The Health Police

I'm currently contemplating an apple a little smaller than my head. This, along with an even larger pear, is Mr. Pan's Chuseok gift to me. Koreans value health above all else, and their gift baskets contain fruits, nuts, and sometimes ginseng. Bobby and I have been marveling at the W70,000 gift boxes of nuts we have been finding at the grocery store. These gargantuan fruits probably came in a box that cost at least W20,000. Ginseng is the most expensive health treat, running around W100,000 for a gift box.

These massive fruits are items I would sometimes find at the Harris Teeter, and shun because I figure they are a product of hormones and genetic engineering. I wonder how these apples grew. Nonetheless, they are incredibly tasty, and I made a valiant attempt to finish one this morning (I got halfway through).  Something this massive was meant to be shared.  Sadly, Bobby doesn't like apples. Koreans are always accosting him for his obviously unhealthy eating habits. That's another thing about Koreans—they consider it their duty to let you know when you are doing something unhealthy. Mr. Pan tells me that when he and his wife go to a family dinner, his family tells her not to eat. Mr. Pan's wife is far from obese—I'd actually put her on the high side of normal weight. Sometimes I wonder if Koreans really are “naturally thin” or if what I'm witnessing is institutionalized anorexia and bulimia. Somehow, drinking soju to the point of extreme inebriation is okay, as is weaving a scooter in and out of traffic with no helmet, but that donut will kill you.

I learned last week that the #1 item procured illegally for Koreans from our PX is vitamins. That's right, they bypass the duty free European chocolates and perfumes and the liquor shelf and go straight for the multivitamins. Such things exist over here, but they are massively expensive, just like the fruit. I guess we're witnessing Adam Smith in action here: Koreans value vitamins, thus they have a lot of monetary value here. The country is only a generation or two from widespread extreme, starvation-inducing poverty, so I guess I understand.

I enjoy healthy food, and I like to eat here. I like knowing that there's probably not high fructose corn syrup in anything I consume, and that I am not facing down a small mountain of french fries with every plate I purchase. (Over here, you can buy fries separately at American restaurants, but you will usually share an order). I like knowing that my food is made from actual ingredients instead of things doctored to taste like actual ingredients. I am glad to find that I was right in defending my love of white rice all these years. A billion Asians can't be wrong—white rice will not make anyone fat.

Nonetheless, the relentless obsession with health and resulting evangelism I experience here annoys me. I enjoy donuts, damnit, and don't take kindly to being judged all the time. What's a holiday without carbohydrates? Not that America has it right. We have a similar dieting obsession, but with an expectation to find a shortcut that leads us to gobble absurdities like low fat cheesecake. Americans tend to be too fat or too thin, but rarely in between and always hating ourselves. I want to find a place where people eat unhealthy foods in moderation and delight in doing so. I think I would like to try Europe next.

How do you like them apples? They come in little skirts with ribbons around them.

Making Gimbap

My blog looks a little silly with only one cooking entry, particularly since I love to cook and do it often. I have had some successes and more failures with trying to merge Korean and American cuisine. One of my more fun experiments have been with gimbap rolls.

Gimbap rolls are somewhat like sushi without the raw fish. The Korean versions are bits of beef, kimchi, cucumbers, egg, and other stuff rolled in rice and seaweed (there are often two types of kimchi in them). They turn out pretty tasty and are less than a dollar, so many of us foreigners like to have them for lunch.

I have tried making gimbap rolls with pretty much everything I have in the fridge. One of my favorites has salami, pepperoni, pastrami, provolone cheese, lettuce, and carrots in it.

The first and most essential ingredient is sticky rice.  It comes in abundance here and is a natural adhesive.  I also have some seaweed wrappers.  I cut all of my filler ingredients into strips.

I roll everything up with the help of my handy bamboo mat.

If the roll starts to fall apart, I wet it.  If I have enough rice in the roll, it's not a problem.

Slice it up and voila!  One of mine self destructed.  Bobby likes to dunk his in soy sauce, regardless of ingredients.

Loki sez what up?

