Korean grub

Apologies, apologies. It's been a while since I posted. Some unexpected calamities arose with my Korean bank account and my wireless Internet, but they've been soundly resolved. I went for a weekend without cash or wi-fi (which put a damper on my plans for Itaewon and What the Book?). But as of this morning, my router is fully operational, there's funny-lookin' Korean bills in my wallet, and my cabinets are full of groceries.

Oh, and speaking of food...

My stomach is sure glad I'm back in K-Land.

I'm going to tell you a little bit about some of my favorite Korean dishes, and the general culinary landscape of the R.O.K. Some of them you've probably heard of before; others, not so much. Let's start with the biggie.

Bibimbap.

It's exactly what it looks like: rice, vegetables, and a fried egg, mixed with a little gochujang (red pepper paste). The ingredients are presented to the diner quite fetchingly, as seen above. The diner will then proceed to mash up, swirl around, and devour the dish, preferably out of a heated stone bowl. (The rice is layered on the bottom of the bowl, which is why you can't see it.) Great pains are taken to arrange the vegetables around the egg in near-perfect radial symmetry. With a slap of gochujang (the red stuff at twelve o'clock), it's ready to eat. Just mix it all up with a spoon and get stuck in.

Now, if you're thinking what I think you're thinking—and I think you're thinking that I'm nuts if I enjoy eating rice, vegetables, eggs, and pepper paste all ground up into a chunky red stew and devoured by the spoonful—punch yourself in the face. Right now.

This stuff is delicious. Seriously, delicious. Not Rachael-Ray-dips-her-finger-into-the-pot-and-licks-it-and-says-"Mmm-delicious!" delicious. More like Mom's-apple-pie sort of delicious. It's the living shizz. You'll find yourself craving it, sweating and shivering for it, as if they'd lined the rice cooker with cocaine or something. I'm not a food critic, and I don't possess the vocabulary to properly describe the synergistic aggregate of flavors melding together in the bottom of that stone bowl, but I don't need to: I'll let you imagine how sticky rice, spicy pepper, marinated veggies and a well-fried egg taste when lovingly combined.

Korean barbecue is another thing I'm glad to have access to again. The Koreans are adept at taking pieces of meat from all over the cow and pig, slicing it into thin strips, putting it on a grill over an open flame (resembling a Japanese teppan) and searing it to juicy perfection. The lucky diner then slaps the resultant meat onto a piece of lettuce with marinated spring onions, fried garlic and ssamjang (red meat sauce) and devours it in two or three bites.

'Scuse me, I have to wipe the drool off my keyboard.

The most enticing and decadent of the meat cuts available is probably samgyeopsal, or pork belly. (Pronounced sahm-gyuhp-SAHL.) Resembling large rashers of streaky bacon, samgyeopsal is a fatty, tasty treat for which even the Koreans are willing to suspend their obsession with healthy food. It's best to put some bits of kimchi on the grill with your samgyeopsal, and other vegetables too (such as bean sprouts), so they can soak up the juice which the uncured bacon exudes as it cooks.

I could really use a spittoon about now.

And lastly, let's talk about Korean street food. One of the things I like about the Asian nations is that they make it so dang simple for a guy to fill his stomach anytime, anywhere, and on the cheap. Anywhere you look—on street corners, or shopping districts, or the bustling night markets, there's food stalls and vendors set up and going like gangbusters. There are some foreign imports; Mr. Wow (in Seoul and Busan) sells spicy bratwurst, and there's a takoyaki booth right outside my apartment building. But I want to talk about Korean street food, and my particular favorite, ddeokbokki.

This stuff has had a complicated history, which I won't go into here. There are a million different varieties, which I likewise don't have time to divulge. I'll just focus on your run-of-the-mill, salt-of-the-earth, garden variety ddeokbokki: rice cakes (those cylindrical things), fish cakes (the flat ones) and gochujang (the ubiquitous red pepper paste), all mixed up together and served hot.

(I could give you a long, wordy, convoluted explanation on how to pronounce ddeokbokki, but it would be long, wordy, and convoluted. So, for our purposes, let's just say that it sounds something like "duck-POKE-ee" and leave it at that.)

Ah, ddeokbokki. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. How spicy you are, and how you make my mouth burn and singe and pine for a bucket of ice water...how your fish cakes are moist, tender, and vaguely fishy-tasting, lending a much-needed gustatory counterpoint to your overwhelming heat...how your rice cakes are simple and unadorned, mere filler some would say, but provide a much-needed respite from the diumvirate of spiciness and fishiness. How inexpensive you are on the street, and how masochistically satisfying you are, and how disgusted you make my friends back home when I tell them about you. I love you, ddeokbokki. You're a filling snack and a potent cultural weapon all in one.

I could mention a few other dishes...mandu (Korean pot stickers), donkkaseu (breaded pork cutlet, a Japanese import), twigim (fried street food)...but that would make this post unnecessarily lengthy. Let's leave it for another day.

Bon appetit, mon ami.

(Hey, if I knew how to say "Stay hungry, my friends" in Korean I'd say it, okay?! Jeez...)