Stuffed Cucumber Kimchi
Oi Sobaegi 오이소박이
With Shrimp, Minari, Sesame Oil, Sesame Seeds, Gochugaru
Jupiter has aligned once again with Mars, in the blogging universe that is. Food Network’s Summer Fest features cucumbers this week. Our monthly cooking group, the Creative Cooking Club’s theme is “stuff-it.” And I planned to create another seasonal Korean fusion dish this week celebrating the honor of having my recipes featured in the Korea Herald Business.
Korean + Summer + Cucumber + Stuffed = Oi Sobaegi
My recipe for stuffed cucumber kimchi came from studying 5 Korean cookbooks in my collection, plus researching many recipes online. One thing I kept noticing, especially on google image – the final dish was not very attractive; green logs with all this stuffing hanging out. No doubt they were delicious, but my challenge was to make the dish pleasing to the eye as well as the palate.
Pairing with shrimp was a natural combination, as the kimchi recipe contains tiny dried white shrimp. My recipe also contains a good deal of ginger, it is quite zippy. Minari is a bright herb sometimes called Korean watercress which adds a fresh note. I also used the thicker Chinese chives to hold the sliced cucumber together, making for a neat pretty presentation. This, my first attempt at oi sobaegi was surprisingly successful, so I am sharing the original recipe here.
Cookbook Resources:
- Korean Cooking by Young Jin Song
- Seoultown Kitchen by Debbie Lee
- The Korean Table by Taeyung Chung
- The Kimchi Cookbook by Kim Man-Jo
- Aeri’s Korean Cookbook 1 by Aeri Lee
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