Seoul Food: Totally Inauthentic Bimbimbap

I was inspired, not so much by the recipe in Cookie Magazine, but by this photo.

Such beauty! Sheesh, why don’t my pictures ever look like that? Oh yeah, I’m neither a photographer or a food stylist. Or a good cook…

I cobbled together some ingredients for my weeknight Bimbimbap.

• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 6 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
• 1 pound tofu, broken into small chunks with a wooden spoon
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 4 large eggs
• Cooked brown rice and shredded steamed turnip
• Assorted vegetables (shredded carrot, canned baby corn, spinach, bean sprouts, red onion...), steamed, stirfried or raw
• Sliced green onions
• Toasted sesame seeds or Nori Shake

Stirfry the tofu in half the soy/sesame oil mixture.

Fry four eggs in a non-stick pan.

Assemble bowls of rice or steamed turnip (okay, I admit it. I MICROWAVED it). Top with vegetables and tofu. Drizzle with remaining soy/sesame oil and top with a fried egg, green onion and sesame seeds or Nori Shake (mixture of toasted sesame, salt, dulse and toasted nori pieces).

Assembling the motley crew. Julienned carrot with my new super duper julienne slicer!

Brown rice for the Man and Child. Shredded steamed turnip for me. I was going for a daikon radish type taste that looked like white rice, but it ended up being too pungent and tasting like, well, like a turnip. Stir fried ‘riced’ cauliflower would have been more neutral and probably a better choice (since white rice was out of the question).

  

My preschooler ate it after some cajoling, minus the egg. She is personally offended by egg yolks for some reason. My auxiliary backup child (niece) ate two servings happily!

If only I was more organized, we could have had kimchi vegetables on the side!