Cooking with Greg: A blog about cooking complicated things without being intimidated or overwhelmed: Soondubu Jjigae

(Spicy tofu soup with seafood)

This is something of a rendition of Lila's and mine of soondubu jjigae which she has made as a New Year's tradition for I don't know how long, maybe always. Having set out to write the recipe I have suitably liquored myself up and here we are now. I haven't gone over the rules for cooking very thoroughly to date so let me start with rule number one: never cook sober (at least if you are trying to have a good time - alcohol goes with food and the two are good friends, take advantage of that).

First things first: when you go to make a particularly ethnic food do not shop at local supermarket; it's way too expensive and doesn't give you what you actually need. For instance, when I was first learning about Spanish I acquired some smoked Spanish paprika at the supermarket for a dinner that I was doing for my parents and was incredibly disappointed in the end result because in spite of saying that it was in fact Spanish Paprika it tasted nothing like the real deal. In the case of this recipe we use dried Korean chili powder and gochujang, you should find a Korean or suitably Asian store to get these ingredients as regular chili powder and Sriracha are not suitable substitutes. In addition - at the Asian stores, ingredients such as shallots and seafood can be much cheaper, though use your senses, if the seafood smells not so good - go elsewhere.

Ingrediants:

1/3 cup rice per person (we used 'black rice' which is a combination of short grain white rice and wild black rice at a ratio of 10/1 - otherwise the rice comes out too purple)

4 cups chicken or fish stock

1/4 cup chopped seaweed

4 dried anchovy filets

1/4 lb shiitake mushrooms, 1/4 inch sliced

2 cloves garlic, slivered

1 shallot, sliced

1 tbls ginger, slivered

1 tsp finely chopped lemongrass

2 tsp fine chili powder (or more or less for spice preference)

1 tbls gochujang (fermented chili paste)

1 lb Mixed seafood (this could be as simple as clams and squid or you can buy packs of mixed various things, though I find that good fresh clams and mussels are about as good as it gets)

1 lb soft tofu

2 rice cake rolls per person, cut on the long bias

1 egg per person

3 scallions (green onion) cut on the long bias (as pictured below)

Step one: rinse the rice three times. or until it is still a little cloudy but not so cloudy - if the water finishes clear you will have rinsed away too much starch and will not be able to get the crust to form in the stone bowl, so a little cloudiness is good in this instance - we are not making Japanese white rice here.

You can make the rice as normal in a rice maker using 1 1/2 cups of water per cup of rice or do it in a saucepan on the stove by bringing the rice up to a rapid boil until the water foams a bit and then reducing the temperature to 'Low' and covering for ten minutes and then turning the burner off and leaving the lid on and letting it slowly steam for at least ten more minutes.

Step two: Pour your stock into a saucepan and add chopped seaweed and a sachet of anchovies (you should put the anchovies into what is essentially a giant tea-strainer so that you can take them out when you are ready. I have not pictured them because I am using anchovy paste which I would add with the gochujang in the next step - not shown or otherwise mentioned). You can strain everything out when you are ready to use the stock if you do not want to eat the seaweed but I find it quite tasty and like to have it as part of the soup.

Step three: We use a stone crock but any saucepan will suffice. The nice thing about the stone crocks are that they keep the soup warm for a very long time and you can use them as a serving vessel at the table so people can help themselves as the need to. Pre-heat your pan/stoneware to 'Medium Low' or about '3.5' on the stove. Add about two tablespoon of oil and then when you see the faintest bit of smoke coming off the oil add the shiitake and cook until they start to brown then add the garlic, ginger, shallot and lemon grass. When the 'suspects' start to color add the chili powder. Mix the chili powder around until it 'blooms,' which technically means that the essential oils have been released and simply means that the spice has been a little toasted and is very fragrant. Once the chili powder has bloomed, add the gochujang and mix it around to caramelize it a bit. Once everything is very fragrant but not burned add the stock and seawood to 'de-glaze' and stop the 'suspects' from burning. Essentially at this point you have soup and all you need to do is add the garnishes.

Step four: Finishing the rice. At this point your rice should be cooked, so what you want to do is heat up one stone bowl per person either on burners at 'Medium Low' or '3' or in a 350F oven. When the stone bowls (or if you have a bunch of people you could do it in one large bowl) are heated add about half a teaspoon of oil to each and then divide the cooked rice between them and pack it down tightly. There should be some sizzling and if you are on the stove top and think that your rice is burning don't worry, just take the bowl off of direct heat and let it sit. Ideally you want the rice to be on the heat in these bowls for at least ten minutes before serving to develop a suitable crust on the bottom.

Step five: Garnishing the soup. Once the rice is in the stone crocks, add the seafood, tofu and rice cakes to the soup. They should only take about five minutes to cook and if the seafood is fresh, not frozen possibly even less. Once the shellfish start to open up crack an egg into the soup and let it sit for a minute before stirring to get it a little cooked so that you get strands of the egg throughout the soup. Stir the soup and season with salt until all the flavors come out (for four cups of broth you will probably want to start at two tablespoons of salt and season from there) and finish with a sprinkling of scallions on top. The soup is done, you can take it out to the table in the stone crock, ideally, or portion into individual bowls as is your preference. On the side you should have at least one, if not more types of Kimchee, three inch seaweed sheets and gochujang so that people can adjust the spice of the soup.