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I love food. During my time in Korea, I have been collecting recipes and anecdotes about Korean food. I also have been working on survival techniques for westerners living in Korea.

In this journal are recipes for cooking Korean food in Korea or abroad and recipes for recreating western food with Korean ingredients.

But mostly, it's about enjoying life.

SUBJECT KEY
Christmas Chronicles - Trying to celebrate Christmas in Korea
Drink - Imbibe me
Event - Special events involving special Korean foods
FFF (Food for Foreigners) - Recipes for foreigners living in Korea
FP (Food Porn) - Pictures for stimulation
Fusion - A mixture -- or clash -- of cultures
Junk - Junk food
KFC (Korean Food Concept) - A blog entry explaining a type of Korean food
Kimchi - Something about kimchi
KR (Korean Recipe) - A recipe for Korean food, duh!
Miscellaneous - Stuff, stuff, and stuff
News - Korean food in the news
Out There - What others are saying
Rest (Restaurant) - An entry about a restaurant in Korea
Street Food - An entry about a street food concept or adventure
Tip - A survival tip for living or visiting Korea
Video - A summary of a video on the site
WTF - A feature on anything unusual that has to be investigated further

Friday, January 27, 2006

(Event #2) Lunar New Year: Let's Have Us a Bowl of Deokguk -- or Thirty-two

It is time for Lunar New Year again. In Korean, it's Seollal. Thank goodness it's not as freezing as it was last year. I have a video of last year's celebrations on the ZenKimchi video blog web site at the folk village in downtown Seoul.

There are a few traditional foods eaten on the New Year, as there are in other cultures. My culture has a tradition of eating black-eyed peas and collard greens for good luck on New Year's Day. Can't find either in Korea, so when in Korea, do what the Hanguk saram do.

The big symbolic food is deokguk, a white beef stock soup with chewy rice cakes in it. We had it today at the school where I work. It's a fairly simple soup. I can't find a recipe on the internet, but I've asked around. What can make it special is the garnishes one puts on it, like shredded egg, kimchi, dried salted seaweed, and vegetables.

The rice cakes, or deok (pronounced similar to "dock"), come from a long strand one inch or more in diameter. It is cut into coin-like shapes, and this is intentional. This is to bring wealth when one eats a bowl.

I'm not sure if the rest of Asia does this, but Koreans count birthdays different than we do. There is the legal birthday, based on the solar year you were born, and there's the lunar birthday. Generally, one could say that everyone is one year older than she really is. Everyone's birthday is on Lunar New Year.

Since this is so, there's a saying that a person must eat as many bowls of deokguk according to how old he has become this year. So, I guess I turn thirty-two this Seollal. I should eat thirty-two bowls of soup.

No wonder this is an extended holiday.

As with many foods eaten as tradition, it's eaten only as tradition. I've talked to a few Koreans who can't stand deokguk but eat it anyway, the same as many Canadians and Americans don't care much for turkey but have it on Thanksgiving. I still haven't found a Korean equivelant of fruitcake, though.

There isn't much out there on the history of deokguk and traditional Korean New Year's foods, not in English. I'll post more when I find out more. One funny thing I found is a reference to an old treaty signed between Korea and England, China, and Germany, known as the Treaty of Deokguk. Korea calls England Yongguk and China Chunguk. Supposedly, Korea used to call Germany Deokguk. I told a Korean co-worker about my finding, and she was surprised. But she said that the word "deokguk" implies being long and white.

How this applies to Germans, I'm afraid to guess.

Labels: Event

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Thursday, January 26, 2006

What the Doctor Ordered: A Taste of Chinese Medicine

I haven't been writing because I haven't been eating much. I got a type of stomach flu last week that I haven't had for over ten years. I'll spare you the gory details beyond stating how thankful I am for the design of Korean bathrooms where cleaning them involves merely hosing them down with the shower head.

There is something about living in a foreign land that makes a person more susceptible to illness. My girlfriend said she got sick a lot when she lived in Canada. And I've gotten sick more and more often in Korea, as have other foreigners.

Whenever I'm sick, my girlfriend usually goes to the local pharmacist and tells him my symptoms. She then returns with a combination of modern and traditional Chinese medicine. I myself, having taken a pharmacology course or two in college, am a bit skeptical of Chinese medicine. My feeling is that if it's just folklore and hasn't been tested using the scientific method, it's no different from Western traditional medicine, which involved bleeding people and drinking Coca Cola (which was first introduced as a medicine).

