Over the summer I made a presentation to my Sogang Korean language class on my favorite cafes in Seoul. Seoul has a great cafe culture--people spend hours and hours just sitting and chilling with friends over an iced green tea latte or slice of cheesecake. (Can nobody make a green tea latte like they do in Seoul?? Since I've been back in the US I've ordered about 4 and they're just not the same..)
I was planning to convert this into a blog entry one day, but I realized it's already spring and I still haven't found the extra time. Maybe when MCATs are over! For now, here's a segment of the raw Korean presentation version, complete with photos. The cafes are in Sinchon, Daehangro, and Myeongdong:
So I've managed to be in Seoul for two months without seeing, trying, or catching the faintest whiff of the meat that Korea is notorious for.... DOG. At the urging of Foster, who was eager to try it, we finally went to a boshintang restaurant today for dinner.
Discreetly nestled between a Japanese restaurant and a small cafe, the "보신탕" sign was easy to find, but also easy for queasy-stomached foreigners to avoid. And a mere two minute walk from our goshitel in Sinchon!
We got to the restaurant, which specialized in boshintang and other summer dishes. I ordered samgyetang, a boiled chicken soup in which the chicken is stuffed with sweet rice, dates, and ginseng.
Foster stuck with the boshintang, along with an entire table of Korean men who ordered the same.
I keep hearing that most of my entries are centered around food. Josanna: "All you talk about on your website is food. 'I discovered this new place to eat. Look at this special dessert. This food is so cheap here!'" This really shouldn't surprise anyone who knows me..I love food, especially Korean food..
Anyway, this week is special. I believe that in the course of this past week I've actually eaten more Korean food than I have in any other week of my life. This is pretty serious, and I believe that my achievement deserves its own entry.
Let's start with Tuesday. I went to the DMZ with a couple other Yalies and administrators associated with the scholarship that I am on in Korea.
Ha, so my first photo is not of food. Actually, it's the Peace Bell, dedicated to Korean war victims.
LOOK AT THESE! Silkworm larvae.
And snails. Yum. I didn't eat those either... I know, I'm a coward.
In this scene, the people of Korea are pushing the two sides (North and South) together. Korean unity! Another non-comestible (no, it's not made out of chocolate or something)
^ THIS IS ACTUALLY NORTH KOREA. Haha, doesn't look too different from South Korea, does it? If you look through the binoculars, you'll see a place that North Korea tells us is one of its "towns". However, this is actually a fake town. Nobody lives there, and the buildings are actually structures with the windows and doors painted on..
South Korea built a train station that says that it goes to Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. Of course, no train actually exists, but I guess South Korea figures that once North Korea allows such a train to be built, it'll already have a station made.
Okay, now that all the cultural stuff is done with, onto the food!!!
Traditional Korean meal-- you get tons of dishes with "banchan", different types of food, inside of them. The dishwashing afterwards must be terrible.. Basically, there's a lot of kimchi dishes (cucumber, turnip, cabbage, oyster), a type of fish fried in soy sauce which was especially delicious (daegu something), bulgogi (barbecued marinated beef), tofu, fresh lettuce and cucumber, sauces, stews, and much more. This restaurant (actually it seemed more like someone's house) was located in Insa-dong, a traditional Korean artsy kind of place.
DRAGON BEARD CANDY. It is as fine as hair, and looks just like it. The guy was showing us how he made it... he takes a cold, hard block of honey and pokes a hole in it. He then coats it with cornstarch powder and makes it into a loop... then he doubles the loop... 2 fibers... doubles again... 4 fibers... again and again until there are 3920840392843092 (or so) fibers and the candy's ready!! Watch the video to see him go!
Insa-dong also sells a lot of yummy traditional Korean snacks on the street: - shik-hye, or sweet rice drink - yak-gwa, oily Korean honey cookie
- hodduk, a sweet fried Korean pancake with honey and sugar in the middle (my favorite)
- caramelized sugar candy on a stick with hearts and stars imprinted onto it. If you manage to get a heart out of the candy without breaking the outside, you get another candy for free! This is actually impossible...
