Friday, April 22, 2011

Recipe 1: Ganjang Pasta


  Hello, everyone! Today, I will introduce you a recipe of special kind of pasta. It called “Ganjang pasta” in Korean which means soy sauce pasta. Yet it is not really traditional one, it tastes very good. Also, it tastes like Korean food but we can get all ingredients in America! It is very important thing to me now, because it is hard to make Korean foods just using the ingredients from American market.


Get the Ingredients!


Spaghetti noodle: for one dish, measure it with circle that size like quarter made with your thumb and index finger
1/2 brown onion
1/2 hot pepper (I used Serrano pepper, but you can use milder or hotter one.)
Some pieces of garlic
Some kind of meats like bacon, ham or shrimp (If you want, you can use clam, but it can tastes like fishy.)
For sauce: 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, crushed 1/2 piece of garlic, chopped 1/2 hot pepper, 1/3 tablespoon of sesame oil, 1/2 tablespoon of sugar, 1/2 tablespoon of cooking oil (olive or canola)


Prepare It!
First, prepare the vegetables.
1. Cut onion into thin strips.


2. Slice garlic and hot pepper



Second, if you have bacon or ham, cut it into small pieces.

Third, prepare the noodle.
1. Put enough water in the pot that you can make half of noodle sank, and boils it.
2. When the water starts boiling, put noodles in the pot with fan shape, and put little amount of salt and cooking oil. It will keep noodles from sticking to each other. Keep it for 8 minutes or more.
*Tip: If you don’t know whether it is cooked or not, cut one noodle into small piece and throw it to the tile wall. It is ready when it sticks to the wall.

Next, mix every ingredient in the list for sauce to make special spicy sauce.
Sesame oil's smell can be strong, but it is normal. Don't care about it.



Cook It!
1. Put the cooking oil on the pan and grill the vegetables in pepper, garlic, and onion order.
2. When the onion turns clear, put the ham, bacon, or shrimp and mix it. You can sprinkle little black pepper powder, too.


3. Put the boiled noodle without water and mix it.


4. Put the special sauce in and mix it very fast.


Eat It!



It tastes like “Japchae”, the Korean traditional noodle dish. It is little spicy and salty, but not oily. This recipe can be looked like complicated since I made it little longer, but it is not. Actually it is really short recipe in Korean. I just tried to explain it more in detail. If you cook usually, you can make it in 15 minutes. It is really simple! If you are tired of some western styles of pasta, you can try this now!