food in korea

I love cooking. It's like a puzzle, and you get to be creative and see how temperature change makes things edible, and then you get to share what you made with others and try it yourself. It's great!

Cooking in Korea - not so great, at least not for foreigners who have trouble deciphering whether to use chopsticks or a spoon for certain dishes (oh, embarrassing moments). Korean food is awesome, yes, at restaurants, but unfortunately not in my oven-less kitchen. Yep, no oven.

Suyu at a restaurant

On Monday, I decided that since there is next to no hope for recreating western meals here, and since noodles are becoming less and less attractive everyday, the only logical solution was to learn how to cook Korean food. Beaming with pride and certain that I would make the most excellent Korean food ever, I marched off to the supermarket last night and bought W40,000 worth of ingredients (about $35) to make several servings of gaeran mari, kimbap, and bibim gooksu.

Asian dumplings sold on the street

How pathetic my pride was. This morning I tried to make gaeran mari (an omelette with carrots, onion, and seaweed) - flavorless. Earlier today I tried making bibim gooksu (noodles, spicy sauce, meat, vegetables). It sounds simple, right? Well, it was, but it turned out to be disastrous. Disgusting. Ew.

Kimbap from the market

I still have kimbap to mess up. There's no cooking involved with that, except rice, so that just might be what pulls me through this cooking rut. Shall I temporarily give up on my zest to try and figure out the secret to Korean gastronomy? I think not. Kimbap, you will be conquered!