both Korea and Vietnam. Beef is not a popular meat in other Asian cuisines. And since we were exchanging culinary expertise last Sunday, Hyunjoo asked me if I knew anything about rice paper as Koreans are using more of it these days to wrap food up in. Ahem… banh trang? Yes, I happen to be familiar with it. (That's Hyunjoo in the photo, talking about virgin vs. married man radish. It's all about the shape, my friends.)
But was there something more? I wondered and about 1 hour into the market tour and we’d made it out of the Korean banchan section of the market into produce, I had an inkling. There was all this lettuce and lots of large serrated beefsteak (sesame) leaves, a relative of Japanese shiso that looked a lot like Vietnamese tia to and kinh gioi. “Koreans love beefsteak leaves with grilled meat,” Hyunjoo said. “We like to wrap the meat and herbs up in lettuce with chile paste and raw garlic. Some people add thin slices of Korean radish too.”
Above is a small Korean radish, called "mu." It's denser than
daikon and sweet tasting with a crisp, refreshing flavor.
Well, doesn’t that sound like how Vietnamese people many kinds of grilled and fried morsels? This particular Korean foodway was very similar to that of Vietnam, and it wasn’t a new and recent adaptation. Viets love to create bundles with lettuce. In fact, we like to create lettuce wrap bundles with many foods, not just grilled meats like the Koreans do.
Speaking of which, in the meat section there was tons of beautifully sliced beef and pork to be used in soup and for Korean barbecue. Hyunjoo zeroed in on a particular sale item – black pork belly on sale for $3.69 a pound, sliced ¼ inch thick. Her eyes practically glazed over as she cooed, “Oh I love grilled pork belly.” The pork was well trimmed (not too much fat) and the skin had been removed. It was a beautiful site to behold.
The black pork belly from Hankook market. The large rectangular
cutting board came from the market too. A great deal for $13.99!
Black pork stands for meat from black Berkshire pigs. The flesh is extraordinarily flavorful and succulent. My mama didn’t raise no dummy so I picked up some.
Then I asked Hyunjoo about the gojuchang chile paste – my enduring problem. “Oh, get this one with the hexagon symbol. They’ve been around for 60 years and it’s good,” she said. “Don’t get the one with the funny looking kid.” Right. Turns out the 60-year-old one is made by Siempo, a well-trusted Korean manufacturer also know for good soy sauce. I brought home a ‘small’ tub that weighed 1 kilo. There are Costco-size tubs too.
Look for the hexagonal symbol to find Siempo brand of gojuchang.
You perhaps can see where I was going with the pork belly and chile paste. The winter-into-spring weather has turned practically balmy in Northern California and I was looking for an excuse to turn on the grill. Plus, our locally grown lettuce is amazing these days given the mild winter we’ve had.
In tribute to the Korean market foray, I marinated the pork belly in a garlicky Vietnamese-Korean combo of flavors, grilled the meat (it’s like thick fresh bacon), and set out a platter of lettuce, herbs, chile paste and nuoc cham dipping sauce. Rory and I made lettuce wraps and drank a hefty amount of chilled Korean soju (a little heavier than sake but nice and smooth). A divine cross-cultural meal to end the day of cross-cultural learning.
RECIPE
Grilled Pork Belly Lettuce Wraps
These kinds of lettuce wraps are called ssam in Korean, and if you’re in the New York area, you may be familiar with them, given all the hubbub surrounding David Chang’s Momofuku Ssam bar. Well, it’s a drinking kind of meal of well-seasoned grilled meat accompanied by raw garnishes including lettuce, thinly sliced garlic, gojuchang chile paste and perhaps some kimchi and thin slices of Korean radish. You could include cooked medium-grain rice too.
The Viet version would have a fish sauce based nuoc cham spiked by fresh chile and garlic, tons of fresh herbs, thinly sliced cucumber and some cooked rice noodles (bun). For this Vietnamese-Korean mash up, I marinated the pork with a typical Viet set of seasonings (shallot, sugar, fish sauce and black pepper) and then added a dose of Korean-ess in the form of extra garlic, sesame oil and finely chopped scallion; Korean cooks often use a fruit tenderizer such as grated Asian pear but the shallot takes care of that. Condiment wise, it was hard to choose and I went with both nuoc cham and gojuchang. No noodles, rice, nor rice paper to keep things low carb and less fuss. Really delicious. So get yourself to a Korean market for some sliced pork belly and get cooking.
