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!)

...

In the upper 10%

Here's a secret about me: I really don't care much for kimchi. Never have. Cucumber kimchi is tolerable to me, and I will eat cabbage kimchi to be polite, but if I never had to eat the stuff again for the next century or so, I wouldn't complain.

It's not the smell (I sort of like the smell). It's not the spiciness, although some of my lack of enthusiasm may have stemmed from my younger days when, as a child, I didn't even like to drink Coke because of the way the sharp bubbles hurt my mouth (also, my older brother loved cola and he was the mother of all monstrous older brothers, so I often took a dislike to things he enjoyed).

I do like some spicy things. My all-time favorite Korean comfort food is sundubu, which is not too heavily spicy but it's enough to put off a lot of people who grew up on nothing less bland than meatloaf. I don't really care much for the kochu-less kimchi either, so I really don't think that's it. I've never been a fan of cabbage, so that may be where this comes from.

I love kyŏja, that wasabi-like mustardy liquid that I so liberally squeeze into my naengmyŏn that any bite will cause a numbing sensation to shoot through my nose — I can't tell you how much I love that feeling.

Ask a group of adult KoKos (Korean-Koreans, born and raised) if they dislike kimchi, and no one will answer yes. Ask the same group of people with their eyes closed (yes, I've tried this) and you will get about 10% admitting that they don't like kimchi at all.

We are the upper ten percent.


[photo: Makes me want to have pizza]