K-dramas and K-food

I caught the Korean drama bug over the weekend. I have access to quite a few of them through Hulu and Netflix. My introduction to a K-drama was a few years ago when I was hanging out with my friend at her place. She and her sister were into one hardcore. It was a series their mom gave them to watch and it wasn't subtitled. Every few minutes they would translate what was happening. After that I never thought about them again.

The one I'm in the middle of watching is Boys over Flowers (aka Boys Before Flowers). It's like a Korean version of Gossip Girl. It's just as ridiculous as I thought it would be but I'm still watching. The Mad TV parody from a few years ago that Bobby Lee stars in has the K-drama down pat, even the subtitles. Everything is so over-exaggerated and over the top . It's hilarious. Bobby Lee and whoever wrote the skit are genius.

To give myself a break from Boys over Flowers (the music gets very repetitive!) and the stupid hair style that the character Goo JoonPyo has I switched over to Coffee Prince. There's this scene in the first episode where 2 characters are downing bowls of noodles. I haven't seen noodles look that good in awhile and had to know what it is. My Korean home cooking source is Maangchi, and I knew she would have the recipe for jjajangmyun on her site.

Simple, right?

I had nearly NONE of those ingredients on hand, so I went to Ranch 99 after work. The closest one by me is a 15 minute drive from work and out of the way from my commute home. It was the first time that I've ever been to that location and it took me forever to find ingredients, especially the noodles and the black bean paste. I felt like a foreigner roaming the grocery and not knowing what anything is. I had no idea there were so many types of bean pastes (yet I could only find one brand of black bean paste). It was nice that they have everything that I can never find at the local American markets.

Maangchi's jajangmyun was incredibly easy to make. The final results tasted and looked as good as I expected it to be. I hope the left overs will still be as tasty tomorrow.