Solomon Seal Tea (둥글레차)

Happy Bear made this tea for our Sunday breakfast on our tour of Jeollabukdo.

The roots we place in the rice cooker and left on the warm setting overnight. The result was was a medicinal tonic with the body of coffee and with a mild bitter taste.

Solomon's Seal root tea is a good tonic acting on the kidneys, heart and sexual organs as well as soothing the digestive system. The tea can be drunk to stop coughs. It sooth an upset stomach. It will stimulate digestion. The infusion is also useful for cuts and scrapbs.

Personally, I have used it to help the digestion of meat and I have used when I feel my throat is becoming sore and I risk getting a cold.

Mushroom and Mussel JJigae

This was a hit at the Happy Bear Breakfast on Day Three of our Trip with the Korean production crew because of its spicy kick. The Westerners would have liked a little less spice for their breakfast, so act according to your tastes.

To make this simple and delicious simple, you will need:

1. 1kg of Mussels
2. 3T of Gochgaru
3. T of Apple Cider Vinegar
4. 10 cups of water
5. 2kg of mushrooms
6. 2 onions
7. 4 cloves of garlic
8. 1 tablespoon of soy sauce
9. Salt to taste
10. 1 medium sized radish cut into 5 cm cubes
11. 5 small potatoes, cut into 5cm cubes

1. Take the mussels and wash them. Sepparate the mussels whos shells are open and dispose. They are no good to eat.
2. Steam the mussells in very little water. In five minutes they will open and be ready.
3. Sepparate the mussels from the shells.
4. Combine all the elements together and cook all together.
5. Eat and Enjoy.

Preparing Brown Rice You Can Actually Eat

From the Happy Bear Breakfast together.

You are what you digest. Brown rice is a healthy part of diet. However, you are what you digest and if the rice isn't prepared properly you will have digestive problems and also you'll absorb less minerals, if any at all. This includes all grains. Grains that are not prepared properly put people at risk for degenerative disease. The link between mineral deficiencies and degenerative disease is well established. I love my wife, parents, sister and her family to much for that.

A traditional way to prepare rice is through fermentation. Everywhere in the pre-industrial world were there were agro-people or hunter-gather people, wild or domesticated grains were fermented because they knew from subjective experience that their health was better.

What we know today is that the fermentation breaks down the phytates. It will help break down the phytates in the rice. The phytates are what block mineral and vitamins from being absorb. They are used by rice to keep creatures from eating them and they work very well on those who don't have the knowledge to remove them and the co-factors to prevent their effects.

When prepared properily brown rice is a great addition to your diet.

This is what you do. Take rice cover it completely with water. Then add a splash of Korean rice wine, whey, or sour dough starter.

24 hours later, remove whatever rice you are cooking with. Save the juices from the fermentation for the next batch of rice. Overtime the bacteria will bulld up in the fermented juice and it will remove more of the phytates from the substance.

Then cook the rice with some kind of fat. Add 2 parts water for 1 part rice into a pot or rice cooker. Then add a fat. I take some organic beef broth from bones that I boil and add it to the rice. You can skip this fat is nothing is available.

I hope this provides you with some help to integrate a whole food like brown rice into your diet.

The change from processed food to whole foods is not easy but the difference is fantastic. I couldn't imagine how much energy I would have when I started this journey or the traps I fell into along the way but it's been a great thing to feel healthier and in a better state of mind from it. Please try this method of preparation for yourself and your loved ones.

Dotorimuk: An Acorn-based Treat

Acorns were eaten by many indigenous people such as Native American tribes. The Oak trees that grow in America are capable of making what is in the picture here. The acorns are soaked to remove most of their bitterness and then are dried and ground to a powder. The cook who gathered them herself after soaking, drying and grinding added seasoning and water and boiled the mixture until it start to firm up. Then she put it in a mold.

The flavor was more complicated than chestnuts and are easier to grow than grain. Acorns are a sustainable eat which retain healthy medicinal value. Harrong Village Restaurant has an amazing tasting Dotorimuk.

We couldn't get the amazing recipe of Dotorimuk from Harong Village, but here is a recipe adapted slightly from the NYTimes recipe.

FOR THE JELLY

2 cups quartered and shelled acorns

2 tablespoons cornstarch

3/4 teaspoon sea salt

sesame oil

For the dressing

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 teaspoon rice wine vinegar

1/2 teaspoon sesame oil

1 teaspoon kochukaru (Korean red pepper flakes) or other red pepper flakes to taste

1 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds

1/2 teaspoon minced garlic

1 scallion, cut into 2-inch lengths and julienned.

For the dressing

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 teaspoon rice wine vinegar

1/2 teaspoon sesame oil

1 teaspoon kochukaru (Korean red pepper flakes) or other red pepper flakes to taste

1 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds

1/2 teaspoon minced garlic

1 scallion, cut into 2-inch lengths and julienned.

