Our Korean Kitchen: Recipes From Asia's Best Kept Secret

Exploring the secrets of Korean cuisine, the book caters for novices as well as the more experienced, from stir-fried spicy squid, to sesame and soy marinated beef. The recipes have been created by acclaimed food writer Jordan Bourke and his Korean wife Rejina, whose culinary history forms the basis of the book.

Alongside the recipes there are notes on dining etiquette, a list of key ingredients that are used throughout the book and how and when to use many of the side dishes.

Haemul pa-jeon – Seafood and Spring Onion Pancake 

200g mixed squid rings and prawns 
4 garlic cloves, crushed
1tsp toasted sesame seeds
2tsp roasted sesame seed oil
100g plain flour (or white spelt flour)
3 level tbsp glutinous rice flour (or cornflour) 
2 eggs, beaten
2tbsp sunflower oil
6 spring onions, sliced lengthways
½ green chilli, deseeded and sliced
½ red chilli, deseeded and sliced 
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Dipping sauce

2tbsp soy sauce
1tsp rice wine vinegar
½tsp roasted sesame oil
1 small garlic clove, crushed
¼tsp toasted sesame seeds

This dense, savoury pancake makes a fantastic starter or sharing dish with everyone diving in with their chopsticks, mopping up some of the soy dipping sauce along the way. Extremely popular as a snack in Korea, you can make it on your own with whatever selection of seafood you like. A plain spring onion version of the pancake, without any seafood, is also a very popular Korean dish, so feel free to leave out the fish if you prefer – just double the quantity of spring onions.

In a bowl, combine all the dipping sauce ingredients together and set aside. Wash the seafood and drain. Place it in a bowl with half the crushed garlic, the sesame seeds, sesame oil and a pinch of salt and pepper. Set aside. In a separate bowl, combine the flours with a ¼ teaspoon of salt, then add half the beaten egg, the remaining garlic and slowly whisk in 150ml of ice-cold water. (Do not add in all the water at once, as you may not need the full amount.) The batter should be the consistency of thick pouring cream. If you are not using fish, add the garlic, salt, sesame seeds and sesame seed oil straight into the batter.

Place a 22cm non-stick frying pan over a medium heat, add the sunflower oil and when hot ladle in 2 thirds of the batter. Use the back of a spoon to coat the base of the pan with the batter. Place the spring onion strips onto the pancake, with the green ends lying in both directions, then scatter over the chillies and seafood. Add the remaining beaten egg to the remaining batter and whisk to combine, then drizzle it over the spring onions and seafood so that they do not come loose when flipping the pancake. Fry over a medium heat for 3 – 4 minutes until the bottom is set then carefully invert the pancake onto a plate and slide it back into the pan and fry for a further 3 – 4 minutes, or until the fish is cooked through and the pancake is golden and crispy.

Serve immediately, dividing up the pancake into bite-size pieces, with the dipping sauce alongside.

Oh-ee kimchi - Almost-instant Cucumber Kimchi 

3 Persian (pickling) cucumbers or 1 regular cucumber
1tsp fine sea salt
1 garlic clove, crushed
2tsp gochugaru red pepper powder (or a little less if you prefer) 
2tsp unrefined sugar or coconut palm sugar
2½tsp rice wine vinegar
2tsp roasted sesame seed oil
2tsp toasted sesame seeds

This is for those days when you open the fridge and realise that you are out of kimchi! All is not lost however, as this almost instant cucumber kimchi can be made in no time, omitting the fermentation process. The shorter, squatter Persian cucumber – sometimes labelled as pickling or baby cucumber – is ideal for this recipe, being less watery with a more pronounced flavour. Persian cucumbers are easily available in good supermarkets and fruit and veg markets. If you can’t find it, you can use normal cucumber, but it will be a little more watery.

Wash the cucumbers and pat them dry. Halve them lengthways and then slice them into very thin half-moon shapes. Put the slices in a bowl with the salt and combine together. Set aside for 30 minutes. Combine the remaining ingredients, apart from the sesame seeds, in a bowl. Drain the cucumbers of any liquid then add them to the bowl. Gently, but thoroughly, combine. Cover and refrigerate for at least half an hour or until chilled. Serve sprinkled with the sesame seeds. It will keep for up to a week in the fridge if stored in an airtight container.

Paeju gui – Scallops with Salted Sesame Oil 

Serves 6

12 scallops
1½tbsp vegetable oil
1 garlic clove, crushed
squeeze of lemon juice
1tsp toasted sesame seeds
1tsp chopped chives
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Salted sesame oil
1tbsp roasted sesame seed oil
½tsp sea salt

One of the chefs I’ve worked with used to make this as a snack – it’s such a simple dish, and so quick, so we often make it when having guests over. The scallops work really well as a canapé or as a light starter, where you can serve them on or off the skewers. The sesame salt is unadorned here, so make sure to use good-quality roasted sesame seed oil. Soak 6 wooden skewers in water for 15 minutes. In a small serving dish, mix together the sesame seed oil and salt.

