Bi Bim Bop is Tops
Recently ordered a tasty bowl of Bi Bim Bop at Portland’s Fuju restaurant on Exchange Street, and had a flashback to our friend Shinhye at Cordon Bleu in Ottawa. (Hi Shinhye!) She’s now back in Korea for a couple of years before returning to Canada to settle in Vancouver, and introduced us to this wonderful dish one night in Ottawa. If I’ve got this right, Bi Bim Bop, a staple Korean dish, consists of rice, a spicy red sauce (I think called “kochujang”), ground meat, a fried egg, and flavorful vegetables. (You basically mix all of the ingredients together in your bowl after adding the sauce.) I remember when Shinhye brought this to our apartment one night and explained how it was made, and how she was very amused by what tiny amounts of kochujang quickly made our faces red and sweaty, while she was able to mix in tablespoons-full of the sauce into her dish, and eat it as though it was something as bland as a bowl of cornflakes. Shinhye, we need your recipe again!