Shereen Ali

De­li­cious and spicy, sooth­ing, or sharp and funki­ly fer­ment­ed, South Ko­re­an food has a whole spec­trum of flavours and tex­tures that's mak­ing it a huge hit in the Unit­ed States right now.

And not on­ly in the States: the eclec­tic va­ri­ety, ver­sa­til­i­ty, health prop­er­ties, and bal­ance of Ko­re­an cui­sine has won it fans far be­yond its shores.

Amer­i­can chef, au­thor and TV per­son­al­i­ty An­tho­ny Bour­dain is among its many fans. In a re­cent in­ter­view with Lisa Granat­stein of Ad­week, post­ed on­line on June 6, he ob­served how wild­ly pop­u­lar Ko­re­an food has be­come in his coun­try, es­pe­cial­ly among the "cool kids." Ko­re­an food, he not­ed, has al­ways been very au­then­tic to its eth­nic roots, re­fus­ing to "dumb it down" for for­eign tastes even when it's made abroad.

Here in Trinidad, it's eas­i­er to find African, In­di­an, Cre­ole or Chi­nese-in­flu­enced flavours than Ko­re­an food. But that was not the case last Thurs­day, June 9, when the Ko­re­an Em­bassy host­ed their Unique Taste of Ko­rea event at the Ko­re­an am­bas­sador's res­i­dence in St Clair.

From the mul­ti­coloured Plat­ter of Nine Del­i­ca­cies to the tangy kim­chi nib­bles, guests en­joyed sam­ples from many dif­fer­ent dish­es, cooked spe­cial­ly by three Ko­re­an Mas­ter Chefs who are cur­rent­ly based in New York.

Among the dish­es were bibim­baps–steamed rice topped with sauteed beef and colour­ful veg­eta­bles, mixed at the ta­ble with spicy gochu­jang sauce and sesame oil. There were seafood and green onion frit­ters; ten­der braised beef with chest­nuts and gink­go nuts; firm to­fu blocks in a de­li­cious, pi­quant sauce; many fresh veg­etable dish­es del­i­cate­ly arranged in­to small ves­sels that were like minia­ture vi­su­al art­works in them­selves; and sev­er­al dif­fer­ent kinds of kim­chi–spiced fer­ment­ed veg­eta­bles, with a crunchy, savoury pick­led taste.

Wash­ing it all down were a se­lec­tion of wines, as well as two unique Ko­re­an drinks: cin­na­mon punch, made from sim­mered fresh gin­ger, cin­na­mon and sug­ar, and Yu­ja Cha or cit­rus tea, made from the tart Ko­re­an yu­ja fruit and sweet­ened to make a re­fresh­ing drink.

Ko­re­an Am­bas­sador Doo-young Lee, in a T&T Guardian in­ter­view be­fore the event, spoke about his de­ci­sion to use Ko­re­an food as a bridge for cul­tur­al un­der­stand­ing:

"Cul­ture is the most use­ful and mean­ing­ful ve­hi­cle to build bridges for peo­ple to un­der­stand each oth­er. So this year I in­vit­ed Ko­re­an chefs work­ing in New York to vis­it. As you know, New York is a ma­jor cul­tur­al, mu­sic, and fi­nan­cial cen­tre. And there is a huge Ko­re­an com­mu­ni­ty in New York–more than 30,000 peo­ple; with a large Ko­re­atown. So there are many ex­cel­lent Ko­re­an restau­rants there. I in­vit­ed three chefs to vis­it T&T from the Ko­re­an Chefs As­so­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca: Joy Cho, KCAA ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor; Dong Chan Lee, KCAA pres­i­dent; and Se­ung Joon Choi, KCAA vice pres­i­dent."

"Ko­re­an food is very pop­u­lar in New York right now," said Mas­ter Chef Joy Cho, "and 80 per cent of our cus­tomers in New York are for­eign­ers. We are very proud to cook our food for them. To­day, we have ex­am­ples of tra­di­tion­al Ko­re­an lo­cal cui­sine, tem­ple food, typ­i­cal Ko­re­an fam­i­ly meals and street food."

