Today, I made Bibimbap:
Bibimbap is a Korean rice and vegetabe dish. It's super easy, but I somehow never managed to find the sauce. Somebody in mentioned the name of it – Gochujang! I was able to find it at the Asian grocer in town today, and if you do a Google image search on it, you will see it comes in a lot of different packages. I like to visualize the packaging since I can't read either Korean or Chinese and only a very tiny bit of Japanese (mostly hiragana and katakana).
The recipe is really easy: Here's the bentolunch thread with the traditional veggies.
I used different veggies because I didn't have/don't like the traditional stuff (although radish would have been great!). Mine are:
* red and green bell pepper
* spinach
* a leaf of chinese broccoli (normally you eat only the stalks, but I was curious)
* eggplant
* asparagus
and sliced sweet omelette on top, because I like that better than sunny side up.
The vegetables are all quickfried with garlic in a little sesame oil. Every vegetable is fried separately to be able to add individual spicing (salt and sugar), but mainly to keep them in separate heaps for arranging them on the rice!
How to eat: I used the sauce pure, because that's what I'm used to. Traditionally, it should be mixed with some soy and additional spices to make chogochujang.
In the restaurant that I used to go to, the rice was served in hot castiron bowls that had a little oil in the bottom so the rice got crispy. The gochujang sauce is served separately in a little bowl. You take as much of it as you can stand (it's a spicy chili paste, and if you use hot iron mugs, it will get even hotter as it gets warm) and mix it in with the veggies and the rice.
Here's a picture of it all mixed up (and half-eaten; I was hungry). Sadly I don't have such nifty bowls:
The rice is purplish because I used brown rice with a few grains of purple rice for color. It's all about the colors!
The plantation on my windowsill is growing under the loving care of (mostly) my bf. We repotted all of the herbs in self-watering pots so they can survive while we are away. Making self-watering pots is really easy and totally worth the effort!
On the left is a normal basil, and on the right Thai basil. That plant grows like a weed! It's incredible!
I also bought a rosemary recently, but it died pretty quickly. Apparently with store-bought herb rosemary you're supposed to take it out of the ground it comes in immediately and give it much drier, leaner ground. The next time I bought one from the gardening shop and it thrives just great in sandy ground!
Also, we planted chili seeds and some actually started to grow! I took a picture, but it came out blurry. Next time…
Interestingly, the seeds we bought were rather low in quality – the stuff that grows well is from dried and preserved seeds. Sadly, the seeds I had left over from my first chili plant didn't make it – they were frozen and don't seem to have survived. Now we have two plants from dried banana chilies (rather mild), two from the storebought seed with unknown strength, and possibly some from a Chinese spice mix.
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