Traditional Korean Rice Pancakes (Pajeon)

I like Korean culture and their food...

I like to learn Korean cooking too but when I visited South Korea last year, I came home with not even one Korean cookbook. In fact, I was excited dashing into all Korean bookshops but disappointed dragging myself out of the shops without any books. Why??? Simply because the good Korean cookbooks that I can find are all in Korean language and I can't decipher any of these Korean writing at all...

Despite that I couldn't buy any Korean cookbooks from Korea, I actually have two Korean cookbooks in my collection. One is Seoul Kitchen by Debbie Lee which is a great gift from Lena from Frozen wings and other is a Chinese-English bilingual book that I bought from Singapore which is rather Korean-Chinese to me.

I like Debbie's Korean cooking as her food are mostly the modern fusion-Korean kind with easy-to-follow instructions and easily-available ingredients. To certain extent, I think that her cooking is pretty stylish. Best of all, her recipes are usually fail-proof and the few dishes that I made from her recipes are all tasting pretty good.

Amongst the recipes that I have tried from this book, I would love to blog about these traditional Korean rice pancakes (Pajeon) that I have cooked. According to Wikipedia, the Korean word pa means green onions and the Korean word jeon means a specific pancake-like dish. Based its name, pajeon is a savoury pancake-like Korean dish made with a batter of eggs, wheat flour, rice flour plus green onions as its most prominent ingredient. Additional ingredients such as beef, pork, kimchi, and seafood are also mostly used to enhance the variety of this dish.

For this post, I have cooked two versions of these pancakes and made two versions of sauces to eat with these pancakes; the traditional plain meatless pancakes for the seafood-allergy me, the seafood pancakes for my husband and son, the non-spicy ginger soy vinegar for my boy and the spicy pimento-spring onion glaze for me and my husband. Although I can't taste the seafood ones (or unless I want to swollen mouth or fat sexy lips - LOL!), based on the feedback I gathered, I can tell that both pancakes are equally delicious being crispy outside and chewy and munchy inside. Both sauces are must-have to eat with these pancakes.

Like what Debbie mentioned in her book... "One is never enough." - This is totally true!

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My family and I will be having a break from our routine for the next two weeks. We will be flying back to Singapore to visit our relatives and enjoy lots of Singapore food and shopping. I promise that this break will be really short as I will be back soon on 25 Nov 2013 with Italian Almond Tart (a bake-along post). See ya!

Yippee! ... that I can cook Korean pancakes!

First of all, I did this...

... then this...

... and this.

Not to forget the most essential ingredient of this dish!

The pancakes smell good when I was frying them.

Making two kinds of sauces

These are must-have to eat with these pancakes!

The pancakes are crispy outside and chewy inside.

I like mine the most with the spicy sauce! But, not the seafood ones, of course!

Here are the recipes from the book, Seoul Kitchen by Debbie Lee
(with my modification and notes in blue)

Traditional Rice Pancakes (Pajeon)
 
Makes 8-10 pancakes
195g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp white pepper
1 garlic clove, mashed
1 egg
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
360ml ice-cold water (with cubes)
4 tbsp sweet glutinous rice flour (chapsat)
2 leeks, white parts only, julienned
(replaced with white parts of spring onions)
4 tbsp vegetable oil
(I used canola oil)
4 tbsp chopped chives, for garnish
(I didn't do that)

For ginger-soy vinegar:
240ml soy sauce
240ml seasoned rice wine vinegar
(I used white vinegar)
4 tbsp finely chopped fresh ginger
(mine is finely shredded)

In a large mixing bowl, combine the self-raising flour, sea salt, garlic powder and white pepper. Add the mashed garlic clove, egg, soy sauce and sesame oil and whisk well.

Add half of the water (without the ice cubes) and whisk well. Add the rice flour and remaining water (discarding the ice cubes) and whisk well. Fold in the leeks with a rubber spatula, then set the batter aside.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine all the ingredients together for the ginger-soy vinegar. Transfer to a small serving bowl and set aside.

Heat a large non-stick frying pan over a medium heat. Add the vegetable oil and warm for 1 minute.

With a measuring cup, scoop 1/4 cup of batter at a time and dollop in the pan, making sure to leave at least 2.5 cm all around so that the pancakes don't touch one another. Brown on each side for 3-4 mins, or until cooked.

Transfer the pancakes to a serving plate and garnish with the chopped chives - I didn't garnish the dish with chives. Serve immediately with the ginger-soy vinegar.

Seafood Rice Pancakes (Haemul Pajeon)

Makes 8-10 pancakes
195g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp white pepper
1 garlic clove, mashed
(mine is finely minced)
1 egg
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
360 ml ice-cold water (with cubes)
4 tbsp sweet glutinous rice flour (chapsal)
115g king prawns (or crayfish), peeled and chopped*
(replaced with 50g smoked salmon, thinly sliced and roughed chopped for 2/3 amount of batter)
115g white crabmeat, flaked
(I used the canned pink ones, drained, about 100g for 2/3 amount of batter.)
35g chopped spring onions
4 tbsp vegetable oil, for frying
(I used canola oil)
4 tbsp chopped chives, for garnish
(I didn't do that)

For pimento-spring onion glaze:
115g red chilli bean paste (gochujang)
70g finely chopped spring onions, white parts only
120ml soy sauce
120ml seasoned rice wine vinegar
(I used white vinegar)
4 tbsp brown sugar
4 tbsp coarse chilli pepper flakes (gochugaru)
(replaced with Japanese pepper flakes)
120ml sesame oil
(reduced to 1 tbsp for half amount)

In a large mixing bowl combine the self-raising flour, sea salt, garlic powder and white pepper. Add the mashed garlic clove, egg, soy sauce and sesame oil and whisk well.

Add half of the water (without the ice cubes), and whisk well. Add the rice flour and remaining water and whisk well. Fold in the prawns (salmon), crabmeat and spring onions with a rubber spatula, then set the batter aside.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine all the ingredients for the Pimento-Spring Onion Glaze except the sesame oil. Once all the ingredients are mixed well, whisk in the sesame oil. Transfer to a small serving bowl and set aside.

Heat a large non-stick frying pan over a medium heat. Add the vegetable oil and warm for 1 minute.

With a measuring cup, scoop 1/3 cup (I used only 1/4 cup) of batter at a time and dollop in the pan, making sure to leave at least 2.5 cm all around so that the pancakes don't touch one another. Brown on each side for 4-5 mins, or until cooked.

Transfer to a serving plate and garnish with the chopped chives - I didn't garnish the dish with chives. Serve immediately with the pimento-spring onion glaze.

Note: I have made 11 pancakes (4 plain ones and 7 seafood ones) using 1 quantity (with 195g self raising flour) of either one of the above recipes. I cooked the 4 plain pancakes first and added 100g crabmeat and 50g smoked salmon to the remaining batter and subsequently cooked 7 seafood pancakes.

*Due to my allergy, I tried to avoid handled raw prawns with my bare hands and choose to replace prawns with smoked salmon instead.

I have made half amount of each ginger-soy vinegar and pimento-spring onion glaze to serve these 11 pancakes and had heaps of ginger-soy vinegar and about 3-4 tbsp of pimento-spring onion glaze as leftover.

Happy Cooking
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