Chef Dong Chan Lee (al­so called David Lee), who al­so plays the drums and was once an in­te­ri­or de­sign­er, said cook­ing has al­ways been part of his fam­i­ly: "I am from a restau­rant fam­i­ly–I am the third gen­er­a­tion. My grand­moth­er was a chef. That's why I couldn't de­cide on a dif­fer­ent ca­reer! At first I was an in­te­ri­or de­sign­er, but then I re­alised cook­ing was in my blood and I be­came a chef. I've been cook­ing for about 12 years now in New York City. I learned cook­ing in school and im­proved my tech­niques in dif­fer­ent restau­rants."

Chef Lee grad­u­at­ed from the In­ter­na­tion­al Culi­nary Cen­ter in New York and has worked at many NY restau­rants, in­clud­ing the Mer­maid Oys­ter Bar, Spitzer's Cor­ner and Barn Joo. He was the ex­ec­u­tive chef at Gog­gan, an up­scale Ko­re­an restau­rant in Hell's Kitchen, New York City, where he spe­cialised in New Amer­i­can Cui­sine, draw­ing from his Ko­re­an roots. Chef Lee has cooked many dish­es, from French cui­sine to tra­di­tion­al Ko­re­an to cre­ative new fu­sions. When we asked him about his own favourite Ko­re­an dish, Lee laughed and said: "Any­thing from my mom!"

Per­haps the youngest chef at last Thurs­day's Taste of Ko­rea event was Se­ung Joon Choi, who said he start­ed cook­ing from the age of 16. He's worked in many cook­ing jobs, from fast food places to the mil­i­tary, and shared: "I was once the per­son­al chef of a gen­er­al. I then de­cid­ed to study in Amer­i­ca. I went to the Culi­nary In­sti­tute of Amer­i­ca, grad­u­at­ed, worked at a cou­ple of Miche­lin star restau­rants, and now I am work­ing in a Ko­re­an kitchen."

To­day he is the ex­ec­u­tive chef of the Ko­re­an restau­rant Gam Mi Ok in NYC. Se­ung Joon Choi says one of his favourite Ko­re­an dish­es is mul naengmyun, which is a spicy cold noo­dle soup made from beef broth mixed with a lit­tle kim­chi juice, with added noo­dles, pick­led cu­cum­ber, radish, boiled egg, and slices of meat–a pop­u­lar, re­fresh­ing sum­mer dish in Ko­rea.

Guests at last week's Taste of Ko­rea event re­ceived a beau­ti­ful­ly de­signed 54-page book en­ti­tled Han­sik, ex­plain­ing some of the an­cient, com­mu­nal, cul­tur­al and spir­i­tu­al prin­ci­ples shap­ing Ko­re­an cui­sine. The term Han­sik refers to tra­di­tion­al Ko­re­an food, as well as the man­ners and rules for serv­ing food beau­ti­ful­ly. The book show­cas­es earthy, taste­ful food pho­tog­ra­phy with well-writ­ten short fea­tures in a clas­sic, art­less­ly sim­ple, fresh yet time­less graph­ic de­sign which breathes a sense of rus­tic el­e­gance root­ed in na­ture: the pub­li­ca­tion in it­self is a thing of qui­et, unas­sum­ing beau­ty. (The book, pub­lished by the Ko­rea Tourism Or­ga­ni­za­tion, has won two de­sign awards, in­clud­ing a 2015-16 Mer­cury Ex­cel­lence Award.)

The book, on a page ex­plain­ing the Ko­re­an verb dan­da–to con­tain (a word of­ten paired with food)–in­cludes this grace­ful state­ment:

"Ko­re­ans be­lieve food should con­tain the val­ues and de­vo­tion of those who make it, the wis­dom and laws of na­ture, and the mem­o­ries built by shar­ing it with oth­ers."What, ex­act­ly, makes Ko­re­an food unique?

If French cui­sine is as­so­ci­at­ed with sen­so­ry in­dul­gence, and Caribbean food with eclec­tic spices and earthy, com­fort-food flavours, then per­haps one defin­ing qual­i­ty of South Ko­re­an food is its sense of har­mo­ny, com­bin­ing spicy tastes with healthy nu­tri­tion in culi­nary tra­di­tions de­vel­oped over cen­turies.

