Fenway

The first time I ever tried kimbap was in a hair salon. No joke. Sure, this isn’t the usual place one may expect to chow down on this Korean rice dish, but to be fair we were expecting to be at the salon for several hours and beauty requires energy. You see, when my cousin and I were in high school we went through this period of getting out naturally curly hair straightened. I can’t remember why. I guess it was hip or something, which was a shame really because curls run in the family and now that I’m an adult I better appreciate their beauty. But we were kids and our mothers may have had something to do with it. Her own mother being Korean, we always made a long drive a few towns over to get to the Korean salon (and honestly they do hair the best; I’ve tried the Brazilian treatments and would go Korean/Japanese in a heartbeat). Anyway, so that’s how I came to discover the magnificence that is kimbap, sitting on a leather couch in the middle of a Korean run salon while I watched my cousin’s thick curls be flattened out to straight perfection. It was love at first bite.

Now kimbap isn’t as easy to come by as one might think. Korean doesn’t seem quite as popular as Chinese takeout, but I’ve managed to find a few holes in the wall. Even better is making friends with someone that can make kimbap. I’ve attempted to make it myself a few times, following recipes quite miserably. But Friday night all that changed when I went over to a coworker’s apartment for lessons. And you know what? It really is not that hard.

Since it was a lesson and I was at a friend’s place, I didn’t document the process as well as I could have, but hopefully you find what I do have to be helpful.

Ingredients:

Seaweed sheets
Sticky rice
Cucumber
Spam (I usually eat it with imitation crab strips)
Egg
Daikon (pickled radish)

Really, you can put whatever you like in your kimbap, but I think the usual ingredients include daikon, egg, spam/crab, bulgogi, cucumber, carrot, maybe some spinach. We didn’t use all these things in my lesson.

Make up some sticky rice. I’m not 100 % sure how to do this, but my friend said it was better than using sushi rice.

Fry your egg and spam, then slice them into long strips. Slice your veggies into long strips as well.

If you’re not a professional sushi or kimbap roller, a recommend using a bamboo mat to make your rolls. Spread the rice out thinly over a seaweed sheet, rough side up.

Line the end closest to you with your fillings. Using the bamboo mat as a guide,  roll everything together. This may be awkward at first but you’ll get the hang of it!

And that’s it. Keep rolling them slice it up into bite size pieces. Yumm

Share with the dog if you feel so obliged

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