Explore Culinary Asia

I just couldn’t resist this metal chopsticks thing.   When we first encountered them, there were some puzzled looks around the table.  Our host, Maureen O’Crowley, said they were originally used by royalty to test for poisoning.  Apparently they change color in the presence of the deadly stuff.

And then I found other stories on the net that the metal ones were used after World War II because there was no wood left, but there was an abundance of scrap metal!  And even better is the theory that Koreans use the flat metal chopsticks because they could be weapons.  So think about it before you insult someone over dinner!  The caveat here is that I don’t know if all these stories are true, but it doesn’t keep them from being intriguing.

I bought a pair of the Korean chopsticks and one of the long elegant soup spoons (very nice!).   I’ve been carrying a set of utensils including chopsticks around Asia for  a couple of decades.  It’s safer in backwater places to bring your own cutlery and it’s environmentally more conscious.   Mountains of the wooden kind are thrown away every year.

And now, dear readers, I promise to move onto other locales, but Korea remains high on my list and will be the center piece of some future posts.