South Ko­re­an food has evolved from dish­es drawn from a rich cul­ture of 5,000 years of Ko­re­an his­to­ry. Bal­anced com­bi­na­tions of rice, veg­etable and meat dish­es de­vel­oped from an­cient agri­cul­tur­al and no­madic tra­di­tions. And be­cause South Ko­rea con­tains moun­tain ranges and is sur­round­ed on three sides by the sea, there has al­ways been a very wide range of in­gre­di­ents to choose from, in­clud­ing many veg­eta­bles, root crops, many kinds of seafood, and meats. So Ko­re­an cooks have be­come adept at com­bin­ing many in­gre­di­ents in bal­anced ways.

A dis­tinc­tive part of the Ko­re­an ap­proach to food is the no­tion that food can be a form of med­i­cine in it­self. "In Ko­rea, we be­lieve food and med­i­cines come from the same root. So, for in­stance, we may use gin­seng or oth­er med­i­c­i­nal sub­stances and com­bine this with oth­er in­gre­di­ents to make very healthy food. Ko­re­an food is al­so a slow food: the food may seem sim­ple, but the prepa­ra­tions take a long time," says Joy Cho, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Ko­re­an Chefs As­so­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca.

Ko­re­an cui­sine has evolved to in­clude many nu­tri­tious nat­ur­al foods. With sea­son­al veg­etable dish­es at its core, Ko­re­an cooks make gen­er­ous use of cab­bage, bean sprouts and spinach. And they pre­fer to steam, boil or light­ly pan-fry meat and fish, rather than deep-fry, to pre­serve the meat's in­her­ent flavours.

Ko­re­an food is al­so dis­tin­guished by its condi­ments, or "yangnyeom", which, con­sid­er­ably more than ca­su­al sauces, play a key part in set­ting the tone for food flavours. Fer­ment­ed soy­bean in three dif­fer­ent forms are the three key condi­ments, while green onion, gar­lic and Ko­re­an chilli pow­der are es­sen­tial herbs used in many dish­es. Toast­ed and ground sesame seeds, sesame oil and per­il­la oil are al­so used to add a dis­tinc­tive savoury flavour.

A key part of Ko­re­an food cul­ture is not on­ly the dish­es them­selves, but the way you eat them: shar­ing is es­sen­tial, with large main plat­ters and many small­er side dish­es on the ta­ble, from which every­one helps them­selves in com­mu­nal meals.

Raw fer­ment­ed veg­etable dish­es are a sig­na­ture part of Ko­re­an food. Kim­chi is the per­fect ex­am­ple of this: a low-calo­rie food rich in vi­t­a­mins, min­er­als, fi­bre, and pro­bi­otics that aid in di­ges­tion and help build the body's im­mune sys­tem. To make kim­chi, veg­eta­bles are salt­ed, mixed with sea­son­ings in­clud­ing red chilli pep­per pow­der, spring onion and gar­lic, and then fer­ment­ed. The kim­chi that is pre­ferred most by Ko­re­ans con­tains salt­ed shrimp or an­chovies, and has aged un­der­ground for at least a year in a jang­dok­dae (large clay jar). Like a fine wine, the process of ag­ing gives kim­chi its deep taste.

Al­though na­pa cab­bage and radish­es are com­mon, you can make kim­chi from al­most any veg­etable; some have even made kim­chi from man­go, pineap­ple, cu­cum­ber, and wa­ter­mel­on.

Ac­cord­ing to the Ko­rea Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion, there are more than 200 dif­fer­ent kinds of kim­chi, and in the old­en days, Ko­re­an vil­lage women would get to­geth­er for "gim­jang", the prac­tice of mak­ing large amounts of kim­chi to last through the long win­ter months. This tra­di­tion brought fam­i­lies, friends and neigh­bours to­geth­er in a cul­ture of co­op­er­a­tion which UN­ESCO, in 2013, list­ed as an In­tan­gi­ble Cul­tur­al Her­itage of Hu­man­i­ty fea­ture. (SA)

MORE IN­FO

Ko­re­an food: http://eng­lish.vis­itko­rea.or.kr/enu/1051_Food.jsp

Em­bassy of the Re­pub­lic of Ko­rea in T&T: http://tto.mo­fa.go.kr/eng­lish/am/trinidad/main/in­dex.jsp

Ko­re­an Em­bassy ad­dress: 36 Eliz­a­beth Street, St Clair, Port-of-Spain; tele­phone: 622-9081, 622-1069

Ko­re­an Chefs As­so­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca: http://ko­re­anchefs.org/about-us/