Chinese medicine in Korea is concocted in different ways. It usually involves a granular powder around the texture of coffee grounds, black pellets which look like rabbit droppings, and the famous black juice.

The powder and black pellets are easy to take. It's the black juice that can be tough to get down, especially if you're having trouble even keeping down apple juice.

Nonetheless, in my opinion, it tastes better than the liquid medicines doctors prescribe in America. This black juice I had last week was more palatable than the ones before. It had the usual taste of earthy ginseng mixed with ashtray (I wonder if that's the mythical stag horn I'm tasting). Yet it was countered by an aromatic cinnamon kick. And it actually settled my stomach.

I don't argue with my girlfriend as much about Chinese medicine as I used to. I'll take it whenever I'm sick. She's starting to accept the aspirin I give her when she gets headaches. I'm still skeptical about its effects. Yet whenever I am running a fever, it tends to break only a few hours after chasing the granules and rabbit pellets with the black juice.

Labels: Miscellaneous

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Wednesday, January 25, 2006

(KFC #7) Dosirak - Just Don't Call It a Bento Box!

Last year, my girlfriend, Eun Jeong, and I went out for dinner. At the restaurant, she was thrilled that this one item was on the menu. Instead of rice, she ordered it. The waiter came

back with a thin metal cigar box. Inside was rice, shredded dried seaweed, vegetables, some gochujang, and an egg. It was like a tiny bibimbap. Eun Jeong replaced the lid, picked it up, and shook the heck out of it. The result was a scary gloppy mess that tasted divine.

She said that it was a reminder of her childhood. It's also a new trend that has been popping up in Korean restaurants, playing on Koreans' nostalgia. I like to compare it to that upscale peanut butter and jelly restaurant in New York City. When Eun Jeong was growing up, this was the lunchbox her mother prepared for her. She said it was a sort of bento box. But "bento" is a Japanese word. God forbid you use a Japanese word in Korea. In Korean, it called a dosirak.

As Korea became richer and more cosmopolitan, dosiraks were considered the province of poor people and not sophisticated. But now, as with the peanut butter and jelly restaurant, they have been given a more sophisticated interpretation as a whimsical appetizer to have with your meal.

Personally, I love these, and I order them whenever I see them on the menu. They cost around $2, and they're a lot of fun. How much food do you shake at the table before eating?

This is also a good example of the difference between Korean and Japanese food. A Japanese bento box is beautifully arranged delicate items to be picked up gingerly with chopsticks, each item having about as much flavor as newspaper. A Korean dosirak is not pretty. It's down right f'ugly. You shake it and scoop the contents in your mouth with a spoon. And it again proves my hypothesis that the tastiest foods in the world are the sloppiest. Just for fun, I may shake a Japanese bento box the next time I get one, just to see people's shock.

Now, yes, I have offended a few Korean friends by calling it a "bento box." But I have seen it on menus as a "benddo" 밴또. I don't care. If I see either on a menu, I get pensive like Bill Murray in "Lost in Translation" and think, "It's Dosirak Time!"

Labels: Korean Food Concept

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Sunday, January 15, 2006

(WTF #2) Toothpaste for That Forest Fresh Feeling

While I was packing my bags to come to Korea two years ago, I was asking my old friend Christina what all I needed to bring with me. The three major things she said were deodorant, condoms, and toothpaste.

Now, she was right about deodorant. It is darn difficult to find. I have found some women's anti-perspirant at a convenience store, and I've seen the nasty Speed Stick deodorant (not anti-perspirant) that high school jocks use on sale at the black markets in Namdaemun. Yet all my personal anti-perspirant I get from care packages from my family.

Condoms are findable here and are getting moreso. Yet the quality and variety aren't that great. That's another item I order by mail from the U.S.

Now toothpaste. There's no shortage of toothpaste. People are passionate about oral care in Korea. Christina recommended the toothpaste because Korean toothpaste, according to her, "tastes terrible."

So I stocked up on toothpaste and didn't try any Korean toothpaste for over a year. But when my first batch ran out, my girlfriend lent me hers, and it wasn't that bad.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of toothpaste flavors. The mint flavor in mint toothpaste does not taste like mint. It tastes like nasty ass toothpaste. Why does mint flavor not really taste like mint? I don't like chocolate chip mint ice cream because it doesn't taste like real mint. It tastes like toothpaste with chocolate chips in it. Grape flavor doesn't taste like the grapes I grew up with. It tastes like the grotesque purple gum that the coach gave out to everyone in little league. It's not grape flavor. It's purple flavor.

