We came across this in a Korean supermarket; they told us that we could eat it raw in salads. I assume that you could also stir fry them, which we ended up doing. Don't really have any recipe for them, but they do taste interesting at least, not a strong garlic flavour. We're going to look for them again next year.
I've seen chocolate and candy by the Korean company Lotte for sale in various Chinese supermarkets, but never their Xylitol gum (which has been around since 1997, but likely mostly in Asia). I picked this up from a Korean supermarket. Their packaging is all in Korean, but what I can make of it, it has 60% xylitol content. Xylitol has been shown to promote dental health, one of the reasons I've recently switched to this kind of gum (another being to avoid chemical sweeteners, which seem to be in all gums these days). This is a bag of gum, less convenient than the small plastic tub, but probably less packaging. It was about $5.
What does Original flavour Lotte Xylitol Gum taste like? From their Website, they also have Lime and Mint, Mint, and Blueberry Mint flavours, available in Asia; these could be interesting. This one tastes of mint, though not a very strong mint.
We picked this up from the Galleria on Yonge Street, a fairly big and interesting Korean supermarket, they were sampling these. It was an interesting flavour, that I liked, so I selected and took one home. Korean Gold Melons, or Chamoe, Yellow Melon, Oriental Melon, Dua Gua or Chae Mae, as I have found out, are small yellow melons with narrow white stripes. The flesh is sweet white to pale peach. The seeds are small and can be eaten. It tastes, according to what I've read, like a cross between a honeydew melon and a cucumber, and, it does, the honeydew melon is more predominant, the cucumber is the crunchy mouthfeel of it, certainly mine looked like a cucumber would. Good tasting, if a little expensive.
This is a vegetarian version of the dish I've enjoyed several times at Korean restaurants; there they serve it mostly with a little bit of pork. You can also try pork belly or chicken or shrimp, just stir-fry the meat in the first step in place of the mushrooms. This makes a thick chunky sauce; the restaurant version is thinner and definitely less chunky. Still delicious, though.
Jjajangmyun (Noodles with blackbean sauce)Heat a small skillet over medium heat with 2 tbs of vegetable oil. Fry mushrooms for 2 minutes, until cooked. Then add black bean paste and stir fry for 1 minute; set aside.
Cook radish and sweet potato in a wok over medium high heat in olive oil and saute for 2 minutes. Then add zucchini and onion and saute for another 2 minutes. Add 3 cups of water, close the lid and boil it for 15-20 minutes.
Open the lid of the wok and skim off the foam from the surface. When the vegetables are cooked, add the fried mushroom and black bean paste from the small skillet and stir it up.
Mix potato starch powder (or corn starch) with 2 tablespoons water and add it into the boiling soup and stir it. then the soup ill turn into a sticky sauce. Add 1 tbs sugar to the sauce and stir.
Cook noodles faccording to the direction on the package.
Reheat the jjajang sauce and put it over the noodles.
While in the Korean supermarket again, I bought another package of xylitol gum, which I thought was Lotte's, but, while it shares a similar packaging format (all in Korean, unfortunately, with no English label sticker), and, as far as I can tell, a similar xylitol content (76% as opposed to 75% for Lotte), the main difference is that these gum pieces are coloured apple green. Not much difference in taste or effectiveness, either. And, again, a similar price (about $2.40). Though, this was the last bottle available, that I could see. I think I prefer the Spry ones, but these are not bad.
Having enjoyed my first testings of the more healthful xylitol gum (xylitol is a sugar that promotes dental health, and is also a more healthy sugar than sucrose, and definitely better than any of the fake sugars or chemical sweeteners), I found this chewing gum in the Korean supermarket and decided to try it. It is mostly xylitol (if I'm not reading it wrong, and most of the packaging is in Korean, which I can not read, the xylitol content is at 75%), in a chewing gum base, with apple mint flavouring. The apple mint flavour is okay, it tastes more like what I would call green apple flavouring, though it has the freshness of mint. This is also much cheaper than the other Spry xylitol gum, $2.39 for 36 pieces (as opposed to $3.60, or even double that for other brands). So far, these are good, but I would prefer the citrus flavour of the Spry rather than the apple mint.
