Ajosshi and His Sticky Ribs

I have a passion for ribs at the moment, I only started cooking them earlier this year, but they have become a regular feature at the dinner table. They're boiled and baked with a recipe of my own concoction, sort of a cross between chinese and western ribs, trying to mix complimentary flavours from both worlds.

Here's the recipe, why not give them a try...

You will need:

A rack or two of pork ribs
A peeled onion
A peeled carrot
Eight cloves of garlic
A thumb of peeled ginger
A star anise
A teaspoon of schezuan pepper (whole, not ground)
Ten whole black peppercorns
A teaspoon of five spice powder
A pinch of chili powder
A good glug of honey
A good glug of soy sauce
A glug of your alcohol of choice (whiskey and rum work well)

Add all of these things to a large pot of boiling water and leave on a gentle simmer for an hour or so. If your ribs are especially meaty then give them an extra ten minutes for luck. Every once in a while skim the surface for oil and make sure the ribs remain covered with water

When your time is up gently remove the ribs from the pot and place them in a foil lined baking tray meaty side up. Add a little of the rib water to the bottom of the tray and baste the ribs with the following marinade:

A glug of oil, a dash of soy sauce, a pinch of black pepper, a squeeze of honey and a shot of your alcohol of choice.

Once your marinade is mixed together lovingly brush the ribs with some of this concoction and place them in a hot oven (225 centigrade) for about half an hour. Take the ribs out once or twice and baste them with the rest of the marinade, adding a little stock water to the bottom of the tray if things are getting to dry or burnt. Bake your ribs as crispy as you like, but do be careful unless you fancy cooking Cajun style...



Finally take the ribs out of the oven and let the rest for ten to fifteen minutes so that they can relax. Then hack at them with a pair of scissors until separate and eat with your fingers...

I love to use dark rum with these ribs, but a half decent whiskey will also do the trick. Just follow the golden rule: If it's not good enough to drink, then don't cook with it.

The ribs will happily sit with a salad, steamed veg, a simple pasta, rice and kimchi... in fact they'll go with pretty much anything you like.

Be sure to gnaw the bones clean...

The Internet Wedding of the Year

Well folks, today was a very special day for the k-blogosphere as the one and only Zenkimchi and his bride tied the knot in a very traditional fashion. Down in the depths of the Namsan Hanok Village, a select few were witness to the wedding of Joseph Daniel McPherson the Third and 이은정.



It was great to see a traditional wedding in all its glory and the bride and groom looked glorious in their hanboks.

I wish them the happiest of lives together and hope that their marital bliss may last forever...


More photos to come once I have some time to sort through them...

Bathroom Secrets

There's a whole lot of shaking going on in my neighbourhood at the moment, with various buildings disappearing each week. This morning on my way to work I passed this partially demolished homestead and noticed that the previous occupants had decided not to save their beloved bathroom poster. She's still up there tonight, but soon her reign as bathroom queen will end and like us all she'll crumble to dust when her time comes.

Goodbye sweet poster lady... may you rest in pieces...

Delightful Rice Cakes

Popped round to a friend's house for tea and a chat about Neil Gaiman. As I left she proffered these little gems and begged me to take them with me. These are some of the cutest little rice cakes I've seen in a while...



A tiny persimmon.



A Canadian rice cake?



Peachy...

Holiday Hummingbird Hawk-Moths

I have a confession to make. I may spend most of my time on this blog talking about food or film, but I have a third passion and that is taking pictures of animals and insects. Seoul isn't the easiest city to do it in, but at certain times of the year nature reveals itself.



Exactly one year ago I walked up the hill from Itaewon to the Hyatt hotel and crossed over the bridge into the gardens of Namsan. As I strolled along the path I saw the most incredible thing: what looked like hummingbirds suckling on flowers. Upon closer inspection these tricky little creatures turned out to be Hummingbird Hawk-moths (꼬리박각시 나방) and I found myself entranced by their fairy like flittering amongst the plants.



I retraced my steps today and I was delighted to find that they were back at their old haunt, as beautiful and strange as ever. If you're interested you can see the full set of photos over on flickr. They'll probably be around for a little while longer and then disappear till the next brood hatches. If you enjoy curious insects and happen to be in the area then they're well worth a look.

Curry for Chuseok...

Happy Chuseok to you all, I hope that your pancakes are crispy and that your kimchi is firm. Here in the Ajosshi household things are a little different, due to work commitments we're staying in Seoul and not able to go down to Chungju to see the relatives. So today before my beloved set out to for work (catch her performing as the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet at the National Theatre for the next week or so), I decided to whip up a spicy little Chuseok treat.



Smothered lamb adapted from a recipe by Madhur Jaffrey.

You will need:
A few handfuls of lamb chopped into bite size chunks
Three peeled and finely chopped tomatoes
Two handfuls of finely chopped coriander leaves (cilantro to our Italian and North American friends)
A finely chopped onion
A large thumb's worth of finely chopped ginger
Two finely sliced hot green chillies (only if you like it spicy)
Two chopped green peppers
One chopped aubergine (eggplant)
Two teaspoons of garam masala
One teaspoon of cumin
One half teaspoon of turmeric
As much salt as you feel necessary (I use about half a teaspoons worth)
Four small pots of plain yoghurt (strawberry flavour is not an option)

Mix all these together and then crush and chop up six cloves of garlic.