I had run out of my Colgate Tartar Control yet again, so I grabbed for my girlfriend's toothpaste. I noticed it had a much more pleasant exotic taste, something I really liked. I looked on the tube and saw a picture of what looked like a pine tree. I asked her to confirm my suspicions.

"Yes, it's pine tree flavored."

HA!

It's the first toothpaste I've tried that's flavored as a scent rather than the taste of a food. And it is a refreshing taste and sensation. It's not that painful Mr. Freeze feeling that Mega-Mint toothpastes attack you with. It's smooth.

I've never really enjoyed a toothpaste, thus it was hard for my mother to make me brush my teeth. Brushing my teeth was a chore before. Now I look forward to being transported to a Yukon evergreen forest through my mouth whenever I brush my teeth.

Labels: WTF

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Thursday, January 12, 2006

(Junk #1) Shrimp Burger vs. Squid Burger

Yes, despite of culture of health consciousness, fast food has penetrated the Korean market with abandon. McDonald's has dressed in its own hanbok to adjust by having bulgogi burgers and other specialties meant to attract Korean diners.

Korea's mega-conglomerate Lotte has its own big franchise, Lotteria. My impression is that it is the most successful of Korean fast food franchises thus far. I have even seen stores in Japan.

Foreigners I know will not touch Lotteria. That's because foreigners tend to walk in and order something that is familiar to them. Lotteria is not the place to go for a hamburger. There are other artery thickening foods that are much tastier.

Every time I go, I try to explore a different menu item. Today, it's the
Shrimp ("Sae-u") Burger (새우 버거) versus the Hot Squid ("Ojingeo") Burger (오징어 버거).

What we would normally call a sandwich is all categorized as "burgers" in Korean fast food speak. A burger is anything on a round bun.

First, the Shrimp Burger. I remember there was one foreigner who raved over this thing and was always eating them. I initially avoided it because I assumed it was a fried patty of filler with shrimp flavoring in it.

The Shrimp Burger comes with a black sesame seed butter grilled bun, lettuce, and a special sauce similar to tartar sauce and Thousand Island dressing.

Biting into it is not mealy like expected. The fried patty is packed with processed shrimp. There's actual shrimp texture in there. The taste reminds me of a Cajun poboy from home. I have become hooked on these, to my detriment. I have also gotten other foreigners into the Shrimp Burger.

The Hot Squid Burger is a different animal but also tasty. Unlike the Shrimp Burger, the patty is quadrangle shaped. Along with a creamy sauce, it is loaded with a sweet and sour hot sauce, along with the requisite iceberg lettuce. It also has a black sesame seed bun.

The inside of a Squid Burger is more foreboding and sinful. It is freakin' spicy for a fast food item. I can only eat one of these in one sitting. The squid itself is flavorless (as is all squid), but it adds texture. The sauce and the flavorings make it sharply tangy.

My conclusion in this lunchtime experiment is that I still prefer the Shrimp Burger for sheer volume of goodness and poboy nostalgia. Yet the Squid Burger is an adequate companion for when I want something different and exciting -- especially with a cold beer.

Labels: Junk

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Sunday, January 08, 2006

(KFC #6) Fiery Chicken Feet

Before you turn up your nose and say "gross," remember that the chicken wing was also a much neglected part of the bird until a restaurant in Buffalo did something special to them.

My first experience with chicken feet ("Dalk Bal" 닭발) in Korea was not spectacular. We were having a beer at our favorite drinking hole when the proprieter offered some chicken feet that a neighboring restaurant had given her. They tasted okay but were a little off. Immediately I identified it as freezer burn.

Unlike my friend who was with me, I gave them another try much later. Chicken feet in Korea are done like hot wings in America, but the sauce is much smokier, sweeter, and hotter. And there are no vegetables or blue cheese dressing to take the heat off.

I have grown to really like these. The flesh around the foot, especially the padding, it fatty and matches the flavor of hot sauce well. Besides, you can get immature and make your chicken feet do rude gestures.

Tonight, my friends took us to a restaurant that was famous for chicken feet. Usually, it's bar food and not something that would be considered a meal, but this restaurant has done it somehow.

Looking at the patrons' faces, it seemed like it was something people do on a dare than a "Hey honey, let's take the kids out for burn-your-butt-off chicken feet tonight" meal.

The first sign of things to come was the complimentary plastic gloves for protection.

Then a soup came out. It was a simple chicken broth with dried seaweed, green onion, and gochugaru (red pepper powder). It was surprisingly spicy for such a mild soup. My friends said it was to build up your tolerance for the main dish to come.

