Hobakjuk

Things have slowed down a bit here, and we've fallen into routine. I was searching for something to write about today, and I thought I would share my Saturday activity: hobakjuk.

Hobakjuk is one of my favorite Korean foods. It's a sweet pumpkin porridge. The best kind has little rice cakes and sweet azuki beans in it, and I set about to make this. I started by visiting the market in search of a pumpkin. I walked out with some bungopan—fish shaped pancakes filled with red bean jelly—but no pumpkin. I bought a hobak, alright, but it looked a little funny to me then. I got home and did some research to discover that Koreans call zucchini “green pumpkin”. I should have trusted my instincts. It certainly didn't look like a pumpkin!

So I dragged Bobby to the Home Plus, which is a bit of a nightmare on weekends. The aisles are packed and the clerks are screaming at us on microphones, dancing, singing, and trying to shove free samples on us. Bobby and I are both hands off shoppers. I do not like having help proffered at every turn, though it's less annoying when I can't understand what someone is saying.

We emerged from the Home Plus unscathed and I started what turned out to be an epic cooking session. First I sliced and deseeded the pumpkin and boiled it for about a half hour. Notice this is a green pumpkin: it's called a kobacha.



















Afterwards, I removed the pumpkin and let it cool. I scraped it out of it's shell, mashed it up like a potato and threw it back into the pot with 2 cups of glutinous rice flour.

















I added 10 cups of water—I had to boil it since tap water here is not safe to drink—and stirred it all over low heat.

















Finally, I threw in the adzuki beans, which are the same kind used to make the sweet bean paste that goes into a lot of Korean pastries, which I love too much. Koreans, like Chinese, are big fans of the color red. It's the color of good fortune. I added some rice cakes, which can be made with glutinous rice flour but I bought some from a rice cake store.




Brown sugar and cinnamon were not in my Korean recipe book, but they were lovely additions. Finally, lunch (at about 4pm)!

















I love Korean food, and have been enjoying learning how to make it myself, but I also don't have a whole lot of options. I don't have access to fresh rosemary, thyme, or basil here. I get parsley from the commissary, but it's not incredibly fresh by the time it gets to me. I think it's time to try my hand at growing things again, starting with an herb garden. Getting seeds from abroad may be difficult...



Hey, there's a mountain outside our window!