Sunday basketball

There was a moment just now—a moment when I glanced out of my apartment window, into the wet night, and saw hundreds of likewise-lit windows swimming eerily at me through the rain and mist. It was though the air outside was really murky seawater, and this city sat at the bottom of the ocean, and miniature submarines scurried back and forth between airlocks, and at any moment a shark or a whale might swim by my window. In that moment, I stepped back and wondered "Am I really doing this?"

I don't know which has surprised me more: the fact that I'm back in Korea or the fact that I've slipped into the routine so smoothly and easily.

It was a rocky start, as you well know. There were delays. Hang-ups. Mess-ups. Hiccups. But they evened themselves out. No matter what this job has thrown at me, I've rallied and risen. In fact, I've gotten so comfortable lately that I'd dare to say it's a routine. It's not just the weekdays, either. Even my weekends have acquired a regimen. On Saturdays I usually go into Seoul, or shop or something. I venture forth from my cave, my manhole, and obtain the requisite supplies for the upcoming week. Revel in the freedom a weekend affords. Strike out independently. Explore a new corner of the city. Do something fun, you know.

Sundays are a bit more laid-back. Generally, around noon, I wander 300 yards down Gilju Road to a little park hidden among some stubby evergreens. There, my fellow expatriates and I test each other's skills on the basketball court. I'm grateful to report that I've gone from "Grade-A Suckage" to "Certifiable Acolyte" in the span of three weeks. I'm not making baskets reliably yet, and I can get hold of rebounds but not sink them; still, I'm steadily improving. There's four or five of us who usually come: Peter, Jon, Andy, Martin, and most recently Stephanie. We warm up for half an hour shooting hoops or playing horse. Then we shoot for teams. This last Sunday we had enough people for three-on-three. Team captains picked their players (I will brag a bit here and say that I was one of those captains, by virtue of making the first basket). Then the game began in earnest. Half-court. Take-backs (if the ball hit the rim). Play to eleven. It was a fierce contest. We ducked, dove, dodged, hollered, sweated and slid, passing and dribbling and shooting. Goals were scored, desperate, jubilant, soul-affirming jump shots and layups. Everybody got a piece of the action. The humid air glowed with hot-blooded exultation, burning spirit and competitive fire—and a goodly dose of old-fashioned camaraderie.

Following basketball, the rest of my Sunday usually consists of reading, writing, laundry, cleaning, and other domestic pursuits, both leisurely and productive. Oh, and of course, a big dinner. I look forward to my Sunday dinners. I usually pull all the stops out and have multiple courses. And by that, I mean that I actually have side dishes with whatever entrée I've prepared. A couple of weeks ago it was bulgogi with fried garlic, kimchi and marinated spring onions; the next week it was mushroom soup; and last Sunday, it was supposed to have been chicken fettucine alfredo, but it wound up being just chicken fried in oil with garlic, kimchi and spring onions (noticing a theme here?).

On Friday night I'm hosting a cooking class of sorts. The octopus I routinely buy at E-Mart has sparked several wild hypotheses among my coworkers. People have asked me what exactly I do with the octopus to prepare it. Dissatisfied with my own answer ("Take it home, boil it and eat it whole") I decided to paint myself in a more civilized light and prepare some proper octopi. And while I was at it, I thought I'd invite some of my coworkers to my apartment so they could watch, and sample the results. The recipe I've picked is called nakji bokkeum: stir-fried octopus with vegetables. It's a common dish, available in any halfway decent restaurant. There's even a TV-dinner version. The dish is spicy (a liberal amount of gochujang—pepper paste—goes into it) but full of vegetable and seafood flavors. With some artful preparation, I hope my coworkers and I will cook quickly, eat slowly, and have a lovely sip of something afterward. I'll let you know how it goes.

Apart from that, what more is there to tell? That I'm slowly carving my way through Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness? That I'm opening a second bank account on Thursday to wire money home more inexpensively? That Martin, Andy, Jon, Peter, Stephanie and I gathered at the pub late Sunday night to watch Manchester United trump Queen's Park on the telly? That Miss H is still anxiously awaiting her paperwork, and I am still anxiously awaiting her?