I've seen these before in various Chinese supermarkets, we thought we'd give them a try when they were on sale in this Vietnamese supermarket. Nong Shim shrimp crackers have been around since 1971, so they must be popular enough. This is the 400 g bag, they also come in smaller 75 g bags. The crackers are interesting, in that they look like twisted french fries.
They are quite crispy and go well with a sandwich. There is not much actual shrimp in these crackers, I've read that there are 5 shrimp in a 75 g bag, that would make more than 25 in this 400 g bag, but you can taste the shrimp at least. Overall, they're pretty good, but not great, and the ingredient listing doesn't look that healthy (wheat flour, palm oil, wheat starch, rice bran oil, shrimp, sugar, salt and nonfat soybean - this last one is monosodium glutamate in the American ingredient listing), so don't eat a lot at one sitting.
We bought these Korean red bean mochi in the bakery located in P.A.T. Oriental Foods located on Dundas in Mississauga, they sell Japanese and Korean fine foods. There were four kinds of mochi, green tea, white sesame, black sesame and red bean powder. Inside the soft rice flour dough is sweet red bean paste. Tasty.
This normally Korean baked good we bought in a Chinese supermarket, it was an attempt to duplicate the crunchy sesame and flour ball. Japanese mochi are different, they are made from glutinous rice flour, and are normally filled with a paste with red bean or taro and other flavours. These Korean mochi are better eaten fresh, and they didn't taste so good, as we ate them when they were a little stale, though definitely there was the nuttiness of the sesame. I think, though, that I would rather like to try them baked in a Korean store.
This recipe called to make eight in total, we managed only five, I guess we made them too big or something. They did taste really good, the sesame oil gave them a quite different flavour than other potato pancakes I've eaten. Serve them with soy sauce only, or with a sauce made from the pancake sauce below.
Korean Potato PancakesPeel and finely grate potatoes; squeeze out water. Place 1 cup grated potatoes in a bowl with sesame oil and salt. Mix well and divide into 8 portions. Soak 1/2 cup of carrots; drain, then divide into 16 portions.
Heat 1 Tbsp oil; sprinkle one portion of 16-portion carrots into frying pan. Place one portion of grated potatoes on top and then add another portion of 16-portion carrots on top to form a "sandwich". Fry until both sides are golden brown. Add a little oil as needed when frying.
Mix all ingredients in blender thoroughly.
I bought this Vitamin C candy in a Korean supermarket, I can't even read the packaging, other than to determine that it is Vitamin C, that the package contains 840 mg of the vitamin, and that they are lemon flavoured. I liked the now discontinued Lemon Vitamin C tablets from Swiss Vitamins, they were great!, but perhaps I was the only one who thought so (I still hope they bring them back). These do taste like lemon, though I believe that they use citric acid and lemon flavour to achieve the taste. I like the little leaf trap door, push it aside to reveal a hole with which you can take out some of the tiny lemon tablets.
The caption for this chocolate bar from the Korean company Lotte says Cacao Polyphenol Chocolate, which made me look closer at the ingredient listing, wondering what the polyphenol means in this case, but it seems good, cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa preparation (cocoa mass 15% and whole milk powder 85%), lecithin and vanilla flavour; I can't see anything that would indicate that it's nothing more than the natural polyphenols found in cacao. The cacao content is 56%. The tagline is 'Dreams Come True!'; while the bar itself tastes reasonable, it didn't quite make my dream come true, of a good tasting chocolate bar, and at $1.20 for 45 g, it is too expensive to eat on a regular basis.
My beautiful Thai friend showed me this interesting variation on the instant noodle packages found everywhere; this one is Korea in flavour, though manufactured in China, and is quite spicy, and thus, in my opinion anyways, far better tasting. The package consists of three parts, the udon-style noodles, which are thicker than those found in other competitors, a Powder soup packet, which contains the spices that give it its zing, and the Vegetable soup packet, which contains dried seaweed, dried mussel, dried squid cake, dried chives and dried carrot. Much like any of the other versions, this is easy to make. Boil some water, add the contents of the package, and boil for 5 minutes. I added some frozen cooked shrimp that I had to give it a little protein, but you could add almost anything; she suggested I add tomatoes, something she likes.
