A Korean Fish Dish

Mrs. You is a chef and owner of Korea House restaurant in Portland, Maine. She was so nice to share with us how to cook her favorite dish from South Korea. It's called galchi jo rim. Now, personally I find cooking this food a little scary because there are a lot of new ingredients (galchi fish?) and processes (fermentation). While we wait for some Korean company to fly me over there to familiarize us about how to ferment beans into a delicious paste, we'll just have to be brave, get some stuff in a bottle, and go for it. If I get really nervous I might not be able to resist asking, "What would You do?" Click at right for all the juicy details.

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Spicy Korean fish with vegetables

Galchi jo rim

As Kum You from Yeosu-si, South Korea, taught Lindsay Sterling

in Portland, ME, October 2010

Cooking time: 30 min

Serves 4

¼ cup soy sauce

¾ cup water

1 tsp garlic minced

1 tsp honey

3 tbsp Korean hot pepper*

1-2 Tbsp sesame seed

12 segments of galchi fish*

1-2 daikon radish, cut into ½ inch half-circles*

4 green onions, minced

4 small zucchini, cut into ½ inch half-circles

4 jalepenos, cut diagonally into 1/4" thick rounds

Mix together sauce ingredients: soy sauce, garlic, water, green onion, hot pepper, honey, Korean hot pepper, and sesame seeds. In a medium pot, place radish pieces down first, fish pieces on top of that (so they don’t stick!) and pour sauce over. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer. When you start to smell the fish cooking, add green onion jalepheno pepper, zuccini, and spoon sauce on top but don’t mix. Cover and simmer until radish is no longer crunchy, 10-15 minutes.

Seaweed side dish with Korean hotsauce

Dehydrated wakame seeweed*

Hot fermented bean paste* (gochoujang)

Vinegar

Sugar

Soak seaweed in cold water. Boil more water in separate pot, add seaweed, cook just 5 seconds until pliable, but not wilted or mushy. Rinse with cold water and slice into chunks. Serve topped with Korean hot sauce. Mrs. You makes her secet family hot sauce with her grandmother's own fermented bean paste, but you can buy a similar base called gochoujang at the Korean market, and add a little vinegar and sugar to taste. It's also good I hear with just vinegar, or soy sauce.

*Where to Shop or What to Substitute!

Galchi fish: Known in English as cuttlassfish, hairtail, and beltfish, Trichiurus lepturus is found in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Mrs. You gets hers frozen at Sun Market (address below). If you fish, catch your own! See Florida Sportfishing’s post on how here: http://floridasportfishing.com/magazine/baitfish-profiles/ribbonfish-atlantic-cutlassfish.html. But here’s the thing: use any darn fish you want! I’m trying haddock tonight because it’s affordable and fresh around here. I bet bluefish would be really good because the flavor would be hold up well to all the spice. Shorten the cooking time if your fish is fresh.

Korean radish: also called Daikon raidish, it’s usually available at our major supermarket, Hannaford. I bet my local farmer’s gorgeous red radishes would work well thrown in whole (the daikon chunks were big and chunky anyway!) Asian markets will have this.

Wakame Seaweed: You can find the Wang brand that Mrs. You likes at Sun and other Asian markets. I have a call out to Maine Seaweed suppliers to see if we have a good, local substitute. Wakame is listed as one of the world's most invasive species so don't try to grow it - there's plenty in the world already! Maybe Environmental protection groups will pay for us to eat it up! The texture is slippery with a little crunch when cooked right, and the width of the leaves is about half of a lasagne noodle. The package is giant so you'll have plenty to throw in soups like miso.

Korean Hot Pepper: I’m still working on finding out what variety of pepper this is made from, and the process. It looks like the peppers are de-seeded, dried and coarsely ground. The bag I got (the kind Mrs. You used) is Wang brand from Sun Oriental Market. It's medium spice to my tongue. The point in this dish is spiciness; the color is red, and the texture is coursely ground. You could substitute any coursely ground dried red chili you have. I have Aleppo from Syria, but that’s still pretty far flung. If local is what you want, grow or get red chilis at a farmer’s market, dry them, deseed, and pulse in a coffee grinder.

Korean Hot sauce: Mrs. You called it Chou go chou jang. The owner of Sun market says Cho means vinegar, and gochoujang is fermented hot bean paste. While Mrs. You’s recipe is a family secret, you can buy the gochoujang at Sun Oriental and add vingar and sugar to taste.

My nearest Korean Market is Sun Oriental Market, (207) 772-8675, 626 Congress St, Portland, ME. To find a market near you, check this list by state:
http://www.koreanfeast.com/korean_markets_in_the_us.htm

I need recipe testers! I'd love to hear from you! Please tell me how the recipe worked for you at lindsay@lindsaysterling.com

copyright Lindsay Sterling 2010

See How To Do It

Korean spicy fish

galchi jo rim

First, she slices the daikon radish into thick chunks, and makes the sauce out of soy sauce, water, garlic, ground Korean hot pepper, and sesame seeds.

