Peter Green

***** Interlude ******* Breaking News! News.yahoo.com has a story from JAE-SOON CHANG, Associated Press Writer that just showed up an hour or two ago about a new venture selling fried chicken in North Korea What it boils down to (or fries up to) is that Choi Won-ho, who has a franchise of about 70 shops (but what's the name of the franchise?) across South Korea, announced that he'll open a chicken restaurant in Pyongyang on Nov. 15. Plus, his shop'll deliver chicken and draft beer by phone order. Let me check out the window to see if it's frozen over out there! We now return to our regularly scheduled drivel.

The Flavour Of A Long Time Ago. Big Beef Kalbi! (That sounds like the title from an episode of a One Piece anime) October 17 - dinner Jason said ‘hole in the wall” and Jason meant “hole in the wall”. There was seating for maybe 16 inside, stools clustered around oil drum burners, rolls of toilet paper hanging from rods attached to the grease and soot (or suet?) blackened ceiling. But it was a beautiful evening, and a nice family asked us to please take the next table outside, ahead of them. It helps having a kid regarded as “cute”. This was definitely old-school charcoal grilling. Smack in the middle of the table was a glowing yeontan, warming our knees while providing our lungs with a protective coating of The yeontan station was just outside the door, and there was a constant back and forth as the bearded head chef bustled about getting more heat going on the tables. I also noticed that the best way for cleaning a charred grill is to get a big piece of beef fat and use that to scrub down the metal. Nice and toasty, we called in some soju and beer, and started sipping at the big bowl of wet kimchi they’d brought out. This was chilled way down, with ice crystals in the fluid, meant to give you the feeling of eating kimchi in the winter. The draw here is Han-U, the marbled Korean beef. It’s a combination of excellent meat, and excellent prices. They haven’t bothered to keep up with the competition as they’ve raised prices, they’re just happy to be filled all day long, day in, day out. The meat that arrived was beautiful, a solid slab dropped onto the grill, garlic spread about, and the cooked to a good just-off rare, scissored up, and finished, to be taken with the usual lettuce, ddaenjang, garlic, and spring onions. Along with Hite (Jason was driving, so no soju for him) we kept the cheom cheoreom soju coming. As the serving staff (the old guy and the old lady) were running solid, customers would just go to the cooler and pull out bottles for the table. This’d be tallied up later. With the meat came a big bowl of soup with a lovely hunk of meat. The meat had a texture like a good pot roast. You would just pull the flesh off. This was matched by kunnamul and sheets of mu for crispness. The second bowl of meat was a wet marinade, a little sweet, with lots of green onion and garlic. We thought there was a hint of red wine, or plum liquor, in there somewhere. Jason slopped it out onto the grill, the yeontan sputtering as the liquid hit the glowing red charcoal, and a great, heady steam of garlic coming up in the air (okay, this is Korea. There’s always a heady steam of garlic in the air). This was a good meal. There, I’ve gone Hemingway on you. How could any carnivore not appreciate this? The fat in the meat is just right, filling out all the notches in your palate, the grease to be cleared with shots of cold soju, scrubbed with the kim chi, and then relayered with another round of meat, bean pastes, spring onion, and roasted garlic. Yeah, I’m kind of enthusiastic about this place. Good food. Great streetside atmosphere. And excellent prices. Okay, it’s not going to be taking any Michelin stars, and the wine cellar isn’t quite there…….but I still like it. I dropped into the kitchen with Jason to check things out. I’d watched the weighing of the beef, but I wanted to look over the counter and see the goods themselves. Mr. Yi SokHi was quite happy to have his picture taken, and had no problems with being posted, so I happily obliged. He’s younger than he looks, it’s the beard that does it. The restaurant as well, jammed into this odd little diagonal corner of a non-descript building on the main street in Mapo (why didn’t we get off at the Mapo stop?), has only been here for 7 years. You look at it, and just based upon the thickness of the grease on the ceiling, you’d swear it’d been here forever. You wonder about the decisions he made that put him here (he was way too busy for us to do much more than compliment him), but it was obvious he didn’t regret any of them. Now, nothing in life can be perfect. In the case of this restaurant there was one missing element that we reflected upon as the last of the beer settled into our system. There was no toilet. At least not one we’d thought about before we got in the car and got stuck into traffic. We drove, and drove quickly, to Apgugeong. We dodged, we wove, and we did some interesting U-turns and reversals. But we made it. In time. Just. (I kept the camera rolling through the drive across the river and into the streets of Gangnam “south of the river”. This should make an interesting cut when it’s done) Pojang Macha'ing - icha Nori People is Jason’s pojang macha – literally a “covered stall”. Okay, in this case it’s a lot more permanent, built out from a shopfront, but the idea is a soju tent, basically a mobile stall that’s put up a tarp to keep the elements at bay while the Koreans can concentrate on the important work of drinking soju. Still, even if it’s more upscale than the usual curbside vision-challenging speakeasy, it was fun. One of the signature items here (and a current trend in Apgujeong – remember AFS/Café Ahn ) was mixing soju. Tonight we were mixing soju with yogurt drinks. You poured a couple of bottles of soju into a small amount of yogurt drink, gave it a firm cyclonic whirl, and you had something……interesting. The yogurt gave it an animal-husbandry sort of consistency, and sweetened it up considerably. This went down very easy. And Jason had been extolling the kimchi chigae here for anju. Not the normal sort of dish I’d associate as beer food…… but the chigae had a depth and richness to it that I’d have to say made it the best of the chigaes we’d had so far. From the first spoonful of the broth I was hooked on this. Serena, our 9 year old barhopper, settled into her corner seat and was quite content with a piece of ddeok and her new book. I could see why Jason favoured the place. “Outside” in the tent, we had a great people-watching venue. We could watch the young and fashionable starting up the night (it was only around 10), and we could intercept those passersby that Jason new. The yogurt and soju kept coming, and we ordered more chigae to get us by. But at some point well after midnight, as I attempted to stand, it struck me that this might be a good time to be heading home. One of Jason’s friends had taken on the designated driver role, so we left Jason (more people were still coming), and headed home. I do remember the car being parked. Luckily we had Serena to get us to the right floor. Note: edited 'cause Yoonhi wacked me upside the head and told me it's "pojang" not "hojang". I asked her what hojang meant and she said "I've no idea" and then laughed at me.

