"korena food" news and stories

"Jook" is a general Korean term for "porridge," similar to Chinese congee. Back in November, Stephania shared her family's recipe for turkey jook as a way to use up leftover turkey. Today, we're having jaht jook, a Korean pine nut and rice porridge.

Koreans eat this for breakfast, but usually, jaht jook used to be saved for special occasions because pine nuts are expensive and not always available. The expensive part is still true, but not the availability part - you can even get pine nuts at Costco year round.

There are a few recipes on the web from various sources like ethnicgrocer (that calls it "chatchuk" which seems very inaccurate because it's not "chat, chuck," ), recipesource, and even reprints of Dok Suni's recipe, but this is the way my Mom told me how to make it.

Let's not go into those resolutions that everyone and their entire extended families have on their lists. Oh, alright, I'll list just a few to test myself out: lose those last x pounds, spend more time with my kids/wife/husband/dog but spend less time on the Internet, watch less tv but watch more my spending, read more books, etc.

Those are on my list, too, but in addition, I have a few that are specific to food, along with some actionable steps:

1. Drink water. I don't drink very much water because I like to taste something. I drink way too much coffee, tea, and diet sodas, so replacing at least one of my two to three cups of coffee each morning will also take care of the "Cut down on the coffee" resolution that didn't quite make this short-list.

2. Eat a little more local. Eating local was very trendy last year, but I do hope it becomes a lasting change that I too will incorporate into my lifestyle. I did well over the summer by spending quite a bit of time in local southern California farmers' markets, but that fizzled when market locations and schedules were far less convenient than the open-24-hours chain grocery on my way home from work. I hope to make it to the local farmers' market at least twice a month this year.

3. Cook at home at least twice as much as I did last year. Twice as much cooking-at-home, however, would still be less than half as much as going-out-to-eat. But with more visits to the farmers' markets for fresh produce, hopefully I'll be able to have dinner at home twice a week, every week.

4. Master the techniques and tastes of my own Korean cuisine. Especially since I am convinced that 2006 will be the year that Korean food will be the "it" cuisine. Yeah, yeah yeah, so it made its debut several years ago, and it was on the up and up last year, but this is the year that folks in Iowa will say, "Hon, you know, I'm craving bibimbahp."

5. Read more food books. As opposed to flipping through cookbooks and magazines just looking at the pictures. I have yet to finish the final chapters of Tony Bourdain's A Cook's Tour, Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphires, and just got one for Christmas, The Devil's Picnic (which is more about travel than food). There are at least ten more food books I want to read, as well.