Posts
Had I written this a couple days ago, I would have said that every Korean food item presented to me in pattie form was great. This was until yesterday, when one of the side dishes at work was some sort of deep fried oyster pattie. The first time I ever had oysters was on Thanksgiving, when they were added to the stuffing. That was okay. But the two times I've eaten oysters since I've been here... Eating oysters makes me feel deeply violated.
But oysters aside, so far I like everything that comes in a pattie around here. This includes meat patties, fish patties, egg patties with vegetables, deep fried potato patties, and a number of patties I couldn't identify or can't remember.
Another Korean food I like is called mando. It's kind of like Korean raviolo. Circular pasta is overstuffed with vegetables and/or meat and folded over. I got a huge bag of it when I first moved in a month ago, and I'm still working on it. I finally got myself a steaming tray, so I can cook them properly. I've been boiling them. I don't recommend it. Wet.
Bulgogi is also good. It's just seasoned (with sesame, soy sauce, garlic, etc.), shredded meat. It means "fire meat." Wikipedia says over a quarter of foreigners in 2007 claimed it as their favorite Korean food. I might agree.
I've been greatly confused about the vegetables here. They seem to use a lot of leafy greens, but not spinach, and sprouts, which I know nothing about anyway. A popular sprout is pictured below. I don't know what it's called, but the end looks like a corn kernal, and the sprouty part looks like a noodle. These are okay. Sprouts, whatever.
A popular Korean food is pibimbap (aka bibimbap), rice mixed with vegetables. "Bap" means "rice," and I don't know what "pibim" means, but it doesn't mean "vegetable." It wasn't in my dictionary. The vegetables include the sprouts above, carrots, some leafy greens that I can't identify, and variable others. Scrembled eggs are also usually included in strips. It's served on a plate all separated, with a container of that stupid stupid red pepper sauce, and you're supposed to mix it all together, adding as much sauce as you feel right about. I actually tend to like it without the sauce. The natural flavor of it all works well. I think it's the eggs that really bring it all together.
Korean barbecue is great, as we all know. A couple times I've gone with Heather and her family to this barbecue joint by her apartment complex. As with all barbecue joints, there is a large grill in the middle of the table, and you cook your own meat. The servers bring a bunch of slabs of pork (I'm not sure if this places specializes in pork, or if that's just what the fam prefers), along with the perfunctory side dishes. This includes kimchi, zuchini, and squash, which are also cooked on the grill, plus sauces, cucumbers in vinegar, shredded lettuce with some sort of strawberry yogurt topping, and these large translucent leaves in water. Koreans like to take leaves of various sorts and wrap them around things. It's cool.
It occurs to me that after I've actually learned all the names for these foods, I'll look back at my descriptions and think myself silly.