October 17 – Cultured This was not one of those mornings when I sprang out of bed. I did have the questionable satisfaction, however, of being up before everyone else, which time I spent gloomily surveying the remains of my Lao coffee I’d brought with me. At the current rate of consumption, I would run dry two days before departure. I’d just have to tough it out. If worst came to worst, there was a Starbucks on the ground floor. We wandered around the corner of Jason’s building to a noodle house that he frequented. We arrived at the wrong time, just after 12, to find it was packed out, and we waited outside for a table. Once inside, we ordered bowls of mandoguk (dumpling soup) and kkalguksu (seeing as the place was a kkalguksu specialty shop). The broth for these was incredibly milky, so much so that I’m pretty certain that they’d put milk in it, which isn’t something I normally associate with Korean food. This didn’t have the taste of seollaentang, it was something different. The soups were topped with shredded gim, green onion down under the surface, and there were drizzles of egg in the mix. Jason and I are both heathens in Yoonhi’s eyes, and we plopped our rice into the guk, using that to add to the starch experience. This padded us out enough that we were ready to see what was for sale on the underground. On the way there, we saw signs of people getting ready to start making a lot of kimchi. The underground trip itself was taking us North across the river, our aim being a cultural day at the Gyeongbokgun Palace, to the North of the city. There were a few surprises on the trip. The first was finding the National Museum closed. Serena and I were heartbroken. It’s actually quite well designed, very modern and set into the environs so it doesn’t jar like the old National Museum building did. The second surprise was the old National Museum building, originally the Government General building from the Japanese occupation of Korea. It wasn’t there. This wasn’t something that struck me all at once. In fact, it was something that nagged at me after the day was over. But the blocky old “almost Soviet” looking thing which had been erected in front of the old Korean throne hall was gone. I looked it up. In 1995, for the 50th anniversary of the Liberation of Korea (Korea was occupied from 1910 to 1945) the building was destroyed, a park put in its place, and the rubble of the old building put on display in the open. It goes to show my powers of observation that none of this had stuck with me in 1998 when we were here and toured the new museum. So, we set aside museums for the moment, and toured Gyeongbok Palace, which has had more restoration lavished upon it since last I was there. Restoration is something that it needed. The original palace was destroyed by the Japanese in the Imjin War (1592-1598) when Hideyoshi set his sites on China, and Korea just happened to make a good starting point. Afterwards it lay shattered until 1867 (partly money issues, partly a question of not being “auspicious”), when King Kojong’s father, the Prince Regent, began reconstruction as a “national unity” symbol, trying to get power recentralized. Unfortunately, the Japanese came back to visit. This started in the mid1890’s with the Sino-Japanese war, got uglier with the assassination of the independence-minded Queen Min by “Resident Minister” Miura Goro’s men (found innocent in Japan for lack of evidence afterwards) and climaxed with their just grabbing the whole country in 1910. At that point the ugly old building went up in front of the throne hall, the royal family was moved over to Changdok Palace, and the Royal Palace was broken down and sold off to the publilc. (From a food perspective, it’s interesting that the Japanese sold off a number of the palace buildings to be used as Japanese restaurants on the slopes of Mt. Nam.) So, it hardly seems unreasonable that the old building, a symbol of those days, was gone. I suppose it’s strange it lasted so long. The museum rents audio guides, and I recommend these to anyone traveling with little kids. Serena has the usual interests in museums and culture of a child her age – that is “zero”. But once we plugged her in, and she had an orderly route to be followed (“no, now we go over here!”) she quite enjoyed things. I was merrily videoing most of this, camera collecting footage that I’m going to have to get around to doing something with. I subscribe to the Clockwork Orange approach to raising children. They may not remember their trips, but they’ll remember the home videos with fear and trepidation. While shooting, I wandered up to the North Gate of the palace, shooting the Blue House, the President’s residence, framed through the gate. Right away three very large Koreans in suits with bulges started walking across the street towards me. I played dumb tourist and started videotaping a tree, ambling off before they could catch up. I must do dumb really well, as they didn’t follow (and I don’t think those guys give up easily if they have real concerns). Along with the palace visit, we also have admission to the National Folk Museum of Korea. Again, something wasn’t right. I remember an old, blocky building of two floors with an open centre. At the time (1992) we couldn’t visit the ground floor, as it was being used for a wedding. This makes sense, as the current building was opened in 1993, according to Wikipedia (although that’s no guarantee of accuracy). We were racing to get here. The museum closed its doors to entry at 5 p.m., and we had to return the audio guide before they shut their desk up at the front of the palace, as well. We made it through the doors with about 90 seconds to spare. The space works much better than the old box, I’ll say that. There was a good exhibit on the ground floor of sounds in Korean life, covering farms, day-to-day, music, and, of course, cooking. When the Koreans talk about culture, they talk cooking. There was an excellent diorama (I love dioramas) covering the kimjang process, covering the entire communal process of making kimchi (I think Doddies got a posting or two of this on her side). The ingredients are cleaned and sorted, then there’s the brining, the draining, and then the mixing in of the ingredients, the resubmerging, and the fermentation. Remember, it takes a village to ferment some kimchi. The exhibit also detailed a number of the other ways in which food permeates Korean culture. (I’m not obsessive, am I?) Throughout the year, there are certain fixed dates that require certain types of foods to be served. Lavish meals will be put out (with accompanying booze) to settle the spirits and show proper respect. The most important of these is Chuseok, which takes place in early October. The old Confucian halls at Jongmyo pack out with ceremony, but, more critical, the majority of Seoul is depopulated as pretty much everyone gets out of town and back to the provinces to celebrate. And those are just the big, everybody-does-them fests. Individually, families may or may not celebrate a huge number of other rites. I say “may or may not” as it depends upon the religion you hold with, and if you’re holding to just that one. Chaeseo was one of my favourites. If you’re the eldest son (or, moreover, if you’re the wife of an eldest son) then it’s expected that you’ll make offerings to the family spirits on the anniversaries of their death, birth, Chuseok and New Year’s. This goes for a minimum of grand parents level, and way more if you happen to have the good luck to be the head of the line. And if you think the Mormons spend a lot of time on genealogies, they don’t hold a match to the Koreans. Registry of the families – the Hojeok - goes way, way back, with a lot of attention having been paid as to who is at what position in the hierarchy, and what common names are to be used for the children. For chaeseo the favourite foods and drink are laid out. The fruits are “topped” so that the ghosts can get at the food without having to peel and oxidize everything. Likewise any bottles are opened, so the ghosts don’t have to unscrew, decork, or pop a tab. I’m personally fond of chaeseo, because, after the spirits have had their fill, the food gets eaten. Sensible. This display of rice cakes is out for hwangap, the 60th anniversary. The 100th day, the first birthday, and the 60th are the ones that get all the attention. A standard Korean serving set, in brass, is a fairly daunting collection of bowls. Bowls for soup, for chigae, for stews. Bowls for rice, for panchan, for sauces. They’ve got bowls. And, given that our local source for tofu has packed up, we were interested in seeing the process detailed for us here. I should’ve bought that grinding stone I saw in Seoraksan. Anybody have any good ideas on what to use for a coagulent? The museum also had lots of details on brewing. I’ve a copy of a map of Korea, with each of the provinces’ “nationally famous wines” located. But that’s all in Hangul, and it’s going to take me some time to work through it all. Here’s the quote from one of the displays In Korea, liquors are made from rice, wheat flour and other grains and yeast and liquor itself are used for fermentation. Under husband-dominated paternalistic family systems in the past, each family had a supply of rice liquor for the spring, summer and autumn and rice liquor and distilled liquor for the winter to entertain guests, offer to the spirits during ancestral memorial services and drink as part of the meal. It sounds like winter was the time to visit. The museum also covered details of the mudang, the shamans of Korea (almost always female) who are still practicing. One bit of information that showed up in the statistics indicates that there are over 50,000 registered mudang (fees paid to the government for licenses) in Korea, which puts them somewhat ahead of the number of Protestant ministers. The display they had set up showed an exorcism for small pox. The mudang had her bells in hand (noise/sound is important), and her hat and knife on the side, and other implements laid out at the ready. And even for an exorcism, you need food. And, naturally, there were textiles. Lots and lots of hanbok, the traditional Korean dress. The format shows the material to excellent effect in broad swaths of fabric, and you can’t help but feel cheerful when you see the bright colours that are traditionally used. We were pushing 6 p.m., and we needed to meet Jason over at Gondok station at 7p.m. This meant we had to get out, spend some time in a book store across the street looking at cat books with Serena, then race down Insdong, and get onto the purple line. Insadong was hopping, but, after the bookstore we were running short on time, and I only had the chance to shoot one picture of the yot (candy) sales on the streetside. The taffy comes in a broad, broad sheet, and it’s shaved off. Having blown through the Street of Tourist Shops (Insadong is a lot more touristy now than it used to be), we made it to the underground, got to our target, and then Jason picked us up from the topside exit (all Korean undergrounds have exit numbers, so if you’re meeting people, you just say “exit #1” or whatever), and we were on our way to a hole in the wall. Literally. Next: Meating Place

