So, the Steemit Iron-Chef theme ingredient this week is lettuce. That's a toughie. I mean, anyone can throw some veggies with lettuce and make a good salad, but how do I stretch my legs a little while keeping it a primary ingredient in the dish? I don't know about cooking lettuce (though some of the entries before mine have shown that maybe I was wrong to discount it...). How about wraps? So I started thinking about lettuce-wraps and doing some research. One thing we do at home is use lettuce leaves instead of bread-buns when having veggie-burgers (who needs all the mediocre starch?), which is kind of a wrap. And in doing my research, I found in Korean cuisine, ssam are lettuce wraps and ssambap are lettuce wrapped around rice (and maybe a little bit of other stuff). And since I have several kimchis brewing -- including my oi sobagi from last week, Korean sounded fun. But I want to say up front, I was entirely comfortable taking all kinds of non-traditional variations. This is maybe ssam-inspired more than "real" ssam.
So I read the Wikipedia article on ssam and followed some links, and read what restaurants do for ssam bars. The wrap is the central element and it seems from my reading that lettuce is broader concept there than I normally think with. They use all kinds of big leaves. So I started with green and red leaf lettuce and also added some Napa and collards, blanched and chilled. Some of the prettiest ssam that I saw pictures of were made with two kinds of leaves, so I wanted variety of texture and color.
It seems to be a pretty meaty dish in its native environment and we don't do that, so I made up a couple of vegan meat-substitutes -- tofu sauteed in five-spice and another in curry. and then started thinking about other fillers. I put out some of the above-mentioned oi sobagi, and a Napa kimchi. Brown rice, pickled ginger, and sliced tomatoes joined the spread. At the last minute, my wife suggested scrambled eggs, so we added that! And then I wanted a variety of sauces. I included the vegan fish-sauce substitute I made last week, tamari, chili-garlic sauce, sriracha, and gochujang. So I put this spread out on our table:
And then my wife, daughter, and I sat down and rolled our own rolls up, using whatever leaves and ingredients we happened to fancy in the moment. My daughter surprised me by especially liking the blanched Napa -- I think it was because it was the least bitter of the wraps. And while we used a bunch of the rice, I think we all sort of preferred the wraps with not very much of it -- all the other filling were better. The oi sobago was particularly good in the wraps, even by itself, but it ended up more spicy than I'd expected when I put it together.
Here are some of the individual wraps or bites:
And at one point, after we were already eating, I realized I hadn't made a "proof" pictures, so I quickly scribbled up a post-it with my info and snapped this one:
- Sorry it's messy even by my standards! ;-)
This incredible recipe I loved!
And do not worry about the disaster in the kitchen we are creative and many times we forget the order to me it happens the same.
Also not as much as you say all your photos are very good.
You have a nice night @clweeks
loving your entry and loving your pics ... my entries are also based on wraps hihi ... guess we had similar ideas ... I was a bit empty on salads at first ... and even though I made both dishes for the dinner I did Monday I still need to make my second blog ... with all the live video's I am doing at the moment on my artsites I am in dire need of more hours in a day ...
Hello my friend! What a pleasure reading your entries each week, i really enjoyed discovering another lovely Korean dish which I will try very soon!
I can imagine how good this must be, especially with the crisp of the lettuces!
I've always love trying some Korean dishes and i in fact had a very good friend who was a chef working together in the Maldives some years back, he used to share a lot of recipes/tips with me!
Who needs meat when you have a spread like this! I love this kind of meal where you are mixing and matching ingredients and sauces for each ssam. It makes for a fun experience and an interesting, light and healthful meal. I also feel that gochujang can make nearly any food taste better! Great dish.
Your exploration of ssam and your creativity from this exploration is amazing! Learned a lot from it. Thanks for sharing!
Healthy food...
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