From today's The Record newspaper (condensed online version)

Korean Cuisine You Can Make at Home

Sunday, March 8, 2009
By ELISA UNG
RESTAURANT REVIEWER


Chef Ji Cha is about to do something she knows would get her into a load of trouble on Fox's "Hell's Kitchen."

"Chef [Gordon] Ramsay would probably kill me for not cleaning the pan," she says as she removes freshly fried carrots from a pan and immediately dumps in some burdock root. She does her best imitation: " 'You're cooking again with the same pan? You [expletive] donkey!' "

But this is Cha's own kitchen at home in Palisades Park, not the television show where she volunteered to leave in the second episode because of an injured ankle.

And today the Culinary Institute of America graduate isn't trying to best any competitors, but rather shine light on a cuisine she grew up with, and show how easily the Korean dishes you enjoy in restaurants can be made at home.

Cha learned to cook Korean dishes at her father's former Korean restaurant in midtown Manhattan and still cooks them regularly at home, particularly now that her boyfriend is a big fan of her bibimbap (a hearty rice dish). And though her main interest these days is in a cookbook she's writing about what she calls "Asian Latino deco" food, she's worked just as hard on her versions of bibimbap, Korean barbecued meats and jap chae, a vegetable and meat-filled noodle dish for which she's preparing vegetables.

It's traditional to fry all the vegetables in the same pan," she explains. And each has to be fried separately so it is cooked properly — including the burdock root, a vegetable that tastes like a mild radish, comes in a long root, can be peeled like a carrot and adds texture to the jap chae.

Cha's favorite place to shop for Korean groceries is H-Mart in Ridgefield Park (the chain also has locations in Little Ferry and Englewood), which stocks pre-cut short ribs and rib-eye for kalbi and bulgogi and a nice selection of Korean side dishes, known as panchan. Here, she can stock up on cabbage and radish kimchi, grab some daikon radish for fermenting or purchase some tofu or fish cakes for sides.

You can even find pre-made jars of meat marinade at H-Mart, but Cha has spent years experimenting with her own marinade for barbecue dishes. She's found that Coca-Cola gives her kalbi (thickly cut marinated short ribs) the best caramelization, and its carbonation tenderizes the meat. But the soda is too strong for the thinly cut bulgogi (rib-eye), so for that dish she uses small pieces of Asian pear. While the meat is traditionally grilled at the table at restaurants, Cha finds a sauté pan does just fine at home.

Cha says bibimbap is probably her personal favorite dish. It's rice topped with a rainbow of vegetables, meat and an egg, and she makes the rice crispy in a dolsot (hot stone bowl), which you can buy at H-Mart and heat on your stovetop (be careful, though). One of the legends behind bibimbap is that it was first served inside soldier's helmets, using whatever leftovers were available.

The bibimbap sizzles inside Cha's dolsots. Dipping sauce made mostly from red pepper and soybean pastes add zing to the hot meat, wrapped in cold lettuce leaves. Heaps of jap chae are supremely comforting. And the little bowls of goodies — anchovies, oyster kimchi, cooling daikon — bring different flavors to the meal and make the table a beauty.

E-mail: ung@northjersey.com

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I should note that the newpaper version had a bunch of pictures and some very detailed recipes. Perhaps you can email Elisa for them (or storm Ji Cha's home on your next Palisades Park indie...........hey - maybe Elisa can hook you all up for a lesson there or something).



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Reading this made me hungry for the dolsot bibimbap at the Soft Tofu restaurant in Palisades Park. ~ Nice description at the end of a traditional korean meal.