Han Bat Sul Lung Tang (한밭 설렁탕), Koreatown

There is a food that I love, love more than most other foods. I can eat it for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and any other time in between, though it's traditionally a breakfast food. It's so good, in fact, that I crave it and must have it at least once every couple months, or I become ornery and whiny (okay, whinier than usual).

I had seollongtang (설렁탕, also spelled sul lung tang) for lunch today, and am so happy now. Mmm, mmm, good has never been as good as this!

(picture taken from Yelp)

I texted my sister this morning, having found out today that I will be out of town for work on Monday and Tuesday. We were supposed to pick up my cousin (flying in from Korea!) from LAX on Monday evening and take him to the parents' house, but I obviously will not be able to make it.

She called me and we chatted for a while, and she mentions seollongtang (설렁탕), the perfect dreary-day fare. I've been at work for a couple hours by this time, and haven't had much to eat, since I'm weaning myself off the master cleanse right now. Though seollongtang largely subsists of a broth made of ox bones, and meat is a bad idea right now, the idea of steaming hot, perfectly seasoned soup with specks of green onions floating on top was too good to resist.

Along with a couple boys, we trekked down to Koreatown to Han Bat, which is ghetto. It's in a strip mall that doesn't even have a parking lot. It's across the street from a Carl's Jr. It's on 5th and Western. But it is also delectable.


Han Bat Sul Lung Tang (한밭 설렁탕)
4163 W. 5th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90020

Telephone: 213.388.9499

Open daily:
7:00 am - 10:00 pm


(I have a quibble with spelling it 'sul lung tang.' I want to say that it's Han Bat Seollongtang, but the actual restaurant spells it Hat Bat Sul Lung Tang. Sigh.)

It's a tiny restaurant, with two rows of tables that extends from the front door all the way to the back of the place, with the kitchen off to the side. The dining area is long and narrow and you can't help but mock the people around you because you're practically sitting on them. Community fun, perhaps?

The Hat Bat Sul Lung Tang menu is sparse- you can get seollongtang, and you can choose what kind of meat goes in it. That's it. I think there are four choices:

Mixed (everything)
Brisket (lean, thin slices of beef)
Flank (flank steak, obviously)
Innards (they don't call it innards, but that's what it is! Tripe, intestine, tongue, and liver, I think. Shudder.)

You receive a bowl of rice, two types of kimchi (cabbage and radish), a giant vat of finely sliced scallion with an accompanying ladle, a small container of fluffy fine sea salt with a small spoon, black pepper, and a little jar of chili sauce. Very simple fare.

Seollongtang is usually served in stone or clay bowls, which retain heat very well and keep the soup scorching, just as it's meant to be. You taste the soup, which has your choice of meat and a handful of boiled cellophane noodles (the same noodles used for japchae). Add as much salt as you think you need. Add pepper. Scallions, if you like them. You can add chili sauce or the dregs of the two types of kimchi if you like it spicy, which I don't. I enjoy my seollontang with salt, pepper, a little scoop of scallion, and take my rice and kimchi on the side.

My sister and I had a legend that we've created between us- if you put a bowl of rice into a bowl of seollongtang, the rice mysteriously disappears! That's not true, of course, but the rice separates into individual grains in the hot soup and you don't get the same mouthfeel. A spoonful of sticky rice dipped into the soup and eaten is very different than a spoonful of soup with rice floating around in it. We both prefer the scoop and spoon method- scoop some rice onto the spoon, then dip the spoon into the soup. I generally like to fish a couple strands of noodles onto the rice, as well.

Today, since I'm trying not to binge, I didn't eat any meat and I ate maybe three or four spoonfuls of rice. I also limited myself to just a few pieces of kimchi, since my stomach probably isn't ready for anything fermented. I did have a couple scoops of scallions and the noodles, because really, I love noodles.

It was perfect for this rainy Saturday, though now I'm back at work and wishing I was still in Koreatown.

Read more...

Bear Soup

Contrary to the title of the post, I did not have soup made of bear. However, I did have gomtang (곰탕), which I'm calling "bear soup" because literally, 곰 means bear and 탕 means soup. There are lots of funny Korean words in this manner, which I'll explain as I blog more about Korea.

