A few weeks ago, I hosted another Korean cooking workshop, Banchan Workshop #4. I wanted to do something with a theme this time so I started planning the workshop idea around Korean Street Food. I felt like I had plenty to share on this topic because I have very fond memories of it as a child growing up in Korea. There were many street food carts outside of my elementary school and inner/outer streets of my hometown in Seoul. Food was cheap and delicious and my friends and I as kids enjoyed eating favorite street foods like Tteokbokki (spicy rice cakes), Uhmook (fish cake soup), Gimbap (A vegetable hand-roll) and Hotteok (sweet flat cake). Korean street food also has the name for ‘School Food’ or ‘Boon Sik’ (분식), which means afterschool snacks. I feel very lucky to have been exposed to this kind of food culture in Korea. I wanted to bring some of that same good stuff to our workshop table.
I designed a menu that we can make together in class. All of them were picked from most popular street food in Korea. These dishes are named after a region in Korea or market places where you can find them. If you have plans to visit Korea anytime soon, I highly recommend trying some of these street foods. The best places to try are some of the market places in Seoul and Busan; two biggest cities in Korea. Here are some quick photo recap from the event. I’ll be share more photos later this week so hope you stay tuned…!
I partnered with Feastly again to host this event. Kitchen studio was filled with natural light and plenty of space for us to do our prep and dine together. I also worked on some details but without going too over-board this time. After all, food was the main focus and I wanted to spend more time developing recipes and testing them. I love planning little details for events. I find great joy in them but I tend to spend so much time on them, I had to stay focus on food. I picked up some succulents and cacti that was on good deal at The Dry Garden here in Oakland. I roughly painted some Korean newspaper to go with the centerpiece and prepared logo stamped tissue papers for the serving trays.
I also partnered with Whole Foods Market to bring the freshest ingredients for the class. All of fresh produce and seafoods were picked up at Whole Foods Market Berkeley (Gilman) and Whole Foods Market Oakland locations. I was also excited to prepare a small gift basket filled with Korean home-cooking pantry items that we can raffle off at the end of the class for one lucky winner to take home. You can see in more detail what was included in the basket (picture above). Allegro Coffee Roasters (Whole Foods Market Berkeley on Gilman) also provided coffee to be included in the gift basket as well as to serve after the tasting table.
Sparkly Asian Pear Mint Iced Tea, a welcoming drink prepared by Julee, recipe from Snixy Kitchen. Check out Sarah’s food blog for many delicious recipes and photos. This drink mocktail was such a creative one, we had to give it a try~!
After all the greetings and introductions, we were ready to dive right into prep.
Guests Meg, Nancy, MooYoun and Milan were assigned to Shin Dan Dong Tteokbokki (신당동 떡볶이) – Rice & fish cake, vegetables, chewy noodles, quail eggs braised in special Korean chili pepper paste (gochujang) and black bean (choonjang) sauce.
Guest KayMaria & Carlos working on their Shrimp & Calamari with Korean Pear Naengchae. A Korean style salad with shrimp, calamari, Korean pear, cucumber in homemade mustard dressing. We had a little hiccup on this dish because we accidently used up all the pears in the welcoming drink (eeks!) so KayMaria and Carlos creatively used some of that juice from the drink in the salad dressing to maintain the flavor! Good job guys!
Julee and Connie worked on Gook Jae Market Mixed Seeds Hotteok – Sweet flat cake with brown sugar, honey and mixed seeds filling. Gosh, we almost did some baking!! These were so yummy. We made two different types of Hotteok, one with sticky rice flour mix and pumpkin flavor flour mix. Yum!!
It was cute to see mostly couples signed up for this workshop. We had 3 couples in the group. Here is Lynn and Steven working on Kwang Jang Market Mayak Gimbap – Mini hand rolled vegetable gimbap with special mustard dipping sauce. This dish also goes great with Tteokbokki (listed above).
Eunice and her husband David working on Busan Uhmook Tang – Fish cakes on skewer soup with Korean radishes in seafood broth. Yup, you know me. I like making all the sauces from scratch. We made so many sauces that day!
More to come on how the final dishes turned out and snippets from my egg technique demo AND printable recipes that you can download. Make sure to leave me a note on comments what you would like to see more at these workshops or at my blog in general!
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This post is in partnership/sponsorship with Feastly, Whole Food Market, Allegro Coffee Roasters. All thoughts and opinions are my own. We thank you for ongoing interest and support!
Photography and editing by Lisa Wong Jackson at Good on Paper.