Burmese kimchi?

With a hat tip to WK, I give you... Burmese kimchi!


The globalasianculture website describes it thus:

Mogok Rice Noodles with Stewed Chicken, topped with Shan Preserved Mustard Leaves, or 'Burmese Kimchi.'

To which WK editorialized:

NOOOOoooooo!!!!

The header for the email was "WTF?", but that's a long-running header for all sorts of things sent back and forth between several of us. (WK wasn't also fond of the idea of kimchi beer.)

I'm guessing I have less of a problem with the Burmese kimchi than WK. Y'see, folks like ZenKimchi are adeptly promoting Korean food like there's no tomorrow, and like everything else, that comes with unintended consequences. As Korean food becomes more "mainstream," I've seen more and more examples of the word kimchi being used as a descriptive stand-in for other countries' pickled vegetable dishes.

And someday, when we start hearing about Irish kimchi, we know that usage has arrived. In the meantime, I'm guessing that ZenKimchi (judging by his comment at the recent smoothie post) would rather see pickled mustard leaves described as kimchi than Kyochon Chicken, Smoothie King, Kraze Burger, Mr Pizza, and Paris Baguette, marketed as Korean food.

Now, I am not a foodie. Simply put, I'm lethargic about trying new things but I like just about everything put in front of me, including things others don't like and things I probably shouldn't like. But I must admit that pickled mustard leaves with some egg and banana (?) and mango (?) thrown in sounds very appealing. (Hawaii has made me love mango, except during mango season, when they are literally falling off the trees and you can't give 'em away!)

...

Recommendations?

I'm in Seoul until the end of the month, minus a side trip or two out of town. I have planned a long list of what's the same and what's different since I was last "home" (literally), which was three years ago (by far the longest I've been away from Korea since I was a teenager), but I'll do that another time.

In the meantime, I wouldn't mind some recommendations for places to eat, sip beverages, dance, read, or see cool stuff. So far I've been trying to fill my belly with food that is either impossible to find or prohibitively expensive in Honolulu and/or Orange County.

This has included decent samgyŏpsal (though, ironically, I wasn't a fan before), shrimp fried rice with jajang sauce (새우볶음밥) at a nice place not far from Yongsan-gu Ward Office, octopus pibimbap near the Dong-a Ilbo Building, etc. Nothing earth-shattering so far, and I'm on the lookout for some cheap shabu-shabu.

I may start poaching the restaurant suggestions at The Marmot's travelog, though probably not the mŏngmŏngtang.

Absent Yelp in Korea, any suggestions, recommendations, or inspirations? Online or off.

...

"L.A.'s first modern Korean restaurant?"

Or is the Los Angeles Times story, despite its inquisitive headline, merely bastardization fusion of Korean food?

I'll have more on this later, but right now I'm at the Kahala Mall Apple Store admiring the new iPads which I'm not going to get. (More on that later as well.)

Sent from my iPad

... 

Recycled panchan still a common practice?

From KoreaBeat, we get a story that many restaurants, including such ubiquitous mom-and-pop neighborhood chains as Kimbap Ch'ŏn-guk (김밥천국, Kimbap Paradise"), have been doing what many suspected was happening but are still grossed out by: the recycling of panchan.

From the KB translation:

A study has found that food products continue to be re-used. 98 well-known restaurants, including Kimbap Cheonguk, 밥&죽, and 지호한방삼계탕, were caught by health authorities.

According to Korea Food and Drug Administration statistics released to the office of Democratic Party National Assembly Representative Lee Nak-yeon, 98 restaurants nationwide were caught re-using left-over food last year, showing that the practice continues the same as ever.

Panchan, if you're not up to speed on Korean cuisine, are the myriad little "side dishes" you get at a Korean restaurant or even in a Korean home (it would seem panchan, spelled banchan in the atrocious Revised Romanization, means "half a dish," but the hantcha [飯饌] is closer to rice-food). If you don't eat everything on that little plate, the restaurants are supposed to dump the rest, but inside homes, recycling is probably the norm.

It would seem the illnesses you are most likely to get from recycled panchan would be things that show up much later and therefore are hard to trace back, like tuberculosis, H. pylori infection (which causes gastrointestinal ulcers and ultimately stomach cancer), and possibly hepatitis.

I rarely eat the panchan served in the cheap eateries for this reason, but I would find it disturbing if it's also the case at more expensive places, even middle price-range restaurants.

Maybe the unlimited panchan practice simply isn't sustainable anymore. Here in Honolulu, I got annoyed to find that the best-known Korean restaurants, like Sorabol, charge you for refills on certain panchan, but maybe that really is the way to go.

I just hope that the investigators have some teeth: if the cost of the fines (including being temporarily being shut down, if that's a possibility) is greater than what can be saved by recycling panchan, then maybe the practice will dramatically decrease.

