On Wednesday last week, I had the pleasure of having as my office lunch quite a special dish courtesy of my coworker-friend. It was Chapchae (also Jap Chae) - Korea's version of Filipinos' beloved Pancit Bijon. I say it's quite special because it's not an everyday type of dish. Why? Because one, its ingredients are on the expensive side and two, cooking it can be tedious as it is done in several steps. Consider this: glass noodles which are used in this recipe, are priced at around P200 per kilo (Bijon, I think can be bought at around P80 per kilo). Chapchae doesn't use chicken or pork, it's beef and we know this is the more expensive meat. And then there's shiitake mushrooms and spinach, which are not ordinary veggies for most Filipino households. For the cooking oil, you use sesame oil and in some recipes, olive oil as well. If you haven't eaten Chapchae and you want to try it, you can find it at BonChon and probably in most Korean restaurants, which now abound in Metro Manila, thanks to Super Junior and those cheeky Koreanovelas (which I love!). Well, I haven't tasted BonChon's Chapchae yet but I'm eyeing to do just that real soon. Once, I bought an order of Chapchae at the Sidcor Sunday market in Centris, but it didn't quite measure up to my friend Leslie's cooking. I hope it's good at BonChon. If you want to learn how to cook Chapchae, I'm sharing a video here from YouTube. Happy cooking!
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