There have been lots of articles on blogs recently about one of my favourite Korean dishes, the pancake! They have a flair for pancakes here and add lots of fresh vegetables, meat and seafood to them. My favourite is the kimchijeon, which (as you can probably guess from the name) has kimchi added into the mixture. Koreans usually serve it on a big plate and share it around the table, people help themselves whenever they want, dip it in the mix of vinegar and soy and enjoy.
Last Wednesday, as our plans to go surfing were foisted, my co-teacher decided to give me a lesson in cooking Jeon. It was only her second time cooking it, as a newly wed her mum had been round to teach her how to do it a couple of days before. It turned out that it's so easy, cheap and yet tasty! Here is our lovely cooking teacher, Grace.
Ingredients for 1 big pancake:
-1 cup of flour (We used special jeon flour that's already seasoned, but normal flour is fine).
-1 egg
-1 cup of water
-Salt
-Pepper
-Thinly Chopped Vegetables; we used spring oninon, chives, carrots and courgette.
-Meat; we added bacon to one and squid to the other, but prawns are also really tasty. (If you're going to use bacon, or any other meat, it might be a good idea to pre cook it a little)
For Dipping Sauce equal measures of:
-Soy sauce
-Apple vinegar
1. In a big mixing bowl, put 2 scoops of flour. (This equates to about 1 cup of flour), season it with salt and pepper.
2. Next, add the egg until the mixture is thick and sticky.
3. Add a little water, maybe half a cup, and beat until it's smooth. It needs to be pretty thin like ordinary pancake batter to make it crispier and tastier. Add more flour or water if needed.
4. Once you have the consistency you want add all of the vegetables that you want and give it another mix.
5. Put some oil in a pan and put on the heat. Wait until the pan is super hot.
6. Pour the mixture into the pan, we made two jeons that were about 15cm wide so they would cook quicker and were easier to flip. We also tried one with bacon and one with seafood.
7. Cook until it is browned, then flip and brown the other side.
8. Once it's finished, put on a plate and serve with dipping sauce (mix soy and vinegar together, and a little chilli paste or powder if you have it)
I love the jeon because you tear it up with your chopsticks and everyone digs in. My favourite restaurant serves it with melted cheese on top, which is really delicious and makes it easy to see why they call it the Korean pizza. Serve with banana makeolli. Yum.
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| Cheesy Kimchijeon |
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