For our sixteenth dinner, I cooked us a meal from South Korea! Compared to most of the countries we have cooked from, I feel a little bit more familiar with Korean food and culture. I have a lot of admiration for Korea, its ancient and beautiful culture, complex (and delicious) cuisine, cinema, and modern technological sophistication. Still, I had never made Korean food at home before. I did not choose the most adventurous items in the Korean cookbook, for sure (live octopus, for example), but they were still mostly new for us. The theme of this meal was 잘 먹겠습니다 (jal mukesumneda), a Korean expression said before dining, akin to bon appetit (literally, “I will eat well”). This was another long cook, at 7 hours. I hit my 10,000 steps just in the kitchen today!
Mark heating up the grill for the 불고기 (bulgogi, lit. “fire meat”)
Rice (밥, bap) is the center of Korean meals, and is accompanied by 반찬 (banchan, assorted side dishes which are shared with everyone at the table)
Bulgogi before cooking
Mark doing the honors
The bulgogi was great -- but my feeling is, you can't really go wrong with steak.
쌈장 (ssamjang sauce), served with the bulgolgi - an interesting nutty flavor
비빔국수 (bibim guksu -- spicy cold noodles)
Mark and I both liked these noodles a lot. To me, they were similar to jjolmyeon, another cold spicy Korean noodle dish made with gochugang.
감자조림 (gamja jorim -- braised potatoes)
These were a big hit. They were perhaps the most "American" tasting part of the meal - this tasted kind of like a breakfast scramble, with the potatoes and green pepper.
아스파라거스 무침 (asparagus muchim -- asparagus with vinegary sauce) --
I love everything with gochugang.
I love everything with gochugang.
fresh pickled daikon -- mild and inoffensive
오이 김치 (oi kimchi -- cucumber kimchi) and
연근조림 (yeonkeun jorim -- sweet and salty lotus roots)
I've never been a big kimchi person, although I liked this okay. It was a fresher style of kimchi, only sitting out 18 hours before refrigeration. The lotus roots were interesting - as Mark said, "a deep soy sauce flavor." We didn't really care for them, but they were quite visually appealing (though it's a little hard to tell in this photo!).
One thing this meal was missing is soup -- I opted for other items, but I think traditionally, a Korean meal would not really be complete without soup of some kind.
다식 (dasik -- tea cookies)
Dessert is apparently not a "thing" in Korean cuisine, but I thought it would be fun to try making some Korean sweets, which are usually made for special occasions. I opted for dasik, which are traditionally served for Lunar New Year. (I'm a little ahead of things, since it's not til February 12, 2021.) I made three varieties: matcha, sesame seed, and imitation omija (I could not find omija tea at H-Mart, so I substituted hibiscus). I liked the matcha one -- the others not so much. Mark did not really care for any of them. I had ordered a dasik mold to make these, but it got lost in shipping, so instead I used a bento rice mold Mark bought me a while ago, and then decorated the tops a little bit. True dasik are prettier than these - but I kind of like how they look.
This was the hardest/most interesting meal to shop for, of the country meals I've done, since I actually shopped in-person at H-Mart (our local Korean grocery store), instead of buying everything in English online. Many of the items were unfamiliar to me* and so I could not pick them out by sight (or even guess confidently which aisle they'd be in), and I had to actually cross-reference the Korean characters from the online recipes with the packaging of products on the shelf. It was a fun treasure hunt in a way, but it was also time-consuming, and at times, a little tiring, frustrating, and embarrassing. It gave me a little insight into how annoying it must be to shop in American stores if you are ESL.
*Like Korean anchovy fish sauce (조청 jocheong), malt syrup ( 물엿 mulyeot), etc.
I bought us Korean chopsticks/spoon sets for this meal -- as you can kind of see in this still from the charming TV show "Let's Eat," Korean chopsticks are metal, flat, and narrower than Japanese chopsticks.
After dinner, we watched the film Sunny (2011), a very heart-warming slice-of-life film about a clique of friends in high school and 25 years later. A wonderful tale about growing older and the beauty of female friendship. Definitely recommend to all. It was also educational, since I had not known about the student protests for democratic reform/revolution in the 80s (you can read a bit about that time on Wikipedia, here and here).
For these country date nights, we have been trying to select upbeat films from that country which do a good job of highlighting their culture (as recommended on various blogs or forums). Normally, though, horror is by far my favorite movie genre-- and there are some amazing Korean horror films! You can see my take on some here.
When? December 19, 2020
Who cooked? Lauren
What's for dinner? (Recipe links) bulgogi with rice and ssamjang sauce, bibim guksu (Korean spicy cold noodles), asparagus with gochujang sauce, gamja jorim (braised potatoes), oi kimchi (cucumber kimchi), yeonkeun jorim (sweet and salty lotus roots), sesame dasik, green tea and omija dasik
South Korea Stats
- Population: 51,225,308 (27th in the world)
- GDP: 2,027 (14th in the world)
- Life Expectancy: 82.8 -- so high! (9th in the world)
- Founding Date/Age in 2020: 2333 BCE / 4353 (very ancient civilization); 1945 was end of Japanese colonization and formal creation of South Korea
- Official Language: Korean; Korean Sign Language
- Rankings (selected) -- as you can tell from these stats, South Korea excels in education, technology, economic prosperity, and medicine
- Highest percentage of 25- to 34-year-olds having a tertiary education degree (68%)
- Highest percentage of graduates with a degree in natural sciences or engineering (32%)
- Best performance in fourth grade science and eighth grade math at Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study
- Highest in Bloomberg Innovation Index
- Highest patent applications per GDP and per million population; most patents in force
- Largest shipbuilder
- Highest in 4G LTE penetration (97.5%)
- Fastest Internet connection speed
- Highest in mobile banking usage
- Lowest obesity rate in the OECD
- Highest colorectal cancer and cervical cancer 5-year survival rate
- Highest spending on research and development per capita
- Lowest in Long-term unemployment rate (.01%!)
- Highest in average number of movies watched in cinemas
- Best performance at World Taekwondo Championships
- Best performance at World Cyber Games
- Largest military reserve force