All those things would be true. Years from now I shall write a little book about Korea. Its joys, its sorrows, its gifts, its privations. Only my comrades-in-arms shall understand it.

a breakthrough...maybe

At this point I must label myself "cautiously optimistic" (in the manner of a seasoned politician or similarly practiced equivocator), for I've been disappointed before, and am warned against further indiscretion.

THE STORY SO FAR: Things have gone rather rotten for me in the past few months. I had accepted a job in South Korea as an English teacher, but it fell through due to paperwork delays. (Totally unexpected and unfair paperwork delays, mind you.) In consequence, I lost my job, because I gave my notice too early. When I finally did get my paperwork, the job market in K-Land had dried up like a...like a...like a thing that dries up really fast. So there I was, in limbo: no job, no prospects, still stuck in my parents' house, bills to pay, and hope fading fast. Miss H was in the same boat, only ten times worse because her parents drive her up the wall.

THE BREAKTHROUGH: One of my friends (and a fellow Korea expatriate), whom I'll call Smithy, pointed out to me that, in the absence of a job offer from one recruiting agency, I should court several more and see if they could turn anything up. This I did, and was both genuinely surprised and ludicrously glad when a service called Longbridge Pacific e-mailed and told me they had a splendid couple's position available in Cheonan, Chungcheong-do, South Korea.

Cheonan!

If that name sounds familiar, there's a darn good reason: the ROKS Cheonan was the unfortunate Pohang-class corvette that made headlines back in March 2010 for being split in half and sunk by what North Korea assured the world was most definitely not a North Korean torpedo fired by a North Korean submarine.

Curious, I went online and looked it up (the city, not the ship). Cheonan, it seems, is the main transportation hub of western Korea, and serves as the gateway to the Seoul area. My interest was already piqued. Living on Geoje (the second-largest island in the R.O.K.) was nice and pastoral and everything, but a two-hour bus ride (or a bouncing ferry) was required just to get to civilization. It would be nice this time around if I lived someplace that was well-connected to the rest of the country by road and rail. And the location was perfect: central Korea, only 50 miles or so south of Seoul, and about as far north of major cities like Daejeon (where the Costco is).

This was looking really good. And it was looking that way before I noticed that the job offer paid each of us ₩2.2 million per month (about $2200); that we'd be working with no less than six other foreign teachers; that our apartment came fully furnished; and that all the usual goodies (paid rent and airfare) were in place.

Hot diggity damn.

So I jumped on it. I e-mailed Longbridge back and told them to sign us up. We're waiting on phone interviews, and then we'll send our documents off and get our visas. And then...we're gone. Like, in December. We don't have to wait around until flippin' February to get jobs! Halle-frickin'-lujah!

And then, ladies and gentlemen, we'll be having the time of our lives. Pigging out on kimchi and bulgogi and sannakji (you remember that, don't you?); taking in the majestic sights and sounds of the Korean countryside; reveling in the nation's proud history and cultural traditions; living it up with our fellow foreigners; and, of course, raking in the won. Why, by the time this little junket is over (two years, if I can talk Miss H into it), we'll have enough money to go anywhere in the States that we like, get a decent apartment, find jobs, pay off loans, maybe even get Miss H her master's degree and me my commercial pilot's license. Maybe even my instrument rating! Hot diggity damn!

Oh wait. I'm supposed to be cautiously optimistic, aren't I?

cocktail review no. 46 - Sazerac

Now here's an interesting one.

Miss H and I were wandering around Victoria Gardens the other day. (It's this marvelous outdoor shopping mall down in Rancho Cucamonga.) Over on the southwest side we noticed a shop we hadn't seen before, called Anthropologie. We wandered in. Lots of scuffed wood, dry grass, pottery, and other nature-inspired décor; we assumed it was one of those places whose clothing line was designed to make everyone believe the wearer to be a famous explorer on safari in East Africa or Australia, but instead reveal on closer inspection that he or she is in fact dressed in designer labels for an afternoon out.

