Christmas is usually held at my aunt’s house in delaware, but we had a change of plans this year. It was at my mom’s house, yes, where I grew up. No ham or turkey here folks, just good old-fashioned korean fare.
The spread. Ain’t it beautiful?

My aunt fried up some shrimp tempura. Ok, so that’s not korean, it’s japanese, but hey, it’s still tasty. How do these shrimp not curl up when fried? It’s a secret. And now I know the secret!
Mrs. K made us a batch of these little pancakes. Not typical of what we would normally eat, as these were made up with ground mung beans, cabbage, and some other stuff. Quite mild, yet delicious.
What’s this weird gelatenous stuff on this plate? It’s muk. I’m not sure what kind of muk, whether it’s made from acorn starch, or buckwheat starch, or mung bean starch, but it’s some kind of korean muk. It’s jello-esque in texture, but still not. Hard to describe. The muk itself essentially has no flavor. So you have to adulterate with something. Here, my mom has just doused with some sort of soy sauce based nonsense, green onions, and eventually, after this photo was taken, some crushed up nori sheets. I know it’s a strange concept, but I dig this stuff.
Grilled squid on the left, and some kind of grilled long skinny fish on the right. Both marinated with some spicy shizz.
A close up of the squid. Beautiful, isn’t it? It’s painstakingly scored in both horizontal and vertical directions. Why? I have no idea. I think it has to do with how it always curls when cooked, but it’s also because it looks so bad ass.
Some spicy pork ribs.
My aunt made some galbi jim, or korean braised short ribs. A family holiday gathering certainly isn’t worth anything if it doens’t involve stuffing your face with good homemade eats.

So my mom’s been making these spring rolls lately, and yes, I truly believe they’re going to make her famous. There isn’t one person who’s tried them that hasn’t fallen absolutely in love with them. And how could you not love them? They’re f’in lovely. And delicious. And healthy.
Above are all the ingredients to my mom’s version. I make the much more standard vietnamese version with noodles, shrimp, cucumber, carrot, cilantro, and sprouts. Well, my mom hates cilantro so she would never make anything with those. Instead, she incorporates red, orange, and yellow bell peppers, carrots, cucumbers, avocado, spring mix, vermicelli noodles, shrimp, and imitation crab legs. They’re a sight to behold. The colors are amazing.
The worst part about making these is really getting all the innard ingredients ready. There’s just tons of julienning and slicing and dicing that has to happen. But once that’s all done, putting them together is actually a piece of cake. And you don’t really have to cook anything, other than the noodles and the shrimp.
The wrappers themselves are dry and once you either run them under hot water or soak them in hot water, they become all rubbery. You lay all the ingredients in the middle and then roll up the little suckers. It’s really as easy as that.
And voila, you have a plate full of these gorgeous handfuls of fresh, crisp, healthy goodness.
Gah, I could literally eat a dozen of these at a time. Yes, I know they’re supposed to be an appetizer, but seriously, I could make them into a meal, and any meal of the day. For whatever reason, the dipping sauce of choice for these is just straight out of the bottle sweet chili sauce with a little bit of sriracha thrown in there (however spicy you want it). When I make my regular viet version of springn rolls, I stick with the hoisin/peanut variety of sauce, but for the mom version, trust me, sweet chili sauce with the sriracha is all it needs.

My family doesn’t really do much for thanksgiving. It’s never been a big holiday for us, and we’ve never really gotten together with extended family for it. At least not for at least 15 years. This year wasn’t much different. Just my moms, bro, and sis-in-law eating well, let’s face it, a very schizophrenic thanksgiving dinner.
I told you we didn’t go traditional, but we had to have turkey. I really do like turkey a lot, so this had to be included. And heck, let’s throw in a ham while we’re at it.
In addition to other non-traditional random foods, we had kalbi and some of these shrimps that my mom had marinated with lemon and lime juice, tons of garlic, and some parsley. The only annoying thing was that she left all the shells on. Totally wished she would have peeled em. There was tons of other food too, including some delish spring rolls, but more on them later. It was so much food that when I saw the table, my immediate reaction was “who’s gonna eat all this food?” But I guess that’s what thanksgiving is all about.