She prepped the rest of the veggies that will go into the dish: jalepenos and zucchini.

She layered in the pot the radish first, then the fish. She'll top this much with sauce and begin to cook, adding the other veggies once she can start smelling the fish cooking.

Here is a pic of what the package of fish looked like. She got it from the freezer at Sun Oriental Market (626 Congress St. Portland, ME, right next to Korea House restaurant). I hear you can get this at Korean markets all over the country.

In case you're a fisherman and want to catch your own. Here's what it looks like fresh. The fish common name of hairtail makes sense because it's tail gets as thin as a hair. Beltfish also makes sense because the fish is narrow and long like a belt! I don't know why others call it cutlassfish.

This is the Korean hot pepper - the secret to the spicy sauce in the fish dish.

This is what wakame seaweed (for the seaweed side salad) looks like dry. She soaks it, boils it for five seconds, slices it and then tops it with Korean hot sauce. Delicious!

Here is what the package looked like (she likes Wang brand) -- so long and huge! (She simply used scissors to cut as much as she wanted to use). I'll be also be using this in miso soup! It's known as one of the world's most invasive species, so please don't try to grow it here. I'll be hopefully hearing from some Maine seaweed farmers about some nice, local substitutes.

Here's the main dish - chunks of daikon radish showing on top, summer squash and jalapeno.

She served four banchan, sidedishes, with the fish dish. Clockwise from top: galchi jo rim, kimchi, fish cake stir fry, sesame-dressed soy sprouts, seaweed salad.

Me in heaven, eating seaweed salad dressed with a 700-year-old family secret!

Thank you Tiffany Converse Photography. (All the beautiful photos are hers. Mine are the mundane but informational ones) Please ask permission to use. lindsay@lindsaysterling.com

The Story

Korean Hot Sauce Puts Out Nuclear Bomb

By Lindsay Sterling

Two weeks ago if someone had asked to play word association, starting with the word “Korea,” I would have said: “Nuclear bomb.” I know this isn’t fair to almost all Koreans, who don’t know squat about enriching uranium. So walking towards Korea House restaurant on Congress St. two blocks from Longfellow Square, I was glad. Cooking with people from other countries (in this case chef-owners Mr. and Mrs. You from South Korea) always rights my world. Now, you say, Korea; I say: amazing spicy fish dish with seaweed salad and secret hot sauce. Ah! Much better!

My news-induced nightmares were quickly overtaken by the image of a 109-year-old woman in Yeosu-si, South Korea, fermenting secret ingredients in 500 stoneware pots that have been producing her family’s sauces for 700 years. This woman is Mrs. You’s grandmother, and the person who taught Mrs. You how to cook. Mrs. You remembers her fist pot of rice, cooked on a wood fire, when she was about nine years old. The bottom was burned, the middle was watery, and the top not cooked. Grandma laughed and said, “You are a lady. You are supposed to know how to cook!”

“But Grandma,” the girl said, “This is my first time!”

“Step by step,” Grandma said, “you learn from me.”

For a decade, she did. Then Mrs. You came to the U.S. to go to college in San Jose, California, where she met her future husband and restaurant partner, also from South Korea. They cooked in Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese restaurants in Los Angeles, Anchorage and Seattle before getting a call from Mr. You’s sister, who was living in Portland, Maine, and running Sun Oriental Market, supplying Portland’s estimated 1000 Koreans with their favorite ingredients from home. She told Mr. You essentially: the restaurant next door’s for sale! You should buy it! In 2008, the You’s bought Happy Teriyaki and this October, re-opened it as Korea House. For the first time in their lives, their restaurant’s menu is entirely Korean.

Well, if I may send a message in a bottle to Korea.... Grandma, good job teaching Mrs. You how to cook! She just taught me how to make Galchi jo rim. The galchi fish was strong, the sauce spicy hot, the braised daikon radish just delectable, and the jalapeno rounds, really quite astonishing for their shock of spice amid the already spicy sauce. The fish had more bones in it than I was accustomed to. I know you won’t believe this, but fisherman from Boston to Texas use galchi (called beltfish here) for bait! We’re so intolerant of bones here! We eat too fast, too, so maybe this galchi fish might be just what we need to slow the heck down!

My favorite thing on the table was the slippery seaweed salad topped with Korean hot sauce, Chou Go Chou Jang. When I asked your granddaughter what’s in it, I think you will be happy to know, she said “Big Sea Quid.” I was thinking sea squid...some kind of sea creature...but no. She was saying, “Big Secret.” 700 years old. Only given to family. Usually, I think secrets are up to no good. But this one I find beautiful, like a grandmother’s ring passed down, something to be treasured, honored, and not flung into a crowd.

Korea House, 630 Congress Street, Portland, ME. 207-771-2000

Copyright Lindsay Sterling 2010