Nonetheless we felt the place worth checking out. Full-length linen dresses in blue or beige, trimmed in beads...straw sun hats, pre-weathered...a wicker deck chair, couch-size, with silhouetted antelopes growing out the back...blue china plates with a stylized octopus...

Ah. Here we go. This is more like it.

I found a book propped on a nicked coffee table called Vintage Cocktails.

I opened it up and found the table of contents. There were a few dozen familiar names, listed side-by-side with libations I'd never heard of in any bar, club or mixology handbook: things like "Pimm's Cup," "French 75," "Mary Pickford," and "Agave Gingerita."

Author Brian Van Flandern and photographer Laziz Hamani have, apparently, created a rough-and-ready go-to guide for all the classic highballs and mixers that ever got wildly popular or well-known at some point in American history. There was a picture in the front of the book depicting Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart and some other heavy hitters standing at the bar, knocking back a few examples. Some concoction among these might have been the preferred tipple of Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra.

I was intrigued, let me tell you.
So I started leafing through it. Laziz Hamani should be put up in bronze, along with whoever mixed the drinks he shot (so to speak). Each full-page photo was jaw-dropping and mouth-watering; each cocktail looked good enough to dive into. The recipe (on the opposite page from the accompanying photo) was uniquely laid out too. Rather than a dull typeset font or a trite quotation or a humdrum backstory, the ingredient list and step-by-step preparation were laid out with a minimum of fuss, in giant letters, apparently written with the nearest box of crayons.

Many of them I was familiar with, due to prior interest in the pantheon of time-honored cocktails: the Bloody Mary, Cape Codder, Brandy Crusta, Between the Sheets, Moscow Mule...

And then I saw it.

Sazerac.

Now, I'd seen that name many a time in The Bartender's Bible. It was hidden up near the front of the book, at the tail end of the chapter on bourbon. Odd name. As you may have guessed, it's French. The Sazerac was first mixed around 1850 at the Merchant's Exchange bar in New Orleans, mostly likely by owner Aaron Bird, using a brand of cognac (also called Sazerac) imported by the Exchange's previous owner, Sewell T. Taylor. The original recipe called for one and a half ounces of Sazerac cognac, a quarter-ounce of Herbsaint, one cube of sugar, three dashes of bitters and a lemon peel. (Legend has it that a local druggist down the block, Antoine Amedie Peychaud, mixed up the bitters; on occasion Peychaud himself is credited with the invention of the Sazerac.) Later, due to an epidemic that devastated France's grapes, rye whiskey was substituted for cognac. In one old-fashioned glass, ice was packed; in a second glass the sugar and bitters were muddled, and the whiskey was added. The ice was then discarded from the first glass and the Herbsaint was poured in and swirled to coat the interior; then the excess was discarded. The rye/sugar/bitters mixture was then added to the coated glass (along with ice, if desired) and garnished with the lemon peel.

It's a tricky drink to compile, as you can tell. (Herbsaint?) In The Bartender's Bible,  orange peel, Ricard (anise-flavored liqueur) and Peychaud's bitters are listed among the ingredients. Vintage Cocktails, however, had it differently. Peychaud's bitters was still a factor, but absinthe could be used rather than Picard or Herbsaint. In fact, certain research suggests that the Sazerac was originally made with absinthe; Herbsaint was substituted when absinthe was outlawed in the United States some years ago.

Absinthe, eh?

I just happened to have a bottle of Czech-made absinthe sitting in my liquor cabinet at home.

This was getting more and more interesting all the time. A whiskey cocktail with absinthe, bitters, sugar, and an orange-peel garnish! I could only imagine what it tasted like. I had to admit to myself that I'd begun the long slide into jaded indifference in the realm of cocktail-drinking. I've mixed so many and sampled so much that many libations are beginning to taste the same to me. There's a great deal of variation on a select theme in the world of hooch. These days it's hard to come by a drink that tastes nothing like anything you've ever had before.

