Itaewon Turkish Surprise

Saturday was sunny and chilly. We headed to Itaewon because I'd been meaning to go to  High Street Market to pick up some ingredients. Once we got there, though, I ended up talking myself out of a lot of things, deciding I could actually buy them elsewhere.

After we left, we were walking around Itaewon looking for something "cheap and really delicious." Then we saw a sign for a Turkish restaurant. After wandering through a car driveway and up a set of stairs that had a slightly smoky smell, we found Kervan. Only a few weeks old, it's basically just one wide-open room. The decor felt Turkish enough to me, but Jinho keenly noted that it sort of felt like a public bath. On one wall there's the open kitchen and on the opposite wall, there's a wide-screen tv that shows the brick oven and chefs' work area. 

They're running a lunch set menu (less than 10,000 won per person), but once we started looking at it the waiter informed us that it's only available on weekends. For lunch, it wasn't cheap but it was delicious and pricewise, it's pretty on-par with most foreign food in Seoul.

We started with Haydari, a yogurt-based item on the appetizer menu. When it arrived alone, my immediate reaction was to wonder where the bread was. It was vinegary and minty and strange. Jinho quite liked it, and after I got some bread, I didn't mind it too much, either.

Our main dish was the "Mixed Grill." It was a nice assortment of chicken kebab, doner kebab, and some other meat kebabs whose names I forgot to make note of. It just came with a few pieces of bread below, some steamed veggies, a baked potato, and a small salad. It was nice to have those non-meat things to accompany the flavorful and juicy meat. It was enough to satisfy two people lunch.

We finished with Turkish ice cream and Baklava. Both very nice, although Turkish ice cream isn't really my thing. Its gelatin texture feels almost viscous to me. I suppose I am just too used to creamy ice cream. The Baklava, was rich, and the pistachios had a nice pronounced flavor. Overall, a nice surprise and a good meal. 

McMorning

I found out this week that "Louisville contains more McDonald's outposts per capita (39) than any city in the country, according to a Daily Beast/Newsweek report." I haven't figured out what the '39' means, though. I looked for the original report but couldn't find it. Initially, I was thinking, 'there's no way there is one McDonald's for ever 39 people in the city.' I guess it's probably 39 McDonald's in the city. But, I'm curious to know about how the per capita figure compares to other cities... 


All this thinking made me hungry this morning, so I decided to contemplate this and other big questions over a bacon egg McMuffin. I'm not sure how many McDonald's are in Seoul, but that doesn't matter because here we have... McDelivery. That's right, call in and get your breakfast delivered. I hardly ever got McDonald's breakfast when I was in the states because I used to wake up at, say, 10:27 and then realize that I had 3 minutes to get to a McDonald's. But in Seoul, that doesn't matter. Because I can call at 10:27 and place my order and get my breakfast! (And they serve breakfast til 11 here, but anyhow.) As you can see from the picture below, the food is exactly like home. (This should be a little off-putting, since it's a reminder that nothing there is fresh and there's some huge McDonald's factory somewhere, but somehow it's a little comforting, in the same way that going to a Starbucks anywhere in the world gives a sense of at-homeness.) Anyway, it's been a good morning. We should be having some higher quality food as the weekend goes on to give me something more interesting to write about. 

Fit for a king

In old Korea, one's status determined the number of dishes that were served at a meal. Although rice and soup are the starting point for a meal, the more side dishes indicated a higher status. We went to a restaurant today that had a cutesy traditional look, but was planted in the middle of a busy shopping center. We weren't sure what to expect, but it was a solid meal -- I'd give it to a king. Rice in a stone pot, kimchi jjigae and doenjang (think Korean miso) jjigae were surrounded by vegetables, seafood, and meat dishes. 

I couldn't be bothered standing up to get the whole table in the picture.

One of my favorites "gae jang" (crabs in soy sauce) is   a simple but delicious way of serving whole raw crabs. After sucking the meat out of the shell, the left over sauce and roe is perfect when soaked up with rice. Another seafood dish, jellyfish, was also well-prepared. It was mixed with a wasabi-ish sauce and served with fresh pear, cucumber, crab and tomato slices. The land meats included bulgogi and bo-ssam (steamed pork eaten wrapped in lettuce and topped with spicy kimchi.) The vegetables like eggplant, zucchini, and green tomatoes were nice to eat in between the other heavier foods. 