Milg, I sometimes wonder if there's a Star Trek style Borg continuum that Korean mom's operate on, whereby they automatically share all common knowledge. Thinking about that and the innate knife skills can keep me awake nights.

Doddie, The kids are happiest with the ones that you prefer, running around about 1 inch or 2 cm I'd say. Serena's been working through that box from the Food Expo pretty fast. Thanks, Peter

Hi, Sheena, Yup, we're serious. It takes ages to draw that essence out of the bones. 8 hours will get you a good meat broth from oxtail, which we use for our miyokguk at home 'cause we can't get clams (oh, it tasted so good on the East Coast of Korea with clams), but you don't get the "milkiness". Cheers, Peter

Sheena, Yoonhi says they'd use neck, knee and other bones, with no meat left attached. But oxtail should work really well. You boil it for a few days, and it ends up milky white. You just have to be really, really patient. (Try munching on the skinned penis worms while you wait )

I'm leaning to the spicy crabs, but part of that is going to be, I know, fallout enthusiasm from my nephew and his friends. Downside on the spicy crabs, though, is the sauce itself. It's a lot messier than the soy ferments, with the sauce getting all over your fingers like good bbq. I found I needed to lick the legs off first, and then work at sucking out the lungs and guts. I couldn't find a recipe for kejang (we have one for kejeot, but that's not the same). I asked Yoonhi "So, if you were going to make this, how would you do it then?" "I'm not. Someone else can come up with the recipe." I know when to stop.

Okay, I'll admit right out that, outside of kimchi chigae, Yoonhi does the Korean cooking in our house (as I like chigae for breakfast, and Yoonhi likes to sleep, this is the one exception). When we were at the Cultural Museum (coming up next) and in the area nearby, we were scouring bookstores for Korean cookbooks. Of the Korean cookbooks that are in English, this one is still the most "complete". Now, I find that the ingredient amounts can be Korean at time ("how much do we use?" "Oh, you just use the right amount, you know!"), whereas Yoonhi is very comfortable with the book. But I question if that's in part as she knows most of the recipes already, and the book just acts as a trigger. Be that as it may, she compared what she found in other books with this, and felt that she'd need three or more of the others to cover everything in here. This in part points out the need for more up to date cookbooks. There's a lot going on in the restaurants this trip that we weren't seeing in the 90's. The material is probably there in the Korean texts, but it'd be good to see that getting translated and made more accessible. But I am an evil cockroach!

You've made a big boy very happy.

Alright! It's sushi day. I'm going to have to send Yoonhi to buy some fish. I think we still have some uni about.....

