Cooking Attempt #20: 부대찌개 (Army squad stew)

I suddenly had a craving for Budae jjigae yesterday, so I made a grocery list and found myself a recipe. It's called Army squad stew, because it was invented after the Korean War when meat was scarce and people traded with American soldiers for Spam, ham and sausages. Wikipedia tells me that it was also called Johnson soup after President Lyndon B. Johnson.

I was going to add cauliflower, but I forgot to get it at the store. Kimchi was also omitted, because I've run out of lettuce kimchi, so I had to improvise on the seasoning of the broth. Instead, I added the juice from the radish kimchi I had. It's much lighter than lettuce kimchi juice and more refreshing. I was originally going to add ramen noodles (without the powder), but then I realized that there was going to be just too much food. Some recipes call for cheese, but I am a purist and those fusion heathens that use cheese in Asian food can go to the devil!

This is the first time I've ever cooked with watercress. It was a lucky thing that I managed to buy some, because I don't know EXACTLY what they look like and all the signs in the grocery store were in French (give me a break, I'm like 1/20th of the way through the A section in my dictionary), so I took a guess and it was right! Des cressons, baby!

Ingredients:
Bean sprouts - 2 cups
Watercress - 1 cup
Shitake mushrooms - 1 cup chopped
Potato - 1 chopped into large chunks
Onion - 1 chopped into thin slices
Pork belly - how big is my fist?
Sausage - 1 cut into chunks

Seasoning:
Mashed garlic - 2 tbsp
Green onion - 2 tbsp chopped
Korean chili powder - 3 tbsp
Soy sauce - 1 tbsp
Radish kimchi juice - I added as much as I had, because I like it spicy.

First arrange the ingredients in a big flat skillet. You can add plain water or make some seaweed water like I did and pour it over the ingredients. Bring it up to a boil and then reduce the heat so that it simmers.



Mix the seasoning separately and slowly dissolve into the stew.



Cook it very slowly until the meat is cooked thoroughly.



Eat with rice! I have some leftover stew. I'll probably add more sprouts and watercress tomorrow to finish it up. Mmmm~

I just got a craving for some spicy chicken, so I might be trying that soon. ^_^