Well, this was it. Here, then, culled from the best bits of The Bartender's Bible and Vintage Cocktails, is the Sazerac I've thrown together.

• 1 teaspoon absinthe
• ½ teaspoon superfine sugar
• 1 teaspoon water
• 2 dashes Peychaud's bitters
• 2 ounces bourbon
• 1 orange peel

Pour the absinthe into an old-fashioned glass and swirl to coat the insides of the glass. Discard any excess. Add the sugar, water, and bitters, and muddle with the back of a teaspoon. Fill the glass halfway with ice and add the whiskey. Garnish with the orange peel.

That there may be no speculation, I used regular ol' Angostura bitters; Mata Hari Bohemian Absinthe; Old Crow bourbon (my favorite); and some simple syrup I'd prepared beforehand. It made the muddling rather pointless but I did it anyway. I'd still recommend Peychaud's bitters above all else; it has a lighter, fruitier element to it, more suitable for our purposes.

Oh, and one other thing: I didn't discard the "excess."

Heh heh. Life's too short to skimp on stuff like that. I figured since there'd be a whopping four ounces of bourbon in, I'd better keep what absinthe I had and liven things up a little, right?

I knew I was going to wind up with something different, but the reality of it took me by surprise. Having nearly despaired of the cough-syrup redolence of the bourbon/bitters combo, I was pleasantly surprised at the way it meshed with the rest of the conspiring flavors in this beverage. While the sugar keeps the mixture from being too bitter (for after all, Old Crow and Angostura form a powerful team), the bourbon still has its full sway, providing the nose and the bouquet and (partially) the finishing sting.

The aftertaste is what this drink's all about. I'm glad I left the absinthe in. The anise flavor comes on strong just after the bourbon passes over the taste buds, allying itself with the sugar to lend a sweet licorice undertone to the Sazerac. You mightn't think licorice would mix well with bourbon, but it does. To whatever extent the absinthe is not disguised by the bourbon overture, it melds seamlessly with the whiskey and then adds its own kick at the end. The sugar and bitters create a delicate balance and the orange peel rounds the experience off with a citrus interlude that complements the anise rather well. All in all, it's a smooth and flavorful cocktail with a sumptuous bouquet and a sweet-spicy kick at the end. 

Try it, and raise a glass to Jimmy Stewart or Dino. And buy Vintage Cocktails. Right now. Go do it. You won't regret it. It's as much art as a recipe book.

on the consumption of live octopus

You have not misread the title.

No, you're not going blind.

Yes, they eat live octopus in Korea.

Charles tells me it's the number-one surefire gross-out food for most foreigners. Most people can't stand the sight of it. For me, it's a dream come true. I like octopus; why bother to waste the time cooking it, or even waiting for it to mature? Just take some baby octopi, slice 'em up into bite-size chunks, then grab some chopsticks and some sesame oil and eat them, still wriggling.

That's sannakji: live baby octopus.

As soon as we learned of this delicacy, Adam, Jeff and I knew we had to try it. Come on: how many times in your life are you going to get an opportunity as bizarre as this?

I'd like to restate the principle of the thing for those of you who might be skimming this article in search of the juicy bits: sannakji is

LIVE BABY OCTOPUS,
EATEN WHILE IT'S STILL WRIGGLING.

Is that clear? Splendid. Let there be no further speculation on it.

Sannakji was on the "must-try" list for Korea. However, being Newbies, we were unsure where to go to obtain some. So we asked Charles, who, being Korean himself, was our resident expert on all things Korea-related, especially food. He said he'd look around. His first recommendation was just to waltz into any seafood- or fish-related restaurant and order up. We heard rumors about a full plate of bulgogi and sannakji served up at some eatery over in Deoksan, a burg somewhere between Gohyeon and Okpo, but didn't act on it.


