angw

Bibimbap

  • 2 cups short grain rice
  • firm tofu (substitute for bulgogi or yukhoe)
  • soy sauce
  • toasted sesame oil
  • garlic
  • honey
  • mirin (rice cooking wine)
  • 1 large carrot julienned
  • 1 large red bell pepper, julienned
  • 2 to 3 green onions, chopped
  • snow peas
  • scallions
  • red cabbage
  • jalapeños
  • hijiki, dried Japanese seaweed, soaked
  • fried egg
  • Ssamjang (so tasty, soybean paste) or Gochujang for heat
  • kimchi, duh
  1. Cook 2 cups sushi rice in cooker. 
  2. Cut tofu into ¾ cubes, marinate in a mix of sesame oil, garlic, soy sauce, and honey. Put aside.
  3. Julienned matchstick whatever you can find, carrots, zucchini, cucumber, red bell pepper. Cook one at a time in a skillet briefly, with sesame oil, little soy sauce, and garlic. 
  4. I didn't have soybean sprouts so I blanched snow peas, and added purple cabbage. Chopped up scallions. Kept these raw for crunch.
  5. Fry tofu in some sesame oil, till slightly browned. Line a big bowl with rice. Place all ingredients carefully next to each other on top.
  6. Fry an egg. Place on top. After serving, mix it up with a stainless chopstick and add Ssamjang or Gochurang for added flavor.

Bibimbap is sort of a leftover meal. This isn't an authentic version at all. Maangachi's raw meat  (yukhoe: 육회). recipe is here: . She uses dried fernbrake and bellflower root which you can order on Amazon.

Anecdote
I watch a lot of k-dramas. Netflix seems to recommend violent, scary, girl-in-a-trunk videos instead so I switched to viki. I immediately fell in love with the sound of Korean language. Korean has 750 syllables compared to our 7,500. It just sounded right to me. It is a timed language like Spanish which I grew up in Peru so maybe that explains it. That was three years ago. I took classes in K-town, and practised with the Lingodeer and Memrise apps. I know enough Korean to get annoyed with the netflix translations. I know more about BTS than I should. I like how there is a hierarchy in social interchanges. Respect for the elderly. You take care of the younger ones. Emphasis on behavior for the common good or team versus looking out for yourself at other people's expense. I love how the alphabet was designed. I was so proud of how SK dealt with Covid and so terribly disappointed and embarrassed by the USA. At one point I had a lot of Korean students in web dev classes at Pratt. The makeup of the student population changes though. I know how to pronounce Soyeong but no longer have students with Korean names. Netflix has k-dramas now. But, there are still girls-in-a-trunk, so not the same.