On Saturday, after lunch and tea with my cousin, we took the subway to Uljiro Station (을지로) so I could meet my family friend and we could dash off to Myeongdong (명동), a.k.a. get-me-out-of-this-unholy-crush-of-people.

When I went to Myeongdong last year, I had a LOT of trouble. I went with the same cousin that I met for lunch and tea, and he did not adequately prepare me for the sheer number of people that would be crunched into a rather small space. I am not a fan of strangers invading my personal space. AT ALL. I don't like it when strangers, no matter how good looking they may be, touch me even casually. I hug and kiss my family and friends, but if I don't know you, I don't want your germs.

Myeongdong last year was a big mistake. I was not only unprepared for the sea of people, it was also Lunar New Year when I went. Unbelievably crowded. (I eventually went back to Myeongdong with my sister and cousin last year, and I was fine, mostly because I was emotionally prepared for strangers to be all feelin' me up.)

This year, I knew to grit my teeth and bear it. So we went to Myeongdong ... and it wasn't that bad! Maybe I've gotten used to living in a busy, crowded city (heaven help me, am I actually adjusting to Korea??) or maybe my expectations were just worst-case scenario, but I wasn't horrified.

We had (a really, really early) dinner (bear soup!) and then wandered around Myeongdong and did some shopping. I (shamefully) bought a top at Forever 21, some face masks at TonyMoly (I am addicted to face masks now, what with the Face Shop, Skin Food, and Missha being ever so populous), and browsed through some phone cases (there are adorable iPhone 4 cases in Korea).

Bear soup is pretty similar to seollongtang (설렁탕), one of my top five foods of all time. Seollongtang is a little more opaque, whereas gomtang is a little bit more transparent. I am used to eating seollongtang with thinly sliced brisket; the gomtang that we had contained all kinds of different animal parts.

I didn't eat any of the animal innards that I didn't recognize. The slices of mystery meat edged with black? I had no bloody clue what part of which animal those might be. I didn't touch them.The kimchi was really good (especially the radish (daikon) kimchi, kkakddoogi), the soup was delicious in the way that can only be had by stewing cows for endless hours, and because we went between lunch and dinner, there weren't too many people.

I probably mentioned this in some previous post raving about seollongtang, but I'm not a big fan of green onions, except in this sort of soup. Then, the green onions are perfect- they wilt just very slightly in the hot soup, taking the edge of that onion-y sharpness that they can have, and they provide a nice contrast in texture to the silky soup and the soft, fall-apart meat.

The more I go to Seoul, the more I discover reasons that I like Korea. This is problematic, as my time in Korea is almost half (!) over. I can't believe I've been here for a month and a half- where in the world does all that time go??

Work's been picking up lately (finally), and I am feeling more like I've adjusted to my working life here. I've realized in my weeks here that the shy little girl that I once was is not as far beneath the surface as I had previously thought. Being in a foreign country, even if it is my homeland, has shown me that there is a huge difference between knowing a language and being a native speaker. I am not comfortable working in Korean, though I am adapting. I am struggling to get that shyness back under the surface and let my assertive (English-speaking) self rise to the top.

My mother says that my Korean's gotten better in the time that I've been here, that I speak more confidently and more quickly. I don't yet sense a difference, but at this point, I think it's a vocabulary problem. My Korean vocabulary is pretty crap, even colloquially, and it's never more apparent than at work, where technical jargon and slightly formal words (surroundings, atmosphere, internal, external, etc.) are lost on me. I know that the best way to improve my vocabulary is to read, but reading Korean is still too uncomfortable for me to do it easily.

Here's hoping that the longer I'm here, the easier things will get!

Read more...

Seolleongtang

Remember seolleongtang? Or seollontang? (That extra 'e' seems out of place to me in the first version, but that's how Wikipedia spells it.)

My entire family really loves seollongtang more than is healthy for us. We love it and crave it and will seek it out. I think my dad's favorite place when he and my mother stayed at my place for a few days was this restaurant.


