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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, December 29, 2006

(WTF #6) The Other Two Ice Creams -- Cafe Au Lait and Waffle House

Rounding out my 50% ice cream festival are two products that aren't as strange as they are decadent and noteworthy.

The first is an ice cream called Cafe Au Lait. It takes coffee ice cream to a new level.

Looks simple enough, but take a bite.

Smooth coffee ice cream inside--what's this--a coffee flavored shell. Holy coffee overload, Batman! Lucky I had this one for breakfast.

The other one is notable because its name makes me pine for home a little. It's an ice cream called Waffle House. Of course, the picture of the Waffle House on the package looks like no Waffle House I've ever been to.

Simple ice cream sandwich with a soft waffle on the outside.

A side view to match the top view for any of you wishing to make this into a 3-D model.

The waffle had some flavor, and the vanilla ice cream was standard. A little strawberry filling gave it that extra kick. Woulda been cool if they had maple syrup and butter inside.

Too late. I'm gonna patent that idea.

Labels: WTF

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Tuesday, December 19, 2006

(WTF #5) Corn Ice Cream

Continuing my fun with 50% off ice cream, the second interesting item I found was corn ice cream.

Did they really mean corn? Corn corn?

Reading the label, I'd say, "Yes."

Well, the sweet potato ice cream wasn't so bad. I'll give this one a try.

Just like the sweet potato ice cream, the corn ice cream came encased in an edible styrofoam mold. It bore a striking resemblance to its namesake. There's no mistaking here. We're gonna be eatin' some corn. I wonder what's inside.

Looks like a vanilla-type ice cream with a thin spraying of chocolate coating, I assume to help glue it to the corn mold. That doesn't look as appetizing. Put the mold back on.

Mmm... creamy corny goodness. The corn flavor here is subtle. It's mostly a generic vanilla ice cream with a hint of a--hmm--popcorn flavor. It's like a popcorn jellybean.

So now we have two surprisingly good ice creams. Maybe that's an indicator that all these freaky concoctions are very good.

I'd agree if I hadn't had the misfortune to try a tomato popsicle last year. I tried to like it, especially since the person who gave it to me was enjoying hers so much. But after three tries, I put it down.

"I'm really sorry. With each bite I hate this more and more."

Labels: WTF

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Wednesday, December 13, 2006

(WTF #4) Sweet Potato Ice Cream

Winter's here, and you know what that means?

50% off ice cream!

At my local K-Mart (the small Korean grocery store, not the Rosie O'Donnel chain) I saw the 50% off ice cream sign over the two freezers almost overflowing with mysterious ice cream bars. I had seen flavors in there in the past that had made me do a double take. This could be my chance to try them. Besides, Eun Jeong had asked me to pick her up a red bean ice cream bar on my way home from work.

I had to fight through a small crowd of sucrose-starved teens (albeit budget-conscious sucrose-starved teens) just to get a look. It took a while to find the red bean ice creams because they just weren't blaring "red bean ice cream" on their packages. I did eventually find them, but I picked up a few strange hitchhikers along the way.

Meet Mr. Sweet Potato (Korean name, Mr. Goguma 고구마 손생님).

He comes out of the wrapper in a shell that I assume is intended to be crunchy. Yeah, right.

Yet Mr. Goguma's makers went all out and tried to make him in the shape of a sweet potato. At least, I hope that's what the shape is.

Eun Jeong broke him open so we could share. It looked like vanilla ice cream with a little chocolate coating. We both had a bite.

There were no chunks of sweet potato, but there was a definite hint of sweet potato flavor in there. And it wasn't a bad flavor. On closer inspection (the second bite), the flavor was quite pleasant. It was like a roasted sweet potato or sweet potato mixed with toasted marshmallow.

Mr. Sweet Potato Ice Cream, you surprised me. Now, if Eun Jeong can put up with all the other weird ice cream I bought.

Really, sweetie, it was 50% off.

Labels: WTF

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Sunday, October 22, 2006

(WTF #3) Lotteria's Rice-Vegetable Burger

You're not seeing things. This is a real hamburger. It's Lotteria's new promotion.

In a way, it makes sense. Many Koreans I know have trouble going through a meal without rice. And how much rice is in your average burger and fries combo meal?

So why not replace the bun with some pressed sticky rice? Add some vegetables to make it seem healthy, and you have the new Rice-Vegetable Burger.

Lotteria is introducing this concept on two of their burgers, the bulgogi and the kimchi burgers. I stopped by and got the bulgogi one the other day.

I wondered if there was some type of post-modern industrial technique to make the rice stick together like bread. I don't think rice has the powerful glutens bread does.

As I suspected, there was not special magic technique. The rice "bun" was just pressed rice. It promptly disintegrated after my first bite, and Lotteria didn't supply a fork to finish what was quickly becoming bulgogi burger bibimbap.

I've said it before. Korean fast food corporations sometimes hit the mark with their strange ideas. But we have to go through some rice-vegetable burgers along the way.

Labels: WTF

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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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Monday, October 17, 2005

(WTF #1) Buldalk Pizza Sandwich

After our trip to Sh-wing, we went across the street to 7-Eleven for some sojus and more snacks. I love looking at the sandwich and samgak (triangle) kimbap sections to see what new flavors they come out with. That night, I found something that blew my mind: a buldalk ("fire chicken") pizza sandwich.

It combined two great late night drinking foods between two slices of bread.

Even better, it had grill marks. Those grill marks weren't painted on. It was toasted. I guess the chilled panini look is getting popular in Seoul.

Inside was a spot of filling. It had some red sauce that tasted somewhat like pizza sauce, some bits of chicken, green pepper, and shredded cheese. The taste? Well, considering that my tongue was numb from Krazy Koreans and beer, it wasn't too bad.

Labels: WTF

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