Rinse the scallops and cut off the tough white muscle tissue on the side. If preferred, you can also remove the orange-coloured roe, but we think they taste great and have a brilliant colour. Heat the oil in a pan over a high heat. Thread 2 scallops onto each skewer. Lightly season both sides with salt and pepper.

When the pan is very hot, place the skewers flat onto the pan (cook in batches if there is not enough space) and fry, undisturbed, over a high heat for 1 minute until golden.

Flip over and fry for 40 seconds. Then add the garlic and a squeeze of lemon juice. Fry for another 10 seconds, just to allow all the flavours to come together, making sure the garlic does not burn. Then remove from the heat.

Serve immediately with the sesame seeds and chives scattered over the top and the salted sesame oil on the side to dip into.

Gin Cocktails Recipes: Hepple gin English Favourites

From now until September, The Goring Hotel’s beautiful secret garden will be home to a living moorland hillock of heather, juniper and wild flowers surrounded by a mini forest of botanicals…all of which is actually a gin bar in disguise.

Award-winning spirits brand Hepple Gin, have created a one-off living bar and gin safari, bringing the soul-restoring Northumberland moors to the five star hotel. The Goring Gin Garden is the place to hide out this summer and enjoy an exclusive gin cocktail, which has been especially created by the Hepple team who are brining the wildness of the north to a corner of Belgravia and a gin experience like no other.

Northside Collins 

Hepple Gin stirred with chocolate mint, lemon balm and apple juice topped with soda water. Garnished with sprigs of chocolate mint and lemon balm from the garden.

50ml Hepple Gin
50ml Soda water

Add to pre batch mix of:

50ml chocolate mint/lemon balm tea
50ml cloudy apple juice
5ml citric acid  (made by adding 10g sachet to 100ml water)
10ml sugar syrup
Stirred in a highball glass with ice

Hepple 75 

Hepple Gin, elderflower and strawberry syrup and lemon juice crowned with sparkling wine

25ml Hepple gin
15ml elderflower and strawberry syrup
15ml lemon juice
125ml sparkling wine

Strawberry syrup is made with one cup of strawberries and one cup of sugar left for 24 hours. Add elderflower cordial in a two to one ratio (2 strawberry syrup to 1 elderflower). Ingredients stirred over ice, strain into champagne flute and top up with sparkling wine. Garnish with slice of strawberry.

Cosmopolitan Daisy 

Hepple Gin shaken with fresh raspberry syrup, citrus liqueur and lemon juice.

50ml Hepple Gin
10ml Triple Sec

Pre Mix:

15ml Raspberry syrup
15ml Lemon juice
Combine pre mix, Hepple Gin and Triple Sec
Shake on ice
Garnish with fresh raspberry

Raspberry Syrup: 1 cup of frozen raspberries to 1 cup of sugar left for 24h then add equal amount of lemon juice.

When grief strikes, food can be a gift from the gods

Less than two weeks ago, I suddenly lost a friend. On his 39th birthday, Andy drowned during a beach vacation with his family. The loss of someone so young and vital and full of life has sent shockwaves through our sleepy southern town.

Following the accident, the community has rallied around his widow and year-old son, donating money for funeral expenses and struggling together to come to terms with the tragedy. And while there are truly no words a person can say to ease the pain of losing a loved one, there are specific things we can do.

One of them is cooking. I don’t know if it’s a southern thing, a farm community thing, or maybe it’s just old-fashioned, but where I come from, when someone dies, the casserole dishes start coming out almost before anyone’s called the coroner.

People can eat all the carrot sticks and carb-free tortillas they want when they’re feeling happy
My memories of the time around my mother’s death two years ago are a strange mixture of too-sharp, minutely etched mental photographs and blank periods of bleak, gray numbness. I alternated between a kind of mown-down exhaustion and bouts of nervous, manic activity.

I would walk into rooms with no knowledge of why I was there or where I had just come from. I nearly burned the house down by putting on a kettle to boil for tea and then walking away for two and a half hours.

Sometimes I manifested all of the symptoms of deep depression including loss of appetite and constant sleeping. Other times, I was seized with violent urges toward anything that felt like living – sudden impulses to dance wildly or scream, to have sex, to buy things. And when I got hungry, it felt like the hunger of an animal.

I suspect this is why southerners try to bury bereaved people in food. My mother’s friends and our relatives brought a mountain of food to her house that last week of July 2014. Cakes, pies, loaves of homemade bread, crocks of macaroni and cheese, fried chicken, chilli, barbecue, homemade ice cream and a profusion of casseroles, congealed salads and other ambrosias.

“Feel free to eat your feelings, folks,” was the implicit message. “Turns out they are delicious!”

The bounty serves a dual purpose. The grieving family is freed of having to shake off their heavy sadness in order to cook for themselves and they also have a variety of treats on hand to offer the parade of well-wishers who will come to pay their respects.

