Posts filed under 'Food'
Thanksgiving or Chuseok is a harvest festival set by the lunar calendar. This year it fell on September 25th. For weeks, Koreans have been celebrating with traditional dances and music - and planning for the inevitable nation-wide traffic jams. As in America, Koreans travel all over the country to be with relatives. Usually this means traveling to the parents’ or eldest son’s hometown since Chuseok is also a day to pay respect to one’s ancestors.
As the holiday approached, I got the chance to see a lot of traditional culture. Nong ark is traditional Korean dance and music. Bands ranging from 9-40 people play small gongs, large gongs, “bass” drums, hour-glass shaped, double ended drums, and flat tambourine-shaped instruments without the cymbals. Some wear hats with ball and socket hardware and a long, white streamer. As the band plays, these members dance complicated figures, all the while swinging the long streamers in graceful arcs around and over and under other dancers. The music has an amazing percussive power. 
At Camp Humphreys (an American military base in Pyeongtaek) I participated in a recreation of the ancestor veneration ceremony for Chuseok. Tables full of special food, wine, incense and candles are set up near ancestor portraits, people dress in their best traditional finery, and make deep, formal bows. Then after the incense has burned down and the ancestors have had time to appreciate the good life, everybody eats until they are stuffed.
I spent Chuseok itself with Korean, Russian, Filipino, Chinese and Japanese students and a dorm director. One student prepared a feast of battered and fried vegetables, Korean pancakes, and two kinds of kimchee (thank you Song Min Kyung!!). Then we all made a traditional Chuseok treat, songpyeon (half moon rice cakes). These are very easy to make if you have a steamer, and are delicious - not too sweet, but addictive. If you would like a good recipe, go to http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/ and type songpyeon into the search box. I do not know how long the article will be accessible, but I cut the recipe out of the newspaper and you can ask me for it. Korea has hundreds of types of rice cakes - for more on this food group see the following website http://www.lifeinkorea.com/culture/ricecake/ricecake.cfm?Subject=types. In my photostream on flickr.com I posted pictures of our songpyeon - both the traditional ones and the more creative, unusual ones. Both tasted excellent, with sesame seeds, brown sugar, chewy rice and a hint of pine needle tang and fragrance.
Then as at any Thanksgiving event, we ate and laughed and shared stories and ate some more. Most stories started in English or Korean, but got translated from one to the other, with Russian and other words thrown in to get the point across. More people showed up with beer and leftovers from their Chuseok celebrations and we ate again. Then we walked, savoring the full moon over a Buddhist temple garden.
Our celebration was not quite Korean Chuseok. But it was our own form of Thanksgiving, for a good harvest of food, for friends who stand in when family is absent, for the things that make life good. Thus tradition crossed cultural boundaries, got reinvented into new forms with old meanings, and ensured its place in a changing, multicultural, but ultimately human world.
September 25, 2007
When I was 21 I traveled to Europe on a six week backpacking tour. I fainted in the Sistine Chapel and spent four days in an Italian hospital. I got rehydrated on an I.V. drip, ate better food than anywhere else in Italy, and entertained the seventeen elderly women in my “semi-private” room. I never got a bill. Calling my Mom from the hospital was hard. But I never felt as far from home as the day I tried to call home from Paris.
At least back then, to call America from Paris with a calling card you had to go through the operator. And the operator only spoke French. Only French. She would not even listen if you broke into English. At that moment, I felt so far away from home, so incompetent, so alone, so utterly lost. I could not do something as simple as make a phone call. I wrote in my journal that night “The ‘foreign’ in foreign country is when the operator does not speak English.”
Living in a foreign country means that at least once or twice a week I have to do something amazingly ordinary that I simply have no idea how to do. The daily chores of living take on new significance when you realize that you cannot do them the American way, and you hadn’t realized there was a Korean way. Having now spent a full month here in Korea, I thought I’d list some of the challenges that put the “foreign” in foreign country.
Public Toilets: Toilet paper, if provided, is on the outside of the stall. Thus you have to decide in advance whether to be environmentally sensitive and conserve paper or always take enough for the worst case scenario. Signs on the door saying “Foreigners” or with a picture of a toilet mean you will find a western toilet. Otherwise toilets are Korean style (see photo).
Doing laundry: Since I do not have a dryer, I have to plan laundry around the weather. Doing wash on a rainy or humid day means clothes can mold before they dry. Since it has been actively raining or over 75% humidity almost every day, some days get organized wholly around laundry. When I do get to wash, I have to be careful how I hang things. Otherwise unexpected visitors at the front door get a beeline view of all my underwear and bras.
Trying to mail a package home: Post offices do not sell international mailing boxes here. You pick used boxes from the box pile provided at shopping centers, turn them inside out so they have no writing on them, and use them to mail packages.
Paying a bill: No one mails payments to companies in Korea. Instead you transfer money directly from your account to theirs at the bank or an ATM. Also no one gets bank statements in the mail - you put your passbook into the ATM and it automatically records every deposit, withdrawal and debit card use since last you updated your passbook.
Taking out the trash: Koreans are amazing recyclers. Food goes in the orange and yellow bins (I’m hoping they aren’t meant for different kinds of food!). Paper, glass, metal, plastic, and Styrofoam have their own large sacks. You have to use your town’s garbage bags purchased at the local market.