1. For the jelly: In a blender, combine the acorns with 1 cup water. Process to a rough paste. Transfer to a large bowl, cover with water and stir. Let sit, covered, in a cool place. (The acorn starch will fall to the bottom of the bowl while the water will become stained brown from tannins.) After three hours, drain water from bowl, being careful not to disturb acorn sediment. Cover with more fresh water and stir. Repeat process as often as possible, at least twice a day, until the water runs clear, from three days up to one week.

2. After the last drain, combine acorn meal with 5 cups of water in a large pot. Bring to a rolling boil, then reduce heat to a low boil. Keep stirring to prevent acorn meal from burning. Whisk cornstarch and salt with 3 tablespoons water until smooth. Add to pot. Continue stirring until volume is reduced by half and liquid is thickened, about 30 minutes.

3. Coat four small serving bowls with vegetable oil. Strain acorn mixture through a fine-meshed sieve and divide among the bowls. Allow to rest at room temperature until set, about 2 hours.

4. For the dressing: In a small bowl, whisk together soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil, pepper flakes, sesame seeds and garlic. Add scallion, and mix.

5. To serve, invert a bowl of jelly onto a serving plate, and remove bowl. Top with a spoonful of dressing. Repeat with remaining jelly and dressing, and serve.

Yield: 4 servings.

-Greg

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

Doraji Muchim

The Happy Bear at Nungil Village had the opportunity to make Doraji Muchim. It is a tasty dish made with bellflower roots. We have the recipe for this delicious meal here.

1. Soak the bellflower roots in water over night. In the morning change the water and keep soaking and draining over a period of hours until the bitterness is removed.

2. Combine the following ingredients:

• 5 cups of bellflower root
• 1 tablespoon of perilla oil
• 1 tablespoon of sesame oil.
• 4 tablespoons of gochujang
• a little water
• 1 carrot sliced into thin strips
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 2 nobs of ginger
• 2 tablespoons of soybean paste

3. Put into a jar and place in the refrigerator or eat with friend.  You can keep it in the refrigerator for up to week if it lasts that like because it's delicious. It's a delicious eat.

Anina's Lotus Root

  

There was a feeling reminiscent to that of a holiday in our own culture - Thanksgiving or Christmas. We stayed up into the midnight hour to prepare our recipes for the following morning's breakfast. There's nothing quiet as comfortable and homey as co-creating a common meal. Music, B-boy dancing, taking turns in the small kitchen space, cutting, rinsing, sprinkling, simmering, mixing, washing, cleaning....

 We were determined to re-create some of the amazing banchan dishes we'd tried at our first dinner...bracken root in perilla powder/oil; lotus root in syrup; and a few other dishes: tiny dried fish with peppers in sesame oil, soy sauce, and vinegar; marinated garlic scapes; cabbage in perilla powder; spinach with sesame seeds; the staple rice (we used brown, as its more nutritionally complete); cut up fresh figs; and mussel 'tang' (stew). An incredible breakfast!

We started our mission at the street market. The fleet of us went in search of our planned list of ingredients, along with our invaluable translator, producer and cameraman. We spent quite some time looking for and deciding on the appropriate/right amount of produce. I was aghast, as I never cease to be, at the abundant variety of produce which is still so enticing and wondrous to me even after 8 months of being here, and at the foods I don't know the words to. I stopped to admire the numerous banchan dishes at one stall and a woman offered me a sample of one dish - it was a mixture of back beans, dried banana chips, peanuts, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, raisins, and figs in a thin syrup. She continued to feed me morsel after morsel, seed after seed, until someone else stepped in and relieved me from the tasting ( I was thoroughly grateful, but still full from lunch).

 Another exciting moment was finding a vendor who ground perilla seeds on the spot! into oil and powder! So lucky us, we got some.

I made the lotus root dish. Lotus root has intrigued me from the first time we met. A tuberous root at first sight, but when sliced it reveals a beautiful geometrical design inside. Its flavor is starchy and nutty. Its texture is crisp, but tenderly chewy. This root is versatile in its role, and can be eaten as fruit in numerous desserts; as an accompaniment to savory courses; and on its own as a side portion. Often compared to the Chinese water chestnut and similar in versatility to the potato, its high in fiber, vitamin C, some B vitamins, many electrolytes, and minerals.

 First I peeled the tuberous lotus root, then thinly sliced it, boiled it in water for about twenty minutes, then drained the water, added soy sauce, brown rice syrup, sesame oil, and a few dashes of apple cider vinegar. Constantly stirred for about half an hour, then kept adding more of the same ingredients to taste. After what seemed like eons of stirring and adding, stirring and adding, I let it sit for the flavors to concentrate overnight. In the morning, all was well and the dish was complete. It was a fair comparison in the end, to the lotus dish we had eaten at the restaurant the first night. The texture was tenderly chewy, starchy, and wholesome. Filling and sweet. Could make a good dessert as well. But it also melded perfectly with the other flavors of the morning. I'm becoming a proponent for foods that combine as many different flavors as possible in one bite. I also realize the importance of simplicity, but there is a time and a place for each. There's something inexplicably satiating about experiencing each sensation of flavor in one meal. Every taste-bud is quenched, which makes me wonder if every organ is also happy....

