a most colorful foodblogging post

Here, with explanations, are the pictures I took of my first-ever attempt at ch'amch'i dwaenjang jjigae, a stew made with a salty bean paste (dwaenjang, with the "w" barely pronounced; it sounds more like "den-jang"), a load of different vegetables, and tuna (ch'amch'i).

As I mentioned before, I'm looking for advice on how to improve the stew, which was good, but seemed to be missing something. Feel free to leave comments or write me an email.

And now-- forward!

In this first picture, we see the cast of characters strewn about orgy-style on my bed. From the left: we've got rice (not needed this time around), a plastic bag of goguma (sweet potatoes-- an unconventional choice), a cylinder of red chili pepper flakes, cans of tuna (one of which I had dropped at the store, which is why it's dented; I don't normally buy dented cans, but that one was my fault), onions, several varieties of mushroom, a plastic container of the previous freakish soup I had made (more on this later), a rectangular container of dwaenjang (from a former coworker), garlic (small, round container), more mushrooms, and green peppers.

A comment about that garlic: that particular brand is like nothing I've ever smelled before. I want to try that brand again. When you sniff the garlic, you smell something sweet and almost buttery; it was unusual, and I immediately liked it.

Next pic (below)-- the washing begins! I didn't really need to wash the onion, but it said it wanted to hang with the other veggies before they all got slaughtered (probably trying to convert them all to Christianity or something).

In this pic you see, along with the onion, two types of mushroom, a lone green pepper (I'm saving the other two for something else), an eggplant (others to be kept in reserve), and two goguma. Those goguma are tough little bastards when you cut them-- not at all like cutting into regular Idaho potatoes. I knew right away that they'd need some softening-up time before I could stew them with everything else.



In the picture below, it appears as though I've either vomited or shat into the pan. While that's a good guess, it's also wrong. What you see in the pan is the remains of the freakish soup I had made the other night when I had an empty fridge and few leftovers: I had some very chunky multigrain rice, some tuna, and some dwaenjang. I mixed it all together and made a soup, which was lame as hell. But the soup gave me the idea to go all-out and do the thing right, hence the present effort to make a legitimate jjigae (Korean-style stew).

Korean stews and Western stews have certain things in common: they're fairly forgiving in terms of proportions, and it's often just a matter of "chop n' toss"-- throw the ingredients together in the pot and fire that thang up.

But Korean stews are usually such that they don't need hours of cooking time. Budae jjigae ("boot camp stew," i.e., stew with hotdog and other mystery meats), for example, requires only a few minutes until it's ready. While I don't know for sure whether dwaenjang jjigae is the same as budae, it seems to come out pretty quickly when you order it at a restaurant. On the one hand, the price you pay for a quick stew is that the ingredients don't really have a chance to blend together. On the other hand, you experience the freshness of each ingredient right away, which is a pleasure in its own right. Ultimately, neither type of stew is better than the other; it's a matter of preference. I happen to like both.

I put the leftover soup in the pot as a sort of "base" on which to build the current stew.



In the following pic, we see chopping in progress. The veggies have all had time to pray, and are now being done away with. The eggplant was surprisingly springy and had no seeds-- odd. This is a far cry from the enormous, bloated aubergines I remember enjoying in France. My French mom made us some incredible stuffed eggplant once. I wish I had pictures.

Chop, chop, chop. All in the name of healthier eating.



Below, we offer a plateful of chopped veggies to Dalma Daesa, but you can see he's turned up his nose at what I'm sure he perceives as shameful excess. Damn monks.



Below are two varieties of mushroom that needed little cleaning; I simply chopped the dirty bottoms off the shrooms on the right. The mushrooms on the left are called neut'ari in Korean; they're apparently called "agaric" in English, but a Google search of "agaric" brings up many different mushroom images, so "agaric" might be too generic a name for these particular shrooms. I admit I like these neut'ari a lot; they're quite meaty. The shrooms on the right are called p'aengi beoseot in Korean; a "p'aengi" is a spinning top. In English, we apparently use the Japanese term "enoki" to describe these little guys. I often place these shrooms in my ramyeon to spruce the soup up. Ramyeon by itself is pretty boring, so I'll add enoki, squash, egg, and whatever else might be handy.

I ended up using only about half of the p'aengi beoseot in my stew. That's fine; I plan on making the stew again when I've run out of the first batch.



In the following pic, we see that I'm boiling the goguma into submission, softening it up separately to reduce cooking time in the main stew. We also get a glimpse of the barf in the pot, which now has some goch'u (chili peppers) atop it.



Ah yes-- I dumped tuna onto the vomit as well, along with the tuna water for flavor.

In case you're wondering why the hell I'm using tuna and not some other meat, it's because one of the popular stews here-- at least in our teachers' office at Smoo-- is ch'amch'i kimchi jjigae, or tuna kimchi stew. Smells good, and is more delicious than the concept might lead you to believe. My Korean colleagues rarely order anything other than Korean food, and tuna stew is frequently slaughtered and eaten by the ladies.

My thought, then, was to try the same thing, but with dwaenjang stew.



I thought this next pic was pretty colorful. I'm showing you the platter one more time because the composition has changed. Compare this pic with the previous one showing Dalma Daesa-- what's different?



Below: we've added more water and are ready to start the real cooking.



The ingredients are about to meet their tasty fate:



In the following pic, you see I've added a glop of garlic, some red pepper, and the all-important dwaenjang, the bean paste. Time to fire up the camp stove...



Below: this is pretty much what the stew turns into as it cooks. The main goal, now, is to keep it moving and not allow the bottom to burn. No one likes a burned bottom. (By the way, this smells fantastic.)

And that's pretty much it for prep. Cook the nasssty little veggies, Precioussss.



Et voilà-- the final result:



The happy brown color is about what you'd expect for dwaenjang jjigae.

The stew was good, but not great. So the question is... what's missing? One thing dwaenjang jjigae usually has is beans. I don't know their name in English or Korean, but these beans, which are light-brown in color, are a common sight in such stews. I did have such beans in this stew, thanks to that chunky, multigrain rice I had added in at the beginning. Another thing, now that I think of it, is green onions.

But the soup was missing something else, some oomph. What was it? What did I miss? I know that, as I was eating, I felt as though I could have added more seafood without harm. Clams came to mind, as did squid. They would have given the soup some salty, burly character, I think. Did the soup need minari or ssukgat, either of which might go into budae jjigae?

Anyway, there you have it-- my stew. Not too starchy (except for the little goguma I put in; usually, such stews use normal potatoes), not too salty (no extra salt added), and just spicy enough.

OK-- fire away with your thoughts.

UPDATE: Aha! Could it be that we're missing dubu (tofu) and squash? I had intended to buy squash, but somehow forgot it on my shopping run.

UPDATE 2: Instead of fumbling about, I should have just followed this fine-looking recipe.


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