I’ve been having a total love in with Gochujang, Korean chili paste. If you’ve not tried it, the best way I can describe it is like smoky chilli paste mixed up with a dark miso. It’s seriously addictive so if you get some make sure you’ve got some good ways to use it lined up. Or a big spoon. So far my favourite way has been in the Korean tofu in the second Horizons book:
I don’t subscribe to many non vegan blogs, simply because I just don’t have time to read all the vegan blogs I enjoy, let alone meat blogs too. When I do they mainly feature Indian or South Asian cuisine so that I can find ways to adapt the recipes. So when I saw this recipe for Korean fried chicken on Terry’s blog “Cooking the Books” (Great blog title too!) I knew I’d have to have it.
I decided to use seitan to stand in for the chicken. Tempeh would probably work very well too. I chopped some of the seitan lite from “American Vegan Kitchen” to stand in for the chicken. I love this seitan; baking it in broth seems to keep it nice and firm but without getting close to rubbery. I have to say I didn’t weigh it but it was about 4 cutlets between the two of us. I made the sauce exactly as Terry did, using the full 2 tbsps of gochujang. The batter is very thin but don’t worry. I didn’t use my deep fryer but just heated a few inches of oil in my wok. I wasn’t sure if the twice fried method was just to cook the chicken properly – I tried it first but it didn’t seem to make any difference with the seitan and so for the rest of the batch I just fried them once in hot oil and they worked great. Then I drained them on kitchen paper and tossed them in the full amount of sauce. This gave a saucier result than the original but the more sauce the better for me.
I served them as a main meal. The vinegary, slightly spicy cucumber namul from “Asian Vegan Kitchen” was a perfect foil for the spicy crispy seitan, and for a starch I used the rice and millet with sesame seeds from “Vegan Fire and Spice“.
This was such a tasty meal and totally reinforced my love for Gochujang. If anyone has any other recommendations for ways to use it then please let me know! Until then I’ll be making this again and again!
Cooking the Vegan Books 
That looks amazing. I’m going to head to the Asian section of Cleveland ASAP and try to get some of that paste. I know I’d love it.
Don’t you love Asian Vegan Kitchen? I’ve made so many recipes from this slender book and so far they’ve all turned out absolutely fantastic. It’s like a magic cookbook. I’m having some dishes from it tonight as a matter of fact…