October 16 – Back to the City Jason had received a call the night before asking if he could make it back to Seoul for a gig. This put us home a day early, but I was beginning to miss Seoul, so I saw no problem with the change. The only issue would be getting everyone out of bed in time. As expected I was the lone body leaving the motel that morning, laptop in my bag, jauntily traipsing the block downhill to the restaurants. I knew my needs, and their capabilities. Stepping past the grilling fish I entered the same restaurant and took a conveniently unoccupied table near the window (disregard the fact that all the tables were conveniently unoccupied). The young lady who’d been grilling the fish (is it the same one) raced to bring me the “English” menu, but I cheerfully called out for kimchi chigae, which stopped her in her tracks with a slightly furrowed smile, after which she ran back to the kitchen. At this point it dawned upon me (mornings are like that) that I’d left the camera behind. So, in a refreshing return to past days of actually writing about food, let’s recap what I had. The chigae itself was a splendid example of morning dining. All the reds and oranges of what at the start of the day would “give sailors warning”. Bright red oil pooled on the surface, clawing like lava at the pale tobikos who fought to keep their caps above the surface. The spring onion, bright green, floating in the red broth, gave the impression of an LSD version of a logjam in a backwater pool, as mist (or in this case steam) lifted to the heavens, the long bulk of the steam half submerged. With my panchan today came myulchi, the little anchovies my family holds so dear (Scud was on the phone the other day pleading with us not to eat all of the ones we brought back before he got here in December). These myulchi weren’t all dried out, as we have them overseas, but pliant. Crisp, but still with some yield. You could almost imagine that there’s some life still in their eyes as you move them into your mouth. The miyok (seaweed) is thick and vinegared, clearing my palate as I wait for the chigae to be ready, and the mushrooms, which I’d enjoyed the other night, are softer today, fresher, with some chilis added in, but with no perceptible burn. Along with the chili, the mushrooms are set off with sesame seeds and minced garlic. I would rave about the mu kimchi and baechukimchi, but honestly, it attested the same. And I must aver that the spinach was still green. It’s a happy environment to take one’s breakfast. The older ladies in the kitchen are talking away like unleashed typewrites, and the young lady out grilling her fish is laughing along from the street. With time, more customers arrive, and as each car pulls up, she trips out to them, all smiles and laughs, bows, and ushers them into the restaurant. I lingered over my meal, enjoying the richness of the broth and the solid pieces of pork to go with the kimchi. A spoon of broth, some rice, a bit of panchan, some kimchi from the chigae with a bit of pork, and all repeated again. Soon enough I was done. I tried to pay, but the young lady insisted that I had to have coffee. Luckily, I’d been schooled to ask for “black”, so what I received was not preloaded with sugar and cream. And, as I enjoyed this, my phone lit up, letting me know that the family was now awake, and in search of sustenance. I advised them of my location, finished my coffee, and ordered a beer. Well, it was after breakfast, after all. Our motel owner had recommended this same one to Yoonhi when she’d left to meet me, but such rec’s should be taken with a grain of gochugaru around here – still, we were happy with what they cooked, and the panchan was better than the place we’d dined at the first night.. Yoonhi collected me, and we returned to the motel, packed, and hit the road, stopping only to take one quick picture of the restaurant we’d been patronizing these last two days. We’d given ourself plenty of time to get back to Seoul. This meant that, instead of the expressway (which has all of the efficiency and charm of I5 down the West Coast of the US) we could take the smaller roads through the hills. Our first stop, though, was for food. We hit Yangyang, just past Sokcho. This is the international airport for this area, which means they’re servicing China and Japan, I should expect. It’s a pretty town as pretty non-descript towns go. Mid-sized, with nothing much to recommend it. But for us, it was a pit stop before we kicked off the next few hours of driving. Jason spotted the local franchise of Kimbap Cheonguk “Kimbap Heaven” next to a donut shop. We took over a table for four (which would’ve been better for two) in the packed restaurant, and did a quick check of what was available. This is the sort of place that makes somebody else rich. If you’re getting ahead, you either own one really good, popular restaurant which you look after yourself, or else you have a chain with a recognizable name, and staff it with low paid Chinese and North Korean employees. The difference in attitude shows. I was comparing the rather glum faces I saw about me here with the smiles and laughter of the family place I’d had breakfast at. Still, the food was good. Jason ordered a bowl of ryabokki – ddeokbokki with ryamen noodles. If you need a hit of starch, this is the thing to order. Serena had her usual ddeokguk, a mass of white, with some crumpled kim (nori) on top. And we ordered a roll of kim bap (this was “heaven” after all) and another roll of maeun gochu kimbap – “spicy kim bap roll”. The standader kimbap was the “everything kimbap” – with processed cheese, carrot, tuna fish, hot dog, sausage, egg, and takuan. The “spicy roll” had a good swab of gochugaru and vinegar down alongside the hotdog, takuan, carrot, egg, and spinach (dropping the cheese and sausage) they’d layered in there. A reasonable bite, at least enough of one that Serena wasn’t going anywhere near it. Yoonhi, over on her side of the table, had galguksu “knife noodles” while I had suchaebi. The galguksu are noodles that are formed by cutting with a knife, a thicker noodle. The dough is made by hand, rolled, and then cut. Yoonhi, however, is suspicious of how even the noodles are, and suspects the intervention of machines (noodle robots?). The suchaebi I had is another variant on noodles. This is galguksu dough, but taken in hunks rather than as noodles. With this we had beer. There’d be more than enough time for soju later on. While we ate (or rather, waited for Serena to finish) Jason grabbed a sports paper and caught up on who was playing who. He walked me through the rag – the Sports Chosun. This is intended to be a sports paper, right? But, aside from a random smattering of pieces on the baseball league and who’s playing tennis or golf, the vast bulk of the paper was social gossip, all about who was dating who, and who was seen at what party. Celebrity driven, of course. On the bright side, the paper carried three solid pages of comics! A lot more of which is serialized over here, like it used to be back when I was young and you eagerly awaited the next installment of Tarzan or the Phantom. My greatest disappointment, though, was the total lack of paduk (go). The recaps of the paduk tournaments and key games used to always be covered in the papers. Not anymore. We are in the twilight of civilization, I keep on saying. In its stead, the modern Korean plays Starcraft. World of Warcraft has caught on to a certain extent, but it’s Starcraft and Counterstrike that hold the bulk of the populace in thrall. The gaming system in Korea is now targeting the kids in middle school to start filling out the ranks of the gaming leagues. In the old days, these were the kids who would join the school paduk and changi teams (changi is closer to chess), and would set aside their studies to practice for 8 hours a day in the hopes of making it into the pro levels. Now, it’s 8 hours a day of video games, with the prize being a spot on the circuit, and purses that can earn you six figures (in dollars, not won) a year. Yoonhi tells me not to give up my day job. After lunch we hit the road again, beginning a series of switchbacks that took us up into the heart of the mountains. Construction was underway, with one lane pretty much perpetually shut down. Luckily, there wasn’t a lot of traffic, and we only nearly died once when a large truck ploughed out of a blind junction and nearly t-boned us. Other than that, it was a pretty benign drive as we wound and weaved our way up. The scenery was better and better as we climbed, with more of the jagged rocks capping the hills. And the leaves were perking up, their colours opening with every day. “In a couple of weeks it’ll look really good!” After passing the mineral springs at Oseak we arrived at the top of the mountain, at Hangyereong Pass, where we took a leg stretch and then cowered inside the rest stop, sheltering from the cold. It was brisk out there. The views here were excellent. Craggy peaks to the south of us, and more steps climbing up the hillside behind us. Inside there was a string of vendors – boiled potatoes (little ones), and hoddeok, and ddeokbokki, and odaeng. And they had booze. They had a great selection of dongdongju, with mushroom flavour being the standard. This area is reknown for its pine mushrooms, so this is hardly a surprise. And there was more alcohol to be had. The one second from the right in this picture is called “angel’s tears” – cheonsaeui nunmul. To its left is Autumn Chrysanthemum wine, a soju of dried chrysanthemum petals (gukhwaju). Beside that, the shapely bottle is songiju (mushroom wine). And then there’s our friend from the other night. Except this bottle is way cooler. This one is labeled as bulgunju. I’m afraid to ask what that means. After our pit stop it was a few more hours drive to get back to Seoul. As Jason’s one of the only people in Korea without a GPS, navigation fell on me, madly trying to keep up with the hangul on the map. But this wasn’t a big problem, as, once we’d descended from the hills and the motorway became a full-fledged freeway, signage was pretty good. Eating, drinking, and socializing in this quirky culture – strongly traditional, but also cutting edge in many ways, you forget you’re in a country that is still technically at war. There’s a cease fire (which more or less holds) but it’s not peace. We came across a rifle company marching up the side of the road – about 120 men armed to the teeth, with a healthy spotting of anti-tank weapons on the bigger guys. I know better than to take pictures. The one that woke us up, though, was when we came back across the Han River on the bridge, and an Apache took station alongside us, bringing its armament to bear on the traffic. Right after that we saw what at first we thought was a drone diving into the traffic, but then we realized it was just a radio controlled plane. A pretty big radio controlled plane, but not one that involved explosives. Wakes you right up, that does. We drove straight to Jason’s work. The studio was just off of Apgujeong, so while he spent some time getting the intonation right, I wandered about, taking in the daytime ambience. Like I say, as long as you like Korean food, this town can really grow on you. Jason did one other piece at another studio, and then we were free to get home, unpack, and go looking for dinner. Dinner tonight was in another old neighborhood Jason had lived in for awhile. This was Nonhyun Dong, by the Kyobo Building interchange. We were dining this evening at Kaesongjib. This place is in Jason’s two favourite places (the first place going to the samgyepsal place we did the first night). The specialty here is fatty beef – chadolbegi. Thinly cut, and sporting broad racing stripes of fat. As it was the specialty, we had to order it. But we hadn’t come here for the beef. We came for the crab. Jason and his friends referred to this place as the “spicy crab place”. As part of the panchan, you had all the crab you could eat. This was much like the fermented crab we’d had with Doddie in Icheon, but here it was slathered in a gochujang sauce that was extremely mild, and sweet and thick on the palate. As you’d expect, the beef is taken as ssum,with ddeanjang, lettuce for the wrapping, and salt and sesame. Plus the other panchan you’re getting used to now. Serena watched the meat sizzling on the foil like a vulture watching a dying Englishman braise in the dessert. We needed some chigae, so we ordered a soon dubu chigae for the table. Now, instead of the ground beef texture we’d just been getting accustomed to we had the soft silkiness of little rectangles again. As I’d mentioned, there was time enough for soju with dinner. We stuck with chamisul, the Jinro 19% soju. This does an excellent job of washing away any cloyiness in your mouth as you munch through the beef fat. The meat went quickly. It was good, and Serena ordered some more, but my pork levels had been getting dangerously low, so we ordered some pig neck “mogsal”. With this, we also called for more garlic, and tossed it onto the foil. I hadn’t paid it much attention, but now that I think on it, I suppose we were eating about two bulbs of garlic at each of our dinners when we were grilling. The pork gets scissored wrapped in lettuce, sauced, and topped up with green onion, kimchi, and garlic. You know the drill by now. But the real draw is, of course, all the spicy crab you can eat. Place the body in your mouth and bite down, then suck the raw flesh and the sweet chili paste sauce in, and move on to the next piece. We went through five refills on the crab. As I’d said, a successful place goes on 24 hour service. This whole street was pretty much 24 hours a day, packed with a full variety of different eateries and bars, including a number of Han-U beef places (you can tell, as the price per serving that’s advertised is way higher). The street was a lot of fun, and I could see why Jason enjoyed the life here before, but it’d been a long day, and we were ready to get back home and get some rest. Of course that happy thought died still-born. At least for me. Once we were part way home, Jason was on the phone with his friends, coordinating the next stage of the evening. Luckily, this next stage was just across the street from his place, so we dropped Yoonhi and Serena off to get some sleep. Jason and I took off on foot for Dongha ddak sutbul bbq (ba-bi-kkyu) Dongha chicken charcoal bbq. To cut it short, this is the bbq chicken spot for Jason and his hockey and baseball teams. After the games they come here in the evening, and relive the glory or ignominy of their contests of manliness. Luckily, they stay in just as good a mood in either case. What you get here, along with large amounts of beer, is a whole chicken, slathered in gochugaru and other things in a marinade, that’s been broken apart and grilled over charcoal, then served with a liberal sprinkling of sesame seeds. This is really good chicken. Not burning hot to the point of distraction, but sweet and spicy, like the crab, and with lots of flesh. Chicken isn’t something we’d eaten a lot of when we’d been here in the 90’s. Heck, it wasn’t something we’d seen much of at all. But the world’s most popular bird has taken over the late night gotta-eat-something scene in a big way over here. Jason’s compatriots slipped in in ones and twos, and pretty soon there was a good sized group of us talking about baseball, hockey, ghosts, 24, and Heroes. The usual stuff. The fellow that owns the place had been described to me before as “jolly”, and I saw what Jason meant. I never saw him drink anything, but he just seemed extremely happy with everything, a state that usually takes me at least one drink and a good appetizer. By 2:30 we were thinking of moving on and giving him an opportunity to shut down for the night, but just then another group of 8 came in, and started ordering large amounts of food and beer. Our reason for leaving had disappeared. So we ordered more beer and another chicken. Behind his smiles he must’ve been distressed that we might not have enough food in us, so the owner started bringing us more bar snacks. The first thing to show was a plate of frites. With mayonnaise, Belgian style, and gochujang, Korean style. About ten minutes after we’d finished that, and ordered more drinks, a plate of tentacles and meat came out, along with some peanuts. I always like peanuts with my squid. The finisher was the dried fish. This was really good, yielding, with some softness left in it, like a Chinese wet jerky. But I was pretty much topped up, and it took so much out of me ordering and drinking the last few rounds of beer, that I could only handle about half of this. It’s good for a man to know his limitations. I’m figuring mine was getting to be 5 a.m.

