JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, February 13, 2025

The beauty of Hansik

by

20160615

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/


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored