Peter Green

Aliens? But the creatures on the top right side of the image look like hoya (sea pinapple) to me. ← "Sea pineapple"? That's a good name. It beats "ttogebbi club" (the Ttogebbi are the gaurdians at the entrance of the temple, armed with a big, knobby club). Along with the infamous gaebul, mongke is of those things we just don't see on the other side of the Pacific....or Atlantic....or Indian......I can't vouch for the Arctic. Tell me, in Japan is it also just eaten raw, or do you do anything with it? In Korea I only come across it at seafood meals, where it is always included in the precursor as a sashimi.

March 30 – Not With a Bang… With Scud dumped at the airport and headed East, and the cell phones returned safely (CDMA is Korea’s standard, so no swapping chips) we were left with the question of what to do next. There was a good two or three hours to kill before I could check in for my flight South Eating did come to mind. Drinking passed by our brain cells, but was quickly hurried out the door. Last night had stretched too far into this morning, and for once wisdom stayed our hands. But eating at Incheon can be a chore. Incheon Airport - that is. Incheon itself is a place I would’ve liked to have visited – hosting the only official Chinatown in Korea, and also well-known for its clams. Plus, there’s that old fortress that held out against the Mongols for a few years. The place has been around awhile. The problem is, to get to Incheon City you have to drive almost all the way back into Seoul. They’re building another bridge (they’re always building another bridge – check out the Han River in Seoul on Google Maps sometime. It looks like Neo’s face when Agent Smith does that thing to his mouth), but that wouldn’t be ready anytime this morning. However, there are a couple of islands nearby, and some cheerful tidal flats that shared those self-same bivalves. We could get to these from the airport without spending half our remaining time and a fortune in tolls, so that settled matters. We ate in the shadow of Silmido. We scouted the shoreline. In the summer this place would be packed with picnickers and young couples, taking in the sunshine and enjoying the seaside. Now, it was a closer fit to our mood. Grim. Still, even in this near-freezing weather, there were people out scouring the beach for clams. One of many things I like about the Koreans is their innate sense of foraging. They’re always looking for something good to eat (and they find it). That’s part of why I like Laos, too. We found a place with a big parking lot and a view of the sea. The big parking lot was empty, but we liked it that way as we weren’t too certain about our parking. ’As you’d expect, there was the usual tank out front with the semi-drowned bodies of aliens that had gone astray from Area 51. Sure, you’ll spot the clams, scallops, and mussels, but who’ll ever recognize the others? And there’s something odd about the meatiness of those big scallops. The point of choosing your place with a view is that it should afford you the opportunity to sit way in the back away from the light. This place was delightfully 1980s. Lino floor, pink hand-made curtains for the door to the kitchen, and the plastic patio chairs. Give me a roll of toilet paper for the table, and I was good to go. Yeah, it was one of those sort of mornings. But it was fun. Jason and I could cover more stuff, particularly films, and talk family stuff. The scallops were excellent. Done up with spring onions and gojuchang and vinegar, ready to eat. The alien bits, skinned and still squirming, were a little harder to take in our delicate state. We still ate them The hotpot, though, that the oysters had gone into, was stretching us a bit. Still, broth is good for hangovers, and I had a long stretch ahead of me. But then the main course, the clams, kind of overwhelmed us. There was a mass of stuff in shells. I know, these should be easy to eat, but the shear effort of working through this much stuff was slowly pushing us out of those cozy blue plastic chairs and onto the floor. It had been a long night. I stared, heartbroken, at the razor clam I was trying to eat, and just said, “nuts”. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that exact word, but this is a family food site. I checked my watch. Jason checked his watch. And then we decided to declare victory and call it a day. I had a plane to catch. Next – Pollen Idols (which takes us to Bangkok, of course)

Now that's worth a thread, right there! If they do the lid in samgyeopsal, how do they season the pot?

Okay, Foodgeekery.com traced back to the Do we live in a great century, or what?

Yeah, KFCB is a better name, but would it play in Omaha, I wonder?

This was just posted to me, and there is a question of credibility of the source, but if true KFC's Double Down may mark the highlight of mankind's evolution. Think of it. A bacon sandwich with Swiss and Pepper Jack cheese and the Colonel's sauce, packed between two slabs of deep fried chicken in lieu of bread. I'm salivating just writing this. Now, this may very well be an internet hoax (hence we post it on Food On The Internet), but, as Prasantrin has pointed out, KFC does have their moments of brilliance (although those are generally in Asia), so this could actually be true. Thanks to ean.craigie for this! He's the one that found it. A man after my own congested arteries.

Thanks, Gautam. There's always the next trip, and the next, and the next.... (The provinces do call out to me.....and there's that fermented skate Fatman described in Andong!)

You're right, they should be out there somewhere, the trick will be having a fluent Korean speaker do some internet searching, as most of the Korean sites are Hangul only (it's easy enough for me to read, I just can't make sense out of it). It does sort of look like something Torquemada would appreciate. Let me ask Peter and Sandra. They're in Vancouver now, but should be back in Seoul soon. Cheers, peter Note - edited to add the photo so we'd have a better shot to solicit feedback. Plus, I just like heavy iron things.

Hm... Korean curry rice, I would say. The ingredients such as potatoes and carrots are much smaller than those of Japanese kare, and the roux is yellowish rather than brownish. It should be less spicy than Japanese kare, right? ← Less spicy is a relative term. I don't really find either to be much of a burn. If pressed, I would say that the Korean is mellower. And you won't hear me say that about Koreans too often, I'll let you know.

At this point of the night, we ourselves probably would've gone up like matchsticks.

Somewhere around here I have one of the kids' old books called "Disgusting Sandwiches" or something like that. It was divided horizontally in three, and you could flip through and create random assemblages by conjoining different pages. I imagine something like this with all of the mainstream (or near mainstream - "tributary"?) flavourings being used to put together the "flavour combination of the season". Perhaps there's one of these in play in the corporate boardrooms?

As I'd heard it...... "jungle curry is a hunter's meal, which means that it can contain just about anything you can find in the bush and toss in. They're trademark is to be burning hot, as the Thai of old would travel with salt and chilies as their "gear" (which led to the old stories of "we were so hungry, all we had to eat was salt and chilies"), which would clear away any gaminess in what they ate."

that's worth bookmarking.

I offer Serena's favourite (and no photo available, so you'll just have to imagine it) - two good slices of multi-grain bread. - butter - five slabs of brie - four slices of proscutto And, to bring up the colour, - a slathering of fresh pesto (based on Scud's reactions, she's going to have a hard time at boarding school)

March 30 – The Spirit if Kare Rice Passed That smell had been with us, haunting us the last couple of days. Kare rice. Yeah, yeah, it’s just a packaged rou (how do a make the accent over the e go away?) by http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...dpost&p=1549937]Glico originally but that’s no reason not to enjoy it. (In Korea and Canada, our brand of choice is S&B). Like a bee we made a straight line to the nearest kimbap place. Okay, this would probably be a bee on some serious reality-altering pollen, but that’s sort of the idea. But these things do haunt me. You get that smell in your nose, and you’re not going to have a good sleep until it’s done. Now, while this is a kimbap place, I had it on good faith (at 4 a.m., everything is “on good faith”) that they’d have kare rice. Up front was the station. Kim (nori]) in a spot made for the sheet. The ingredients in place – carrot, spinach, fern, egg (fried and artfully cut into strips), and the jolly yellow of takuan – the pickled radish. The Korean equivalent of the sandwich shop. The perfect collection of ingredients to keep you going for a little while. Whether kimbap came from the Japanese Occupation, or whether the Japanese brought it back to Nippon in ages past (most likely the Imjin Wars of the 16th century) is a matter for scholarly pursuit. In the final analysis, you eat it and you’re happy. What more do you want? It’s just one of those comforting foods. Seasoned rice, a mix of vegetables (or whatever) and a quick roll. I can eat this most any day (and I do). Jason, on his Quest For Starch, ordered ramen bokki, a package of shin ramen cooked in a gochugang paste with vegetables. A good alcohol sponge at this time of the night. But me, I know what I want, and I’d found it at last. Kare rice. That turmeric yellow gloop, thickened up with potatoes, and dressed with carrots, onions, and anything else that doesn’t cost as much money as protein. Okay, at home I’d use some chicken. But I know the rules here. It’s that smell (says Agent Smith). But in this case, it’s a good thing. You’d think there was a snake in there that was luring you in by your nose. This is what we’d smelled in Hongdae the other night, and now its time was come. It was okay. Not great. But you just have to do these things. Much of the rest of the evening is, understandably, incoherent. It doesn’t make a lot of sense looking at the photos, either. I’m pretty certain we had a good time. Was there something about a plane? Next – Aftermath (I think that was either English, or Social Studies)

March 29 (or was it the 30th by now?) We didn’t stray much farther. The mob asked what I wanted to eat, and Peter and I looked at each other and said “Guts”. It was kopchang time. And the place near to us had enough of a reputation that it had a two of its own places and a copy cat next door. (I mentioned the copy cat syndrome last trip, but I’ll give it a quick review here) The Copy Cat Syndrome In Korea, restaurants will, over time, build up a loyal clientele, and from there a reputation for a specialty dish. Big deal, you say, that happens everywhere. But in Seoul (I can’t speak for all of Korea) people eat out. A lot. Jason has said it “you never lose money on a restaurant here”. There’s always clientele, with the average person eating in only two or three dinners a week, and almost always eating out for lunch, or ordering in. You don’t see a lot of lunch sacks at work. That sets the scene. This is very much a restaurant culture. This is also a drinking culture (you hadn’t noticed?) and eating and drinking go hand in hand. The copy cat element arises when the popular places have reached a point of fame where they start to get packed out. Then they sprout up with names that would raise eyebrows amongst the more litigious amongst us. Say if you call yourself “Grandmother Choi’s Pig Trotter Restaurant”. Within a few years, someone will set up shop next door calling themselves “Old Grandmother Choi Choi’s Pig Trotter Restaurant”. You get the idea. This makes money in one (or both) of two ways. In the first instance, you lure in the unwary, who don’t realize that there’s a doppelganger at play. This is a really great ploy if you can set up on a one-way street before the real place. The second way it works is in that you can just play for shrapnel. Faced with a one hour wait to get into the famous place, most people will break down and just go to the place next door. To some extent, you might consider, as the proprietor of the original, that you’re losing business. But they just feed off of what you couldn’t service, so it’s not really that bad. Plus, there’s a point of pride in being good enough to have parasites. Hmmmmm……remind me to tell you about having worms in Vietnam some time. Now, back to our story. This is the place that Yoonhi and I went to last time, it’s just it was a lot later, and colder. They’d tented in the outdoor section, and took up a couple of tables there near a space heater. We’d lost a couple of people, so, as Jason’s not a big fan of kop chang, he went outside and started working the phones. How can anyone not love this stuff? It’s a completely different taste and texture, and the bright cheery red of the raw liver just makes you think of Christmas. This raw dish that comes out as the precursor is probably my favourite of the set. The Koreans are masters of simple sauces. Sugar, salt, and sesame. And some garlic in there, to. These are dipping sauces for the raw entrails and the liver, and lift the roughness just enough to let you enjoy the crunch and grind of the gristle in the guts. We would order more of this later. Ask me, and I’d say that these bits, with the salt and sesame sauce, are just about the perfect company for industrial alcohol. At stage 3, as you would imagine, we have passed into the “lets spend a lot of time with our soju”. Trying to get the perfect cyclone tied us up for a while. Traditionally, with soju, you bang the bottom to move it about a bit. This mixes the elements (the technical term is “stuff”) around, so that the sweeteners haven’t settled out. Luckily, of course, we hadn’t been here that long yet. The main course arrived. Consider it “proto-sausage” if you’re squeamish about these things. But it’s well cleaned, without that bit of nasty that can sneak up on you sometimes. This is a good way to finish up a trip. Surrounded by old and new friends, everyone in that happy stage of drinking, without rancour or bile (sobriety went out the door and walked back up the hill ages ago). The entrails and vegetables are slowly simmering over the open flame, and the world revolves around the inconsequential. And then they torched the kopchang. I don’t remember them doing this before. It was kind of neat, and the extra heat was well appreciated. This gave a nice charring to the guts, and I wonder if it was meant to burn off some of the excess methane? I just have once conern, however, looking around the flammable plastic, rolls of toilet paper, and the varnished wooden floors with gas lines snaking across them. Does Korea have anything resembling “fire codes”? Just a thought. The night was still young, as was everyone except me. Aside from my fears of impending immolation, this was a fine farewell evening. We’d had a good run of things, taken in some sporting events, which we hadn’t done before, and had touched upon our favourites while still having time to do some new things. If I had regrets, they were ones that could be settled on the next trip. There’ll always be a next trip. But for now, it seemed like a good idea to find some more food. Next - Phase 4 ”But you said it was going to be an early night!”