Bulgogi

I have been meaning to bring my camera along to a restaurant for weeks, but I never walk out the door with it. Today we had a large, late lunch at one of my favorite Korean restaurants, and after I again forgot the camera I decided to borrow from the world wide web. (For those of you who are librarians, I “borrowed” these images from wikipedia commons and now consider my obligation to us copyright law fulfilled).

Today we had bulgogi, which is a beef stew. I was never much of a red meat person before I came here, but bulgogi is one of my favorite Korean dishes.

At many good Korean restaurants, we take off our shoes at the door and grab a cushion so we can sit on the floor. This place, which has the English name “Korean Traditional Restaurant,” was no exception.

Someone handed us a menu. They often try to explain it in Korean. Apparently they can be very fussy about explaining the particular attributes of each dish, but this is lost on us. We looked at the menu (if we're lucky there are pictures) and pointed to a dish. There is always one menu and one dish. In the west, everyone orders a plate and eats only their own dish. This is unheard of in Korea. We order one thing for two people and share it. If there are more people, we'll order two things, but we always share. If it's an individual dish, like soup, we of course order two, but they get confused if we try to order two different ones. Well meaning restaurant owners have brought us three dishes before—two of one, one of the other—because ordering separate things is unheard of.

If your dietary needs are different from everyone else's, by the way, never fear. That's why there's banchan. Banchan are the myriad of side dishes they bring us after we order. Banchan varies by restaurant. Some have several side dishes, some a few (never less than four), some have “nicer” banchan like dishes involving fish or tofu, some have the cheap banchan like spinach or potatoes. Sometimes there's so much banchan that we can't find room on the table for the main dish when it comes. Banchan always involves at least one kind of kimchi, and we've had up to four kimchi plates in one setting. We used to try and eat all of the side dishes, since it's rude to leave too much food on the table, but we soon discovered that doing that only invited the restaurateur to refill our dishes.

On a side note, I have not encountered too many waiters in Korea. Many times, the person serving the food is the only one in the restaurant besides the cook. There are no aprons or uniforms, and there is no tipping. Honestly. It's considered an insult, which makes sense if you think that the person serving you the food is probably the restaurant owner. Apparently tipping implies that they need more money than they charged for the meal. Many restaurants appear to be family owned, and there are often children running around and people sitting in the front watching TV.

Anyways, the table was crowded with banchan, which is where Korea's long chopsticks come in handy. I can snatch something from a plate in front of Bobby. The restaurateur brought a bunch of raw meat and vegetables and placed them in a pan, poured on some broth, and turned on the gas grill, which she set on our table earlier. She handed us a ladle, some tongs, and scissors. She came back to stir and cut the bulgogi, but most people do it themselves. We are westerners and they assume we don't know what's going on (they are often right). After the meat cooked, they turned the burner down. We each had a little bowl in front of us, and our server brought two bowls of rice. We mixed rice and stew in our bowls and dug in.

While we ate, I ran out of water and had to yell for it. This is hard to get used to. There are no hovering waiters anxious to refill our glasses, and Koreans either push a button on their table or yell “Yogi, mul juseyo! (Here, bring me water)” That feels very rude to me, but that's how it's done. Even if someone visits the table to bring another side dish, she will not refill my water unless I yell for it.

As usual, we were pretty full after we finished, but at this point in the Korean meal they will often order soup and fruit. If I'm not in the mood for what was ordered (Korean men are nuts for this bacony dish called sam gyup sal that I tire of), I'll then fill up on soup and rice. There is also coffee and tea. I did have some tea called sujeongwa, made with persimmon, ginger, and cinnamon, that's out of this world.

We then had to pry ourselves off the floor and walk to the cashier. In Korea, you never pay at the table. There are no taxes and no tips. The lovely meal that I failed to capture on film for you set us back 26000 won, or 23 dollars. This was a little pricey for lunch, but it was a nice restaurant with fancy bangchan.

Next time, I'll bring my camera (I swear).

Banchan. This one has three types of kimchi (now that I think about it, three or four types of kimchi is the norm). My favorite is buchingae, which is a potato pancake, though I also really like tofu covered in sauce and salad with yogurt. Bobby loves caramelized rice and mini potatoes.








Bulgogi before: many tables have burners in the middle.













Bulgogi afterwards. It's good, trust me.