Jap-chae

On the recommendation of a friend, I tried my hand at Korean food. There's a Korean mini-mart down the street from my apartment so the starch noodles were easy to procure. (For shiitake mushrooms, I had to go to the hardcore Korean market in K-town).

Jap-chae is a Korean noodle dish which I have never actually had prior to making it, so I cannot comment on how authentic my attempt turned out. That being said, I feel the product of my efforts was not entirely undigestable, so I'm sharing it here. I will definitely be ordering jap-chae next time I go to a Korean restaurant.

I made this based on the Youtube video my friend sent me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2inbxROOCzY. Minor, irrelevant side-note: I found the narrator / chef's dialogue irritating for some reason.


The following ingredients are needed:

• 1 bunch starch noodles (I actually used 2---it was wayyy too much).
• 2 or 3 shiitake mushrooms (dried; soaked for 3 or 4 hours; seriously, don't use too many of these---shiitake mushrooms have an overpowering flavor).
• 200 grams beef (cut into thin strips).
• soy sauce (a lot).
• sesame oil (a fair bit).
• olive oil (2 or 3 tbsps).
  
• 1 bunch spinach (seriously, use the whole bunch---if you've ever cooked spinach before, you'll know that it basically disappears when boiled).
• 2 carrots (chopped into strips).
• 1 medium onion.
• 1 package of regular white mushrooms.
• 3 cloves of garlic.
• 4 or 5 scallions.

Yes, that is a lot of material, and this took a lot of effort. Truth be told, I don't think I'll be cooking it again anytime soon.


First, the noodles need to be boiled for 2 or 3 minutes. It should be soft and a little chewy afterward. When this is done, drain and place in a big mixing bowl and infuse with some soy sauce and sesame oil (to keep it from sticking together).

Next, comes the spinach. Boil the spinach (in the same water), and then drain, cut and mix with the noodles.

Now, the author of the Youtube post essentially recommends cooking each of the remaining vegetables in sequence. But since, with the exception of the beef, they're all cooked the same way for approximately the same amount of time, I mixed them all up and cooked it together in the olive oil (by them, I mean: the carrots, garlic, scallions, white mushrooms, onions). This is then mixed with the spinach and noodles.

Finally, we cook the beef with the shiitake mushrooms, and this is mixed with the rest.


More soy sauce and sesame oil is added, and we are done.

I particularly liked this dish since it has so much vegetables. I haven't been eating enough recently (see previous post), so I made this to compensate. But I think I used too much noodles, which overdid the carbs. Whatever. My diet during the last few weeks of class consisted of pizza, Chinese take-out and Subway sandwiches, so this might still rank as one of the healthier options.