Friday, June 24, 2011

Makin' Korean food in India

That tinda pickle was part of my effort to make an Indian inspired bi bim bap (or bi bim bap inspired Indian food, I'm not sure which).  Bi bim bap is in my mind the quintessential Korean dish: several different preparations of vegetables and ground beef and rice and raw egg and delicious chilli sauce.


Ours of course has no ground beef, as Bo is vegetarian.  Shama had made some soya ball curry,  but I don't like soya balls.  I like the crumbled granules okay, if cooked with enough soy sauce, cumin, garlic, onion - basically flavor and salt.  The way she makes them they taste like waterlogged, grainy sponges.  (I'll cover all of this in another instalment of  Mystery Produce.)  So I wanted to repurpose her curry.  I chopped it up, cooked it with garlic, onion, cumin powder, garam masala, coriander powder, soy sauce and ketchup.  Ours is topped with a fried egg and an attempt at chilli sauce.  I would go with cock sauce or a Korean chilli sauce, if you can.  I made ours with ginger garlic paste, sesame oil, chilli powder, little soy sauce and vinegar.


Here it is without the egg.  I'll describe the veggie vignettes starting at the top and working clockwise.  First we have simply carrot matchsticks (poorly crafted, I am no Masterchef).  Next time I will pickle these in some fashion.  Now sesame scallions.  These are just inch long pieces of scallion marinated with a little salt, garlic, sesame oil and seeds.  Next is plain chopped tomato.  Then our beef replacement.  Followed by our tinda pickle.  The potatoes were particularly good.  These were sliced as you see and simmered gently in some water with a ton of soy sauce and turmeric powder.  Delicious.  And finally long beans sauteed with a little ginger and garlic.

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