Two types of Pancakes That Aunt Jemima Never Ate Commonly you'll see two types of pancake in Korea Pindaetteok - mung bean pancake Jeon - rice flour pancake Here are two recipes, taken from Practical Korean Cooking by Noh Chinhwa (ISBN 0-930878-37-x) Pindaetteok 1 cup dried mung beans 1/2 cup rice 1/2 cup water 1 oz pork ginger 1 clove garlic sesame oil MSG 1 oz kimchi rd pepper thread (hey, this's what I can use that for!) 2 green onions cherry - see comments parsley - see comments 1. soak the mung beans several hours in water and rub off the skins. Grind soaked riceand the mung beans wih water in a blender 2. Cut the pork into thin strips and mix it with the chopped garlic, ginger, and seasoning 3. Squeeze the water from the kimchi. Cut it into thin strips and mix it with sesame oil. 4. Drop the batter from step 1 by table-spoonfuls onto a hot oiled pan and top it evenly with the vegetable and pork strips. Fry until golden brown. Hint: It tastes better to fry the batter in pork fat instead of oil That's verbatim what they have in the book. Yoonhi's sleeping now, and I'm not stupid enough to wake her up for this.....okay, maybe I am stupid enough, but that's countered by an acute level of self-preservation. Anyways, looking at what's here, I know she isn't going to bother dressing the dish up with cherries after the fact, nor with parsley. Drop both of those ingredients. This is a good basic starter for lots of things. You can play with the vegetable and meat ingredients and do mix and match to your heart's content. Pajeon - Fried Green Onion Pancake 1/4 lb mall green onion 1/4 bundle of watercress 1 oz pork 1/2 cup sea mussel 1/2 cup rice powder 1 egg salt vinegar-soy sauce lettuce 1. Trim the small green onions and watercress and cut them into 4" lengths 2. Slice the pork thinly and chop the sea mussel finely 3. Add a little water to the rice flour and a little salt and mix into a light batter 4. Spread the sliced green onions in an oiled pan and place the sliced watercress between the green onion slices 5. Arrange the pork and sea mussel evenly on the vegetables of step 4. Spread the batter from step 3 on the top and cook slightly. Then cover the top with beaten egg and fry until golden brown. Serve with vinegar-soy sauce for dipping with lettuce on the side. We have this at home a lot more often then pindaetteok, so I can talk this through a bit more. Yoonhi says don't worry about the rice flour if you don't have it. You can get by with all purpose. Likewise, this dish is all about green onions in batter, so don't sweat the watercress. Squid can substitute for mussels, but baby octopus are really good in this. You will get a slightly crumbly, falling apart texture to the dish, so don't fret. Cut the pancake into bite sized pieces before serving, as the green onions running through can make it a mess to separate with chopsticks alone. If Yoonhi disagrees violently with any of this, I'll get back and repost. And remember - everything tastes better fried in pork.

