Modified Food Cravings

Are you tired of seeing and reading about food yet? It seems like one of the funnest differences about visiting new places, and it's one of our hobbies, so I guess it makes sense that the topic comes up so often.

A month from today, I will be travelling home to South Carolina for a visit. As I look forward to this trip, once again food is a subject that pops up in conversations and thoughts. Which comfort foods will I want to gobble up first? How many jars of Jif peanut butter can I cram in my suitcase for the trip back to Korea?

But I think my stomach has changed its tastes a bit. For the most part, I'm no longer pining for those familiar foods like English muffins and macaroni and cheese. There are several munchies I crave now, but I realize that they are rather different than eight months ago.

So here are the foods I find myself craving now, which I guess could also be seen as my favorite eating out meals.

Soups

Maeuntang, the incredibly fresh fish soup usually served as the finale of a large meal. It's cooked right there on your table, and the spicy broth is sure to clean out your sinuses.










The smell of fishcake soup often wafts across sidewalks - from small restaurants with open doors and street vendors. At first I wasn't a fan of the scent or drinking the liquid, but now I've grown addicted. The simple, salty, fishy broth is perfect to warm you up. And there are several fun textures of spongy fishcake to chew. This particular place serves Busan fishcake, which Isaac says have a reputation for being the tastiest in Korea.

Stone Pot Mixed Rice

Served in a super hot stone pot, this dish is sizzling and steaming when it arrives before you. It's rice topped with various vegetables and some protein - commonly beef and egg. For my craving, it's fish eggs or salmon. The ingredients are laid out prettily, and then you use a spoon and chopsticks to mix everything together. You can also stir in gochujang, red pepper paste, which some say is the Korean equivalent of ketchup. Bits of the rice stick to the hot pot and become chewy and crunchy, and it's always fun to scrape the bowl clean with your spoon at the end.

Just below is fish egg rice (albap) from the Home Plus food court near our house. It's 6,000 won, a little under $5, for this meal. The mixed rice has many ingredients like cabbage, kimchi, sprouts, pickled radish, mushrooms and seaweed.

This is a similar dish except with a blob of salmon sushi on top. I would definitely eat this every day if I could. This is 6000 won as well, the cost of a fast food meal. Before mixing:

After mixing:

Side Dishes

Like I've mentioned before, one of the best things about Korean food is the plethora of side dishes that accompany each meal. Kimchi is one of the most common, but I continue to encounter new side dishes rather often. I find myself especially craving side dishes that have the taste of Korean red pepper flakes (gochukaru).

Here are two of my favorites. Cucumber kimchi still has the sweet, fresh crunch of a fresh cuke, with a fun added tang. And the plain looking salad is the stuff of dreams. It's dribbled with nutty sesame oil and has a zing from the red pepper flakes. It also has the most delicious kkaenip leaves, which are shaped like hearts, super fragrant and tasty (a bit like licorice as I've mentioned before).

Fried Chicken

This craving is not totally new or foreign, just modified. Fried chicken culture in South Korea is a big deal. I hesitate to try and write a short blurb about it because I know it won't do it justice. It seems to me many Koreans love fried chicken at least as much as people back home in the South do.

Isaac told me that it's not uncommon for people to eat dinner, and afterwards go to a chicken restaurant and eat again. It's like dessert chicken. There are many different varieties and chicken jibs (restaurants devoted to serving only chicken) often guard their sauce and breading recipes. Sounds similar to barbecue or fried chicken recipes back home, huh?

There's bone in or out, original crispy or drenched in some sweet and spicy sauce.

The white things below are fried rice cake.

Of course, one of the benefits of living in a city is that you don't even have to leave your house to eat such food. It still feels like a novelty to me that we can have food delivered to our door. Although it usually an unhealthy option, like below.

This super fried meal comes in what looks like a pizza box, its insides divided into neat sections. This restaurant was a little special for having kkaenip fried chicken. They put the fragrant tasty leaves in the fried chicken batter itself and give more for you to sprinkle on top yourself. It also comes with a soda, french fries, kimmari (noodles and veggies wrapped in seaweed, fried) and pickled radish to contrast all of that grease.

Maybe it's coincidence, but after thinking and writing about fried chicken for the past while, I've got a stomach ache. I hope you enjoyed seeing a few of these foods, and that it wasn't too painful.

Once again, we are guilty of taking way more pictures of food over the past week than each other. But last Sunday was Valentine's Day, and while we were walking around there were some surprise snow flurries, which inspired me to try to take a picture of us. It's not one for the scrapbook, but you can see that we are alive and (eating) well, even if a little pale after the long winter.