Delucious Korean Side Dishes!

6 8 oz. Containers Featuring Delicious Korean Side Dishes

No, it's not a typo.  Delucious is a new Korean side dish delivery service operating in the City of Toronto (including Richmond Hill and Markham).  Out of a selection of 8 dishes, you can have Delucious deliver a 6-pack of Korean dishes in 8oz. or 16oz. containers ($17 or $25 respectively) every Thursday from 7-11pm on a weekly, biweekly, or monthly basis.

Subscribing to their service is a great idea for dinner parties or for busy people such as moms, students, and professionals looking for convenience when it comes to adding variety or that extra touch to their daily meals.  In fact, it can be your entire meal as I created my own custom bibimbap with my side dishes.  I just added rice and a fried egg on top with plenty of seasoned soy bean paste! 

These fantastic preservative-free dishes are made with love by Lucy - Korean chef, Delucious owner, and mother.  Eating these dishes are like going home to your honorary Korean mother's for dinner.  The dishes are salted nicely and are not oily which is congruent with their mission for you to eat healthy.  I loved the pickled dishes (the kimchi and radish) because they had the right balance of sweetness and acidity.  

 Unlike most of the dishes which can be stored for 7 days after delivery, you can keep the kimchi even longer in case your preference is to have a more pungent and sour taste.  My favourite was the the seaweed stems because they had great texture and had a nice sesame seed aroma to them!

The service is co-owned by Lucy and her son.  They are candid with their intentions to become successful so that Lucy is able to quit working 12 hour days, 6 days a week.  With such a solid offering of food, why wouldn't you help set Lucy free?

Visit www.delucious.ca

Kimchi

Spinach

Crunch Bean Sprouts

Korean-style Coleslaw

Pickled Radish

Seaweed Stems

Koreana BBQ Restaurant

One of my favourite Korean BBQ places is Koreana located in the South of Calgary.  Why do I like this place so much? The layout of the restaurant!! It's wide open with lots of ventilation and has private dinning areas seperated by screen doors. The first time I ate here was for my niece's bday and they were able to accomodate our family of 50 but also keep the party private with these versitle screen doors. So this place is great for large parties.

So now the the ambiant is taken care of, how is the food??? Superb! Tonight was a day of celebration since mama Pineapple has decided to move to Calgary. We decided to take her out for one of her favourite cuisines. We ordered the following.....

Budae Jiigae (Army Soup)

Yummy Side Dishes

Stone Rice Bowl (Bibimbap)

Seafood Pancake (Haemul Pajeon)

Beef Bulgogi

Stir Fried Potatoe Noodles (Japchae)

The food was excellent!!! The only thing I did not like was the cheese in the Budae Jiigae, but that was my own fault. If you are like me and are not a fan then remember to ask your server for no cheese. I mean I like cheese just as much as the next person but not in my soup.

The only down side is I would say Koreana is one of the pricer Korean BBQs since they do not offer all you can eat. We have tried a number of dishes on their menu and have been satisfied everytime. The only questionable items would be the Chinese and Japanese sections on their menu. Yes, this Korean restaurant serves Chinese and Japanese food, I would not call it authentic so I would not suggest ordering those items. If Chinese and Japanese is what you crave then stay tuned.... The Pineapple Princess is on it!!!!

Beat the Heat with the Refreshingly Icy Mool Naengmyun at Cho Sun Ok

Cho Sun Ok Korean Restaurant

7353 Yonge Street

Thornhill, ON L3T 2B3

905-707-8426

Date visited:  July 5, 2014

Side Dishes that accompany your Meal

I can't imagine a more perfect place to eat than Cho Sun Ok on a sweltering day in Toronto. Why?  Because their signature dish Mool Naengmyun literally transports you to the heart of Alaska!

Cold, chewy and thin arrowroot noodles are served in a wondrously icy broth.  The broth itself is so complex and delicious.  It's sweet yet tangy and it has a deep beef flavour.  The homemade red pepper sauce gives it a subtle kick and the sesame seeds and oil give it an astounding aroma!  Still, the coolest thing about this slushy broth - if your not careful - is that it can give you brain freeze!  It's such a strangely unique concept (at least to me) that is fully thought out... I mean, the Mool Naengmyun is served in a stainless steel bowl so that the broth stays chilled while you consume it.

Along with a boiled egg, the Mool Naengmyun is also served with notoriously refreshing and crunchy ingredients such as slivers of cucumber, pickled daikon, and a slice of pear.  What an awesome combination of ingredients to give a contrast to those chewy noodles!  It's a true winner to help you stay as cool as a cucumber (I know, I couldn't resist).

I didn't want to end this post without saying that Cho Sun Ok is not afraid of heating things up either.  Cho Sun Ok is home to one of my favourite incarnations of Gemja Tang, commonly known as pork bone soup.  The pork neck meat is just so tender that it is easily coaxed off their bones - fall off the bone if you will.  You roughly get four hunks of meat in a well developed broth with potatoes and onions.  But it's the generous garnishing of perilla seeds and green onions that really take the cake for me.  It makes for such an aromatic soup!  I highly recommended!

The Fry

So it's basically summer, the NBA Finals are on, the World Cup is on, the US Open is on and it's hot outside. Hot, muggy and often rainy. So what can you eat? The patio is sort of off limits, the bars are an option but the food is usually not great. I still want to watch the games though so what can I do? Enter The Fry! Newly opened at Yonge and Sheppard (in the old Armando's) the Fry has expanded down from Yonge and Cummer, offering Korean style fried chicken, soups, alcohol and TVs. Best of all is they generally offer all of those things in the form of combos. Fried chicken and beer in a frozen mug? Garlic and soy sauce fried chicken and soju? Spicy rice cakes, fried chicken and a Coke in a frozen mug? All with a side of special World Cup friendly hours? That's a recipe for success in my mind.

