Cooking in Korea

Every weekend is bittersweet for me. Sure, I get to sleep in. I get to play soccer, or hike, or go to Seoul, or read, or pretty much do whatever I feel like. Yet there is always something missing that makes me look forward to Monday. No, it's not the students. I see them all over the place on the weekend. (They're always shocked to find out that I do other things in life besides teaching.) What those weekends don't have is the special hour where I can say the magic words, 배고 파여 (paygo pahyuh, which I think translates to something like "I'm starving"), and I'll be taken to the place with the warm floor to eat as much food as I can in order to impress and also because I don't know when I'll be eating that well again.

One of the biggest surprises of my adventure in Korea has been how good the food is. I'd eaten at many of the Japanese, Chinese and Thai places on the Ave back in Seattle, but I never knew how different and good Korean food is. Even the first meal I had at the school, which included a soup that had cut-up hot dogs and onions (the Korean teachers told me that in Korea it is called "Chris Ferns guk"), was delicious. Delicious or in Korean, 바싰인미다(sp?) (bahsheesheenmeeda), is really the only word I can think of to describe Korean food. I mean that literally too, because that's the only word I have learned to say while eating. I'm going to be in a lot trouble when I finally eat something that I don't care for, but I'm hoping that will just never happen.

The food here is great, but it's not all peaches and kimchi. One problem for me is that restaurants only serve portions for two or more people, and asking for a doggy bag is fightin' words. Since there is currently only one of me this has made my after school meals more of a challenge. That first week I was able to survive on a steady diet of french toast, eggs and popcorn. However, for a growing boy like myself I needed more sustenance than that. While my hunting skills hadn't reached the level I was hoping for, my gathering ability had improved tremendously. While wondering around in the nearby mountain I discovered that the pine cones have nuts in them. Here is a picture to help you picture the nuts because television has probably rotted your imagination:

Now don't get too excited just yet. There is actually a durable shell surrounding the meat of the pine nut.

Luckily, I managed to create a special tool for opening pine nuts:



Give the nuts a good hard whack, but try not to follow through too much or you'll squash the nut against your cell phone.

Just pretend that you're disciplining a misbehaving student.

A naked pine nut.

Don't forget to eat it.
Now you smile and say 바싰인미다

I kind of think that I may be spending more energy into opening these nuts than I'm actually getting out of them. Some of the teachers might have noticed my emaciation over my first couple weeks here too, because one day I was invited by the home ec teacher to learn how to cook some Korean food after school. I graciously accepted her invitation and later met her and some other teachers in a kitchen classroom. She taught me how to make 떡볶이 (tuhpokey), or as I call it, "dinner for November." I'll return her kindness by paying it forward to my loyal readers and giving you the secret recipe.

First, you'll need some vegetables and meat.

Here are some exact details:
1 onion
2 green peppers
2 ginormous carrots
4-5 big mushrooms (try to find an Asian variety because they actually taste good)
1 lb ground meat (I used ground pork because that's all I could find)
1 package of glutinous rice cakes (called 떡 or duhk or if you're a jerk you could call them by a Japanese name like mochi rice cakes)

Peel apart the rice cakes and soak them in cold water for 15-30 minutes. While you're doing this, you should find a soccer game to watch, and start cutting your vegetables. For the green peppers, big mushroom and ginormous carrots, you'll want to cut them into about 8-10 cm long strips that are less than half a cm in width and depth.


Chop, chop.

I forgot to tell you to cut the onions into 32nds. Do that too.

You should also start boiling some water for the rice cakes during the preparation of the vegetables. Boil the rice cakes for five minutes. Then drain and rinse the rice cakes with cold water.

While this is going on you can make the sauce, here is the recipe for that:
2/3 cup soy sauce
2 Tbl brown sugar
1 Tbl sesame seeds
2 Tbl sesame seed oil
2 shakes of black pepper
2 Tbl crushed garlic

Mix that up really well and then add four tablespoons of it to your rice cakes which should have been boiled and rinsed. Take the rest of the sauce and poor it onto the meat and mix it in.
Be sure to use your hands to mix the sauce in. The teacher told me that it helps add flavor.

Add some oil to a wok. Brown the meat and stir it into bit sized pieces. Then add the carrots and cook those for about 3 minutes. Add the other vegetables and cook those for another 2-3 minutes. Add the rice cakes last and cook them for 2-3 minutes too.
Be sure to be stirring constantly and not taking pictures of yourself so that nothing burns.