Spring Greens Bibimbap

Hey, happy hump day! I'd like to be more excited about posting today, but today is phlebotomy day. Which means... some student is going to be sticking a needle in a non-existent vein in my anemic arm and sucking out a vial of my blood. Even a trained phlebotomists take a couple of tries and still leave a massive bruise. I'm just scared out of my mind, that all I will have left by the end of today is a stump where my arm is. Haha kidding... but so help me if someone does that "wriggling" motion to find the vein... [insert knife emoji]

Sorry... I didn't plan on talking about blood so early in my post, but that's all that is on my mind :P What I DO want to talk about is SPRING GREENS. Vegetables just taste so robust and vibrant, their flavors so bold and bright! So, I'm highlighting them today in a Korean bibimbap, which is a dish composed of mixed rice, greens and a hot spicy sauce (bibim = mix, bap = rice). Some bibimbaps are cold or hot, some served in stone pots, some entirely composed of vegetables or with meat and raw seafood. I grew up eating bibimbaps almost every week when it was refrigerator clean out days. We would get a bowl of hot rice, throw in just about anything from the fridge and mix it up with fried gochujang (Chili paste).

I promise that this recipe has a bit more finesse than my childhood kitchen sink bibimbaps. There are dandelion greens, spinach, radish, pea shoots and all things spring! And the secret is ALL IN THE SAUCE. Because this is somewhat of a cold/warm bibimbap, the bibim sauce is not what you will find in a typical bibimbap that people are used to in the US. But, it is very popular in Korea and especially my hometown (Busan), where we eat a lot of seafood bibimbaps. The sauce is zesty, tangy and slighty sweet and just makes this bibimbap work. You can even use it like a salad dressing!

SPRING GREENS BIBIMBAP
serves 4

Bibim sauce
1/4 small apple, grated
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp sugar or agave
1 tsp minced garlic
2 heaping tbsp Korean chili pepper paste (gochujang)

1 bunch dandelion greens (of red and green stemmed kinds)
handful of pea shoots
handful of alfalfa sprouts
5-6 radishes
1/2 carrot
1 bunch wild spinach
3-4 bowls of cooked short grain rice (white or brown)
4 fried eggs, sunny-side up
sesame oil
sesame seeds

1. Coarsely grate apple in a small sauce bowl. Squeeze in lemon juice, add vinegar, sugar, garlic and gochujang. Mix thoroughly, wrap and let the flavors come together in the fridge (best made day before)
2. Wash and cut dandelion greens into bite sized pieces. Julienne radishes and carrot
3. For the wild spinach, blanch in boiling water for 1 min. Rinse with cold water and squeeze out as much liquid as you can. Loosen and marinate with a little sesame oil, sesame seeds and salt to taste
4. In a large bowl, place desired amount of just cooked hot piping rice and top with a sunny side up egg. Arrange all the veggies around the yolk
5. Drizzle a little bit of sesame oil, dollop a few generous tablespoons of the bibim sauce, and garnish with sesame seeds. Mix and enjoy!

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Easy Kimbap - 김밥

The weather has been one fickle lady. Ear numbing cold one day, hot booty shorts weather the next. I just want to go on a picnic by the river, but I don't want to have my teeth chattering louder than my talking. I can't wait for it to be 80 degree weather! Is that around 25 celsius? I still can't use Fahrenheit, BECAUSE IT DOENS'T MAKE SENSE. Like foot, inches and yards. Whaa???

Anyway, one of my favorite picnic foods is kimbap. All kinds of things wrapped up in an easy to eat morsel. It's actually super easy to make, maybe a little bit more prep time. But once you have your mis en place (oh fancy words), rolling it up is a breeze! If you want more detailed instructions, you can take a look at my old blog, MD cooks for 2. (A truly embarrassing old blog)

Kimbap - 김밥

makes 6 rolls ~3-4 servings

2 cups of uncooked rice
3 eggs
1 pack of yellow picked radish
1 pack of picked burdock (or you can use a cucumber for crunch)
3 medium carrots
1 bundle of fresh spinach
1 pack of ham (or any meat or no meat if you're keeping it veg)
6 sheets of nori (sushi seaweed is different from small packs of seaweed, make sure you get the right one!)

sesame oil
salt and pepper
sesame seeds

1. Wash and cook rice as directed on the package in your rice cooker. You want to use freshly made rice for this. Once cooked and cooled to room temp, add 2 tsp sesame oil and 1 tbsp sesame seeds and fluff up the rice with a paddle. Don't mush or overwork it though.
2. Peel and julienne carrots and cucumber (if using that instead of the burdock root. but don't peel the cucumber!). Cut your ham into thin long strips 
3. Bring to boil about 2-3 cups of water in a saucepan. Add a pinch of salt (this makes spinach greener when blanching). Blanch the spinach for about 1 min, rinse with cold water and squeeze out all the water. Season with a pinch of salt and 1-2 tsp of sesame oil
4. Heat about 1 tbsp mix of olive oil and sesame oil. Fry your julienned carrots for about 1 min, salt to taste, set aside. Next fry up the ham just to heat through.
5. Beat the eggs with a pinch of salt, and pour onto an oiled non stick frying pan on low-med heat. Let it cook until it looks partially done on one side and flip to cook the other side. Cut into 1/4" strips
6. Assembly: On a sheet of seaweed placed on a sushi mat, add a thin layer of rice and leave about 1 cm at the top. Line up each prepared ingredients in the middle (look at the picture above). Roll the kimbap to tuck in all the filling (away from you) and quickly roll it to let the rice stick on the seaweed. Using the sushi mat, knead lightly and roll a little to keep the kimbap in place. Repeat until out of ingredients.
7. To serve, oil your hands with sesame oil and run along the roll of kimbap. Cut to 1/2" with a sharp knife. Sprinkle sesame seeds on top for garnish

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