Similar to Fat Guy's earlier post..... We use a (very) sharp paring knife, and flense the skin of with fairly quick scrapings. (Keep the skin for ginger tea). Then we use one of Ikea's cheese graters (they're very good. A metal greater over a plastic tub) and shred the ginger into that. From there, either use the shreds, or, if you're doing Chinese dishes, put the remnants into a cheese cloth (or use your fist - after washing - it's good exercise).

March 29 – Phase 2 Ice cream is one of the great invigorators. A crispy cone, something red flavour, and a man (or woman) is ready to take on the world. The soju probably helped, too. We were to travel just a short block, Scud protesting at our heels. Our last night called for dong dong ju, and there was a place just a couple of blocks away. Weolmae Chumak – named, I’m told, after a famous old lady. If you want dong dong ju or makkeoli, look for the rustic. This looked rustic. And comfortably inviting, too, once you looked inside the door and saw the battleship stairway leading down into the dark. The Koreans like to bury things – kimchi, of course, springs to mind – so burying your bars seems like a natural progression. This is not a hard fact , of course. Our first makkeolli jip of the trip had been a second story (or was that third) affair, so this is just a statistical observation. Of course, it could just be that the rent is cheaper for the basements. You’re growing used to the dong dong ju shots, by now. I liked the eclecticism here in the bowls. Any which ones are available, it would seem, with the sizes roughly equivalent. Bean sprouts, some steamed egg, and kim chi graced our table. You aren’t going to starve in Korea, that’s for sure. I wonder, at times, what sort of boy I’ve raised. Last night out in Seoul with a raucous crowd (our numbers, like my stomach) were swelling, and what does he have to drink?....... Hershey’s chocolate milk. Sheesh. That was pretty much it for the Boy. He bailed on us and walked home, muttering something about airplanes, airports, and how I was going to be in a lot of trouble with Mom if he didn’t get on that plane on time. But that meant he missed out on chapchae, the mung bean noodle dish, the noodles springy and pully, fried up with fresh greens and chilis. My last dong dong ju. It’s a pleasant thing to drink, and I’ll miss it (unless I can figure out how to make it at home). That was enough of that place. There were more of us now, and we were growing hungry again. The only trick was getting out of our booth. Next – Phase 3

I had some feedback from my friend's Khmer wife: She "says they use 90% of the time, duck egg, not chicken. Though there is some chicken done too. You'd have to talk to her cause its a wierd sounding name. duck egg = bong thea kon (something like that). chicken = bong moen kon. " I gave up long ago on transliterating Khmer. note: edited to remove a name I'd missed.

There's a piece in the latest Bayon Pearnik, issue 156 on the 2nd to last page of the pdf that discusses "Strange Cambodian Foods", written by Steve Hili. It talks in general about the usual sensational items (yes, the tarantula legs do sort of taste like crab) but he dwells upon something I hadn't seen in mainland South East Asia before - chicken fetuses (fetii? fetid?) in the shell, or balut to everyone familiar to the Philippines. Interesting, and I understand ethnography places the Khmer closer to the Malay, so it makes sense. It's just not something I'd thought I'd find there. I should go back soon.

I think I've had these. Crispy rolls of flour (or rice flour?), sort of like an Indian dosa, but much smaller. One of those things you bite into with relish, and then you realize you're wearing 1/3 in the form of flakes on the front of your shirt. Good market shots. The blackened chili peppers is an interesting item. I wonder if arrived through Thailand, as the Cambodians were kept cut off from much of the early maritime trade of the Portugese (and their trade in firearms), and so weren't introduced to the chili pepper until much later. And those dried fish are exactly what I was looking for to work up that watermelon salad recipe! Cheers, Peter Note: edited a couple of times as I suffer from IMG dyslexia tonight.

