Beyond Kimchi

By Michaela Fenix

Philippine Daily Inquirer

LAST summer, the hottest months in my memory, Korean groceries were running out of popsicles, a recent favorite among those of us who like to cool down with melon and strawberry yogurt flavors and who miss the red beans on top of our ice cream.

Time was when the only Korean eats we knew of was kimchi, pickled fermented vegetables, very often Baguio pechay and radish, done when those vegetables were in season and kept in huge jars mixed with hot chili to make those long cold Korean winters bearable. But even in hot summer days, I know my Korean friends will have kimchi, the constant at their tables.

When the first wave of Koreans came to Manila, Korean restaurants followed. Koreans, it seems, will mostly eat their own food. If you know nothing about the food in this north Asian country, you just have to look at the menu. All of them become familiar on the third visit. You notice that there are far more meat dishes than fish and that there’s no dessert. So like most Chinese and Japanese restaurants, Koreans will serve fruits as the last course.

Before those restaurants, however, whatever was known of Korean dishes was limited to stalls in fast food joints that served them. It was always beef and pork barbecue served with bean sprouts. The meat was sliced into small long pieces, cooked on a dome-like frying pan with a sauce that was a mixture of soya, sesame and a bit of sugar. Or in some places, it was bibimbap, rice topping as we like to call it here, with everything mixed together – vegetables, meat and eggs. It’s fast food, easy food.

What I love about Korean restaurants is the freebie goodies served after you order. They come in bowls, from four to six of them. Kimchi is a mainstay. Vegetables like bean sprouts flavored with sesame oil, anchovies glazed with sugar, fried tofu, even boiled mussels are offered. For first timers, there should be a caveat. Diners beware, because it’s easy to make yourself full with these excellent small tastings.

A more relaxed sit-down dining is required to have real barbecue or bulgogi. While one can have the kitchen do the cooking, the fun is always in doing it yourself. Diners have their own rice, a pair of metal chopsticks and a spoon to be used for soups or stews since Koreans never bring the bowl near their mouths as the Japanese and Chinese do.

For bulgogi, there are tables made to hold a single gas stove in the center, with a grill placed on top. Beef or pork is cut thinly against the grain for faster cooking. Once done, the meat can be cut with scissors before the cooked bulgogi is wrapped in lettuce leaves, the flavors heightened by an assortment of sauces.

My favorite will always be the kalbichim, stewed beef ribs cooked with carrots and onions. Authentic ones will include several kinds of nuts – gingko, chestnuts and pine nuts. The resulting sauce after the long slow cooking is best eaten with rice and I never let leftover sauce go to waste.

A newbie to Korean eating is always introduced to two orders –

pajeon and chapchae.

Chapchae is akin to our pancit guisado, the noodles, thick and glassy called tangmyon, are stir-fried with beef and such pancit mainstays as vegetable strips like carrots and green beans. Because the noodles are slippery, one Korean student who taught me how to do it mixed everything with her hands, to the consternation of a cousin who was watching the procedure. Chapchae noodles are now also used by caterers as their version of pancit sotanghon.

Pajeon can be described as a thin pancake, shaped like a square. Cookbooks include oysters or baby clams in the mixture but since seafood is expensive, most of the pajeon here only have speckles of spring onions in its batter.

Seafood is rare in restaurant offerings, nothing distinct in the menu save for the octopus that has been cooked with the hot sauce of the kimchi.

On a trip to Seoul, my mind and palate were ready to receive new Korean dishes. Yet on the first days of our visit, it was always what could be had here so it was a succession of bulgogi lunches and dinner. While there were times when we had skewered beef or pork instead (sanjok), it wasn’t any different from bulgogi in flavor, only the meat was threaded into thin sticks. It was enough to make one think that the cuisine was limited.

Cookbooks, however, say otherwise. And yet none of those colorful arrangements of ingredients for fancy hot pots were served us.

But on our own after a frenzied shopping pace in the night markets, we decided to get in out from the cold into one of those makeshift eating places beside the shops and discovered kalbitang, boiled beef ribs with radish. The flavor isn’t strong but of course all the hot sauces were around, including kimchi. With every sip we chased away the chill and were euphoric with the discovery.

And then at breakfast, away from the continental offerings, a sweetened rice and barley drink made the boring breakfast bearable. It’s called sikhye, served cold but still perfectly refreshing even in the early winter when we were there. I vowed to learn how to make it, but seeing how long it took to make the drink (five hours!), I thought I should look for it here instead.

But my best experience in Seoul was going to a restaurant that served traditional cooking. On the table were laid several bowls, too many to count it seemed at the time. Each contained different food, all of which I hadn’t encountered at any of the restaurants here. Smaller bowls contained sauces and condiments. There was no one to translate whatever it was we were having so we just tried to discern what they were, enjoying the new flavors and textures, as well as the warm floor we were sitting on.

Cooking Korean can now be done with all the groceries that have sprouted all over the place. Meat cuts are done to specification but cost much more. Bean sprouts are giant in size. They have very good tofu. And there are a myriad instant noodle packs to choose from, some of them made here in factories Koreans own, some as far as Baler, Aurora. The Korean invasion is indeed extensive. •