Whenever I recall making Korean food in Spain, seafood pancake is the most extraordinary. Seafood pancake was the first dish I served at the first party I held with my friends at Foundation Alicia, a food research institute in Spain, and this is also the dish that brought us closer to one another.

At the time, I was unfamiliar with my surroundings because I had just started working at the Institute, and in Manresa, where I was living, it is quite difficult to find Korean grocery stores or other Koreans. So, I wondered what kind of Korean food I could make, and the first thing that came to mind was seafood pancake. It’s a representative Korean dish, and at the same time, you can easily find the ingredients anywhere in the world.

The party was potluck, so everyone was asked to bring a dish from their home country to share, and in this situation, when I couldn’t find any Korean ingredients, this is the dish that really saved me. I remembered serving it to my friends in Australia, and I was very confident about making it because it is the dish that foreigners invariably like. My friends in Spain also really liked it and described it as a Korean-style pancake. They were especially interested in the vinegary soy sauce that I served with it. Because I didn’t have enough vinegar (having decided to make it on the spur of the moment), I used balsamic vinegar, and afterward, I was surprised to find out that it was better than I expected it would be. It was a lucky coincidence.

The next day, everyone saw the left-over pancake batter and asked me to make more, which I did, and I can still vividly recall them grinning from ear to ear. That day, I learned to drink wine directly from a porron (a Spanish glass pitcher with a long spout) to accompany our seafood pancakes, but someday if I have a chance, I want to have warm seafood pancakes with some nice, cool makgeolli (Korean rice wine) with my Spanish friends.

Seafood Pancake (Haemul Pajeon)

<Ingredients >
1. 70 g spring onions, 30 g onions, 50 g shelled shrimp, 50 g squid, ½ red chilli pepper
2. For the Batter: 1 1/3 cup flour, 1/3 cup glutinous rice flour, 1 tbsp. starch, 1 egg, 5 g salt, 1 1/3 cup water

< Method >
1. Clean the spring onions and cut into 4 cm pieces. Cut the onion in half and slice. Cut the red chilli pepper in half and slice thinly.
2. Cut shrimps in half lengthwise, and clean the squid, rinse in lightly-salted water, and drain.
3. If using small shrimps, cut in half lengthwise, maintaining the shape of the shrimp, but large shrimps should be chopped up. Also, the squid can be cut into narrow strips roughly the same length as the spring onions.
4. Mix the flour, starch, and salt and add the egg, forming a batter by adding in the water.
5. Dust the spring onions with flour and add to the batter. Oil the pan and pour desired amount of batter in, making sure it is evenly distributed in a circular shape.

6. Place the seafood onto the batter on the uncooked side of the pancake. Top with red chilli pepper.
7. Lightly brush with a bit of egg yolk to bind the sliced red chilli pepper to the pancake. Pan fry on both sides to a golden brown over low temperature.