In the meantime, maybe we as consumers can do our part by taking our leftover panchan and mixing them all together in a mishmash that the restauranteur can't possibly serve to the next customer.

oldgirl

Before.

Over at Seoul Eats, foodie-blogger and all-around-good-guy Daniel Gray has a cute video showing Alice Shin, the winner of the P.F. Chang blogging contest, downing a live octopus, à la oldboy. Okay, it's a smaller octopus than the one in the movie, but Alice Shin appears to be a smaller person as well, so it's all good.

During.

Apologies to Alice Shin herself, as I'm probably picking the most unflattering stills from the video. Because to me this is an ode to the eight-legged one, not the woman devouring it. Sure, there's probably the story of a marathon struggle of her own in there as well, but I usually root for the underpod (at one point before consumption it appears to attempt escape).

After.

Me, I prefer my live raw octopus sliced up. Whole live octopus is dare food. Like kimchi-flavored Everclear, pŏndegi, or Cheetos.

Also, I would have checked with my food-mates first to make sure they're up on their first aid, particularly the Heimlich maneuver.

Oh, and if Daniel Gray ever invites you to take a tour of Noryangjin Fish Market with him, take him up on it.

New and improved fruitcake

Today, December 27, is apparently National Fruitcake Day (and just in time for the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell — rimshot!). And in honor of today being National Fruitcake Day, all of today's stories will be written in fruitcake.

Okay. Obviously Kushibo did not get a sophisticated sense of humor for Christmas. But the National Fruitcake Day angle has an interesting twist to it: Korean bakers are introducing Korean-style fruitcake into the mix of doorstop-like blocks of dried fruit in a heavy cake.

From the Orange County Register:

There are at least two options for your Fruitcake Day festivities, and they both landed on our shore in 1985.

Your first option is for those of us (OK, the majority of people) who don't dig the sticky several-pound mass of dried fruit and nuts bought in round tins printed with holiday pictures.

Friends, we give you the Korean fruit cake, a delightful dish of sponge cake, custard and fresh fruit, layered up on a platter and covered with whipped crème. It's like the gussied-up, grown-up version of strawberry shortcake, with the addition of pineapple, kiwi and mandarin oranges.

At the Manmi Bakery in Garden Grove, Anna Yi sells two sizes, at $18 or $25. The cake is not specifically designed for Christmas, but rather for special occasions, like birthdays, she said.

"Each store has different kinds," Yi said. "Ours is more like an American-style. Other bakeries have a French style."

The French style has more fruit inside, but just a bit of fruit on the top of the cake, looking more like a Western-style cake, she said.

The cakes are not traditionally Korean, said Sejung Kim, assistant director of the UCLA Center for Korean Studies. The cakes grew popular in Korea in the 1980s, when people fell in love with the whipped cream icing, she said.

The story goes on to describe steam-baked Butterfield farm cakes, which sound really appetizing. When I'm back in OC, shall probably check out both. I've never been a big fan of Korean-style bakeries, some of which have dry and bland cookies and cakes, but I do like the moist, custard-filled cakes you find.

Now Manmi says they don't sell these as Christmas cakes per se, but back in Korea (and Japan and much of the rest of East Asia) this is exactly what people buy for Christmas (what some say is part of the destruction of Christmas in places like South Korea or Japan, where its newfound character as a second Valentine's Day has derisively earned it the nickname Sexmas... a pun that works in Japanese and Korean if you replace the Chinese character for 성/せい, meaning holy, with its homophonous counterpart meaning sex: 聖誕祭 replaced by 性誕祭, if I'm putting that together properly).

Back in the 1990s, there was one of those social commentaries that likened people to some person or object in order to illustrate a point. In this case it was women as Christmas cakes, with the date in December corresponding to their age. Around the 22nd or 23rd, it may be a little early but some people are buying the Christmas cake (bear in mind that this is Korean age, so we're talking 20 to 22). Around the 24th, lots of people are buying. By the 25th, that's the Christmas cake's last chance to be bought, because no one buys a Christmas cake from the 26th on. Yes, that's why a lot of women felt freaked out about being an old maid by the age of twenty-five, with many of them rushing off into a marriage to the least worst guy they could find.

I say women are like New Year's cakes... [Kushibo ducks]

Korean street food I miss

Wednesday and Thursday are my "big days," so in lieu of a ground-breaking report on why Kim Jong-un will not eventually be crowned secretary-general and the Western media is just involved in a... hmm... what's a polite term for circle jerk? ... I'll just give a post on street foods I miss.

Kyeranppang.

Way back when, when I told my s.o. that I missed Egg McMuffins, she told me to get a kyeranppang [계란빵] and wrap it with ham. She was right.

T'osŭt'ŭ.

