Korean Style Cold Bok Choy Why practice

For KY - you continually challenge me and make me try harder.

Ive been on a bit of a quest recently to improve the quality of practice, everywhere I have a chance.  Mostly this means that Daughters and Son are subjected to some strange experiments, but it also bleeds over into my work volunteering at schools and in Sunday School.  What is the goal?  Be more efficient in practice.

Ive been reading the book, Practice Perfect, and I havent even gotten that far in it (Rule 2 out of 42) but I keep going back to the one point daily.  The rule is to "Practice the 20" which according to the book is about deciphering and analyzing which 20 percent of the things that are most important are you going to practice 80 percent of the time.  In the books words, "...to become great, you should focus more on practicing the 20 percent of things that most create value than the other 80 percent of things you could plausibly spend time on" (29).  Now, this looks like a lot of things to a lot of people, so Ive been thinking and mulling over what it means for me and those with whom I have the most contact. (Children and students.)

I decided to apply a little of the book to Daughters swim practices, because I am currently their teacher.  It makes for more flexible scheduling and allows me to take advantage of the pool when it is less busy.  Daughters have been doing tons of laps with me, over and over and over again, and in my mind, I figured, yes, this is practice.  But repeatedly I kept on seeing the girls not improve their stroke, but rather deteriorate in their stroke, and as I am not a swim teacher, I couldnt figure out HOW to help them.  I was good at getting them into the water and forcing them to swim their 800 to 1200 yards when we had a chance, but in terms of refining and perfecting their stroke, not so much.  I questioned, WHY ISNT IT GETTING BETTER!!!

The book challenged me to rethink what I was asking them to do.  I wanted them to get better at the complete strokes, the complete movement across the pool, but what I needed to do was to break down those strokes into small drills to force them to improve on tinier parts.  I had assumed that since Children "knew" how to swim, that they no longer needed to practice the smaller parts of each individual stroke since CLEARLY (not) they had already learned the stroke.  The problem I didnt realize was that knowing and MASTERY are two different things and I needed to move them towards mastery.  The way to mastery?  Practice 20 percent of the important things they need to do 80 percent of the time.  I wasnt clear what that was, but I challenged myself to rethink our 40 minutes in the water to make it more efficient.  What I came up with was it wasnt the distance that we did in 40 minutes, but it would be how we would use the 40 minutes to be better.  32 minutes of our 40 minutes would be spent on drills, which would essentially distort and focus individual swimming techniques and make Daughters strengthen specific areas.  8 minutes, I decided to just have them swim as they normally had, full complete strokes.

I researched a few drills and brought them to the water today.  I explained to the girls the math behind the practice - 80% spent on working on smaller parts of the stroke and 20% on practicing the full stroke itself.  What was so interesting is that as an experienced swimmer, there wasnt a significant difference in my doing drills versus the full stroke.  Of course I felt more stretched and pushed, but I didnt flail on the drills. Daughters however, despite having been proficient and good on whole strokes STRUGGLED through the drills.  In one, I asked them to swim on their side and kick  with their heads relaxed and one arm pointed straight up in the water and the other relaxed at their side and neither of them could swim straight across without swerving.  It took 5 lengths of that drill in order for them to figure out how to position their bodies and get their legs and arms long and balance on their side and still kick.  We ran through a few other drills and then I allowed them to swim the whole strokes.  After months of no improvement, I could clearly see improvement in their overall strokes.

Its a lot more work trying to figure out the smaller pieces to work the practice. but I can say that from this small experiment (and there have been many tiny little ones this week as well) that Im ready to alter how I view practice.  Encouraging and pushing mastery of the small fundamentals truly impacts the overall growth and improvement.  This totally also applies to cooking.  Mastery over smaller things - choosing the right produce, chopping, boiling, sauteeing, blanching, all work together to make a great meal.

Ive decided to focus on (drill) a particular Korean technique, a classic Korean technique for making many green vegetables - blanching and then squeezing out the excess liquid.  I love this method of cooking vegetables because it can be made ahead and then seasoned at the last minute.  Its the same technique I use to make the spinach side dish, ubiquitous at so many Korean restaurants.  I applied this technique to bok choy, with the idea that I could make a side dish that would have a similar feel as spinach, but just done with bok choy.  The results were great and Children and friends gobbled it down.  There is room on seasoning, by adding soy sauce or other things to make it fit the flavors youre looking for, but the technique of blanching and squeezing out the liquid is one worth learning.  

Korean Style Cold Bok Choy
Serves 4

Ingredients
1 lb bok choy
¼ teaspoon sea salt (or to taste)
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon crushed sesame seeds

Method
Fill a large pot with water and add a pinch of salt. Bring to a boil.

While water is boiling, prepare bok choy. Trim the base of the bokchoy, cutting off the stem, so that the bokchoy separates into individual leaves. Wash well.

Once water is boiling, add bok choy all at once and stir, mixing into the water, allowing to cook for 1 minute. Remove from heat and drain all the water.

Arrange bok choy in a ring in your colander,so as to promote cooling of the bok choy.

