It's crunchy, fresh, and SPICY! Hot days are coming soon...and MD experienced sudden burst of preview of the summer for couple days already. These days something that can wake you up and give you a nice kick at your stress could be this Spicy Noodle Salad. I mean...it's really spicy for me. Anyhow after sweating (if you can't handle spicy anything please don't try this at home!) and turning RED I felt better and felt cool (literally!).

So if you are adventurous enough (...and if you can take the heat!) let's see how we made ours!

**NOTE: I have linked some unfamiliar ingredients to its pictures. Hope this helps!***

Ingredients-Makes 4-5 servings
0.52lbs Mixed Greens (I really wanted a lot of greens so we put a lot!)
1/2 Romaine Lettuce chopped
1 cucumber-thinly sliced
1 pack Fresh Rice Stick Noodle
1 mung bean sprouts
1 carrot-thinly sliced
2 scallions chopped

Sauce
1 tbsp fish sauce
5 tbsp Sriracha Hot Sauce
1 tbsp hot pepper paste
1 tsp sesame seed
2 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp vinegar
2 tbsp sugar

Let's Start!

Slice cucumber and carrot thinly. Chop scallion and Romaine Lettuce. Wash and drain sprouts to use them fresh. Add all the others (veggies) in a mixing bowl and top with cooked rice noodle. Add all the sauce ingredients together in another bowl.

Rice Stick Noodle is easy to cook and needs to be cooked very quickly. Actually you just need to put int hot water for couple minutes. Please follow the instruction on the packaging. When you are done cooking the noodle, rinse and drain the noodle and mix the noodle with the sauce FIRST.

After mixing noodles thoroughly FIRST (to have even taste) mix/toss everything together.

*Other Version OPTIONS*
1.You might want to add extra spiciness with chopped Korean green pepper.
2.You might want to play it down by adding Hoisin Sauce. Hoisin Sauce goes well with Sriracha Hot Sauce and more sweet. (Please see Restaurant Pho Nam Review for the pictures)

Iron Chef Mu-Shu Hoisin Sauce 15 oz US $7.99

4 BOTTLE LEE KUM KEE VEGETARIAN HOISIN SAUCE 20 OZ. US $22.99

And you are done! Don't forget to have lots of water/milk next to you!

Korean Pancake is not usually made for Breakfast like Pancake you may know. It's usually an appetizer, sidedish, or snack. But you decide what it could be. And you decide what size you want it to be. If you order this in the restaurant, it's usually the size of a whole pizza. I guess you could also say this is Korean pizza. This time we made it smaller just because.

So shall we start?

Ingredients: Makes about 15 palm(your hand) sized pancakes

15 Shrimp
1 Squid
150g crab meat
10 scallions/green onion
1 cup Korean pancake mix
3 cups Korean frying mix
4 cups water


Ok, so clean whole squid and save the body part and the tentacles, clean shrimp (peel off and take out the vein from the top by cutting slightly and pull out the vein), shred crab meat, and cut scallions to 3-4 inches long. Pajeon means Scallion Pancake so Scallions are supposed to be a significant part of this recipe so don't be afraid to cut them big and long!

Mix them together and no need to add salt. It's all premixed in to the pancake and frying mix.

Pour enough oil to fry this pancake. Scoop and spread out as thin as possible and make it into about a palm (your hand) size. Fry at about 7-8 stove temperature knob (DON'T use the Highest Temperature).

Don't forget to flip to cook both sides! And you are DONE!

Enjoy!

*NOTE: If you want Pajeon to be more crispy, add more frying mix than pancake mix and if you want it the other way, then use the opposite proportion.

Other Special Recipes:
Easy Spicy Wing
VERY Spicy Noodle Salad
Mandu/Dumpling

Other Recipes:
Bulgogi-Korean BBQ beef
Spicy Chicken Bulgogi
Korean style Pickl (Oiji)
Fresh Spicy Cucumber Salad
Fresh Tofu Salad
Stir Fried Eggplant
Mini Ground Turkey Pancake
Zucchini Jun

Kimchi Recipes:
Traditional Whole Napa Cabbage Kimchi
Quick 'n Easy version Kimchi

Ingredients
500g sweet rice powder
2 eggs
1tsp baking powder/flour
1.5 tsp baking soda
4 cups milk
2 tbsp sugar(can be adjusted to your liking)
1 tsp salt
nuts
raisin
(optional) 1 steamed sweet potato sliced thinly

***Let's Start!

Mix eggs well first.
Add milk and mix again.
Add sugar, salt, baking powder, and baking soda one by one while mixing nice and slow.
Add sweet rice powder and mix really well.
Add sliced steamed sweet potatoes, nuts, and raisins and mix.
Bake at 375F for about 45-50minutes.
Let it cool, cut, and serve.
Pair it with tea or coffee (or just this) and Enjoy!

