recipe tryouts: korean pajeon

I've been thinking of making an instagram account for random photos of food I take. I guess that's the thing to do? But mostly I want a place to collate the random photos of food I take on a weekly basis but never get around to making blog posts about (or simply choose not to post because of not having anything interesting to say about them). So, I might do that!

But here's another recipe tryout in the meantime.

>> Korean pajeon

I watch a lot of cooking-related channels on YouTube, and most of them aren't in any way paleo/primal or low carb. But they do have delicious-looking visuals, and sometimes they inspire me to try primal versions of their recipes. Also they're just entertaining (Cooking With Dog is the best). One recipe I've long admired from afar that I've never tried is that of Korean pajeon. Pajeon is a pretty simple green onion pancake recipe and it looks utterly delicious (I LOVE any and all onions).

There are a couple videos I used as inspiration, the first from Eat Your Kimchi:

This recipe was the first time I'd seen it, and I think it's notable for the inclusion of the egg.

But I mostly took direction from this recipe (which is essentially the same recipe, but using a slightly different technique):

(Skip to about 1:50 to get to the cooking part.) I thought her method was more interesting, as she basically fried up the onions in the oil for a minute or so before pouring on the batter. That was the method I decided to go with.

As for the batter, both recipes call for 1/2 cup flour and water. My alteration (well, more like completely fundamental change) was to use a batter of 2 beaten eggs plus a couple tablespoons of almond flour (plus the salt). It did end up a bit more eggy in texture (though it didn't actually taste very eggy) than pancakey this way, and I might alter the recipe in the future. Perhaps 1 egg, almond flour, and some water? 

But despite its slightly less traditional texture, the pajeon came out amazing. 

onion punch in the face!

In the true spirit of impulse cooking and lack of preparation, I didn't have the right kind of green onions on hand. Though from what I can glean, it really doesn't matter. What's inside are a mix of leeks which I sliced up real thin, and Mexican green onions (without the bulbs). I chopped up a chili pepper for the top because I love spiciness, and on the side I threw together a quick ginger soy sauce and wasabi for dipping and OMG. Chris was speechless, I was speechless. These things are truly as delicious as I always suspected. 

I still want to try to tweak the batter into something a bit crispier but even if I don't, think is amazing the way it is. And is a super cheap snack to make. It would also be a good breakfast as long as you don't have any important meetings that day. (Onion breath like whaaaat.)