Then Charles found something more material: sannakji being sold out in the local sijang (market). After some scheduling mishaps (Jeff, the poor sap, is being "rented out" to kindergarten by his employer; his mornings are taken up with teaching now as well as his afternoons), we managed to set a meeting time: Wednesday noon across from the market, outside Lotteria.
I awoke that morning agog with expectation, and everything I turned my hand to seemed charmed. It was certainly charming weather, a warm and sunny spring day with a breath of cool breeze to tone down the blossoming sunlight. I donned my most gaudy Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses, took a long walk, then went back to the apartment to fetch the camera. As I rounded the corner of the block the market sits on, I descried Adam standing in front of Lotteria, in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, his cap pulled low over his eyes, smoking a cigarette and surveying the market in front of him. Both of us acknowledged that we might need some water to wash some enterprising octopus down our throats, so we went in search of a convenience store. We'd heard that sannakji can be tenacious, wrapping their tentacles around your teeth or attaching themselves to your gums with their suckers. Adam's drink-sniffing nose led us to a shop just a minute or so up the street; we nabbed a couple of water bottles and nipped back to the rendezvous, where Jeff had arrived in the meantime. Soon Charles rolled up on his bicycle, and the three of us walked across the street to the market. We located our quarry after only three steps.

Charles, ever watchful for an opportunity for me to practice my Korean in a practical setting, called on me to conduct the transaction.
"Sannakji eolmayeyo?" I asked.
The woman held up four fingers (swathed in pink rubber gloves).
"Nemari man won," she replied. Four octopi for ten grand. We took out our billfolds and started up a collection for the Mollusk Consumption Foundation. Without further ado, the woman snatched four wriggling baby octopi out of the basket, sliced them into chunks, put them in a bag, and handed it to us with a container of wasabi. As we left the market and strode back to where Charles had parked his bicycle he suggested we adjourn to his place; he could procure some sesame oil and we could eat in comfort and peace. This we did. We installed ourselves and our precious haul of raw mollusk under a pavilion in a playground next to Charles's apartment (the same ill-fated playground in which I'd lost my wristwatch during a drunken dive out of a swingset after the housewarming party).

Charles dumped his stuff off in his apartment and reemerged with paper cups of sesame oil and chopsticks. Then we opened up the container and went to work. Inside was a moist, gelatinous mass of tentacles and amorphous chunks of octopus, the color of brain matter. Most of it was still writhing. Lesser men would have balked at the mere idea, to say nothing of the sight; but we set our teeth and went into the breach.

It was interesting eating. Uncooked octopus tastes and feels a tad rubbery, but regardless I believe that intoxicating oceanic flavor that pervades seafood (especially mollusks) was still present, and appreciable. My first bite wasn't moving perceptibly, either. So I made sure to nab a motile tentacle the next time around. This is most visible in the video.

The feel of a tentacle writhing away in my mouth, scraping roughly against my tongue, teeth and cheeks, is a feeling not soon to be equaled in this lifetime or the next. I strongly suggest you try it, if only once. I wound up eating a load of the stuff. Jeff took a huge bite the first time out and the magic sort of went out of it for him; Adam's views on the subject are perhaps best summarized by this picture, taken shortly after the one above.


Nonetheless we all continued to pick at the stuff. We'd come this far. By now, at least, it had stopped moving. Finally everyone declared they'd had their fill and I was left to finish the remainder.

I'm known as something of a walking garbage disposal in these parts. Jeff is the accomplished master in dealing with leftovers; it is my lot to eat any and all strange, odd, unusual, revolting or disturbing foods. Put us together and we'll eat anybody, anywhere out of house and home.

So ended the Trial of the Octopus. We came, we saw, we sampled. For us all, it was the realization of a dream; we'd finally gotten our chance to challenge and master sannakji and the principle of stuffing still-moving food into our gullets. For me, moreover, it marked the first steps toward the completion of a pet ambition (sample the weirdest food of every country I visit, and then write a compendium).

We said a hearty thank-you to Charles, our guide, teacher and minister, then departed for our respective apartments.

We can now all die happy men.