Gayoung Kim / Mix and Match Your Meal / Thu 1-3 p.m.

Mix and Match Your Meal

 

One of the trends in these days is a "fusion" cuisine. Since many kinds of food from various cultures have spread to Korean society, people begin to enjoy mixing different foods together. Fusion cooking also means adding unexpected ingredients to a dish. The new kinds of creative flavors could be better than original foods. This special way of cooking is even more attractive because it's easy and simple, so that some fusion cuisines are available at your own home. At the forefront of the trend, there are "Hot Carbonara Tteok-bokki", "Chocolate Pizza", and "Corn Bing-su".

Hot Carbonara Tteok-bokki is a combination of Italian spaghetti, "Carbonara" and Korean snack "Tteok-bokki". First, mince garlic and slightly treat it with olive oil. While garlic turns golden brown, chop some onions and mushrooms. Then, stir-fry the vegetables with garlic in oil and add unsweetened fresh cream. When cream starts to boil, add a few spoon of red pepper paste, which is the main ingredient of Tteok-bokki. Adjust quantity of the paste looking at the color of the sauce. After it turned to salmon-color, put rice cakes and cook for another 3~5 minutes to be done.

Second amazing fusion dish is Chocolate Pizza. It might sound odd because it is difficult to imagine sweet pizza. However, it tastes so good that some restaurants only sell Chocolate Pizza have opened in Seoul. At first, prepare pizza dough or Tortilla for the bread part. Then, spread melted chocolate or chocolate jam all over the dough. Next, sprinkle toppings that harmonize with chocolate. For example, almond slices, dried fruits, raisons, and chocolate chips match well. According to your liking, you can make one more layer above the chocolate with peanut butter. At last, cover with Mozzarella cheese and bake it in the oven or microwave it with lid. It's good to go when cheese melts down completely.

Last but not least, Corn Bing-su is not only the simplest, but also most astonishing fusion food. "Bing-su" is a Korean dessert, which is basically a pile of shaved ice with sweat red bean paste jellies, fruits and a few kinds of syrup. But this recipe replaces red bean paste with canned corn. Most of Korean people never put corn on their Bing-su. So this may seem strange at first, but the canned corn brings a hint of salty taste to the dessert and raises the flavor to a higher level. At the very first, freeze a glass of milk instead of pure water due to it is easy to break to pieces and has more savor. For the next, take it out from the freezer and shave it with a sharp fork. On the heap of icy milk and yellow crunch corn, pour only one kind of syrup, condensed milk. These two types of dairy products blend into one another and let the flavors of corn pop out.

Until now, I introduced three popular fusion dishes which are easy to cook and also taste amazing. Eating delicious food is one of the big pleasures in our life and it could be more joyful if we start to go on adventures to find out brand-new flavors. Furthermore, it does not require very much money or time to mix and match a variety of foods. I hope that the recipes and ideas above help you to find and enjoy all the pleasures you can get in your everyday life.