- PATBINGSOO: I absolutely love this. It's shaved ice with toppings. Sweet red bean syrup, vanilla frozen yogurt, strawberries, kiwis, rice cake pieces, pineapple. Perfect for hot, humid Korean summers.
Insa-dong also has a good jjajangmyun (Chinese noodles) place where apparently the guy makes his own noodles, so I've gotta go back and try it!
WEDNESDAY, another day, more food.
KALBI. Possibly the most well known Korean food, after kimchi. Marinated, fatty, delicious BEEF.
Roast on your own personal fire, dip in spicy pepper paste and bean paste, transfer to a waiting leaf of red-leaf lettuce, add rice and kimchi, and stuff the resulting huge pocket of lettuce into your face. Bliss that everyone needs to experience at least once in his or her life.
This kalbi place is next to the train tracks in Sinchon, and had the best kalbi that I've ever had in my life. It's called Chulgi wang-kalbisal.
^ We ate that for dessert.
Just playing =p... not ready to eat bo-shin-tang (dog meat stew) yet...probably ever.
Here we had SOJU COCKTAILS. Yes, alcohol counts as food... So many flavors, but yogurt is the best! Although it sounds gross, it's something you've gotta try.
We went from this:
to this:
It's making Kaila crazy.
It's norehbang time...
Friday. The new Pirates of the Caribbean movie! Not too bad, although pretty Disney-fied. And the Johnny Depp-Keira Knightley kiss at the end......hot! Seriously, I'm in favor of Keira ditching Orlando Bloom (who makes a stupid bet and dooms his father to lifelong imprisonment... and did he ever stab the heart of Davie Jones like he promised to?? No!) for Captain Jack Sparrow (ahahaha, see this article Knightley begs for Depp Kiss).
Anyway, went to Hilton Millennium Hotel's casino-- only foreigners are allowed in, so bring your passport..
All gyopo =p There were actually tons of Japanese inside... The bar was free, and so was the food ^_^ got shrimp curry, and numerous cocktails
The bathrooms....scary Kaila was inside and I heard her SCREAM Apparently the toilets have special jets that shoot water at different parts of your rear.. hahaha, you can even choose "pulsating" water flow...
full and happy (if a few bucks poorer)
Saturday Party for my Sogang writing class... the email containing the directions was 4 pages long =// Me, forlornly trying to figure out which way to go..
Once we got there there were hot dogs, hamburgers (for the first time since I've been here), soju, juice, Krispy Kreme ;)
This class is so adorable!
Nighttime view of Itaewon
RAIN (monsoon season)
All this food has a consequence though... We went back to the gym today and got retested for body fat, muscle mass, weight, the works. I had the EXACT SAME stats as I did a month ago before I started working out! Haha, oh well... But our poor trainer was pretty disappointed.
Seriously, if I had to choose between Korean food and losing weight... let's just say it's no competition.
I recently discovered that the place that I am staying at, Cherryville Livingtel, has a pretty well-stocked kitchen. In addition to free rice and kimchi, the kitchen also has condiments, spices, oils, and BUCHIM GARU!
Buchim garu is somewhat like pancake mix... "Buchim" means to stick together, and garu means "powder". Basically, you combine the flour powder with water and some type of julienned vegetable (such as potato or Korean zucchini) or seafood mix to make a "buchimgae", or savory pancake.
Kimchi buchimgae, 김치 부침개, is my favorite type-- it's hot, crispy, and delicious! Also great with soju..
Here's how to make it:
Combine buchim-garu powder and cold water in this ratio: add ALMOST (not quite) twice as much water as buchim powder. Knowing this ratio is useful so that you can make however many buchimgaes that you'd like.. as little as two or as many as thirty!
Now mix this until the flour has dissolved and you are left with a white batter. If the batter looks not watery enough, remember that the kimchi that you put in will add some liquid to the batter.
