Body sensations: 꽃개찌개 / Ggotge jjigae (Stew of Korean flower crabs)

Sometimes I crave things in the Korean language, and when I do, they are often cravings based on body sensations of experiencing food. For example, in the middle of a still-wintery March in Munich, I craved something that had 시원한맛 (Shiwonhan-mat), and 얼큰한맛 (Eolkeunhan-mat)— both words that I find difficult to articulate or explain in English.

artist: Luchita Hurtado

Here is my poor attempt:

I can describe shiwonhan-mat roughly as a sensation of a refreshing physical sensation experienced as you put the food in your mouth and it is being digested. The refreshing aspect is not limited to any specific temperature— it can be cold, or hot.

Eolkeunhan-mat can be described as the sensation of food as it feels both hot and spicy through your body.

In the middle of a cold, snowy week, I craved both of these sensations. So I decided to make a stew / jjigae of Korean flower crabs sold at the Korean grocery store in Munich, with some other locally good vegetables.

꽃개찌개 / Stew of Korean flower crabs

Ingredients list:
-Korean flower crabs, washed with cold water and cut in half or quarters depending how large they are.
-Good quality medium firm tofu
-Green onions
-Korean or Daikon radish, peeled and roughly sliced
-a few thin slices of a sharp red chili
-Pyogo (a.k.a. shiitake) mushrooms — plus a mixture of others, if you have— cleaned and roughly chopped into good bite-size pieces
-1 or more pieces of dashima amounting to about 10 cm x 10 cm total
-Red Paste: 1 spoon Gochujang, 2 spoons Dwaenjang, 2 spoons thick gochukaru, 1 spoon thin gochukaru, 1 spoon minced garlic, 0.5 spoon grated ginger, 1 spoon korean rice wine or sake, salt and black pepper to taste

Make the base dashima broth: drop the dashima piece into a preferably wide and medium-deep pot, filled halfway up with water. Bring to a slow boil, then turn off the heat and remove the dashima.

Add the radish, mushrooms, red chili slices, and green onions into the broth and simmer over medium / medium low heat until everything is just cooked through. This will prepare a beautifully deep and rich broth for the spices and the crabs to enter into.

Prepare the paste by mixing all ingredients in a bowl, then add in a few spoonfuls of the hot broth being cooked, into the paste to thin it out a bit. Then add the paste spoon by spoon into the stew, not all at once. Taste, add more as you need.

Add the tofu. I like the roughly cut into large chunks and not really uniform. Carefully spoon over with broth and nestle them in so they cook well in the stew but does not dissolve.

Lastly, carefully nestle in the crabs. They won’t take too long to cook. Taste the stew, and correct with more paste and/or more salt.

Enjoy with a bowl of steamed rice.