Beans and rice

I’ve made two delicious rice-based dishes recently that I want to tell you about.

First, I was invited to a Southern food party. Since I’m incapable of following rules, I thought about bringing a southern Thai dish, like massaman curry or fish maw soup. Nah, too much work. Then I remembered the Lee Bros’ Saigon Hoppin’ John. Perfect!

Hoppin’ John is black-eyed peas and rice. (I’m going to try really hard to get through this without making a joke about “My Humps.”) It’s a traditional New Year’s dish in the South. It’s usually made with bacon, but the Saigon version omits the bacon and adds coconut milk, lemongrass, and ginger. I made it with your basic long-grain S&W rice, and it’s an extremely satisfying vegetarian meal. (Okay, I used chicken broth and fish sauce, so it was an extremely satisfying almost-vegetarian meal.)

[Here’s the recipe](http://www.culinate.com/books/collections/all_books/The+Lee+Bros.+Southern+Cookbook/saigon_hoppin_john)

Next, I made myself this lunch that was so good, I took a picture:

Dokbokki

That’s _dokbokki,_ Korean rice cakes with hot sauce. It’s from the [Momofuku Cookbook](http://www.amazon.com/dp/030745195X/?tag=mamstesgrubshack). The rice cakes are the Korean equivalent of mochi, pounded and molded glutinous rice. Super-chewy and satisfying, the savory equivalent of [Hi-Chew](http://www.gourmet.com/food/2009/07/hi-chew-candy-better-than-a-real-mango). They’re sold in every Japanese and Korean market, frozen or refrigerated. For this recipe, you want the hot dog-shaped ones. They look weird but are a completely natural product made of nothing but rice, water, and salt.

In order to make Momofuku’s dokbokki, you need to make a couple of condiments: Korean Red Dragon Sauce, which is just a mixture of off-the-shelf chile sauce and a couple of other things you probably already have; and caramelized onions. (David Chang called them roasted onions, but they’re just totally standard caramelized onions.) Once you’ve made these things, you can make yourself crispy, chewy, spicy dokbokki in less than ten minutes. And you should.

[Here’s the recipe](http://www.inuyaki.com/archives/2495)

Related posts:

  1. Rice is nice, eat some twice
  2. Rice to the top
  3. Dangerous beans

5 thoughts on “Beans and rice”

  1. giao

    we (or should i say, my husband) just finished off a sweet dessert with black-eyed peas, sticky rice and coconut milk…traditional vietnamese recipe from my mom’s kitchen. looking forward to checking out the dokbokki, david chang is a god.

  3. shinwha

    I never thought to cut up the rice cakes in smaller pieces like that, but that’s a great idea! That way they’re bite-size, and there’s more surface area for that gochujang sauce. Yum.

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