Buying groceries: Koreans charge 5 cents a bag for every bag you use at the supermarket and appreciate your bringing your own. You do your own bagging and you have to move quickly - the people behind you are always in a hurry. Chickens at one market come cut up, but not at another - you have to ask (I avoid that section of that market, since heads on chickens goes past my comfort zone). Bananas can only be bought in complete bunches (20) but apples depend on the market - six at one, seven at the other, a dozen at a third. You bag your own produce and then walk it to an assistant, who weighs it and sticks a label on it (kind of like the bulk section of Hannaford - but with an assistant). It pays not to get the number of apples wrong.
Finding an address: Even Koreans agree that finding a street address is incredibly hard in Korea. Buildings are numbered based on when they were built, not their location on the street, and less than 20% of streets have actual street signs. All directions are relational (left at the temple, right a block after the supermarket, we’re the store behind the bank) which means having a good sense of everything ELSE in the neighborhood is useful for finding a particular location. If you are new to the country, you walk a lot - and you try to accept it is about the journey, since you may never find your destination.
So daily life has its challenges, but there are compensations. Telemarketers and survey people hang up on me as soon as I answer in English. Every supermarket trip or dinner out is a foray into new foods and new tastes. And I’ve never had such a sense of satisfaction from taking out the garbage, paying a bill, or buying apples.
September 23, 2007
Recently I had an amazing meal and I can say with certainty I will never have it again.Let me explain. I took a bus into Seoul intending to have Turkish food (hey, you can only eat one kind of food so long without a break!) but I could not find the restaurant. Instead I passed Cunga Conga Fresh African Café and could not resist. African food in the center of Seoul? The menu was entirely in Korean, except for “Creamed Corn Tortilla”. It didn’t sound African, but it was not Korean either, so I ordered it.
I was served a plate of salad - thinly sliced cabbage, covered with an American overlay of iceberg lettuce, one cherry tomato and a slice of cucumber with French dressing. On a separate plate were slices of pickled cucumber and pickled radish - very Korean. My main meal was four creamed corn tortillas, a mound of bright red East African beef and berebere sauce, a small scoop of rice with peas and carrots, a little pile of jalapeno peppers, a little pile of corn, and a collection of spicy baby shrimp. Lettuce and sliced tomato were served on the side.
As I said I’ll never see anything like it again and every piece of it was tasty. But all food here has been extremely good. Korea itself is global in a way I cannot yet explain clearly, yet it also has deeply rooted food traditions.
In general there are three kinds of food here: Korean, American, and other (usually Japanese). This was reflected in my students’ answers to my question, “What is your favorite food?” Top three answers: pizza, sushi and Korean food. Increasingly they might add coffee and donuts.
Typical Korean meals always include rice, soup, kimchee (pickled cabbage in any of 100 forms), and 3-4 other dishes. At a “traditional” Korean restaurant (where people go for special occasions like welcoming the new American professor), one is served 4-5 dishes to start and then dishes are brought until the table is completely full. If you finish one, it is removed and another takes its place. Dishes might include grilled mackerel (whole with bones - really difficult when you are newly armed with metal chopsticks), 3-4 kinds of kimchee, 2 kinds of baked tofu, sesame oil on seaweed, Korean style pancake, 2 or 3 kinds of chicken and rice soup, sliced pork which is eaten wrapped in lettuce leaves with soybean sauce, pickled radishes, tiny green leaves with tiny garlic cloves, hot red peppers in sauce - the list goes on and on.
I quickly learned to pace myself, try everything, and then eat seconds of whatever tasted best (except the mackerel - I now avoid all foods with little fish bones until I am in the privacy of my own apartment and can pick out the bones with my fingers). None of the foods are particularly hot to my tastebuds but other people tell me some of the food is fiery. I can believe it given all the hot peppers I’ve seen drying this month (see photo).
Yet there is great variety. I have discovered a “traditional Korean porridge restaurant” that I like very much. In one variety of “juk” (porridge) rice is pulverized, creamed and mixed with winter squash for a sweet, smooth dish. In another the rice is cooked in chicken broth until it has the texture of grits. Then it is combined with a ginseng root, a jujube fruit, and a half dozen chopped green things (see photo - the things on the side are bossum [boiled meat], daikon radish, a spicy eggplant dish, and kimchee). At another Korean restaurant, our table had a charcoal grill in the center where we grilled bits of duck and then ate them in lettuce leaves with 3 or 4 different sauces and vegetables. We pulled aluminum-foil wrapped sweet potatoes out of the coals as our second course.
I have not yet tried the pizza so I cannot vouch for its authenticity, but I have had great sushi at two different places. Whelk, mollusk, sea urchin and abalone are not on my usual sushi menu, but they were good, if a bit chewy. For dessert I’ve learned to love these delectable “rice cakes,” (ddoek) filled with or rolled in fruits and nuts. They are soft, chewy, a bit sticky, but not overly sweet - really addictive (see photo).
As long as I can eat well, life is good. I don’t always know what I’m eating, but I just see that as part of the adventure. I’ll try to include more food photos another time, but I am rather conspicuous as it is, so taking public photos of what I’m eating is tough! However, a friend has volunteered to give me Korean cooking lessons soon, so I’ll be sure to ask for a close up picture of Beth and the bulgogi (marinated BBQ beef). Mashikke tuseyo!
September 12, 2007
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