Delicious, golden, juicy, crispy chicken

The chicken was freshly fried, juicy and crispy. The chicken came out golden brown and not the dirty brown indicative of a slacking kitchen not changing the fryer oil. The service was friendly and fluently English despite only having one waitress for the packed resto - perhaps less attentive than normal but we had enough napkins and drink so not much more attention was necessary for the devouring of fried chicken.

Pickled cabbage, salad,
macaroni salad

Spicy rice cakes with cheese,
chicken and cabbage

Garlic soy sauce fried chicken

The bill came to about $55 for three of us. We ordered a half and half combo of garlic and soy fried chicken and original fried chicken along with a spicy rice cake and chicken dish (which was delicious). We had the usual palette cooling side dishes of pickled radish, salad and (maybe not so usual) macaroni salad. We also had one I've never seen before - seared corn with some kind of buttery, mayonaisse-y, cream sauce on it which was actually delicious. The right amount of sweet and salty without being overly greasy or heavy. With the aforementioned drinks in frozen mugs, we were very full but very happy by the end of the meal so I'd say the price was reasonable.

All in all, it was a great experience and I'd definitely expect to be back there soon!

Peace,
B.

Recipe #1 - Pork Pork Pork Night!

For the Urban Foodie's first recipe, I give you Samgyeopsal (삼겹살)! We like to call it PorkPorkPork since Samgyeopsal (Korean) translates directly to 삼 -Three 겹 - Layered 살 - Flesh. Why Three Layered Flesh you ask? Because the main ingredient in this meal consists of this: 

That, my friends, is one layer of fatty meat, one layer of meaty fat and one layer of pure fatty goodness. Are you grossed out? If you are, first of all, this blog might not be for you! Second though, stick with me because the finished product looks something like this: 

Do I have you back? Excellent. So here's the deal, this is a Korean dish that requires a minimum of two eaters but is a great example of the more the merrier. This past Easter Monday, the Urban Foodie, the Pineapple Princess, myself and ten of our friends got together for one such meal. 

Things you'll need: 

- Pork belly (two people per pack)

- Green onions (two people per bunch)

- Perilla Leaves (two people per pack) (Find at any Korean supermarket) 

- Red chili powder (a few teaspoons)

- Garlic (as much as you want)

- Sesame Oil (a few teaspoons)

- Soybean Paste (quite a bit) (Find at any Korean supermarket)

- Kimchi (as much as you want)

- Rice (half a cup to one cup per person)

- Red leaf lettuce (two people per head)

- Alcohol (Is it Friday or Saturday? A lot. Any other day? Are you employed? Yes? Maybe a little less, friend.)

- Newspaper (Do you like mopping greasy floors? No? A lot then.)

- One each of these for every five people or so:

Why one of those strange cooking tops? You see that hole in the middle? It drains to that hole in the side giving you these: 

 

You see that cup there? That's triple-distilled pork fat bro. You get about one of those cups per two packs of meat. 

So I mean, at this point, the recipe may look a little daunting. You seem to require a lot of ingredients and no shortage of equipment to get this done. Don't be afraid though! It's really quite simple. Basically, this is how it goes down: 

1. Shred onions and Perilla leaves and mix in a bowl with chili powder (it makes things spicy right? so if you can't handle the spicy, don't add so much!) and some sesame oil to make it all stick together.

2. That's really all there is to it. Everything else you just straight up throw on the grill and leave it until it's either crispy and beautiful or browned and aromatic. Ie. sliced garlic, kimchi, porkporkpork (cut these to 1.5-2 inch sections with scissors), and any other veggies you want. 

3. Then you take your leaf of lettuce (I generally halve it so I can stuff it in my mouth better), add some rice to it, throw some of that green onion/perilla leaf salad on it, throw your cooked stuff on it, add a dollop of soybean paste and some sesame oil (if it's your thing), wrap that thing up and scarf it down. Easy as pie. And you all know that I love pie. 

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you can't accomplish step 3 anymore. 

A few P.S. items: 

- If you're going to use the table top stove, you should put newspaper underneath it and on the floor because the grease flies everywhere. That green tablecloth? That went in the garbage after the meal. 

- If you don't have all of this stuff, no big deal. Just cook the meat in a pot (pot>skillet because it'll keep more grease in) and empty the grease after each round!

Lastly, if you don't want your house doused in vaporized grease and smelling of porkporkpork for days, do it at a friend's house. That's what friends are for ;). 

TL;DR

PorkPorkPork goooood. Easy to make. Make it. Eat it with friends. Be happy. 

OH! P.P.S.

Everybody knows what a Jager-bomb is by this point right? Drop a shot of Jager into a glass of beer or Red Bull, throw back and enjoy that weird sense of up and down at the same time? Well, along with this meal most of my friends enjoyed a beer or three. Many Koreans would also enjoy it with a few glasses of Soju (소주). Do you see where I'm going with this? Drop a shot of Soju (purchase at your local LCBO) into a glass of beer and throw back (Fridays and Saturdays only!). For extra fun, balance shot on top of glass between two chop sticks, have one person scream SOJU! and everyone else scream BOMB! as they pound the table with their fists. Repeat until shot bombs into your beer and then throw back (Still only for Fridays and Saturdays!). Now you're ready. Get your porkporkpork on.