Roasted potatoes with parsley-caper dressing

In the middle of the hottest summer that I can remember, I keep wanting to eat things that require using the oven.


Like roasted potatoes.

Three meals, same ingredients (mostly): Bibim guksu

Meal #3: Bibim guksu



The same cast of characters as bibimbap:

• some kind of greenery, in this case, sigumchi namul
  
• thinly sliced cucumbers
• any additional Korean banchan like myeolchi, fish roe, kimchi, etc. (here, spicy pickled radish)
• a starch (in this case, soba noodles)
• lettuce leaves like romaine, red or green leaf
• gochujang (which I mix with sesame oil, sugar, water and/or rice vinegar)

Three meals, same ingredients (mostly): Bibimbap

I had to add that brief interlude on my hot water dispenser because it played a part in putting together this meal.

Without further ado...


Meal #2: Bibimbap


Again, the cast of characters:

• some kind of greenery, in this case, sigumchi namul
  
• thinly sliced cucumbers
• any additional Korean banchan like myeolchi, fish roe, kimchi, etc. (here, spicy pickled radish)
• a starch (in this case, rice of course, because it's not bibimbap without the bap)
• lettuce leaves like romaine, red or green leaf
• gochujang (which I mix with sesame oil, sugar, water and/or rice vinegar)

Top with my favorite, a fried egg.

And now, a word from our sponsors*

I'll get back to my "Three meals" series momentarily, but I had to add this ode to my hot water dispenser.


I had resisted it originally when my mom first suggested I get one because I associated hot water dispensers only with my older relatives and, as a larger group, older Asians in general. But, as has happened many, many times, my mom was right: I did want a hot water dispenser. I saw how incredibly useful it could be. Coffee and tea at any hour of the day! Instant noodles! Instant oatmeal! Even for cooking, like when making soup, I could add boiling water, without having to have a kettle of water on the stove, if the soup got too thick.

And I found yet another use: pre-cooking spinach.

Three meals, same ingredients (mostly): Ssam

I must give credit for this series of posts to my sole commenter for pointing out, somewhat astutely, that Korean food was boring (blasphemy!). I think what he meant was that Korean cuisine was more or less a variation of the same flavors and ingredients.


I can see the reasoning behind that... and luckily for me, this is actually a good thing, because I can make a few, fairly distinct meals out of the same set of ingredients.

Heaven (aka carrot ginger dressing)

This is the dressing that is served at Japanese restaurants on the small salad you get before your sushi, if you choose the salad over soup option, which I often do, precisely for this dressing. I've tried bottled versions before and they weren't the same, so I had pretty much accepted the fact that I could only have this dressing when I went to a sushi place.


Then I saw this dressing posted on one of my favorite food blogs. Somehow I just knew, knew, this was it--this was going to be amazing.