Shin-Sun Seolleongtang
Gyeonggi-Do Goyang-Si Ilsan Dong-Gu Janghang-Dong 847

Telephone: 031.907.0025

신선설농탕
경기도 고양시 일산동구 장항동 847


So, of course, being wintry and freezing (fuh-reeeeezing!), my sister and I made the (two block) trek to have some seollongtang of our very own. In pictures, here's how good it was:

My sister and I, we don't generally eat everything on a Korean restaurant's table. Not because we don't like it, but because there's a lot of food and there are usually one or two side dishes that we don't like. 

Not so at this place. My sister got the seollongtang with tteok (뗙, rice cakes) because she loves tteok. We ordered the mandu (만두, dumplings) because we love them and I wanted to try them. I'm a sucker for mandu. 

I don't know if it's because the weather's been so very, very cold lately, or because we just love it so much, but we hoovered up our meal, obvious from the "after" photo above. I had to take the before and after pictures because they were so funny- it looked like we had licked our bowls clean. 

Work's been a beast lately. There have been some personnel changes and I'm not a fan. There's also a niggling little feeling in my little head that some people are somewhat ... laughing at me. I need to work it out over the holidays, away from Korea and Koreans.

I have decided to stay at this company in Korea until the end of next June. Six more months committed to this place. 

I've extended my lease, as well. Though I have no idea when my phone contract is up. That's the only other thing with which I have to concern myself. 

Work-related function tomorrow in Seoul. I have a sinking feeling that I'll be there all day, freezing my eyelashes off.

It feels like I just got back from LA, but I'm flying home on Friday for a month (just a couple days shy of a month). I'm so ready to go!

Read more...

Chicken Phở (월남국수)

**edit again, 11/7: I have just typed out all instructions in Korean, too. With my mother. It was a fun-filled time, really! All the laughing with inadvertently hilarious mistakes that I made? Awesome.**

**edit: I have just typed out all the ingredients in Korean. If they're wrong, let me know so I can fix 'em. It's exhausting trying to remember the mother language, let me tell you!**

Whenever I need a break from ... well, everything, I pack up and drive 30 miles southeast to my parents' house. Yesterday night, I felt like I needed to get away from it all, so I showed up at my parents' doorstep, pineapple juice and two laptops in hand. Because I am a workaholic, even when I am taking a break.

The thoughts of the Daring Kitchen had been on my mind constantly since I first posted about it, so I told my mom last night that Saturday would be a pho-filled adventure. She and my father both love pho, while I only like it when I really want it (about once every two months).

Today, after a breakfast of nonfat plain yogurt and a small dollop of black cherry confit, we set off to the chaos that is the Chinese market. Between the crazy Chinese women, the crazy Vietnamese women, the crazy Korean women, the crazy Thai women, and their collective inability to drive, it was a white-knuckle parking lot excursion.

We got back home safely, supplies all snuggled in my car. After my mom had a sandwich from Lee's Sandwiches, of course. (The vegetarian, for the record.)

Then I set about making pho, something I was scared of, but hey! Turns out that it's easy! And I liked the process!

Chicken Phở [월남국수]
Slightly adapted from Jaden Hair's recipe

Serves 4 [4 인분]
Total preparation time: 30 minutes (if using white meat chicken), 1 hour (if using dark meat chicken) [준비 시간: 30 - 60 분]

= For the broth [육수]:
2 tablespoons whole coriander seeds [2스푼 고수풀 씨]
4 whole cloves [4 정향]
2 whole star anise [2 스타 아니스]
1 1/2 quarts chicken stock [1 1/2리터 닭고기국물]
1 chicken leg and thigh [1 닭 다리, 허벅지]
1/2 onion, cut in three chunks [1/2 양파]
3-inch chunk of ginger, julienned [7.5cm 얇게 썬 생강]
6 cloves of garlic, sliced [6 얇게 썬 마늘]
1 tablespoon sugar [1스푼 설탕]
2 tablespoons fish sauce [2스푼 액젓]

= Noodles & accompaniments [국수, 양념]:

1 pound pho noodles (rice noodles) [.5 kg 월남국수, 쌀 국수]
Basil, washed [바질]
Bean sprouts, washed [숙주나물]
Lime wedges [레몬, 라임]
Chili or jalapeno, thinly sliced [얇게 썬 고추]

The coriander seeds, cloves, and star anise, measured out. The French and the foodies call this mise en place, I call this a photo op:


















Toast the spices until fragrant, about 3 - 4 minutes. I believe I toasted the suckers for about 4, but they started smelling lovely a bit sooner. I shook the pan around and then cut up the onion and threw out the grocery bags. I'm all about multi-tasking.