March 29 – Phase 1 It started off innocently enough. “We’ll just stop off and have a good meal of pork to see you off. “ “It’s just down the hill.” “We’ll be back by 10.” And it did begin well. Within moments we were back in our familiar stomping ground down the hill and to the left. I spotted a couple of new signs to give me pause. “Human & Human”? What could that have to do with lawyers? And “Music Bar Shower” had my attention, until Scud told me to get my mind out of the gutter. It was just a bar called “Music Shower”. And then we were arrived at the sign of the pig. In case you want to find the place, the phone number is 200-4415-5775, a couple of blocks from Nambu Terminal. The pork here is a good thing to finish on. Plus, I get to have some of those good looking stubby mushrooms we saw in the market in the morning. Once I’d finished the first couple of soju, I remember the bamboo soju they had here, and I ordered a tube. Yeah, yeah, I know that I’d said I preferred the regular soju, but tastes change. I was growing to like the slightly flavoured sojus, too. It was turning into a good evening. Our numbers had swelled to about ten, and the restaurant was packed. This was prime time for eating, and everyone was busily (and noisily) enjoying their food. But there’s a price to pay for that. Our bokkum bap was a sorry thing. The manager was too busy with the crowd to take care of it for us, and it was obvious that the ajima had better things to do with her time than cutting this up for us. Pity, as the bokkumbap we’d finished on last time was, truly, a thing of beauty. We contented ourselves with what we had, and called for more soju and beer. I had, previously, forgotten an important thing. When you leave, you get ice cream. Outside, strawberry cones in our hands, we contemplated the next phase. “Dad, you said we were going home!” Next – Phase Two

March 29 – Optimism We arrived back in town without mishap. The Boy was in a relatively good mood, enhanced by the allure of a Big Jaws bar. They actually went to the effort of getting this thing to look like a shark. Well, kinda…… Christopher Moore had a very good observation in his last book. The Asians don’t seem to go through “hunger” as we know it. A mild, annoying, nagging pain that slowly builds up until, after, say two or three days you feel you really do need to eat something. Instead it’s like a sudden plummet into starvation. Scud needed food. Luckily, as men we understand the importance of hoarding food for these moments. That’s why we never throw uneaten things away. Ever. The pizza was back from the dead. Microwaved to a point of slothful sogginess, the potato and corn was enough (along with the jelly beans) to qualify as a well-rounded meal. Really, it was just a snack. We had plans for dinner, but this filled the gap for him while we packed bags and boxes. “Dad, I have an early flight tomorrow. We won’t be out late, right?” “Of course not, Young Scud. It’ll be a light dinner, and an early night. You can trust me, right?” He always falls for that one. Next – Descent

March 29 – Farewell, Janghowon We’d pretty much wrapped up the market. We’d found ourselves along the River’s Edge (sorry, it’s a Hopper thing) admiring the plating that had been put in to allow the armour to get up and down from the riverbed without too much damage (Janghowon hosts annual joint exercises with the US troops here). At times you forget that the Korean War is still not over. At times. Stuffed, we took in the view, and admired the town. Your typical local 20 litre bag of popped stuff van. I’m a big city guy, I know. But there’s a good feeling of belonging to a town like this. As we’d strolled through, Doddie was always meeting friends and acquaintances, stopping for those brief pleasantries that make life…..easier. It’s an interesting distinction. In Seoul, in Bangkok, in Tokyo, as a regular customer you’ll be recognized and warmly greeted. But there, you’re a customer. It’s nice to be somewhere where people still have non-commercial interests in each other. We could’ve gone back through the market, but that would have been a redundancy. Instead, we walked along the river and cut through towards the bus depot. It’s a small town, but it’s still a town. The amenities you'd expect. There’s a manhwa shop – where you can rent comic books and catch up on the latest adventures, and, of course, being Korea, there are plenty of places to drink. A Korean tradition that doesn’t get much discussion is the kisaeng. The Korean equivalent of the geisha, skilled in singing, the arts, and poetry. You see bars named after the famous ones – like Eo Udong. If you search about, you’ll find snippets of poetry coming up on the internet. Like much of Korean folk art, it runs to the ribald, but then, that’s part of the fun of Korea. I’m glad Doddie saw us to the bus depot. The official depot had closed down, the result of a squabble with the landlord, and the current stop is run out of a temporary structure. And the bus back to Seoul fills out pretty quick, so you’d better know what you’re doing when you line up. Otherwise it's a long wait for that next ride.

Thanks, Doddie. Someday, somehow, I'm meeting the hubby and eating his ribs (Hmmm....that came out a little zombie-like, I'm afraid). Can you comment more on the black chickens? We just touched on it in passing when we did the walk, and all my friend here said was that they were supposedly good for grilling (rather than the stews or soups with ginseng, etc). Is this a native Korean strain, something imported, or have those boys in the white lab coats been hard at work somewhere? As for the puppies, I remember that you'd mentioned them, but I don't think we found them anywhere that day. The meat section was fairly limited (like I say, chicken's a vegetable), and I was surprised at how little pork there was. But, again, thank you for a wonderful day. But I'm not done yet.