Jennifer from The Pickle Club TV contacted me and asked me for an interview about kimchi. She came to my New York meetup 30 minutes early and brought a jar of kimchi.
I thought it was hers! She asked me to taste it and give my opinion. Jennifer stayed for the rest of my meetup and enjoyed the food brought by the rest of my readers. And we got to eat the kimchi she brought.
It was part of a report they did on a man experimenting with making kimchi. Check it out, watch parts 1 and 2:
Posted Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 8:09 am. 15 Comments »
Hi, everyone,
Here’s what happened at the June 20th meetup last Saturday:
It was a great success even though the weather was rainy.
I was surprised to see many people appeared on time, around 12:00 pm at the Sony Plaza in Manhattan. As I said, nothing could stop us from meeting!
As usual, I didn’t have to worry about finding people because they recognized me first!
“Hi, Maangchi!”
My answer was:
“Yayee!” : )
We hugged each other just like old friends.
At about 12:30 pm, we started eating and toasted with rice wine I made! Home made rice wine, called “makkoli” in Korean, was my surprise gift for all of us. Someone whispered to me, “We shouldn’t say this is rice wine, because we may get in trouble if a security guard hears this. Having alcohol in public place is illegal,” so we called the rice wine “rice milk.” Isn’t it funny?
Tangsuyuk and makkolli
“Are you going to get some more rice milk?” I poured it into someone’s empty cup.
We had white rice, multi-grain rice, LA style beef ribs, tangsuyuk (by Joon, guest star of my tangsuyuk video), japchae, omelet rice, 3 kinds of kimchi (geotjeolee, stuffed cucumber kimchi, and young radish kimchi), sigeumchi namul (spinach side dish), kimbap, gyungdan (rice cake balls rolled in roasted black sesame seeds), fruit cake (pear), and hwajeon (flower pancake).
3 kinds of kimchi!
hawjeon (flower pancake)!!!
rice cake balls rolled in roasted black sesame seeds!
Korean style omlette rice
Michael's specialty - pear fruitcake
This kimbap was perfect!
After lunch, we voted for the best dish. The first, second, and the third place received some prizes I brought, mostly Korean ingredients.
The first place went to Michael and Sujin who brought japchae, a spinach side dish and cake! They got a package of dried anchovies, a bottle of sesame oil, and a box of hot pepper paste. They live outside of New York, and said ”we were going to stop by a Korean store to buy these things on the way home back.”
Michael (the future Korean Iron Chef) and Sujin
They even brought roasted sesame seeds to sprinkle on the sigeumchi namul just before serving so that the sesame seeds would be crispy!
Also a nice surprise was that the Korean Cultural Service in New York sent me a big box of Korean books and CDs to give to my viewers. Everybody got at least one gift, which was pretty cool.
All the dishes looked fantastic! Beautiful hwajeon made with real fresh flowers, gyungdan rolled in black sesame seeds, omelette rice for lunch box, sweet, sour, and crispy tangsuyuk, tuna kimbap… amazing! All the dishes looked very familiar! Why? Because a lot of them followed my recipes!!!
Kyna was a real big help for me, I really appreciated it
I had a great time! It was so wonderful to meet so many of my viewers and readers. It went so fast, I wish I had more time for longer conversations.
I will definitely have another meetup in the future. I hope you’ll all come back and do it again!
Posted Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 9:00 pm. 20 Comments »
Last Saturday at my meetup I was worried about one couple I was expecting from out of state who never came. It was raining and I was afraid something happened. It turned out they couldn’t make it which was disappointing but they wrote me a nice email about why they really wanted to come:
The reason we were (and are) so excited about your site, is because my husband has two Korean half sisters. They’ve been cooking for him his whole life, and for me our whole marriage, but like you said on your site, Koreans don’t really measure stuff out to cook, so whenever I said ‘how can I make this for my husband?’ it was ‘well, it’s different every time,’ yada yada, so I never got a recipe. When we found maangchi.com, I started being able to cook everything they do- and sometimes things they haven’t tried cooking! (like tang soo yuk or jjajangmyun, they only eat these at restaurants.)
Now I am able to share all my favorite foods with my family, too. My sister loves mandu and my dad loves kimchee jigae. We have three nearby korean or general asian markets, so we are lucky that it’s always close by to go grab ingredients for a new recipe. The one thing I can’t find is the kim for those triangle kimbaps which I want to make, so we’re going to keep looking.
All that to say this- sorry we didn’t make it. I was so looking forward to meeting everyone, and my daughter has never been to New York so it was going to be a really fun day! I hope everyone had fun and there were lots of nice leftovers :)
They were going to bring their baby Faith. Mom says she is my “littlest fan” - 7 months old and her favourite food is kimbap! I’m sure she will grow up to be a Korean food connoisseur or good at cooking!
Posted Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 8:08 pm. 3 Comments »
Let’s do another meetup in New York City on Saturday, June 20th, around 11 or 12. This time will be a little different. Bring one Korean dish that you made. I’m going to bring some prizes for the most delicious dishes. I’m also going to bring rice, kimchi, and bulgogi so we’ll all have lunch altogether.
If you’re too busy to make something, you can bring some Coke or fruit. And also bring some funny stories to tell and questions about Korean cooking. You can meet some new friends who are just like you, whose hobby is Korean cooking. All you guys should be good friends.
Hi, everybody, I received an email last year from a man named Chris living in Germany. He said he changed his diet to Korean food and lost lots of kilos! He made his own Korean food following my recipes. I was very surprised but happy!
I encouraged him to tell people about his success and he posted this on the forum. Then I asked him to leave more detailed directions for those having problems with weight control. And he did it!!
I think this is going to be very useful information for a lot of people. I want to share this precious information with more people, so I’m blogging about it here. So if you’re interested in losing weight by eating Korean food, read all about it.
Thanks for telling us about it, Cbris!
Posted Sunday, May 17th, 2009 at 2:53 pm. 7 Comments »
Can you believe that a couple of days ago I reached 10,000 YouTube subscribers? I remember when I got 5,000 I was very excited and proud, now I’m even more excited.
So today I’m introducing my 10,000th subscriber Matt to all of you!
This is the message that Matt sent me:
“Hello Maangchi, I am very happy to be your 10,000th subscriber and be introduced on your blog! My name is Matt and I live in Long Beach, California. I am 13 and am in 8th grade. I love your videos because they are easy to use and are delicious!”
I interviewed him through email.
Me: Hi, Matt, when did you find my recipes on the internet?
Matt: I found your recipes when I was watching cooking with dog (lol) and found that you were on her subscribers and I clicked on your channel. I have loved your recipes ever since.
Me: I started cooking when I was very young. Do you sometimes cook following my recipes?
Matt: Whenever I cook I use your recipes and follow exactly what they say.
Me: Do your parents sometimes use my recipes?
Matt: Yes my parents sometimes use my recipes.
Me: Your hairstyle is very unique! It must be very popular these days. Are you going to hair salon to get the hairstyle? : )
Matt: No my hair style is natural I don’t like to use chemicals in my hair I like to keep it healthy.
Me: Anything else you want to talk about?
Matt: I am Korean/French I know its weird T.T
Posted Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 6:25 pm. 18 Comments »