고수풀 씨, 정향, 스타 아니스를 향이 날 때까지 3-4 분 동안 팬에 볶는다.


















Half an onion, the ginger, and the chicken. The original recipe calls for a chicken breast, but my father likes dark meat, so we bought what he eats. Women serving the man of the house again, of course! We only used the larger piece of ginger, didn't use the smaller piece to the right.


















Though the original recipe calls for the onion half to stay whole and asks that the ginger be sliced and then smashed with the side of the knife, I thought that the more surface area that is exposed to the broth, the better. So my mother, with her superior knife skills, julienned the ginger and sliced the garlic. The original recipe does not ask for garlic. But I'm Korean. I can't help myself.


















Everything gets thrown in the pot and boiled. Bring to a boil and then lower heat to simmer until chicken cooks (20 minutes for white meat, 40 minutes for dark meat). Being stupid, I forgot that I used dark meat chicken, which takes much longer to cook than white meat. So I simmered for 20 minutes, per the original recipe, and the chicken wasn't cooked through. Back in the chicken went, for about 20 more minutes.

육수의 재료를 모두 냄비에 넣고 끓인다 (가슴살은 20분 정도, 허벅지살은 40분 정도).


















The broth after the chicken's been removed. Mmm, oil. I drained the portions of the broth that were eaten today with a coffee liner inside a sieve. The rest of the broth, I boiled a bit more and am now cooling, so the fat congeals and I can easily take it out.

고기가 완전히 익으면 고기는 건져 놓고, 육수의 양념을 체로 걸러내고, 육수 위에 있는 기름도 걸러낸다.


















The accompaniments- mung bean sprouts, basil, and lime wedges. There was also Sriracha sauce for my father. He wanted Hoisin sauce, too, but I couldn't find it (my mom found it later and told me where it was for tomorrow's breakfast).


















My mother's version, with bean sprouts and tons of basil and one wedge of lime. She likes the vegetables.

국수를 삶아 그릇에 담고, 육수를 붓고, 숙주나물, 바질, 라임과 멕시칸 고추를 취향에 따라 넣고, 매운 소스나 호이신 소스를 적당히 넣고 맛있게 먹는다!


















My father's version, with tons of bean sprouts, not so much basil, and a liberal dousing of Sriracha sauce. He also likes thinly sliced jalapenos, but I forgot to slice some up until he was almost done eating. Oops.


















Seriously, this pho was easy (less than an hour, including clean-up) and really, REALLY good. I'm not Vietnamese, obviously, so I couldn't tell you if it's authentic, but it tasted exactly like the pho we get in the several restaurants that we go to.

I don't know why it took us so long to try making pho- we probably thought it was like seollongtang (설렁탕), which is insanely annoying for the home cook to make.

Read the original recipe on the Daring Kitchen to see what else I changed, because I'm lazy and forgot what else I disobeyed, but I tried not to veer too far away. I'm very good at following instructions for baking- really, I am. But I am terrible at following a recipe for a savory dish. Korean cooking is all about touch, feel, taste, smell, and appearance, not about measurements, so I'm used to that method. I can't break the habit!

I was told that pho is usually a breakfast dish in Vietnam, so my parents are having the rest of this batch for breakfast tomorrow. With Hoisin sauce and sliced jalapeno, of course. Oh, I also undercooked the noodles. I like all my pastas very, very al dente, and my parents like their pastas cooked until dead, beyond al dente. Oops!

I didn't eat any- no complex foods for me still: yogurt, cherry confit, pineapple juice, and tofu is as far as I'm going today.

I'm so excited that this worked! I'm going to try cooking and baking all kinds of recipes now- hopefully they're all as successful as this one was.

(And no, I was not tempted to eat while cooking. First of all, that raw chicken totally skeeved me out. I am not a huge fan of chicken, and raw chicken makes me a little nauseous. Second of all, I felt full just off the smells from the toasting spices, the broth, and the basil.)

Hooray cooking! And baking!

Read more...