Heat a large saucepan and add a few glugs of oil, gently fry the garlic and then add in all the other ingredients. Add a glass of water, bring to the boil and then let it simmer slowly for two hours (be sure to stir every so often so that nothing sticks and burns).

Go watch a film, preferably with zombies in - at 126 minutes Romero's Dawn of the Dead will probably be a good option. If reanimated corpses aren't your thing then Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amelie Poulain runs 122 minutes and contains practically no traces of the undead.

After your cinematic interlude. Thoroughly wash and then gently chop two handfuls of spinach. Add these to the curry and allow them to wilt into submission.

Finally turn the heat up high to get rid of any excess moisture (or don't if you like a sloppier curry) and grind in as much black pepper as you feel appropriate.



Serve with rice and suitable breads. We settled on whole wheat chapattis.

Eat with your fingers...

Good News for Bluray Fans

Popped into Synnara records this afternoon and discovered that CJ Entertainment have released a bluray edition of 좋은놈 나쁜놈 이상한놈 (The Good The Bad The Weird). This quirky self described "oriental western" directed by 김지운 (Kim Jee-woon) and starring 송강호 (Song Kang-ho), 이병헌 (Lee Byung-hun) and 정우선 (Jung Woo-sung) is well worth a watch. It's not a perfect film, but it is stylishly directed and very enjoyable. I picked up my copy for 33,000 won, though I'm sure if you look around you could find it for a few thousand less. Hopefully this signals the release of a few more Korean bluray titles, my fingers are crossed for a "Mother" bluray disc...

Rest in Peace Keith Floyd

On Monday 14th September 2009 the world lost a great man, one of the greatest television cooks of the twentieth century and an inspiration to me as I grew up in the 1980's.

Keith Floyd was my childhood food hero. He wasn't stuffy like all the other presenters; he was wild and raucous, he insulted the cameraman, botched up recipes and was insulted by little old French ladies, all the while holding a glass of wine and looking progressively less sober as the program continued.

He had a great passion for food and through his roguish charm he entranced my boyhood self with his visits to kitchens in France and Spain.

Here are some videos of the man himself, I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.

Rest in peace Mr. Floyd.


Old school pizzas...


Being told off...


Liver dumplings...

Nothing to do with Korea, but still very funny...

Phil and Phill's Craft Day - watch more funny videos

My dear friend Matthew Steer and his dear friend Jamie Glassman have made a short video. I find it funny, I hope you also enjoy it. It has nothing to do with Korea and a lot to do with t-shirts. Visit their website here if you like this skit.

On a slightly different note, today, as I walked through the back streets of Itaewon I saw a stumbling cockroach vomit onto the pavement... I feel my day is now complete.

Ajosshi and the Freaky Japanese Transvestite Mime Love

Dear Readers,

I'd like to apologise for a lack of recent updates. It's been a hectic old time for me starting rehearsals for a new show, whilst beginning a new training regime and going on a diet. It's all go, go, go at the moment and it has meant it all went a bit stop, stop, stop on this end.

Fear not, I'll be doing my best to post more as I get used to my new whirlwind life...

Last Thursday I headed down to the Mapo Arts Center to check out Gamarjobat, the freaky Japanese punk mime artists. It was well worth going to.

The first half consisted of four very different short shows: The Gamarjobat Show, 20 minutes of frantic slapstick and jokes that hardly gives the audience time to breather; The Kettle, a rather touching story of a kettle's attempts to please its ramen loving owner; The Hypnotist, worth watching if only for the best hypnotizing pose ever; and The Tarai, 10 minutes of guitar playing and beer can stacking.

The Tarai was the only mistep in the whole of the performance, whilst every other sequence kept the audience's attention and filled the room with a sense of anticipation, the guitar playing and can stacking didn't really make any sense, contained no mime and wasn't funny. However, the other fifty minutes were downright hilarious.

After a fifteen minute interval it was on to the second half and Gamarjobat's attempt to re-imagine Charlie Chaplin's film "City Lights" on stage...

As a fan of the original film, I was very skeptical as to how two men could pull off a touching story about the love between a blind girl and a little tramp, but they did it. Forty five minutes of hilarity and beauty, they captivated the audience and drew us into their world completely.

Mime isn't for everybody, it takes great suspension of belief and a certain amount of concentration from the audience, you can't just sit back and let things wash over you, you have to fill in the blanks with your own imagination. Some people may think of mime as just being trapped in a box or walking into the wind, but through mime it is possible to create stories capable of capturing even the most cynical person's heart.

If you're open to seeing a bit of mime this autumn, then I urge you to go watch Gamarjobat. It's not everyone's cup of tea, however, if you're in the mood for freaky Japanese transvestite mime love, then you'll be happy you went.