Serves 4 as a light main course
Marinade
1 shallot, chopped (¼ cup)
3 large cloves garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon finely chopped ginger
2 ½ tablespoons light brown sugar
½ teaspoon black pepper, freshly ground preferred
4 teaspoons fish sauce
1 ½ teaspoons dark (thick) soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
2 scallions (white and green parts) finely chopped
1 ½ to 1 ¾ pounds ¼-inch-thick sliced pork belly
Leaves from 2 heads lettuce (red leaf, green leaf, or butterleaf)
Assorted fresh herbs, such as cilantro, mint, red perilla (tia to), and/or Vietnamese balm (kinh gioi) (details on Vietnamese herbs)
½ pound peeled Korean radish or cucumber, thinly sliced
20 beefsteak (sesame) leaves (optional)
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced (optional)
1 cup kimchi (optional)
Condiments (choose one or both):
¾ cup nuoc cham dipping sauce
¼ cup Korean gojuchang red chile paste (see photo above of recommended brand)
1. Put the shallot, garlic, ginger, and sugar in a mortar and pestle and pound to a rough paste. Add the black pepper, fish sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil, and scallion. Taste and adjust the flavors to your liking. I like a garlicky savory over a sweet savory flavor. Add seasonings and get it to your liking before you add the pork.
2. Mix the pork with the marinade with your hands to ensure that every slice is well coated. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 4 hours and as long as 2 days.
3. About 45 minutes before grilling, remove the pork from the refrigerator and set it out at room temperature to get rid of some of the chill. Put the lettuce, herbs, radish, sesame leaves, and garlic onto a platter and small side dishes and set at the table. Put the condiments at the table too.
4. Preheat the grill to hot and then grill the pork, about 6 minutes, turning as needed, until cooked and nicely charred. Bring to the table. Set out scissors for every to cut the meat (makes it easier to eat).
5. To eat, put a palm-sized piece of lettuce in your hand, add herbs and other fresh garnishes, a smear of chile paste (if using) and the meat. Bundle it up and eat. If eating with nuoc cham, bundle up the lettuce leaf wrap and dip in the sauce.
Robyn says
Dunno if Korean food is up-and-coming (wasn't that the buzz about 5-7 yrs ago too? and it never took. Of course David Chang wasn't on the scene then either) but we used to have great Korean food in Saigon ... and noticed that unlike many of the other expat-oriented restos there, this one also drew alot of Vietnamese. Perhaps it was that wrap thang.
Gabbie says
Looks delicious! Will you please please post a recipe for grilled vietnamese pork chops? I love ordering them in restaurants and have been looking everywhere for a good marinade recipe but none of them have come close to what I've found in vietnamese restaurants.
Eddie Howard says
This recipe sounds great, and a perfect way to use up a bunch of pork belly I have sitting in my freezer. Who needs David Chang, when we have your blog?!
precious says
the pork belly looks like bacon. is it?
thuy says
Precious: Bacon is pork belly, just smoked.
I think there is a Viet-Korean connection in the foods because there was many Korean owned businesses in Vietnam before 1975. My friend told me when he was growing up in Vietnam, his mother had to cook for the businessmen that his dad brought home from work. When you are away from home for an extended period of time, you will bring home with you. And when you go back, you will bring something new back.
thuy says
Oh let us not forget the hordes of illegal Vietnamese immigrants in Korea too.
Andrea Nguyen says
Robyn, This month, Gourmet has a huge spread on Korean food -- note the culturally incorrect photos that are so very Chinese. The piece pronounced that Korean is ready to go mainstream America. Then the Wall Street Journal prints this article:
The New Hot Cuisine: Korean (3/6/09)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123639056889058949.html
Trends go mainstream late so you were catching wind of something very much later on.
As for bacon, it's cured (not always smoked) pork belly. Here's a recipe from Saveur, if you want to make it yourself! http://www.saveur.com/article/Food/Home-Cured-Bacon
Thuy, thanks for reminding me... about how if you go to Vietnam these days, Korean corporations are well established there. There are Viet people learning Korean language. Investment dollars matter.
Gabbie, will do on breaking the Viet restaurant code for grilled pork chops!
Rena Takahashi says
Andrea, thanks for a great post. That market is so close to me yet I've never been brave enough to venture in. And thank you and your friend so much for the brand recommendation for the gojuchang. That stuff is like oyster sauce or fish sauce - eleventy billion brands and all so different in quality/taste! I will definitely try a small tub of it.
I think I'll go there this weekend and take a look around. When you said berkshire pork, I was sold! I occasionally buy it at Nijiya market in Mtn View but have never seen it anywhere else.
Diane says
I've been obsessively watching Dae Jang Geum (the most awesome series ever, from any country!), and have been drooling over all the scenes of cooking Korean food in it. It's not a cuisine I'm very familiar with (aside from some basics), so I spent a lot of time saying "oooooh, what is that? That looks GOOD!". I've been so interested in trying to learn more, and here is this very timely post. Thanks so much.
Hyunjoo says
Wow..Andrea...
