I’m in Seoul! Home to korean dramas, k-pop stars and kimchi:)
Fortunately, for me, my very good friend has recently moved here she and her family are kindly letting me stay with her to experience all the eats Seoul has to offer and more!
Last night she made this amazing Taiwanese Seafood Porridge and we happened to also visit Noryangjin Fish Market too where you can get the freshest most incredible seafood! It’s really the best indoor seafood wholesale market I have seen in a long time.
Noryangjin Fish Market is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – there are all kinds of marine creatures to be seen.
Floor one is where you can buy seafood in the retail part of the building, if buying seafood, make sure you shop around and ask for prices first, before making your purchase, most hawkers converse in mandarin and are able to speak to you and give you a discount depending on what you buy.
Once you buy your seafood you can take it home to cook, or choose to eat your “catch” upstairs on level 2 in a restaurant where you can have it cooked however you like.
These were some of the amazing catches we looked at:
Fresh abalone & Scallops
Swimming baby octopuses
Mean and lean sashimi guy!
Platters of really fresh sashimi
Large, medium, small all kinds of prawns
Blue flower crab, used in so many Korean stews
King of the seafood – Luscious Lobsters!
All that beautiful marine produce was found on floor one, and then we wanted to get some dried little anchovies to make stock/side dishes and so we headed on to floor two…
These are some directional signs for the dried fish stores which are on the second floor.
Korean seaweed, kombu, wakame they have all types if you are super fond of Miyoek-Guk which is korean seaweed soup you got to leave with some of this.
Dried anchovies, prawns, cuttlefish all for korean side dish making or stock making – we bought 5 boxes of tiny anchovies with pink roe in the end.
All shopped out we went home for dinner, my friend and host who is Taiwanese and living in Korea prepared this beautiful and delectable dish that can be cooked by anyone and in 15 mins to boot!
The beauty of this dish really lies in the freshness of the ingredients, so even if you aren’t able to get your raw ingredients from a wet market, try to get these as fresh as you can get them and cook them on the same day!
SeoulSeafull! – Noryangjin Fish Market & Taiwan Seafood Porridge
Serves 4
Ingredients
Seafood (any mix you like)
15 clams
4 blue flower crabs with roe (cut into half each)
6 to 10 medium or large grey prawns (with shell)
1 cuttlefish cleaned and cut up in slices
8 scallops (thinly sliced)
Ginger – 6 slices jullienned (cut into thin strips)
2 tablespoons grapeseed oil
1.5 litres of water
Rice wine (optional)
Garnishes – chinese parsley (one bunch leaves only) and chopped celery ( two stalks into little mini cubes) and 4 cups of precooked rice.
Flavourings – sesame oil, salt and a dash of ground white pepper
Instructions
Peel and cut 6 slices of ginger into thin (jullienned) sticks – set aside.
Prepare all your seafood, rinse your cut crabs and prawns in salt water. (That’s plain water with a teaspoon of salt)
Clean and cut your cuttlefish and also your scallops if they aren’t already pre-cut.
In a separate pot, on medium heat, add oil heat for a few seconds and then cook ginger till fragrant, add in the clams fry a little till they open and pour in a little rice wine just a round of it. (No rice wine, no worries just omit it from your recipe)
Add water from the 1.5 litres you have prepared or set aside, after the alcohol from cooking the clams evaporates, add enough water to just cover the clams – cook till they open fully. Toss out those that don’t open.
Add in the rest of your water.
Add in your crabs and prawns, cook till they turn just pink.
Lower in the cuttlefish cook till flesh becomes white and slightly firm.
Lower in the scallops and turn off the heat.
Add in cooked rice, chopped chinese parsley and celery before serving. Divide into individual bowls. Serve!
You may add the ground white pepper before you serve the seafood porridge into the main pot or allow your guests to add however much they want to their individual bowls.
Prepare a small bowl of sesame oil and a small platter of salt to allow your guests to adjust the soup to their taste.
Tayste Tips
Other seafood combinations: You can use fish, or squid or oysters even to substitute. (If using raw oysters, coat in corn starch before cooking).
You can’t use mud crab instead of blue flower crab it will make the stock taste really different in not a good way.
As a rule of thumb, the more delicate the seafood the shorter the cooking time.
If the 1.5 litres of water isn’t enough to cover your seafood add a little more.
If your seafood isn’t at it’s peak freshness add more chinese parsley and celery.
If you make this dish, show me and tag it at #taystesg!