So shall we start?

INGREDIENTS
0.6 lb ground turkey
2 packs dumpling wrap
1 egg

1/4 cabbage
2 carrots
1 zucchini

1/2 onion
3 scallions
1/2 tofu

1/2 tbsp ground garlic
2 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp sesame seeds

(OPTIONAL)
1/2 cup dried daikon/radish strips
2 tsp soy sauce

Let's prepare ingredients for the stuffing first.

Slice cabbage into 1 inch lengths.
Steam it lightly in boiling water and squeeze out excess water with cheesecloth.
Then, fry steamed cabbage in a pan with a little bit of oil and a pinch of salt. Think of squeezed out sauerkraut.

Add a pinch of salt on sliced and thinly chopped zucchini strips and let it sit for a while.
Squeeze out any excess water and fry it in a pan too.

(OPTIONAL) Dried radish strips need to be hydrated in water first. Squeeze excess water out. Chop! Chop! and fry with soysauce.

Just like the above picture, chop carrots too and fry (no need to salt or squeeze out water).
Fry ground turkey with little bit of salt until there's no more liquid/water/whatever there is.
The idea is that all the ingredients cannot be watery.
Chop onion and scallion BUT DO NOT fry them.
Squeeze out excess water from tofu. Tofu is supposed to be crumbled.
When you are done, all the ingredients should look like this!

NOW mix all the ingredients from the previous step and an egg together so everything will be mixed nicely. Add salt, black pepper, sesame oil, sesame seeds, and garlic as well.

*Make sure your wrapper can be separated from each other. Gently thaw them. It's perfect when it's still little frozen but separable.

Let's start making Mandu!

Place the wrapper on your left hand (if you are right-handed) and stuff about a spoonful right onto the center of the wrapper.
(WARNING: Please restrain yourself from over stuffing. Remember to leave outer edge area fairly untouched to be used to close mandu...you know to keep everything in...OR it's gonna pop.)

To close mandu up you can use just plain water or nicely mixed egg.
Use a spoon or be primitive like me and dip one of your fingers (wash your hands!) and wet only half, the semicircle edge of the wrapper.

Fold in half and use your fingers to close the edges.

You can make them in different ways. First one on the top is the basic one when you close.
OR you can pinch the edges to make different edges.
OR grab both ends, pull them together and stick the edges together WITH water, of course. That gives you a round Mandu.
(It's more fun when you make this with your family. You'll see that everyone makes different Mandu. Be creative. Have fun with it. Once I wanted a BIG mandu just for me, so I used two wrappers. One for the top and the other for the bottom.)

Here is the quick video of how to close up your Mandu. Sorry it's out of focus...hope this helps...if it's too blurry let me know.

So here are all our finished mandu. Don't eat it just yet. It needs to be cooked first!

So here's the harder part of mandu.

Fry 'em?

Steam 'em?

OR make soup out of 'em? (Recipes to be followed.)

That is a question YOU need to answer.
Enjoy!

Mandu/Dumpling related items on ebay:

NEW ~ ASIAN INSPIRED BAMBOO VEGETABLE DUMPLING POTSTICKER DIM SUM STEAMER BOXED US $19.99

Asian Tidbits (Dessert, dumpling, snack etc) Cookbook US $5.90

NEW HQ CAST ALUMINUM RAVIOLI MAKER MEAT DUMPLING PELMENI MOLD PASTA ПЕЛЬМЕННИЦА US $23.99

Dumpling Mold Set: for Dumplings, Pastries, Fruit-Filled Turnovers, Meat Pockets US $7.95

How-to Fry Mandu
How-to Steam Mandu

Other Special Recipes:
Easy Spicy Wing
VERY Spicy Noodle Salad
Korean Seafood Pancake

Kimchi Recipes:
Traditional Whole Napa Cabbage Kimchi
Quick 'n Easy version Kimchi

Other Recipes:
Mini Ground Turkey Pancake
Bulgogi-Korean BBQ beef