 Gae-jang -- note the yummy orange roe. MMMMMmm...

Jellyfish

Steamed pork 

Toast

When I think of toast I think of sliced bread that is inserted vertically into an electric box and then pops out with brown-black lines that mirror the heating coils inside the machine. But here, toast means something different. It refers to an entire sandwich, actually. This morning I had one for breakfast. It's better than McDonald's since it contains only fresh ingredients, but it still satisfies my Saturday-morning craving for something other than the cereal or fruit or nothing I have for breakfast during the week.

In Busan, the toast shop near my house sold these amazing sandwiches with three pieces of bread and a tangy, mildly spicy sauce (like barbecue sauce but mellower.) Here, though, the toast has only two pieces of bread and a mayo sauce. It tasted like either the cabbage, the sauce, or both were laced with sugar though because some bites tasted like candy. Even still, it didn't deter me from eating it. I had the most basic "Vegetable Cheese Toast" which has a scrambled egg, pickles, cabbage, and cheese on it. Other options add things like bacon, ham, beef(?) or all of them to make it a bit bulkier.

Not bad for a five-minute walk to get a two-buck breakfast.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving in Korea really doesn't feel the same. But that probably could have gone without saying. I still like to do something anyhow. I didn't really have time to plan anything this year. So Jino and I just got some delivery chicken and then threw together a few "side dishes" using stuff we had in the fridge. The resulting menu: barbecue and grilled chicken, garlicky 'stuffing' (bread squares toasted in garlic butter), corn salad (corn, sliced olives, sliced peppers, vinegar, and cumin), fruit salad (apples, pears, persimmons in a mayo sauce), and kimchi. It wasn't the best ever, but it was easy and fun and yummy enough for a Thursday night dinner.

Oh, and yesterday, a delivery man (think UPS) knocked on the door and handed me this:

It's a box of Jeju Island mandarin oranges. They're sooo yummy but I am wondering how/whether we'll be able to eat them all before they go bad. I think Jino's parents sent it.

Kimjang

"Kimjang" (soft 'a' like 'art') refers to the time of year when Koreans traditionally made kimchi by the boat load and stored it in clay pots. As was true when my great great grandparents were alive, these huge batches of kimchi -- heads of wilted napa cabbage bathed in kimchi paste* -- spend the winter outside, in nature's refrigerator. The cold temperatures allow for these to be kept outside and ensure that the kimchi doesn't ferment too quickly. Prepared properly and kept within a cool to cold temperature range, this kimchi can be eaten for maybe even years after it's made. (Don't quote me on the 'years' business, that's just what I've heard. I don't have to see everything to believe it.)

Anyway, as you can see in the picture above, our fridge is packed full of tupperware. Everything but the small containers in the upper-right corner of the main area is kimchi. Cut-radish kimchi, whole baby radish kimchi, and several kinds of cabbage kimchi (including one my grandmother made and shipped to me -- I actually had to have it shipped to my office since no one is at home during the day to receive packages. It weighed nearly 15 kilos, if I had to guess. And I hear rumors it pissed some professors off while it sat in the fridge waiting for me to taxi it home. Umm. We're in Korea, dummies. If you haven't gotten used to kimchi smell yet, maybe you should consider going to another country.)

But anyhow, there you have it. Now I know why most Korean homes have separate fridges whose sole purpose is storing kimchi.

*kimchi paste is the secret to kimchi and varies widely by region and individual tastes and traditions.

Yummy

We've been talking about starting a food blog for a week or so, so I just decided to do it. No rules, no big expectations. Just posting about things we eat or cook, or both or other things, if we should have an urge. We considered several names, all of which were deemed worse than the one we chose. (Among them, "this is why I'm not super skinny", which was axed because Jino is pretty skinny. And "jino's food world" which was axed because it made me feel left out.)

Two things for today:

Over-priced "Oh-gyup Sal" (five-layer pork). It was yummy but the expensive portions meant we left the restaurant feeling a little less than full. The kimchi broth was especially nice, fresh, clean with a nice balance of sour vinegar bite and sweetness. 

Orange Crepes. Jino made them and they were on the table when I got home. The sweet orange syrup was just a 1:1 simple syrup with fresh squeezed orange juice. He reduced it a bit then removed the solid bits to make it nice and clean. Blanched orange zest to top it off. (Who knew orange zest was so yummy?)

Now what to have for our post-dinner snack...