We spent our New Year's Eve with a friend of ours at home. Since I've been so into Korean cooking lately, I cooked a variety of Korean dishes to celebrate.
Appetizers...My first homemade Kimchi(!), soy bean namul, pajeon, and stewed kabocha pumpkin. I never imagined I would make my own kimchi. But, here it is. I actually had fun making it. To make the yangnyeom (the sauce to rub to the salt-marinated and dried napa cabbage), I blende about 10 different ingredients including the hot chili powder, fermented anchovy sauce, grated apple, ginger, garlic, etc. It came out very nice!
The main course was Donabe Gamjatang. I used my classic-style Donabe, "Hakeme" to make this dish. The pork spare-ribs (salt-marinated overnight) were slow-cooked in donabe in the oven for 2.5 hours before adding any other ingredients. The broth smelled when the donabe was took right out of the oven.
Then, the broth was seasoned and other ingredients were added. With tons of sesame leaves and roasted sesame seeds, the soup was so complete and wonderful. The meat was extremely succulent and fell off the bone so easily.
Instead of eating soba noodles as a traditional Japanese New Year's Eve meal, we ended the main course with kalguksu (Korean wheat flour noodles). The noodles soaked up all the flavors of the rich broth and it was magical.
Cheese course. And all the wines.
It's been a wonderful 2009.