The one item I remember most vividly from the week of my mother’s death was a chicken casserole made by my Aunt Faye. (She’s actually a cousin, but like many southern families, the titles “aunt”, “uncle” and “cousin” get thrown around with very little regard to how we are actually related – if we are at all.)

This casserole was everything a person could ever want in comfort food. Creamy and deeply satisfying, it boasted a crunchy crust made of poppy seeds and toasted Ritz crackers. It hit all the marks. I remember each bite feeling like it was steadily warming me up from the inside out, restoring me to warmth and life and providing some of the first real pleasure I’d had in what felt like eons.

I called Aunt Faye last week to get the recipe, which required not one but two cans of Campbell’s condensed soup and a lot more butter sour cream than is probably safe. I followed it exactly, though. People can eat all the carrot sticks and carb-free tortillas they want when they’re feeling happy. Heavy grief, in my opinion, is best fought off with equally heavy cream.

I dropped off the casserole and a chocolate meringue pie with Andy’s wife Nora and her mom, hugged the baby and politely withdrew. I wasn’t even halfway home when the first text came.

“Oh, wow,” Nora wrote, “this casserole is amazing!”

I texted back a row of emoji hearts when I got to a traffic light. While our powers to soothe heartbreak are limited, we offer what gifts we can.

In this way, I like to think we can strike little victories against the pain and darkness that inevitably come with being alive.

How to spice up your summer suppers with Korean influences

It’s oh-so easy to fall into a cooking rut. We all do it. You find yourself time pressed and whip up the same dish again and again. Sure they loved your tuna surprise the first hundred times you made it but now it’s greeted with audible yawns or barely concealed groans. Suddenly it’s not such a surprise anymore.

The good news? It doesn’t take much culinary muscle to climb out of a cooking rut. Sometimes all it takes is one ingredient.

These days, my new best friend is gochujang – a Korean hot pepper paste. The rise in popularity of Korean food – think kimchi and bibimbap – makes it much easier to find Korean ingredients these days. I found gochujang at a Korean market but you can buy it online too.

What is it? Gochujang is a savoury, spicy condiment made from red chilli, glutinous rice and fermented soybeans. It’s thick – we’re not talking about a pourable hot sauce here – and sticky with a hint of sweetness.

You’ll want to thin it out a bit before using but when you do the possibilities are endless. Brush it on a steak before grilling, mix a hefty dollop into some Greek yoghurt and serve with roasted vegetables, stir some into soup for a hit of chilli heat or spread it onto flat bread and top with leftover roast lamb.
Or use it for a marinade like I’ve done here. This couldn’t be easier – some garlic, ginger, and oil. That’s it. I used boneless chicken thighs because the dark meat stands up to the heat of a barbecue better than chicken breasts and they’re less expensive. Having said that, I use free-range thighs that cost more than bog-standard chicken but the taste is infinitely better. And it still only costs a few pounds for a serving of chicken (based on two thighs per person).

Pair it with a crisp salad chock full of raw vegetables and you’re in business. I like to serve the chicken on a platter with lots of lime wedges and a sprinkle of sea salt and some chopped coriander. Waltz into the dining room with that and folks will perk up.  And next time you’re tempted to make your tuna surprise, toss in a tablespoon of gochujang – that’ll surprise them.

You can find gochujang in Korean markets and also online at www.souschef.co.uk

Spicy chicken thighs

You could make half of this recipe no problem, but any leftovers are a joy to have the next day – great sliced and served on a salad or tucked into pitta bread.

Serves 5-6

2 tbsp Gochujang
4 tbsp oil
1 clove garlic, finely minced
1 knob of ginger, about 20-30g
12 chicken thighs, about 1 kilo
Coriander, chopped for garnish
2 limes, cut into wedges
Salt

Place the gochujang, oil, and garlic in a large bowl. Grate the ginger. I find the easiest way is to take a teaspoon and drag it along the ginger to remove the outer skin. A grapefruit spoon with a serrated edge works particularly well. Then finely grate the ginger and add it to the marinade ingredients.

Put the chicken thighs in the marinade and toss to coat. Cover the bowl and place it in the refrigerator until you’re ready to barbecue – a couple of hours if you have the time.

You can cook the thighs on a medium hot barbecue or inside in a frying pan or ridged grill pan. Salt the side facing up. If your hot pepper paste contains sugar – and mine does – then keep an eye out because it can burn if you’re not careful.

Cook until nicely browned on one side – about 4 minutes or so – then turn and cook on the other. Again, sprinkle lightly with salt. If you’re unsure if the thighs are cooked then you can pierce one with a skewer – the cooking juices should run clear.

When done, remove to a serving dish. Drizzle with a bit of olive oil (optional), a sprinkle of sea salt, some chopped coriander and wedges of lime. Serve hot or at room temperature.