Pocky was first sold in 1965. Pepero came out much later in 1983. ← What! You're going to rely on facts? Maybe they were created in Japan by Koreans brought over by the Occupation Forces after the annexation in 1910?

I could definitely see myself eating much of what Peter and his lucky family are eating (probably not the 4th stomach, or the cockroach things, however). But when I read his posts on this thread (and I've read every one of them, word for word!), the most that I can usually muster is: "Wow". Which seems rather inadequate in the shadow of his adventures and wordsmithery. I do have a few questions nagging me, however: 1. Along the lines of insomniac's question, would it be difficult to find a guide to assist tourists who speak only English? Would it be advisable to ask hotel staff for a reference? 2. What is the proper recipe for Korean pancakes? Your pictures are killing me. I bought a mix (like this), however, I can't read the directions and my pancakes seem too thick, and very gummy. Any help (ratios of mix to water to veggies, etc.) would be very helpful. Sheena, Doddie or anyone? 3. Next summer, we may have a chance to attend a music festival (GMMFS) located at the YongPyong Resort. Do you (or any other EGers) have an opinon about visiting this region, or this resort in particular? I realize that it is touristy, but according to the website, it is about 200km from Seoul . . . . ← I'll try to ask some questions about the YongPyong Restort tomorrow, and see what's what. When they say something's touristy in Korea, that generally means either Japanese or Korean tourists. There really isn't a lot of anybody else (although there is a growing Chinese tourism). And I'll see if we have a good pancake recipe. Like I say, there's a growing group of English speakers, so finding someone to take you about may not be impossible. The best bet is ask friends if they have friends, and see what happens! More food coming.

Doddie, thanks very much for putting up the gamchattang recipe. I couldn't find it in my English language books, and was procrastinating about trying to work through the Korean ones. Nakji, Were you caught out by "cider" like I was? I was expecting an alcoholic drink like a Strongbow or such. I wasn't expecting Sprite. Insomniac, The language thing can be a bit of a barrier, but the Koreans are generally very gracious to tourists and will go out of their way to try and help. Also, with so many kids having done homestays in Canada and Australia (and elsewhere) the level of English is improving. Often you can get by okay if you're willing to work in print, rather than verbally. However, one problem you will have goes back to the graciousness. Quite often they're going to decide what is or isn't appropriate for you, and you may not be able to get the truly authentic hit you're looking for (but this goes for China and Thailand and lots of places). Best bet (outside of doing a crash course in Korean), get a Korean friend, or better yet a gyopo (a returned Korean) to shepherd you through things. Plus, you'll have someone to drink with then!

