Time to get up for my daily training. Well… maybe I can sleep in just a little long. “Hey Cricket!” Ooohhh no, Jinyung is already here. “Cricket, get up! Master Hong is calling for all of us.” If the master is looking for us, I should probably get moving. Sleeping all day is not going to teach me the ways of the Hongmoon. Hmm… where did I put my uniform? Ah, there it is. I better check if Gilhong is still asleep before heading to the master. Of course he is, he is always asleep! A small poke will wake him. “I’ve been up this whole time, Cricket. Please I would never sleep in.” Sure he was. Never mind him, time to see what the master wants. As we all begin to gather Master Hong apologies for his absence over the past few days. He then looks at me and smiles. “Cricket. Come with me.” I nervously follow the master. I hope I did not do anything wrong – what could he possibly want from me? “Cricket it is time we take your training to the next level. Take this book. Today we start focusing on your true potential.”
Last week Blade and Soul released in the west. I had heard about the game a few years back when it was being released in Korea. I haven’t really given the game much attention until a few weeks ago when I watched a few streamers play. The game reminded me a lot of Aion, another NCSoft game I really enjoyed. And since Blade and Soul is free to play, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to check it out. I’ve been able to spend a little bit of time with the game but I’m really enjoying the combat system. I’ve tried out the blade master and summoner so far. The blade master has been interesting with all the blocking and having to learn the correct time to attack certain enemies. I’m sure those blocks will be much more important at higher levels, so best to get used to them early on. My adorable pink-haired summoner has been what I’ve played with my friends. We are very close to being able to explore the first group dungeon and I’m very excited to try it. All of the combat animations have been amazing to see and I can not wait to see combat at higher levels. Hopefully this coming week I’ll be able to spend a bit more time with the game.
Since the game just came out, my summoner has only seen the beginning of the cooking guild and only knows how to get seasoned chicken and dumplings. Neither of those recipes spoke to me. Luckily, the game’s cash shop has several Korean dishes for sale. The Hongmoon Hot Artisnal Mamosu Stew is the first recipe we will be taking a look at. I don’t have much experience cooking Korean cuisine but I do really enjoy eating it. After a lot of research, I figured it was time to dip my toes in this style of cooking with a Korean short-rib stew, galbijjim. I took the base of a galbijjim recipe and made some minor modification to call it my own. The workload for this recipe is very minimal but the cook time is very long. The oven will be doing most of the heavy lifting this time around. Make sure to start this recipe early in the day since the cook time will take at least four hours. Let’s jump into this delicious stew.
Recipe inspired by Korean Bapsang
Results: 4-6 large bowls of stew
Ingredients:
4.5lbs beef short ribs
0.4 oz ginger, sliced
1 oz garlic, chopped roughly
19 oz daikon, quartered and then sliced into ½ inch pieces
10 oz lotus root, quartered and then sliced into ½ inch pieces
8 oz onion, quartered
5 oz carrot, cut into 1 inch pieces
5 oz shiitake mushrooms, sliced into ½ inch piece
6 oz korean pear, cut into bite sized pieces
¾ cups soy sauce
⅔ cup rice wine
4 tbsp sugar
salt
pepper
olive oil
2 tbsp cornstarch
3 tbsp water
Place your beef short ribs into a bowl of cold water and let it soak for at least 15 minutes. This will help remove any excess blood from the meat. Remove the short ribs from the water and dry thoroughly. Season the meat with salt and pepper.
Begin preheating your oven to 250℉. Place a dutch oven on the stove over medium-high heat and begin heating up two tablespoons of olive oil. Once warmed, place the short ribs meat side down. Cook each side until browned. You will have to do this in 1-2 batches. Move the meat to a plate to rest after cooking it.
When you are done browning the meat, cook the ginger and garlic in the dutch oven for about 3 minutes or until they have lightly browned. Add the daikon, lotus root, onion and carrot to the dutch oven. Mix to cover with the oil and cook for about five minutes.
Once the vegetables have softened slightly add the meat and mix well. Finally, add the shiitake mushrooms and korean pear. In a small bowl combine the soy sauce, rice wine and sugar. Pour into the dutch oven and mix until everything is slightly coated in the sauce.
Cover and place in the oven. Cook for at least four hours and check on it every 90 minutes. When checking the stew give it a little mix and then cover again. The longer you cook this the more tender the meat will be. I cooked mine for five hours and was really happy with the results.
After the stew has finished cooking, remove it from the oven. Spoon out about 1-2 cups of the sauce. Place it in a sauce pan over medium-high heat. In a small bowl combine the cornstarch and water. Add the cornstarch slurry to the sauce pan and whisk together until well mixed. Increase the heat to high and whisk regularly until the sauce has thickened.
Serve by adding rice to a bowl, adding the stew, then pouring a bit of the sauce over the bowl. Enjoy.
I’ve probably never tried a few of these ingredients, and I want this. There is an Asian specialty grocery store on the way home from work. This is dangerous.