Now, you add the kimchi. Make sure that it is cut into small to medium pieces. Keep adding pieces until it looks spicy enough! Personally, I like adding a lot of kimchi. However, make sure you don't add so much that there isn't enough batter to coat the kimchi pieces, or else you won't be able to make a pancake. Also, if you'd like, you can add a couple spoonfuls of kimchi juice.. this makes the batter more flavorful!
Heat a non-stick frying pan on low to medium heat. When it is hot, add vegetable oil, coating the bottom of the pan. Spoon out some batter onto the hot oiled frying pan and use a wooden spoon to spread the batter out evenly and thinly. THINis key--the buchimgaes will taste best when they are thin, crispy, and thoroughly cooked.
Make sure the heat is on medium-low so that your buchimgaes don't burn. After about 2 minutes, depending on the size of the buchimgae, one side should be done. Flip the buchimgae over so that the other side can cook. Add oil as needed so that the batter doesn't stick to the pan. Wait a minute or two so that this side can cook, and then transfer onto a plate, preferrably on top of a paper towel (I have to use the toilet paper rolls in the kitchen since napkins and paper towels don't exist in Korea!) so that the oil can drain out and the buchimgaes stay crispy.
Now continue making until your batter runs out! These taste best off right off the frying pan, hot and crispy. If you have leftovers, save them in the refrigerator, and you can refry them when you want to eat them later. Also, if you make a biiiig buchimgae pancake, use a knife to cut it into triangles, pizza style.
I can make this for FREE! Haha, there were two freaking full UNopened big bags of buchimgaru.. nobody uses them. Probably because you have to add oil to the pan to fry them, and oil is fattening. The only things that I see girls doing in the kitchen is peeling cucumbers, making a mixture of seaweed and water, and boiling cabbage leaves..diet diet!
Made dwenjang jjigae today in the kitchen!! Turned out DELICIOUS. It is also is a lot easier to make than I'd thought. Up at Yale, I always craved dwenjang jjigae, in a kind of helpless way. The only way I could get to it was to pay $10 for a bowl of it at overpriced Seoul Restaurant. Never again....can't wait for my Swing Space in-dorm kitchen next year. =p
Here's the recipe, compliments of my mom:
된장 찌개 / Dwenjang Jjigae
Add two tablespoons of dwenjang, or soybean paste, to two cups of water. Make sure the dwenjang is the kind used to make stew, not the dipping variety. It should have a picture of a bowl of soup on the cover. I used the free one that I got from the Sempio factory tour =) Once you have the dwenjang and water in a pot, add about three large dried anchovies. You can get these at a Korean market- make sure they're the largest variety, not the small baby ones. These large ones are specially sold for boiling, as a base. If you have red pepper flakes, add a spoonful of these as well.
Mix the dwenjang up in the water. You can use chopsticks for this; just roughly spread the paste around in the water, making sure it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan. IT WILL LOOK GROSS. Don't worry, you'll be left with something delicious. Continue...
Boil the soup for five minutes. When five minutes is up, take out the anchovies and discard. Add THIN slices of potato (since potatoes take the longest time to cook), slices of Korean zucchini cut into half moon pieces, minced garlic, a sliced hot green long pepper (jalapeno?) and cut up pieces of tofu. Make sure the tofu is the HARD variety, for stews (tofu comes in soft, medium, and hard textures). You'll probably end up using about half of a potato, half of a zucchini, and a spoonful of garlic. If instead of fresh garlic, you can use the pre-minced paste variety sold in a bottle, even better! Oh, and here's a picture of the Korean zucchini that is used: Yep. I picked it out of the garden myself.
Just kidding... Google image search. The zucchini also comes in a yellow variety.
Cut these vegetables up and add them to the pot. You should probably do all of the cutting and peeling BEFORE setting the dwenjang paste to boil. Kaila and I were rushing to throw pieces of vegetables into the overflowing pot because we hadn't done this... =p
Boil the vegetables quickly at a high temperature.. this should only take a couple minutes. To check if the stew is ready, use a pair of chopsticks to pick out one of the potato pieces and eat it...is it soft and cooked? Good, your dwenjang jjigae is DONE!
This should feed about two people. Eat with rice and a good appetite =)