Some rice bowls came out with julienned dried seaweed on them, along with plates of stir-fried spicy chicken gizzards. We mixed the gizzards with the rice and wrapped them in more dried seaweed given to us in individual packets. This brought the spice level up another few Kelvins.

Then the chicken feet came out. These were different from others that I've had in that they were barbequed. The bones were also crunchier than the ones I've had at beer hofs. The women with us showed a way to properly debone the feet.

After doing a few like that, we all abandoned convention and just sucked the meat off the leg bone.

Even though we were sweating, blowing our noses (usually a rude gesture at the table in Korea), and I personally had tears running down my face, we ordered another batch.

I have experimented with making my own chicken feet at home. I got a big bag of them for only 1,000 won ($1).

There is not much information on the internet on how to make them. I've called Korean friends for ideas, and most were clueless. The best suggestion I got was to boil them first to make the toe bones softer.

Before boiling, though, there is much preparation. The raw chicken feet come with some skin that has to be peeled off. The claws have to be clipped to. This was the first food I've prepared that needed a pedicure. I also clipped off any blemishes, usually around the padding.

When I boiled them, I discovered another great thing. Chicken feet make a good chicken stock. It didn't occur to me that they're full of cartilidge, which is what makes a stock a stock.

Now that they were soft, I wanted to make them crispy on the outside. In the future, I'll skip this step. Chicken feet explode when deep fried -- violently. I had a frying screen to block the oil, and the oil exploded so violently, it knocked the screen off.

In the end, the experiment was a bust, but I did figure out how to make the famous spicy sweet garlicky Yangnyeom 양념 sauce that comes with much fried chicken and chicken feet. Now, I threw this together, so I don't remember any measurements. I started sweating some chopped garlic and onion in a pan. To it I added a big dollop of gochujang (red pepper paste), a drizzle of sesame oil, and a little honey to sweeten it and give it a glaze and let it simmer until it became saucy. That was it, really. It also makes a great barbeque sauce.

But, yeah, the chicken feet were too hard from frying.

Labels: Korean Food Concept

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Thursday, January 05, 2006

(KFC #5) Dinosaur Soup: HaeJangKuk

HaeJangKuk 해장국 is a traditional hangover cure. It means "Hangover Soup." According to PreviewKorea.com, drinking houses used to make this pork bone soup in a beef broth with dried cabbage leaves and fortified with clotted ox blood.

This soup is perfect for a cold winter evening. When autumn was dying, and the first blasts of frigid Siberian air hit me, I was looking for a ballast to help me through winter. As always, food makes me feel better. There are some foods in Korea that are best to eat in the wintertime. They're just too hearty to eat during summer. Besides, I'm too much in the mood for cold MulNaengMyeon in the summer.

It looks forboding when it first comes out. It looks like something Fred Flinstone would munch on after a meeting with the Order of Water Buffalo.

It also looks like a simple soup, but there's an art to eating it. There are three empty dishes among the wonderful kimchi (places that specialize in winter food seem to have the best kimchi) and side dishes. One is for your meat, which you remove from the soup, one set of bones at a time. Another is for a dipping sauce that comes in a squeeze bottle. It tastes a bit like Chinese mustard with other flavors. The last bowl is for the bone graveyard when you're finished.

Some places also have a spice as a condiment. I don't know what it is. I have never tasted anything like it. It looks like ground coriander seeds, and they give the soup a darker, manlier, more punchy taste.

Westerners would not find this soup too exotic. It reminds me of Brunswick Stew back in the South. It's also similar to another Korean late night/early morning drinking food, KamjaTang, which means "potato soup," even though it has a heck of a lot more meat than potatoes.

Supposedly, HaeJangKuk is a relatively new invention. It came around after Korean independence from Japan following WWII. An old man, named Mr. Kim, started making HaeJangKuk at his restaurant, Yeonghwaok in Cheongjin-dong, downtown Seoul. A curfew used to be enforced from midnight to 4 A.M. The neighborhood would be crowded in the morning when the curfew was lifted. No restaurants were open. No one sold food at this hour except Mr. Kim and other restauranteurs copying his HaeJangKuk idea in the area. It naturally became the place college students went to after a night of dancing. (from Jongno-Gu)

They say there are five secrets to making HaeJangKuk:
1. Remove foul meat odors by rubbing it with soybean paste.
2. Use as many veggies as possible.
3. Mix clotted cow's blood with salt and water in the right proportion.
4. Boil in a kettle the traditional way.
5. Top it all off with chopped leeks or green onions.

I'm hunting for recipes and more info.

Labels: Korean Food Concept

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