Making Gosari Namul banchan

Our accommodation for the night was a pension. We arrived late partially drunk on the greatest makkoli to ever exist, what’s better is we had a keg of the stuff donated to us from the owner! Unlike the stuff you retire off nowadays this pension provided great comfort and warmth and reasonable kitchen with which to start preparing our banchan dishes which would be served for breakfast the next day.

I first rinsed the fern bracken with water. This is the bulk of the dish to which I added a perilla powder and to this I added a dash of salt to add flavour. As I sipped away at the delicious makkoli we acquired earlier I just couldn’t resist but add a dash into the banchan. Maybe I was a little drunk or just over come by the sheer ‘맛있 factor’ of the makolli it didn’t really make a difference and I can imagine had I added more I could have spoilt the flavour completely; lesson 1 great tasting alcohol won’t necessarily lead to great tasting food.

My Gosari namul

As you can see this dish is very quick and simple to make. The next morning we ate our banchan dishes. Unfortunately my dish didn't taste half as good as the ones in the restaurants. I think this dish was lacking in one or more ingredients.

After doing some research I realized the dish was lacking in more than just one ingredient. Garlic gloves, minced onion and a couple of teaspoons of soy sauce would have really made the dish!

So if you want to make the ‘fern bracken banchan dish’ follow the method below:

You will need:

Boiled fern bracken (1 package)

Perilla powder (cooks choice, keep adding until you can taste the flavour)

Perilla oil (2 table spoons)
sesame oil

Salt

Garlic cloves (1 full sliced garlic)

Minced spring onion (1 stick)

Soy sauce (2 table spoons)

(Note: we bought pre boiled fern bracken so if you buy it dry you will have to boil it first)

First heat some sesame oil in a pan and add in your fern braken and mix just to heat and get the oil to stick. Then in a sepparate boil add some chopped garlic, minced green onion and 2 tablespoons of soy sauce and sauté. Then add the fern braken.   Add some perilla powder to your fern bracken and a little salt and mix it together.  Then add a dash of perilla oil at the end. You can eat right away or save it for the next morning as we did.

Our delicious side dishes

Banchan breakfast

-Andy