In England, when I was growing up, Sundays felt like a special occasion because our family used to eat a traditional Sunday lunch.  It’s a lot of effort though to prepare the roast meat – beef, pork, lamb, or chicken – roast potatoes, seasonal vegetables, and gravy. And you can’t have Sunday dinner without apple pie and custard, treacle pudding, or some other calorific but tasty dessert.  I like this tradition and Sundays don’t really feel the same anymore without Sunday dinner. I sometimes attempt to cook one here, but it’s a lot of work and you need quite a big oven and lots of pots and pans – I have a small oven and not a lot of space so that’s why I don’t make it very often – that’s my excuse anyway…

As far as I know there is no tradition for eating a particular meal on Sundays in Korea. Anything goes.  So after a leisurely start to the day and peering sadly into an empty fridge, we decided to go to a cheonggukjang restaurant for our Korean Sunday lunch.

The restaurant was busy with some smartly dressed folk (they’d probably been to church), a few customers in hiking gear (they’d probably been up the local mountain) some families with young children, and us. The restaurant has no menu as there is only one dish to choose from – 청국장 cheonggukjang soybean soup with rice and side dishes. OK. We’ll have that then…

top left: 누룽지 nurungji – First we were served this warm drink. It’s made by adding hot water to the layer of crispy  rice that gets stuck to the bottom of the rice pot after the rice has been cooked. Salt or sugar is not added so I’d describe the taste as quite soothingly mild smoky popcorn

top right: 청국장 cheonggukjang – fermented soybean soup. There is nothing mild or bland about this feisty soup. It has a very pungent smell so it’s not for the faint-hearted. In fact the smell of cheonggukjang permeates throughout its restaurants and lingers on its customers so much so that it features in an advert on TV advertising spray fabric freshener: two office workers come back from lunch and their colleague looks up and says ‘Oh! cheonggukjang for lunch?‘ The two ladies then scuttle off embarrassed that their clothes smell. Cheonggukjang is similar to 된장 doenjang fermented soybean paste but not as salty, a lot smellier, and it has whole soybeans in it. It is cooked with tofu, courgettes, leek and (of course) chillies. Side dishes in this picture are fried pork and youlmu kimchi – a summer kimchi made with radish leaves. Read more about kimchi here. 

bottom left: There are LOADS of vegetables in this meal. It comes with a huge bowl of lettuce, cucumber and bean sprouts. Add the rice and mix it all up like bibimbap adding some kim (dried seaweed) and sesame oil. Then the cheonggukjang can be eaten from a separate bowl or ladled on top of the rice and eaten together with the rice.

bottom right: 깻잎전 kennipjon sesame leaf pancake side dish with a soy sauce and vinegar dip.

This is a lot of food and very filling – (especially with a bottle of makkoli) It reminded me of how I used to feel after Sunday dinner back home – stuffed! So all that was left to do was go home for a rest and look for our fabric freshener spray ….

I’m experimenting with different vegetables trying to get the perfect juice for breakfast. This morning’s juice was one and a half carrots, 3 small ripe tomatoes, and half a Korean pear. It was quite sweet – perhaps a bit too sweet for me. Next time I’ll try some orange or lemon to give it a bit more of a kick. Still good though and it was a fabulous colour to cheer us up on what looks to be another rainy day.

I can spend hours watching the shopping channels here convincing myself that I absolutely can’t live without a set of 50 glass containers with plastic lids or some form of foldaway exercise equipment. But then I have to accept that we don’t have room for much more in this flat. Recently a popular item on sale has been the Hurom slow juicer, a Korean brand. Although I like the idea of drinking a healthy juice every morning, in reality I’ve always thought it would be more trouble than it’s worth. I tried to blend some tomatoes once and ended up with a pulpy, sour, pale pink mess. And I can’t be bothered with all the cleaning up afterwards either. Or so I thought.

My sister-in-law has been RAVING about this juicer. In fact she was so impressed that she bought one for us too! And I never thought I would see the day but I am now juicing on a regular basis. I’m even spending my free time searching the internet for new and exciting recipes. The colour of the juice is so rich. And the juice itself is naturally sweet. I’ve been scouring the supermarkets for green leaves and other veggies and fruit. And I found kale, so I made kale and apple juice. Look at the colour of this…

Kale on its own would be too bitter though. It definitely needs the apple. This juicer works differently to other ones I’ve seen. You don’t need to push the veggies down into it. Just drop the pieces into the top and the machine does the rest. It’s not very noisy either. And it’s easy to clean. So far I’ve also tried carrots, tomatoes, oranges, and cabbage. Can’t wait to try more combinations. See more information on how the Hurom juicer works here.