Eumshik 2: Yori

We have pictures of a few things we've cooked.

Alert readers will recognize the first two from an earlier post.

Breakfast: toast with butter and jam, fruit.


A word about toast may be in order at this juncture. When I lived in Hong Kong, I also didn't have a toaster and wanted to have toast. I remembered that my grandfather had taught me how to toast a bagel over an open gas burner, by sticking a fork in it and moving it gently back and forth over the flame. That was the first thing I tried, but you can't hold up a piece of sliced bread with a fork. It doesn't have the same solidity of structure as a bagel half. I tried using chopsticks and a spatula, but it was too difficult to hold and maneuver the bread while exposing it to the flame.

The next thing I tried was frying it in a little butter, à la a toasted-cheese sandwich. But that was a mess.

At some point I tried just putting the bread in the hot dry pan, and it worked like a charm. I have no idea to what to attribute this flash of inspired brilliance.

Anyway, here's our first home-cooked dinner. A full description is in the OfficeTel entry.


The tofu-pepper stir-fry came out surprisingly good even though I had almost nothing to work with. It's flavored with just soy sauce and sesame oil.

Last weekend we decided to try to make pancakes for breakfast. That meant finding a mix, since it wouldn't make sense to invest in flour: we're only here three months, and there's no oven for baking. We found a Korean product called Hat-Keik Karu 핫케익가루, "hotcake powder". (Below the product name it says, I think, "Make and enjoy delicious hot cakes in no time".) You'll note on the package that it is served with butter (or is that cream?), syrup, raspberries, and a mint leaf. We decided, with regret, to make do without the raspberries and mint leaf.

Oddly, although the Koreans make their own pancake mix, we couldn't find Korean syrup. (Maybe it's available somewhere.) So we got imported Japanese syrup. It says on it ケイキシロップ keiki-shiroppu, "cake-syrup", and partially obscured in the lower-right corner メープルタイプ meipuru-taipu, "maple-type", a clear indication that there is no maple in there whatsoever.


We added milk and an egg, and cooked 'em up. Not great, not terrible. I think the bag was intended to make enough to serve four or five people, but the two of us tried to eat it all ourselves. Didn't manage it. Had to put some away for later.

Oh, that's a persimmon (gam 감) in the background.

We (read: Erma) have been making some Korean food as well. Here's an action shot of bulgogi 불고기, which is one of the best-known Korean dishes, in the making.

[Linguistic note: bulgogi means literally "fire meat".]


That's carrots and onions in the pan. The beef (in the background, mixed with scallions and soy sauce) is Australian. Erma and I don't eat beef at home, unless it's organic, natural, grain-fed, or otherwise immunized against mad-cow disease. So we were a bit dismayed when we learned that a few weeks ago imports of US beef into Korea had resumed and reached high volumes. Australian beef at the markets is all branded as "Australian beef: clean and safe". I think they are trying to corner the suspicious-of-American-beef market in Korea.

Here's the tasty finished product:


This picture is actually a great illustration of the basic elements of a Korean meal. More on that later.