Once bok choy is cool enough to handle, take a handful, and squeeze, removing excess water from the bok choy. Repeat until all bok choy has been squeezed.

Lay bok choy out on a cutting board and cut into 1 inch sections. Bok choy can be chilled at this point and dressed before serving OR can be dressed and served immediately.

Over bok choy, sprinkle salt and toss well. Taste and add more salt if desired. Drizzle sesame oil and add sesame seeds and toss together again. Serve immediately.

Printable recipe

If youre interested in the book on practice.

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Korean Style Red Bean Shaved Ice Patbingsoo 팥빙수 Obsessions come home

There was a summer during college, when I went to Korea in order to figure out if teaching was what I wanted to do.  My aunt helped line up a series of students for me to experiment on, and I landed in Korea and had my own tiny little room in another aunts house.  I spent my days teaching and my evenings hunting down Seouls best version of their summer time dessert, patbingsoo, or red bean shaved ice.

I actually remember the first time someone offered it to me and I was immediately put off by the idea of red bean and ice.  WHAT?  Weird!  Its like refried beans that are cold?  Gross!  No way!  But when my cousin insisted that I try it, I did and I was so hooked I became obsessed.  My cousin suggested that we attempt to eat one red bean shaved ice each day and compare our favorites and find out which we liked the best.  It sounded like a great challenge and Id even skip dinner some nights (as it was super hot anyways) just so I could go out and hunt for a great shaved ice with my cousin.  We ate cheap ones from mini corner stores that had a ton of fruit cocktail dumped on top, to fancier versions in hotel restaurants that had expensive and beautifully cut fruit arranged on top, much like one would decorate a cake.  We would eat them in bakeries and we would hunt them down in bookstores.  It became a ritual to hunt down another place where we could have them and we fulfilled our daily intake of shaved ice that summer.

While living in Korea, I also would occaisionally grab one during the summer, but for some reason I wasnt as crazy about it as I used to be.  Perhaps it was my anti-bean husband who didnt much care for it, or the fact that its one of those dishes I associate with solitude and peace, and children dont equal solitude and peace.  For whatever reason, I didnt eat it much.

Last week, on the 4th of July, I had some friends over, and my friend brought this dish as a dessert.  There were a good number of people over, but she prepared an awesome selection of fruits and toppings and brought it over to share.  I shaved ice for folks and people got to decide what they wanted on their patbingsoo.  It was Childrens first time ever seeing a manual ice shaver (yes, weve never been to Hawaii) and it ended up being super exciting for them.

In short, I had to go out and get everything so that I could begin my love affair with patbingsoo again.  I tried grinding the ice in the Vitamix as an initial solution, and it kind of worked, but not as well as I wanted.  I went and got a manual ice shaving machine from our local Ranch 99 along with a bunch of other ingredients readily available at the market.  Children became experts at creating the shaved ice dish of their dreams and I began creating the shaved ice versions from my own memory.

I personally favor the simpler shaved ices, which focuses more on fresh fruit and fewer toppings like this one.  With shaved ice, watermelon, red bean, mochi, and a little scoop of sweetened condensed milk its the most refreshing one that I enjoy.

 Some people like a more complicated, more topping-filled one which has a variety of fruits, nata de coco (coconut jelly), lychees (canned), mochi, sweetened condensed milk and a sprinkling of cereal.

There is also the option of a scoop of vanilla ice cream to add to your shaved ice.

 Then you have my nutty kids who refuse to eat the red bean (which is sort of the whole point of the dish) and proceed to enjoy their shaved ice with a ton of fruit and a ton of syrupy soaked toppings.  Go figure.

The range of choices is super wide and people seem to have their own preferences of what they like so you can set out a bar of choices and let people construct them.  The key is to have cold everything - fruit, canned items, and condensed milk.  The colder everything is, the less ice meltage you have, which is the desired effect.  Prepare and wash your fruit and cut it and stick it back in the fridge until you are ready to serve.

The important ingredient is the ice itself.  Ice shavers come in a variety of permutations, but the best ones are simple to use, simple to clean, and simple to replace.  I found one for $11 at Ranch 99, and a lot of Asian markets will have one for less than you can find online.  In addition, try to find one that includes the ice molds so that you can create large disks of ice that shave the most efficiently in your ice shaver.  You can also find them on Amazon for a little bit more money, but if youre not close to a Chinese or Asian market, it may be your best option.

 As for my canned ingredients, here they are.  The red beans, although probably even tastier if I made them myself, taste very lovely in this dish from a can.  Sweetened condensed milk is the final sweet and creamy touch on top.  Nata de coco are coconut jellies and are currrently the obsession of both Daughters.  They also like the lychees in syrup, even though Im not a huge fan.  All these I got at my local Ranch 99, with the red beans and condensed milk coming in at above $3.

Some people even like a little sprinkling of cereal. I think the tiny bits of mochi, which are at your local Korean market or Japanese market, are the most important.  But choose what you like and arrange cold toppings on a tray or a table and let your guests go to work!

My obsession at home!  Im ready to mix this up!

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