This in no way resembles what a North American would be thinking if he/she asked for "toast," but t'osŭt'ŭ [토스트] has served me well as a quick breakfast when I'm in a rush to get to some meeting downtown.

Dŏkpokki. Aka topoki. 

There was a time when I would eat dŏkpokki [떡볶기] only if forced (which was not that infrequently, as my former fiancée and her sister would make me drive out to Shindang-dong to get this at the famous Dŏkpokki Street). But now I crave it. I am now on a mission to find this in Honolulu. Any suggestions?

Hottŏk.

I have many fond memories of exiting Namyŏng Subway Station for the ten-minute trek to my house in the snow or icy cold, when this warm, greasy pancake filled with brown sugary goo was the perfect way to maintain body heat on the way home. Well, either that or the roasted koguma (sweet potatoes).

Ironically, although Honolulu doesn't really get below 60°F (16°C), hottŏk [호떡] is the one street food I am able to find on Oahu, in one of the restaurant stalls in front of Don Quijote, a Japanese grocery chain near Ala Moana Shopping Center. I think they're about 75¢ each, if I recall. But without Siberian winds whipping at your cheeks, it's just not the same.

Advent of the Korean shoebox eatery™

I've never been to Western Massachusetts, but the NYT's description of this restaurant caught my attention:

The Pioneer Valley, home to a whole mess of Western Massachusetts’s finest higher-education operations, is not a bad place to eat per se. But I know from friends who live or have lived there that the options can feel limited. So I was stoked, when passing through last week, to be taken to a restaurant that I hadn’t heard of and actually liked: Gohyang Korean Restaurant, a shoebox of a place on Route 9. There’s no reason why there shouldn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t be a good Korean restaurant there, but I was quietly thrilled about it.

Gohyang is probably best known as “that Korean place in Hadley,” because the English-language signs one can read from the road identify it as “Korean Restaurant” and it is in Hadley, Mass. It’s housed in a smallish, bluish building with three doors: one for Gohyang’s Singing Rooms, a karaoke parlor; one for the restaurant; and one for Kim’s Oriental Mart, a place piled high with Korean kitchen supplies.

The last two Korean places I ate at in Orange County were a small but very tastefully decorated former Italian restaurant turned Korean and the Kogi Taco Truck, while the Korean places I frequent most in Honolulu are a shop at the end of an isolated strip mall near Ala Moana Center and a makeshift add-on in the Manoa Valley, so I'm liking the "shoebox eatery" description.

Not only is it a cool name, I think it's a cool concept. It doesn't take a lot of space to create a Korean restaurant, as any denizen of any Korean city will tell you. Of course, that doesn't mean you should skimp on the decor: If you hope to expand outside an AA clientele (and I don't mean AlAnon), you will need to make it look as if the place passes code with ease.

And that's another thing: Try to put a name in English on the outside (preferably an accessible name, but that's another post for another time) other than a descriptive signboard. It's going to be a bit troublesome when Korean-speaking locals are referring to "Kohyang" (the name in Korean), while non-Coreaphones are referring to it as "Korean Restaurant."

And maybe offer a ch'obo beginner's menu (à la Pho Hoa when they first came to Korea).

There. I've done my part for round 2 of the Korean Wave.

PETA goes after my sannakchi

I have to admit I quite enjoy live baby octopus [산낙지; sannakchi, aka sannakji], even if I don't have it that often. The scene in Oldboy where the protagonist shoves an entire live octopus into his mouth didn't particularly appeal to me on a gastronomic level, but I do appreciate the taste and texture of baby octopus (dipped in kochujang) that is so fresh its severed tentacles are still wiggling around on your chopsticks. 

PETA, however, objects [HT to reader]:

Showing cruelty of gastronomical proportions, restaurants in Manhattan (Sushi Uo) and Queens (Sik Gaek and East Seafood Restaurant) are chopping up and serving live octopuses to customers. Octopuses have their tentacles cut off while they are still conscious and are then served, writhing, while their hearts are still beating. Others are slowly steamed alive in front of customers before their tentacles and upper bodies are cut into small pieces with scissors.

And they're trying to make the case that these are smarter creatures than we realize (the same argument applied to dogs, dolphins, and whales):

Because octopuses have sophisticated nervous systems and feel pain just as acutely as mammals do, we feel that the restaurants' practices clearly violate the state's anti-cruelty statute. Recently, octopuses were observed carrying around coconut shells to use as shelter—making these complex cephalopods the first known invertebrate animals to use tools. These "deep" thinkers are also fond of decorating. They decorate their dens with bottle caps, stones, and other objects that they find on the ocean floor. They are so smart that they can also learn how to do things such as unscrew jars by watching someone else do it—once!