PG, thank you for that compelling image. I knew there was a doozie coming, and you did not disappoint. I must have missed the tarantulas, was there a picture? If so please advise, I am starting a collection of extreme food pictures from eGullet. So far I have this one (loaned to me from stevarino for my eGfoodblog) and this one from the gifted Anna Friedman Herlihy. ← Peter, Good news and bad news on the tarantula. The good news is you haven't missed the posting here in eGullet The bad news is that it was something I had at the roadside in Cambodia back in '99, and I wasn't as obsessive about photos then. I should go through my old video tape.........

Wow, as a chronic maple syrup addict, I'm wondering: was there a huge flavor difference between grades (assuming you did some sampling)? ← I'm not Nina C., but I did grow up in NH and we made our own syrup. Yes, there is a big difference in grades. "Grade A Fancy" or "Grade A Light Amber" is usually what you will find available for sale at most retail outlets and it is usually the highest priced. There are a few other grades of "A" but for my money, the best taste is in the "Grade B". Unfortunately, it is hard to find a retail supplier of Grade B (although if you can find it, it is usually less expensive than the same amount of "Grade A"). Grade B has a much more assertive maple taste and it is much darker in color. If you like maple syrup, by all means see if you can locate some Grade B. It makes the best sugar on snow! I'm looking forward to hearing more about the cheese trail! ← Quite true. One of my friends from Vermont, and a couple from Eastern Canada, always said, "buy grade B. We only produce grade A for the tourists."

Now, if ever I saw the perfect opportunity for a blog, it has to be Rona in the Prairies! (there, the name writes itself)! Heck, it'd even be a great name for a band.

Hah! I jumped in early and missed the accountability arguement. A food writer is accountable, in the main, to two groups. His or her readers, who, hopefully, will raise the standard in their support (or pillory them mercilessly). or The marketing folks who want to see hotels and restaurants paying for ad space. I have some friends who are editors on entertainment rags. I suspect you can guess which group has the bigger clout. Cheers, Peter

Darn! I missed by a day. I had a great tagline just now of "self-appointed, or self-anointed?" after which I was going to go into a Jean Le Baptiste shtick. I would take umbrage with the use of the term "professional". Too often it has been hijacked to describe someone who does something for money (as in "the oldest profession"). Consider the roots of the word. "To profess", as opposed to "to confess". To put forward that you believe firmly that you can deliver a quality product (and we can spend pages on quality, I know). I was trained and disciplined to be an engineer. Talking with the older (and, admittedly Irish) profs we had at the time, that was much akin to entering the priesthood. Money was not the object, but the dedication of oneself to doing the best job possible (not your personal best, but "the best"). Take that as the marker. There are people that approach the issue of a food review with far greater discipline than many of us would, and that is the mark of professionalism. It is a fair comment for us to question our commitment. If I'm in a foreign country for two weeks, will I do three trips to the same place to ensure that I didn't catch them on a bad night? Maybe not (but would I do two or three trips to recapture a good night?). Maybe I'd make do on polling the locals I know (if I can trust them). There will always be a dichotomy between those that are paid to do something, and those that do it for love. And so we return to the oldest profession.

I like the looks of the ones with crushed almonds. I wish I'd known about this a week ago! (Yeah, I know, the leaves are wonderfully coloured now). So, let's get the controversy going. Are the pepperinos the originals, or are the pockies? We could start a whole new conflict!

