Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Doenjangjjigae - Tofu Soybean Paste Stew

Ok, I faked you out. I didn't make MaPo Tofu, because I was watching korean drama[1] last night, and started craving korean stew. So instead I made Doenjangjjigae, following (somewhat) this recipe from My Korean Kitchen.

I say that I only followed it "somewhat" because

i) I didn't quite get the right ingredients (is anchovy soup stock the same thing as anchovy powder?), and

ii) I realized I don't have liquid (or dry, for that matter) measures, so I had guess how much 350mL of water was. Ahahahah, I think I overgauged it, and so had to add an extra tsp of anchovy stock, so it wouldn't be too bland. (Or maybe anchovy powder is more potent than anchovy stock?)
Shopping for the ingredients was an interesting experience - the recipe calls for half of one green chili and half of one red chili. Now, I don't know if it's just because I was shopping in Koreatown, but I went to three different places, and at none of these places can you buy chili peppers in quantity less than about TWENTY chili peppers. They seem to only come prepackaged in amounts of 20 (or 40 if you want the big package). I couldn't find a lone chili pepper anywhere! And I'd be damned if I bought one package of 20 green chili peppers, and another package of 20 red chili peppers. So I just bought one package of green chili peppers, and used one whole green chili. I'll be eating chili peppers in my food for probably the next two weeks as it is[2].
Oh, but I'm so glad I didn't skip out on the chili pepper. The stew was so satisfyingly savoury, with the wonderful kick of spiciness that I was missing so much when I had my Blackbean Tofu. And one chili pepper was just right for me and my weak-sauce threshold for spiciness. I had the stew ladled over rice[3]. Mmmmm, so good. It doesn't look as good as the picture on My Korean Kitchen, but it tasted good : )

Up next: Whatever I can make using up the leftover chili peppers, zucchini, onion, carrot and green beans...
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[1] Incidentally, I have only two more episodes of Coffee Prince to go...
[2] And I'll be having a lot of zucchini and shiitake mushroom while I'm at it. Along with trying to finish the giant bag of green beans I'm slowly working away at - they only had one size of bag at the chinatown market!
[3] I'm still trying to figure out the rice-cooker and rice/water ratio though. The rice was too wet - it wasn't mushy, but it was kind of wet. Luckily I was having it with soup anyways.

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