I'm not sure I buy that high-consciousness argument, as the ones that are eaten aren't exactly the large and smart ones, and so much of its motor movement is obviously separate from the brain itself. At any rate, how can you not want to eat them when in the plural of their species, you're reminded of pie?

Anyway, I guess this is one time it's for the best that Korea is in the shadow of Japan, because they're mostly picketing sushiya, not hoétchip.

Sigh. What disappoints me most about this campaign is that it doesn't involve naked celebrities covered in cephalopods, a form of publicity PETA is wont to engage in. I promise to stop eating them if you get me naked celebrities covered in cephalopods. Of my choosing (the naked celebrities, not the cephalopods).

UPDATE: I've decided to add a little artwork to this post, including the main character in Oldboy, Oh Taesu, devouring the aforementioned octopus. Below is the female protagonist's (Kang Hyejŏng) reaction to said devouring. In the interest of keeping this blog family-friendly, I will spare you the jokes that he picked the wrong thing to eat raw.

dead baby fish versus cheese

I had an interesting discussion with one of my dorm mates. We're in one of these "international" dorms where everyone is supposed to be open-minded and nonjudgemental. But when he finds that people are leaving used paper towels and chopped up food piled high in the sinks of the community kitchen, he wonders out loud whether some of our neighbors—who include many Americans—were either born in a barn or have grown up in such privilege that they simply don't know how to take care of themselves by cleaning up their own mess.

And yes, we do have someone coming every night at 11 p.m. to clean up the kitchens, which would only serve to reinforce the latter condition.

After that tirade, the discussion moved on toward other intolerable things. When it comes to food, there is only one that this neighbor finds insufferable, and that is what he describes as "dead baby fish." He's not sure what the name is, but he's fairly certain it's from Vietnam (though this does not mean he dislikes Vietnamese food).

In all fairness to Asian culinary quirks, he said, folks back in East Asia don't always have the most pleasant impression of typical American food either. He recounted a Chinese person he knew who vomited immediately upon eating his first Dorito. "We'll make more" may sound more like a threat than an encouraging message for this guy.

Naturally, my own thoughts went back to Korea, where things like Doritos and foods that probably would fall into the "dead baby fish" category are both quite popular. I described for this neighbor pŏndegi [번데기; also beondegi], commonly known as silkworm larvae. This is the one single food in Korea I find offensive to the sense of taste and smell. The best way I can describe it is that it smells like someone is cooking dirty socks and it tastes even worse.

Korean kids love pŏndegi, which is still sold by street vendors near schools. Even nowadays, despite changing tastes geared more and more toward fast food. And that's the other thing: Koreans* love cheese. Big Macs, pizza, cheese sticks, TGI Friday's fried mozzarella, etc. If it contains cheese, tastes like cheese, or has cheese in the title, it will be gobbled up and more will be demanded. McDonald's and Pizza Hut franchises are on virtually every corner, ready to serve up cheesy items filled with cheese.

No Korean except some old fogey living up in the hills would ever vomit upon eating a Dorito, or Cheetos, which is also hugely popular.

If someone starts marketing cheese-covered pŏndegi, they'll make a fortune. Cheese-filled pŏndegi might also fare well, but it would be harder to produce. How do you get those little larvae to munch on those cheese slices?

The weird thing, however, is that — despite the love of cheese — the smell of cheese is offensive to a lot of people in Korea. In fact, one of the complaints I hear about Westerners is that they "smell like cheese." I was told by one Korean that I must have strong Korean DNA because I was the only American he'd met who didn't have that odeur de fromage wafting about them. (I may have a weird chemical make-up, because a Canadian woman I'd dated told me I was the only foreigner she knew in Korea who didn't smell bad despite the lack of deodorant.)

That got me thinking that the average Korean may in fact have a very wide-ranging palate that runs the gamut from "dead baby fish" to cheese. Koreans are even known to like natto, considered by many to be the vilest of all Japanese cuisine (though I happen to like it, especially when mixed with warm rice). All the flavors of the rainbow — except cilantro. For some reason, Koreans and cilantro are like vampires and garlic.

So to sum up:

1. Many Westerners don't like pungent fishy smells.
   
2. Doritos can make some East Asians vomit.
3. Most Koreans love smelly fish AND cheese (though it's not clear if they would like them in combination).
4. I was able to woo a Canadian woman because I smelled okay despite not using deodorant.
5. Koreans enjoy a wide range of tastes, but hate cilantro.
6. Vampires hate garlic. 
7. Pŏndegi smells like dirty socks being stewed. 
8. Natto not so bad.

* By "Koreans" I am by no means referring to 100.0% of the population. If I had to venture a guess, this broad generalization probably covers about three-fourths of the population, give or take. As with any country, it's rare that you would get more than 80% or 90% of Koreans agreeing on any one particular issue, not even a love of kimchi.