Nighthawks at the Diner No, we didn’t go to the casino in the Seorak Park Hotel. It didn’t quite look like it was open, anyways. Instead, we headed back into Sokcho to check out the hot springs. We should have cottoned on when the motel owner asked why we weren’t bringing any towels. We drove back towards Sokcho in search of the famous hotsprings of the East Coast. We found a place just outside of town, and, aftern navigating the parking lot to the front entrance, past the three or four restaurants, we came into the main lobby. Okay. I am not a spa sort of guy. It just doesn’t appeal to me. I tried a spa once with Yoonhi in Chiang Mai. It hurt for a week. It was all pretty large and vacant looking. They’d said there was a restaurant with beer, so I offered to go sit in there with my laptop while the other three had their fun. But the place had one major problem. No one was working there. I moved to the lobby café, as there was another table already setup there, and they were drinking. In this manner I snagged the concierge/waiter as he rushed by to bring more soju. “Saeng maekju jusaeyo!” I am fully functional in Korean when it matters. For this I got a large glass (about a quart) of draught Hite. I nursed that and wrote for ages (about 15 minutes) and then called in another. After about 90 minutes (how many beers was that?) the crowd showed back up at my table. What they had enjoyed that evening was not a spa. It was a mogyogtang, a bathhouse. Mogyog means “bath” and tang is “tub”. The word is probably different in the Chinese characters, but it’s interesting that it’s the same word as for “soup”. Hanibal Lecter would be interested in this. Now, having checked with older sister, this is a hot spring. This is how the Koreans wanted their hot springs, just like a bathhouse, but with hot spring water. Ttang actually means (older sister again) “steaming hot liquid”. Now, that raises the issue of what is a guk and what is a ttang (and what is a chigae). A ttang is something that takes ages to make, as the stock needs ages to break down and get to the stage it needs to be at. Whereas a guk is something that can be worked up pretty quick. For instance, a ddeok guk is a thing you can enjoy in a matter of a few minutes (or half an hour) after it’s been brought to a boil. For a ttang, figure on four or five hours of simmering. Now a chigae, like soontubu or kimchi chigae, is more savoury, and eaten in smaller amounts. It’ll be more salty. Traditionally, with ttang or guk, everyone gets their own bowl, whereas with chigae everyone dips into the common bowl. Yoonhi gave me the story on the experience. Serena was scandalized at first. She got into the ladies’ changing room with her mom, started getting ready to shift into her bathing suit, and then shrieked “Everyone’s naked!” At this point she tried to cover herself up with two hand towels. You can do it at that age. Serena’s ineherent shyness (of which I fully approve) lasted up to the moment that she found another kid her age in the baths, at which point she kicked off and the two of them were “all over the place”. As an aside, can anyone out there recommend a good convent school? I’ll need it in about 4 years. The “bring your own” comment haunted them. Everyone else had shown up with towels (which you could get there) and their own loufas and scrubbers and stuff (which you couldn’t). Still, after the knee killing descent from the hill, and given that this was our only exercise outside of walking from bar to restaurant that we’d had all week that the family had had, the baths felt pretty good. I felt really bad about missing out…..oh, yeah. Like I say, I have my own set of priorities. But, everyone relaxed, either with bath or beer, it was time for dinner. We drove into Sokcho looking for gamchattang – potato soup, but the pork rib is the important part. Okay, for this sort of stuff, what you’re looking for is a 24 hour joint. If a restaurant is really, really good, then they can draw enough business to keep going all day and night long. Otherwise, they go home and sleep like normal people. The restaurants proudly put their signs up with haejangguk “hangover soup”. We cruised Sokcho for about a quarter of an hour, looking for someplace seedy enough to be good. Finally, on the outskirts, we lucked out. (Aside: something I regret, I saw a place in the distance with pictures of pheasant. We never had that on the trip, and now I regret that.) I haven’t talked about cutlery. Every place, except for the one seafood joint we’d done for crab, would put out a long plastic container with metal chopsticks and spoons. I think Korea may be unique in using metal chopsticks. It’s an interesting point. The metal cleans well, and doesn’t carry bacteria (although I might think that the wood cutting board vs bacteria argument might also be applicable), but there’s a tradtion that goes back a long way. Traditionally, the Koreans used silver chopsticks. Everyone got a set for their first birthday. However, this set won’t last until you get married, at which time you get another set (as the first First, silver cutlery is way cool. But, I do admit I have a silver fetish (remind me to show the sterling next time I do a blog). Second, silver shows up a number of traditional poisons. In contact with sulfides and other oxidants, the silver will go black just like that. Finally, as I found in Mongolia, if you pack metal chopsticks, people back up really fast when you pull them out. Something different in this place was the handling of the kimchi. It came out in big brown bowls, but we were instructed not to eat from the bowls, but rather to cut what we needed, and then remove that to separate plates. Kimchi buffet! Also, the gochu (chilies) here, were hot. I’d gotten cocky and had started taken their mildness for granted, immediately grabbing one and dipping it in the ddaenjang as something you’d unconsciously chomp on between dishes. This stuff bit. It was like a Thai chili, all meanness and spite (and fun to be around). Jason and I both backed up a bit, and then grabbed more (Yoonhi is far more sane than either of us). Anyways, along with the usual few bottles of soju, we had to order kamcha ttang. The soup is really about pork ribs. Pork ribs in a beautifully rendered broth, topped with ggae nip, tobikos, gochugaru, and a sprinkling of what looked like parmesan cheese, but was actually powdered yellow lentils. The pork itself is precooked, similar to how some people do bbq’d ribs. The point of the potatoes is to remove some of the “pork smell” (why? It’s good!), which in turn act as little sponges of pork essence. We also ordered some sol lang tang for Serena (and me). This is a beef stock that’s been worked down for a few days, drawing an awe-inspiring milkyness out of the bones. It’s hard to describe this. In the West, we’re so used to demiglace and other reduced stocks (well, at least in my house). In the East, it’s all about broths. The individual essence of the material itself, as opposed as to what you can do in the mix. Having said that, the ttang broke down most excellently, pushing the fat from the ribs into the broth alongside the chilies and the starch from the potatoes. I mean, just look at the fat glistening like sweat on my fat! Plus, fresh, crisp bean sprouts to contrast with crunch against the starchiness of the pork-laden potatoes. And, once we’d chewed and gnawed our way through the ribs and broth, it was time for some bokkumbap. We’d gone days without bokkuming anything. There, don’t you feel better now? After killing an appropriate number of soju bottles we hit the road, with Jason doing the driving (he, as always, was on designated driver duty). When we got back to the Zone C, we ditched the car, and we did a quick walkthrough in the village. The walkthrough was needed to stock up on stuff for the evening (Jason was the designated driver, after all). First we’d found some injolmi to snack on. Rice cake (ddeok) with sweet soy bean powder on it. This, with a good two litre jug of bad beer is a fine excuse for sitting around on the ondul. We should’ve had some cards. We could’ve played hatto ( a traditional card game Korean women play to intimidate men). We’d found a couple of bottles in town. The bottles looked interesting, but we couldn’t vouch for the internals. The mushroom wine looked….well…country. Once we tried it, we all agreed. We just couldn’t figure out which country would taste that bad. And the other bottle I’d spotted behind the cashier as we walked by the shop. I raced in, and pointed out the bottle. Another guy, with his girl, spotted what I was buying, and, by the miracle of guyliness, I understood perfectly what he was saying in Korean: “Hey! Look at that!” Jason translated the shopkeeper for me after. The old guy took a deep breath, took my money, and said, “Yeah….I don’t even know how it’s legal for them to sell something like this.” Next: [ b] the perfect breakfast Note - edited for a stutter

Honestly, that would be the most excellent title for your next blogging.

innard update First,though, dongdongju has a higher alcohol content than makkoli. That's according to the brothers-in-law. Plus, the dongdongju is much smoother, according to Yoonhi. Now for the Kopchang update Okay, we have the authoritative guide on innards the yang is the first stomach. The second stomach is the peol jib "honeycomb" or "bee house" (which we often see in dim sum, straying from the Korean theme). the kopchang itself is the intestine. Long, tubular, and just crying to be stuffed with something. The third stomach, the bits we eat raw, are called cheon ip, which Yoonhi refers to as "1000 leaves" but that isn't necessarily what the Chinese characters say. This is what we refer to as "towels" when we have it at dimsum The magchang was first described as "just right by the rectum", but we figure now it's the fourth and final stomach of the cow. Really, the kopchang would come after the stomachs. There, you all feel better now, don't you? Note - edited for dyslexia