Korean? noodle pancakes
- 2 hours ago
- 6 min read
"misused words generate misleading thoughts." Herbert Spencer
The April Woolworths Fresh Ideas Magazine popped up yesterday, and so I took one and flicked through it. I confess I've gone off the Woolworths magazine in recent times - it's recipes seem less interesting and less well presented than the Coles equivalent. Not that Coles is a goldmine of recipes I should add. But it is indeed always interesting to browse both magazines for all sorts of reasons other than looking for recipes - well if you write a foodie blog anyway. In the supermarkets trends come to life. As do all those food related issues we come up against in this world.
And here we have an example of a trend - the trend for all things Korean. Which I suspect sprang from the K-Pop craze which created an interest in all things Korean.
Woolworths call the recipe above Korean-style noodle pancake, and moreover they have not been efficient enough to get the recipe up online. You would think that publication in the magazine and online would be simultaneous would you not?
Anyway it was the one recipe in this issue that caught my eye enough to bookmark it, partly because it looked tempting, and partly because I thought it would be an opportunity to investigate what I thought was a real Korean dish - the Korean noodle pancake - for the blog.
Well I have now done that, and I am not convinced that this is truly a Korean thing. Also if you call something Korean-style what would you expect? Kimchi and gochujang surely? I know that ignorant me would expect that - especially from a supermarket magazine. But there is no kimchi or gochujang in this recipe. Indeed the only Asian things in it are the noodles (rice vermicelli), some soy sauce and rice vinegar for the dipping sauce and coriander, toasted sesame seeds and chilli oil to sprinkle on top - although they are rather more an everywhere thing than purely Asian. There are questions to answer.
The first - and the most obvious is why call this Korean-style? Is there anything at all about this recipe that is truly Korean? And you know, actually I think not.
One of the prime Korean food blogs is Maangchi and on this website Maangchi indeed has Korean pancake recipes - 27 of them and not one of them includes noodles. There are indeed lots of kimchi pancakes, but no kimchi noodle pancakes - well not from this Korean.
The nearest recipe I could find to our Woolworths example, was from an Australian with an interest in Asian food - Leanne Kitchen on the SBS website with her Kimchi noodle pancake (Kimchi buchingae) which at least is Korean enough to have that kimchi in it - and she does use rice vermicelli noodles.
Generally speaking however for the Kimchi noodle pancakes - and this may well be an actual Korean dish - the noodles are glass noodles made from sweet potato and they are therefore softer, meaning that the end result is not crispy. Again from Australia and Gourmet Traveller we have Kimchi noodle pancakes - or the same kind of thing from Teek Eatz - who may be Korean - definitely Asian - but is American - Kimchi noodle pancakes
Or there is a Singapore dish that doesn't have the kimchi, but does use those soft noodles. In fact it was the closest recipe that I found to the Woolworths one - from Brendan Pang on his Facebook page - Crispy Singapore noodle pancakes and he puts an egg on top of his.
Seeing that distinctive pattern being spread over the top of the pancake in this one, of course reminds us of the Japanese pancake - Okonomiyaki - which is also a hot item - but not only does that not have kimchi - well it's Japan not Korea and they tend to go for the kewpie mayonnaise - but they don't have the noodles either. Mostly they have cabbage however, but not fermented. Which is interesting, because the Japanese are big into fermenting, so why not fermented cabbage. Maybe they do. Another day I think.
None of which explains why Woolworths added Korean-style to the title of a pancake which doesn't really seem to have a lot Korean going for it.
However, I now see that - tucked away in the corner of this section on noodles - quaintly called 'Noodle on This' is a promotion for what is obviously a Woolworths product - Lantern Alley noodles. Another example of the new kind of home brand product - à l'Aldi - which does not feature the Woolworths name. So each recipe in the section features a different kind of noodles produced by as this brand - although none of the other recipes mentions a particular national inspiration - they are more generic.
Which brings me back to the question of why Woolworths bothered with 'Korean-style'. And I'm guessing it's just because all things Korean are popular. But the bigger question, for which I have no answer - is - then why not include kimchi and gochujang in your ingredients? After all they have them in store. As I say - I have no answer to this, as it would be easy to do. The target audience? Are they too conservative to try kimchi and gochujang?
The idea of a noodle pancake is a good one however, and there are a few others. Coles goes the 'inspired' way with their Japanese-inspired noodle pancake; a website called Fresh Approach Cooking has Rice noodle pancakes - which in keeping with this sort of dish is a sort of fridge-raid thing, and then there's Vegetable noodle pancake - from Silvana Franco/BBC which has a nod to that Japanese thing of the lines of sauce over the top.
Now I'm not saying that the Koreans never make pancakes with rice vermicelli noodles with no kimchi because this is indeed a fridge-raid kind of dish. Others might opt for an omelette rather than a pancake but maybe that's just going to depend on how many eggs you've got in the fridge. To demonstrate the homeliness of all this - Olli Hansford, head chef at The Stokehouse on the delicious. website responds to a question about what to do with leftover noodles with this:
"blanch the noodles, then mix into a light pancake batter, mixed with peas, sweetcorn, chilli, ginger, garlic, some kimchi if it’s kicking about and then fry them to become delicious crispy pancakes."
Alas no picture. And note - he mentions kimchi. If that doesn't illustrate the current popularity of this dish I don't know what does. A short while ago it might have been harissa - or before that - simply garlic. What next?
A THOUGHT
Today's desk calendar had a painting by Umberto Boccioni - whose work I don't know - and I wasn't really enamoured of the painting on offer, but there was also a quote which included the phrase 'the tangible miracles around us', which rang a chord with me - perhaps because I had just changed my computer desktop picture to this.
It sent me looking for more 'tangible miracles around us' in my Photos libraries - and of course there are many.
Here are another three. And they cheered me on a day when I am feeling a little down.
Maybe kimchi is one of those tangible miracles. Maybe instant noodles are. Maybe an aeroplane flying overhead is too. Maybe something as ordinary as some broken glass. Or an invitation to dinner with your son, his wife and grandchildren. Or, simply, that I am alive on a beautiful day.
Next time you are feeling low, look around you. There are miracles everywhere.
YEARS GONE BY
April 25 - Anzac Day - Australia's holy day. I didn't get up for the dawn ceremony - I am in two minds about it - but my grandchildren did.
2025 - Khachapuri Imeruli
2023 - Supermodel pasta
2021 - Missing
2020 - Missing
Makes me think of Sri Lankan string hoppers which I tasted years ago in Springvale days