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Korean Food: People joke about the kimchi here in Korea. For example, when certain people who had been to Korea learned that we were headed over here they told us to get ready to eat kimchi. They were painfully right. Korea is fiercely proud of their fermented cabbage and red pepper paste monster and they serve it with everything. The other day in class, instead of doing a regular roll call, I called the students� names and asked them to tell in me what their favorite food is. Most of them said kimchi. Kimchi comes with everything. If you go to an American restaurant, you�ll get a side order of kimchi. If you go to a Chinese or Japanese restaurant, you�ll get a side of order of kimchi. People here figure that if you are eating, you are eating kimchi. Kimchi is the coleslaw of Korea. They �make� kimchi, or should I say, �allow the monster to be born�, in these very distinct ceramic pots. The pots are brown and look like a giant urn. They are often sitting out in the far corner of the garden or in the back of the establishment somewhere. Personally, I like kimchi in moderate amounts. It�s just that Celeste refuses to come any where close to me after I�ve eaten any. Kimchi. Celeste. Kimchi. Celeste. There are more than 300 different kinds of kimchi and the Koreans gloat in that fact. We stick mayonnaise and raisins in our cabbage monstrosity coleslaw (which, in my opinion, isn�t any better that kimchi), but the Koreans put their infamous red pepper paste in theirs. The infamous red pepper paste can largely categorize the Korean cuisine. I think that the Korean cooks think to themselves, �if people are eating and they happen to not be eating kimchi, they want whatever they are eating to taste like kimchi.� Therefore, the Koreans put the red pepper paste on anything. The red pepper paste is serious, spicy, hot sauce made from red peppers. Not difficult. Just difficult to stomach every damn day. Eating out in Korea has been quite a regular thing. Most of the restaurants are carbon copies of every other restaurant in town. The prices range from about $1.50 for small dishes, up to $6.00 for larger ones. You can plan on getting filled up (with a lot of red pepper paste) for under $5.00. In the states, I was always looking for the great, under $5 meal. Well, that seems to be Korea�s specialty. If you are lucky, you can go to a restaurant and the menu has pictures of what you want to eat. Though we speak little Korean, we can usually point to the picture of what we want and send the waiter off to get our food with little complication. The prices are clearly marked and there is no sales tax nor tip required when eating out. This is nice. Sometimes there are no pictures, no English translation. Just a lot of Korean symbols. In this instance, I have been forced to point to something and hope like the Dickens that I just didn�t order the kimchi sampler. So far, I�ve been pleasantly surprised when I have had to order on a whim. Almost invariably, when you order with the help of a picture, though, you get some sort of a surprise. In the picture there is no lake of red pepper paste in your dish but when it comes out you are unpleasantly surprised with one. I really like the noodles that I have eaten here. They serve a lot of soups with large, chewy noodles that often have rice cakes in it, or dumplings. The rice cakes taste like large flat noodles as well. Another thing that Celeste and I enjoy eating is called kim bop. This dish is close to the American California roll�something you�d find in a Japanese restaurant. Though the Korean�s serve this dish, it is the unloved stepchild of Korean cuisine for it comes from the Japanese influence when they came in and took over the show around WWII era. This is good for us though because it is always the cheapest thing on the menu, a statement, I believe, by the Koreans to diss the Japanese: �Hah! Look how we respect your Japanese dish!�. The other day Celeste and I went to a Japanese restaurant. We have figured out that (like America) there is never an authentic Japanese restaurant, or Chinese restaurant. It is always largely Koreanized. I ordered something that looked like a teriyaki salmon number and Celeste ordered the famous kim bop. My dish came out to be the eel thing with a teriyaki-like sauce on top over a bed of rice and vegetables. There were chopsticks and a spoon that was served with our meal. I have become quite accustomed to eat with chopsticks and therefore began eating my meal with chopsticks. After a few minutes a woman, noticing my eating folly, came from the kitchen to my table and in Korean began to explain that you are supposed to stir your vegetables, rice, and un-skinned eel all together before you eat it. She took my bowl from me and began to mix everything together. I felt like I was suddenly thrust back to kindergarten. But hey, when in Rome . . . I thought I had learned everything that mean could teach me until a few minutes later when another woman came over and in Korean explained tome that this dish was to be eaten the Korean way, with a spoon and not with chopsticks. The chopsticks were fine for me but she insisted that I use a spoon. More Red Pepper Paste, Please--Scottro [2002-11-04]
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