Explore Culinary Asia

This just in from Geun-mi Kwon, our Korean guide

We also have a sort of Halloween day in Korea, but it is rarely known, the day after Dae-bo-reum (literally “Great Full Moon”) which is also a Korean holiday that celebrates the first full moon of the new year of the lunar Korean calendar.  One familiar custom is to crack nuts with one’s teeth.  It is believed that this practice will help keep one’s teeth health for the year, as well as frighten ghosts and chase them away.  For breakfast on Dae-bo-reum, O-gok-bap, a five-grain rice consisting of rice, millet, Indian millet, beans and red beans is served with various dried herbs.

Two Questions, Geun-mi.

Do you eat it with kimchi?

And do dentists have increased business right after this holiday?

Imagine mimed street theater on steroids and you get NANTA, an over the top performance featuring four cooks who have one hour to prepare a wedding feast.  Throw in a bad tempered manager and the fun gets super charged.

For a group of foodies feasting on richly different Korean foods, this was the perfect climax to another full day.

Along side a mostly Korean audience, we laughed and applauded our way through death defying knife-throwing antics, eye-boggling plate juggling and movements that didn’t seem physically possible.

Do the Korean’s like broad comedy?  You bet!  Since 1997, this brilliant comedy has pulled in the largest audience numbers in the county’s history.   It’s even had an extended run on Broadway.

As we strolled outside on a warm October evening, we all agreed that we didn’t see how it was possible after a satisfying dinner, but we were hungry for more Korean food.  My friend Pom says that after she has watched an episode of her favorite Korean food sitcom, her husband knows he’s going to have to take her out for Korean food!  Don’t you love the power of suggestion?

Given the frequency of sampling Korean restaurants in Seattle as well as New York and Dallas, I thought Kimchi was, well, kimchi

My eyes popped, my taste buds applauded and I waxed lyrical with other foodies on my excursion to Korea last week.  Apparently there are over 100 varies of   this simple but vibrant pickled vegetable staple that have become synonymous with Korean cuisine.

While getting into chili paste up to our elbows didn’t make me or my fellow travelers experts on what we came to see as pure food art, it did give us a new appreciation for what we got to sample three times a day in Korea. As we chopped, blended and then spread the glorious red paste over leaf after leaf of Chinese cabbage, then rolled it into a small soccer sized ball, the best was yet to come.  

At our very next meal, the waitress arrived at our ladened table with a pair of oversized scissors and went after the ball of cabbage, revealing a palate of tempting aromas, textures and colors.

Before you race out for the ingredients, expecting to serve it to this week-end’s dinner guests, those neatly (ok, for us, not so neatly) wrapped balls ferment away in specially designed pots in the ground for a minimum of a year.  Talk about delayed gratification!

But I’m up for it!   Anybody in the Pacific Northwest know where I can buy one a couple of kimchi pots?

How naïve of me to think I would have the leisure to blog daily once I was in Korea.  It’s been 16 to 17 hour jammed packed days filled with surprises, delights, curiosities and the occasional, “what was that about?”    I drift to sleep with images of this newly discovered Asian destination and roll out the next morning for another intense day.

My travel friends and I have experienced sweeping nature walks and vistas, heritage villages where people still practice life as it used to be, meanders through a tea plantation, and of course food varied, vividly colorful, intoxicatingly aromatic, all providing regular opportunities to make friends with Mr. Chili.

Today it’s an urban day in Seoul, with a royal palace dating from the 1400s. The day is climaxed with a NANTA performance, featuring non-verbal, reckless rhythms in a comedic mode.  I’m really psyched because the theme is food – more on that in a later blog

Considering the long history of artistic expression in Japan, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that some farmers in the rural village of Inakadate design truly amazing field art by using different types of rice to create the intricate patterns.

This certainly puts our Halloween mazes to shame, even the one on Sauvie Island outside of Portland Oregon, designed in the shape of the Trailblazers logo.

I thought maybe these Japanese farmers just tossed the rice in the air and then the gods went to work while they slept.  Alas, they have evolved from duplicating traditional woodcut patterns to now using computers to design their creations.  Still, it’s impressive!

Now the question is, how do they harvest it so they don’t have weird mixtures of different rice types.  Anybody know any farmers in Inakadate?

Here’s the confession from an incredibly sheltered, and narrow culinary childhood.

My mother tried to broaden our horizons by taking my brothers and me on regular pilgrimages to the big city of Dallas so we could be exposed to some culture that included visits to “foreign” restaurants.  I specifically remember Indian, Chinese and Scandinavian where my brothers and I adored the carousel of jellied desserts.  But even with the Indian restaurant, I don’t remember spicy.  Clearly the owners had dummied down their offerings for fear of losing customers.  The only spicy that still dances on my tongue from my early years was Tex-Mex chili.

So when I went to live and work in Europe in my early 20s, I thought I was prepared for ordering curry in a London Soho restaurant.  Even while my mouth was still on fire, I was hooked.  What really surprised me was the Brits long love affair with Asian spices.  With all due respect to my ancestors, I was disappointed to find that the rest of British food was, well, as bland as East Texas served up.  What’s up with that?

So what is it that attracts people everywhere to blazing hot chilis and the delicate interplay of herbs and spices that romance our taste buds?

While that makes perfect sense in countries where everything is degrees of spicy, how is it that so many Europeans and North Americans who eat basically no-taste foods can swoon over curry?

I have my opinions but would love first to find out about your opinions.

If a menu describes curry shrimp and vegetables shocked Lebanese harissa and dry vermouth redeemed by tomatoes and coconut milk, what would you reaction be?  And even more mysterious was how this stew found its’ way to a restaurant specializing in the foods of Indo-China.

Of course I had to order it and I swooned.  My friend and I laughed about the terms shocked and redeemed but, foodies both, we were definitely stumped by Lebanese harissa.

After lunch, I whipped out my phone and looked up the meaning.  The only thing I found was a description of a Lebanese Saint.  That was a show stopper. Fortunately, reason got the best of me since I knew that unless someone at the restaurant had a truly wicked sense of humor, it must be something to do with a spice.  So I went to the Foodista blog and there it was from the puckered lips of Sheri Wetherell    http://www.foodista.com/blog/tag/north-african/

If you like hot and spicy foods, then you’d love harissa; an oh-my-hell-it’s-hot! North African chili paste, most commonly found in Tunisian, Algerian, and Moroccan cuisine. Too much can turn your hair red and melt the lips right off your face!

Amazing how much difference it makes to a search when you drop the adjective!  So mystery solved!  Now shocked and redeemed made perfect sense, unless redeemed really does have something to do with that Lebanese saint.

Thanks Sheri!  Looks like the perfect recipe to try on a gray Northwest day.  I can’t wait to see how it compares to Asia’s fiery chilies.

I’m curious.  What’s been your experience with harissa and are you lips still intact?

And what’s your read on fusion experiments like this one?

I’m excited!  Now I can share my Asian food/culture stories and curiosities with others.  Whether you are a newbie or a committed to all things Asian junkie, we are going to have some fun!   Maybe now I’ll stop trying to engage total strangers in sharing Asian stories beyond the plate.©

Later today I’ll post my first “what the heck was that” food curiosity.

I’m busy packing for a trip to Korea next week and will be blogging daily about my food/culture delights and surprises.