124 recipes. Page 4 of 6
Traditional drinks and bar snack recipes
Makgeolli, lemon-lime soda, yuja marmalade and lemon juice go into one large bowl, enough for four glasses. Turn the makgeolli bottle over gently before opening so the sediment at the bottom mixes back in. Once the soda is added, give it one big lift from the bottom, then ladle it out right away so every glass gets ice and a few slices of unpeeled apple.
Chill everything first. Mango pieces kept in the fridge, cold yogurt, and cold milk give a thick, cold lassi with only a little ice, so the drink doesn't get watered down. Pour the yogurt and milk in before the fruit so the liquid covers the blade and everything blends evenly. Taste the mango before adding honey, since a very sweet one needs less, and keep the quarter teaspoon of cardamom: it is what separates a lassi from a mango smoothie. It's ready when no bits remain and it lightly coats a spoon; thin it with a splash of milk if needed and pour into chilled glasses right away.
In masala chai the spices go into the pot before the tea does. Crushed ginger, cinnamon and cardamom simmer in water until fragrant, then the black tea and milk follow, and everything is strained before pouring. Boil the leaves longer and the tea gets stronger, but also more astringent.
The matcha is whisked to a froth in water around 80°C before it meets the warm soy milk, and acacia honey sweetens it. Roasted soybean powder sifted over each cup brings the bean flavor of the soy milk back once more.
Roasted buckwheat simmered over low heat for ten minutes turns the water golden. Two jujubes and a strip of lemon peel go in with it, the peel cut thin with as little white pith as possible, since pith makes it astringent.
Thick, sweet, and slowly turning sour, miki comes from the Amami area of Kagoshima, where cooked rice flour, sugar, and water are fermented with juice pressed from raw sweet potato. Only the juice is used; the grated solids are left out. Freshly made, it tastes plainly sweet. Over the following days a sour tang builds behind that sweetness, and how much tang you like decides when the jar moves to the fridge, more than the calendar does.
A tablespoon of condensed milk on top of the sugar gives this milk tea a dense, caramel-like sweetness. The tea bags steep off the heat for four minutes and are lifted out without squeezing; squeezed, they release a harshness the milk cannot cover. For iced milk tea, the pot is cooled and chilled before it ever meets the ice.
Minari, apple, cucumber and a small piece of ginger are blended with cold water. Poured straight from the blender, the juice is thick and fibrous; passed once through cheesecloth, it turns clear and green. A tart apple keeps it from leaning too sweet.
Dry-roasting dandelion root together with barley before simmering makes the cup taste more of toasted grain than of earthy root. Licorice and sliced ginger soften whatever bitterness remains and leave a warm finish.
Misutgaru, a powder of roasted grains, is first worked into 100ml of cold milk until no dry bits remain, then thinned with the rest of the milk in two or three additions. Once it is poured over ice, roasted soybean powder is sifted on top.
Thin slices of quince, skin and all, are simmered briefly with sugar, honey, lemon juice, and a cinnamon stick into a fragrant amber preserve, and a few spoonfuls stirred into very hot water make each cup. The skin stays on because it carries much of the fruit's floral, citrusy aroma; only the bitter seeds and the hard core are cut away.
Dry red wine, a splash of orange liqueur, orange slices, whole cinnamon, and cloves warm together until the citrus and spice have steeped into the wine. With no water or juice added, the drink keeps the body of the wine itself. It warms slowly over heat low enough that the surface never comes to a hard boil. Served warm in heatproof cups, it is still an alcoholic drink after heating.
Nurungji, the scorched rice from the bottom of the pot, is toasted again and simmered into a nutty water much like sungnyung, the drink Koreans make from it after a meal, and milk turns that into a grain latte. How long you run the blender changes it most: a short pulse leaves bits of rice to chew, a longer one makes it smooth.
Mulberries are in season in May and June, and the syrup here is cooked from berries frozen then. They simmer with sugar and water over low heat for six minutes, lemon juice is stirred in, and a fine sieve takes out the seeds. The syrup keeps about five days in the fridge, and tonic water in place of sparkling water gives a slightly bitter finish.
Tea simmered for thirty minutes from dried acanthopanax bark and astragalus root gets a very small amount of salt. It is there to take the edge off the herbal bitterness, not to make anything salty, and the honey goes in just before drinking.
Barley, millet and foxtail millet go into the malt water along with the sweet rice, so the sweetness of this sikhye, the Korean rice punch, carries an extra layer of grain flavor. If the keep-warm temperature climbs past 70°C, the malt stops working and the drink comes out less sweet. A day in the fridge mellows it.
Dried corn silk and corn kernels simmer in the same pot. The faint sweetness comes from the silk, the toasted-grain nuttiness from the kernels. Twenty-five minutes on low turns the water a clear gold; go longer and astringency starts to creep in. It is fine hot, though the sweetness comes through more clearly once it has been chilled in the fridge.
The broth for this punch comes from schisandra berries left in cold water for two hours or more. Honey is stirred into the red liquid and it goes into the fridge, while the pear and watermelon are scooped into balls only just before serving and floated with ice. Fruit left soaking in the punch goes soft quickly.
Dried schisandra berries are steeped cold in the fridge rather than boiled, which keeps the bright red infusion tart and refreshing instead of harsh. The hands-on work is short, but the steep needs at least 8 hours. Starting the night before works best.
Most of the cooked red beans are blended smooth into the milk, but a handful are kept whole and added at the end, so soft beans keep turning up as you drink. Condensed milk takes the sweetness somewhere close to caramel.
Vanilla ice cream dropped into cold root beer makes the foam rise fast, then settles into a creamy top layer over still-fizzy soda for a few minutes. Ginger beer or regular beer will not taste the same as root beer, and the bottle should be labelled nonalcoholic. Without ice, nothing waters the drink down. A spoon and a straw let you eat the cream and sip the soda separately.
Thin slices of ginger packed in an equal weight of sugar give up their juice, and that juice slowly dissolves the sugar into a thick syrup. Whether the jar keeps comes down to moisture. Water left on the ginger or inside the boiled jar thins the syrup and lets mold start at the surface, so set aside time to dry the ginger before slicing and the jar before filling it. Slices about 2 mm thick release juice steadily; thicker pieces are slow, and grated ginger breaks up in the syrup and clouds every cup. Unlike Korean ginger tea simmered with jujubes for each pot, one jar of saenggang-cheong lets you stir two spoonfuls into hot water whenever you want a cup.
The ginger is peeled and sliced thin, the jujubes pitted and halved, and the two simmer together. Unpeeled ginger works too, but peeling it keeps out the earthy taste of the skin. After straining, honey and a tiny pinch of cinnamon go in, and two slices of lemon float on top. Drink it warm.
Dried sambaekcho (Saururus chinensis) is not a strong herb, and as a tea it leaves only a light, grassy smell. Dried apple and scored jujubes simmer along with it, and once the heat is off, lemon slices go in for just 2 minutes before coming out again; left longer, the peel turns the tea bitter. Cooled and mixed one to one with soda water, it becomes a kind of herbal ade.