Korean Cooking: Class Three

Our second Korean cooking class covered the preperation of one of our absolute favorite dishes: man-du -- Korean dumplings. Man-du comes in a variety of forms; steamed, in soup, fried, filled with meat and veggies or kimchi.

For mandu - you'll need a little magic. Only because they're tricky to close and I can't accurately tell you how to make the dough or where to purchase it - however, I assume something like wonton skins would work.

To make the filling finely chop:
Chunk of Pork (1/8 cup) -- loin or chop
Tofu (1/4 cup) -- after squeezing out the moisture using cheesecloth and your hand
Small portion of Leek or Scallions
Clove of Garlic
Kimchi (2 Tbsp.) -- liquid squeezed out

(Measurements given are HUGE approximations and would only allow for about 6-8 dumplings.)

Place a tsp. or two into the center of the dough circle bring edges of dough together using a light touch of water if needed to assisst the coming together of the dough -- this is where the magic comes in. It's a learned art, this folding of Mandu and at this point - I have no tips for the perfect folding technique...sorry.

Using a steamer, steam the dumplings for 8 - 10 minutes, enjoy dipped in soy sauce. Your tastebuds will love you for it!

The second dish we made was 'goong joong tak pok ki' -- Mike describes the dish as a Korean twist on stir-fry. We were informed that this dish is finding increasing popularity among the younger generations of Koreans - so, here are the rough directions for a 'trendy' Korean dish.

In a skillet, fry up some thinly sliced beef (perferably marinated in soy and sesame oil). Add thinly sliced carrots, onion, green pepper and cabbage. Too the skillet add a dressing of soy sauce, oyster sauce and sesame oil (for our small skillet we used probably 2tsp of the first two ingredients and 1 of the oil). Then add to the pan a small bit of water and heat the dish until much of the water has evaporated. Now, for those of you in America, I hope you have a glorious Asian market or some connection because the rice cake noodle may be hard to duplicate -- anyway, find yourself some rice cake noodles, cut into thirds coat with a little sesame oil and soy sauce and add toward the final minutes of meal preperation. Enjoy with mandu and a few good friends, you can't go wrong!