We had the driver evaluate our dishes honestly and he pointed out that only two of the 6 dishes we made were distinguishable as non-native-made dishes. He was impressed.

It proved to be surprisingly simpler than I thought to re-create such dishes. They are really all quite simple, but it takes taste-testing intuition and some time learning to navigate the markets to bring a desired result to fruition. I would suggest, if you are interested in making Korean recipes, to walk around the markets, ask questions (via translator is best, but a dictionary can also be an invaluable tool), browse recipes online, and don't be afraid to experiment!

Lotus root being cooked

Various banchan dishes

Geometrically-perfect lotus root

Morning's spread minus the brown rice

- Anina
http://happybeareats.blogspot.com/2011/11/meet-anina.html

Cabbage Kimchi: Or How I Learned to Stop Loving Saurkraut and Loving Kimchi

My Korean co-workers from last year really like this recipe when I made it in bulk for the winter season. I think my Western friends would too. It has a balance of sweet/ and sour flavor of sauerkraut with all the fiery essence of kimchi.

Prep:

Step One: Brining

2 cabbages and 1/2 cup of salt for each cabbage
*Note: quality salt is important, sodium chloride is great, because its one ingredient with no additives that can interfere with the brining.

I have two sinks. I fill one with water and the other I use for draining. I cut up the cabbages into small pieces. This makes it easier to ferment and to pack more into a smaller space. I soak the cabbages in the water to get off dirt but also soaking helps for the next step. The cabbages then go into the other sink and our salted with good quality salt. Then I mixed it together. Then I leave that for two hours.

Step Two: Making the Paste.

I simmer 6 cups of water with 1 cup of rice flour. I stir it and then leave it for 5 minutes. Then I come back and add 1/2 cup of sugar and stir until the paste is translucent. Then I put the pan in a larger ban which has cold water in it.

Step Three: Adding the additions

2 cups of red pepper
2 cups of crushed garlic
a whole piece of ginger, peeled and cut into little pieces
2 tablespoons of brine shrimp

I mix the additions to the paste when its cool to room temperature.

Step Four: Dunk the cabbage back into the water filled sink and drain it. You want to taste some to make sure its not too salty and if it mix it until a lot of the salt is in the water. I use enough water in the sink to dilute a lot it.

Step Five: Mix it all together

1. I take a large 5 liter glass jar and fill the jar with cabbage. Then mix in the paste. No technique has worked better with my hands.

2. Then I seal the glass jar and I open it twice a day to let the air out. In two-three days it should be ready to eat. Bubbling is normal. Put the jar in your refrigerator when not using it.

Step Six Eat: SO good with organic pork belly and tofu.

Eat Well and Enjoy!

Greg 

That's me in heaven!

*Notes:

IF you use soap to clean your hands normally try to refrain from this. Soap can throw the taste of the kimchi. I use some vinegar diluted in water to sanitize my hands. Then rinse my hands off.

 Glass has the best tasting Kimchi. it's also non-toxic unlike plastic.

Get organics where you can

Tis the Season for Korean Fermented Vegetables!: or Long Live Fermented Foods!

As it gets colder Korean continue a tradition that predates refrigeration for all cultures. It's time for food preservation and in Korean it's to make a lot of kimchi before the farming ends and winter time begins. That's the time when Korean would have to live on what had grown and preserve that until the next farming season began.

I presume you don't have to be told that kimchi constitutes many types of variety. The most ubiquitous is baechu kimchi or cabbage kimchi.

We had an opportunity to make kimchi with true foodies who owned restaurants and made farms. I had my own personal experiences making Korean food during my  Wwoofing and while in Korea.

We ate a lot of fermented or preserved foods on our trip.

In my studies of traditional foods, I've learned that a certain amount of raw, uncooked food in the diet is indispensable to the highest degree of health and a certain amount of cooked food is necessary for the procurement of enough calories and to unlock the nutritional potential of those foods. One striking observation of ethnic cuisines is that rarely are meals eaten without at least one fermented food or drink. Traditionally they included sausage, cheese, ham, bread, and pickled vegetables in the West. In India, soured milk is often drank. Indonesian's eat tempeh. African's ferment millet for pouridge making. The Chinese ferment duck eggs and tofu. The Korean's eat kimchi. This isn't just a matter of taste but the health benefits derrived from such foods eaten with a variety of other foods.

Happy Bear had the opportunity to make Kimchi in Jeollabukdo and healthy side dishes which will be showed cased in a recipe series of our own recipes inspired from Korean food.

We will showcasing our recipes of these healthy foods.