Everyday Foodie turned six years old yesterday, and like any good foodies we celebrated with Spam:
Okay, stay with me. There's more to it! I haven't gone off the deep end.
Since Korean is our favourite type of ethnic cuisine we decided to have a couple Korean meals yesterday. For lunch we had tteokbokki.
Then for dinner we decided to whip up budae jjigae. Budae jjigae (army or soldier stew) became popular after the Korean war when food was scarce in Seoul. Many people made use of canned surplus foods from army bases (Spam, ham, beans, etc.) and mixed them with Korean flavours such as gochujang and kimchi. This dish is still popular in Korea, and it is a mixture of modern American ingredients such as instant noodles, American cheese, macaroni, and hotdogs, with tofu, a Korean broth and spices, rice cakes, and vegetables.
It starts with making and then straining a simple, quick broth. In the broth are dried shitakes, dried shrimp, dried anchovies, onion, and kelp.
Then you saute some onion, carrot and garlic. Once softened you top the vegetables with sliced Spam, sliced hotdogs, sliced tofu, rice cakes, and kimchi. You can add different things too - Google a few recipes if you're interested.
You pour the broth over everything, and bring it to a boil ...
Then you add a spice mixture of gochujang powder, gochujang paste, soy sauce, and rice wine.
After cooking that for about five minutes, you add some instant ramen noodles, and cook until those are done.
Then, in case this hasn't been strange enough for you so far ...
You add a couple processed slices of cheese.
Stir that in and then dig in!
The verdict = It was too Western for us to be honest. It tasted fine, but almost a little bland compared to what we're used to with Korean food. We like to tell people that we're part Korean, and although this is a popular Korean dish, the addition of all the Western ingredients made it taste not Korean enough. It could have used way more spice too. We had fun making it though!
It's hard to believe that I created this blog six years ago. I remember it perfectly, sitting in the spare room, on a desktop computer at a corner desk. I had started blogs before, but never stuck with them. This one I wanted to commit to. I bought the domain name that day, and got started, never imagining where it would end up. Within the past year alone I've partnered with some big names, such as Canadian Living Magazine, Sobeys, Circulon and Menchie's! What a blast! I'm so excited to see what the future holds for Everyday Foodie.
I'd love to learn more about my readers!
1) Your name
2) Where you're from
3) What keeps you coming back to read
4) What you're up to this weekend!