Your post looks a lot more authentic and original Korean than Gourmet's..especially with my photo in it..hahahahahah.....
sophia says
if you are interested in some korean food recipes, you should definitely check out http://www.maangchi.com
she's a cute lady, and she really knows her stuff. she posts videos on how to make every dish on her site; plus she responds to every comment or question that is posted
Joel says
Andrea, I wouldn't have connected the dots if you hadn't compared Korean and Vietnamese dishes side by side, but it does strike me as similar in some tastes. For example, Korean treatment of grilled beef is a slightly sweet with some sesame oil (sesame paste as well?) with some soy sauce and garlic mixed in it. Meanwhile, Vietnamese grilled beef on top of bun also has the faint sweetness and garlic flavour mixed with soy sauce. The taste is very different from Chinese grilled beef served in Pekingese style cooking.
Of course there are many other things that are day and night. For example, Koreans serve sashimi which Vietnamese traditionally don't - I can't vouch what happens when new nouvelle Vietnamese cooking takes off :).
BTW, I believe black pork is the same type as the famed Kagoshima black pork that was all the rage in Hong Kong a few years back. A lot of food commentaries back there talked about how some upmarket Chinese restaurants started promoting signature dishes using pork after a long absence (pork hasn't been the prestigious meat in HK's upmarket Cantonese restaurants since 1980 at least because of public perception that chicken is healthier and more prestigious) but emphasizing that the pork is from Kagoshima black pigs. It is something like 4x the cost of "ordinary" pork.
Michelle says
Andrea, this recipe sounds amazing. Wish I had a backyard to grill in. And thank you for shedding light on the good brand for the gojuchang! I have been borrowing a Korean food book from the library and have been itching to try the recipes.
Andrea Nguyen says
Michelle, I've ventured to Korean markets and blindly bought gojuchang for years but really wanted to know if I was in the ballpark. The brand pictured above is very very good. Terrific with rice, even.
Wandering Chopsticks says
I've made bo la lot with the Korean sesame leaves, with my usual marinade and then with a bulgogi marinade. It works well.
The Viet-Korean link actually goes back centuries. When the Ly dynasty was ousted by the Tran dynasty in the 13th century, members of the royal family fled to Korea. And hundreds of years later, their descendants (who are pretty much totally Korean now) still make pilgrimages back to Vietnam to honor their ancestors. My friend ran into some of the descendants at a temple in Hanoi. I don't have much info beyond that, but always found the story fascinating.
Tangled Noodle says
Thank you for drawing the connections between Vietnamese and Korean cuisines! We have plenty of Vietnamese restaurants here but very few Korean establishments (that aren't folded into another Asian cuisine). I would love to re-discover Korean food - it's been too long since I've had anything like it. One good thing about the long pause: my palate has matured enough to finally enjoy kimchi!
Andrea Nguyen says
Good info, Wandering Chopsticks!
Tangled Noodle-- there are so many versions of kimchi and if you make your own, you can dial in the flavor. Also note that kimchi ages and gets funky over time. Kimchi that's eaten within a week of it being made is addictive. At 4 weeks out, you better be making kimchi jigae soup with it!
Graham says
Andrea, you've inspired me. I am "so" doing this. I cannot get a decent Korean fix in this town - there are no Korean restos and the only thing I can cobble together is a bulgogi - but this is possible, very possible. Much appreciated.
Jaden says
OH honey, I can't wait to try this. Just like Graham, no Korean food in town. Gotta make it myself!
p.s. when are we gonna find you on Twitter?
😉 xo jaden
Andrew LEE says
Your reports on Korean Food is also quite interesting to me.
I never think about Connecting korean cuisine
to Vietnam cooking before.
But your idea is very impressed to Korean like me. Anyway Keep going~~~
Ms.Hyunjoo is my cooking teacher~
I live in Vancouver. My nickname is wonderer.
Andrea Nguyen says
Graham, I know you lived in Korea for a bit so I'm flattered to have inspired you from such a distance!
Jaden -- my lord, you and Graham push me...
Mr. Lee, A response from a Korean person is quite impressive indeed!
Ann says
The connection probably has a lot to do with the Vietnam War and the our Korean counterparts helping us fight the Viet Congs. South Korea suffered over 20,000 casualties.
Of course their involvement back in the 60s and early 70s is connected to Vietnam helping them fight the Mongols.
Remember Vietnam fought off the Mongolia three times!
So the connection probably dates back to then too.
3hungrytummies says
hey Andre
I recently have 2 bbqs in a row one korean and the other vietnamese. Funny enough we were talking about the similarities the 2 country shares 🙂
have a look and tell me what you think .Been cooking a lot of vietnamese food of late, would love to hear what you think 🙂
http://3hungrytummies.blogspot.com/2009/10/korean-bbq-gogi-gui.html
http://3hungrytummies.blogspot.com/2009/10/another-bbq-but-vietnamese-touch.html
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Andrea, you've inspired me. I am "so" doing this. I cannot get a decent Korean fix in this town - there are no Korean restos and the only thing I can cobble together is a bulgogi - but this is possible, very possible. Much appreciated.
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marlon says
The connection probably has a lot to do with the Vietnam War and the our Korean counterparts helping us fight the Viet Congs. South Korea suffered over 20,000 casualties.