Seoult and Pepper

Gopchang

June 13, 2012

Gopchang (곱창). Even the word sounds unpleasant. That’s it, up there. A cow’s small intestine, all fatty and grotesque. Seoul has whole streets of restaurants devoted to these insides, simply fried table-side in their own fat. But I’d never eaten intestines in Korea, always opting for something a little less nauseating than an entire meal of greasy tubes. Despite my qualms, I wholehearted agreed to, and even pushed for, a visit to a famous gopchang joint in southern Seoul.

At 부추곱창 (buchu gopchang), a bustling greasy BBQ joint, there’s a short menu and a long line. Young couples and families wait to eat a few different sizes of intestines and a range of raw beef preparations. It’s in Sillim, a busy area, which I only ever visit to eat offal.

This is no cook-your-own deal. Sit, drink soju, eat 육회 (yukhoe, raw beef), shield yourself from sputtering fat with soju-brand aprons and let roving waitstaff address the bubbling browning insides.

Wait for the OK, then grab a piece of sizzling, caramelised and fatty gopchang with some softened green Korean leeks. These snippets of insides are a puzzling combination of unctuous and chewy, the shrill gamey flavour reminding you of what you’re eating with every bite. Each morsel is so fatty the act of eating it seems illicit, but somehow you can’t stop. The taste is pleasant and not overly strong, but I soon felt heavy with oil.

Bokkeumbap (볶음밥, fried rice) was the only cure. It’s a fried rice dish on offer at a range of Korean restaurants. When your table finishes the main shared food, be it gamjatang or shabu shabu or gopchang, the waiter fries rice in the same pan your meal was cooked in. They might add kimchi, bean sprouts, egg or anything else, here it was spicy sauce and more leeks. The rice absorbs the flavour from the cooking pan and becomes crisp and rich, pushing you down the path to utter gluttony.

I stand by my opinion that gopchang looks repulsive and although I can’t eat a whole pile of it, I would happily brave the slippery floors of Buchu Gopchang and eat it again. Though, maybe for 2nd dinner next time.

부추곱창 //Not the most wonderful website in the world

Gopchang 10,000 won. per serve (we ordered 3 serves, enough for 3-4 people).
Bokkeumbap 2,000 won per serve.

Posted in Korean, Seoult and Pepper | 2 Comments
Seoult and Pepper

Cheung Kee Noodle, Hongdae

June 8, 2012


Pork with hot and sour sweet sauce & wonton / with noodle 9,500w.

Prawn wontons and pork dumplings are few and far between in Seoul. Had I known this my stopover in Hong Kong prior to moving to Korea for keeps would have been even more of a wonton rampage than it already was. Because it’s these silken pockets of prawns dipped in chilli sauce and vinegar that are high on my favorites list and everything else can take a back seat.

Cheung Kee Noodle is the Seoul outlet of Hong Kong’s Mak An Kee Noodle. And while the food isn’t a perfect replication, it’s close and the best my deprived taste buds have found in Seoul. On offer is any conceivable mixture of noodles, wontons, dumplings, braised beef, spicy sour pork, and soup, with sides of oyster sauced green vegetables (choisam or kailan). The thin, springy wheat noodles have a hint of grease and are cooked a whisker short of al dente, so hold their own in seafood-scented soup. Pair with gelatinous anise scented braised beef and pork dumplings heavy with meat.

After countless visits, my order has settled to prawn wontons, served in peppery rich and lightly fishy broth and steamed kailan. The chilli sauce, a necessary dip or addition to the soup, is dark, oily and fierce, and on sale by the front door. The noodles are a delicious, novel eating experience in Seoul and I’m always sure to steal some of his. Often served dry, mixed with a fatty sweet, sour and spiced pork, or tender braised beef, always lifted by vinegar and that tremendous chilli sauce. Cheung Kee Noodle is pricier than its Hong Kong cousin, but worth it in otherwise wonton-less Seoul.

Cheung Kee Noodle
청키면가

Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday (closed on Mondays) 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Noodle dishes hover around 9,500 won.
Welcomes solo diners.

Next to Hongdae playground.

Posted in Chinese food, Seoult and Pepper | 1 Comment
Seoult and Pepper

Ssam Bap

June 4, 2012

Korean meals overflow with opportunities to ssam (wrap). That package of 김 (gim, seaweed) bunged on your cafeteria tray, seemingly as an afterthought, isn’t really intended to be a postscript, like a salty dessert, you crazy white girl. It tastes way better if you envelop a bite of rice with each sheet. Do the same with your kimchi’d perilla leaf and what was a pungent, tough-stemmed mouthful of pain becomes lightened, bearable and, with time, pleasant. So long as your Korean chopstick skills are up to snuff.

Other times the opportunity to ssam is obvious. The basket of lettuce and perilla leaves cry out to be filled with hot pieces of fatty 삼겹살 (samgyeopsal, BBQ pork belly), sauces and any variety of banchan. But there is a slightly healthier meal where is it is essential to ssam, and this is Ssam Bap.

Last weekend we went on ssam bap adventure to Pyeongchang-dong, an affluent, quiet area, packed with beautiful houses and art galleries, unserved by the otherwise excellent Seoul subway. 강촌쌈밥 (Gangchon ssambap), a traditional-style Korean restaurant, has floor seating, a two-item menu, and an outlook that belies it’s Seoul address. Ssam bap has a reputation as being healthy, a meal of mostly vegetables, mostly raw, and is associated with the mountains. The ssam bap here (11,000 won per person) is an unexpected feast. A range of banchan, including wonderful whole cloves of pickled garlic in a sweet spicy sauce, and simply steamed bitter greens with garlic, rice, doenjang jiggae, bossam, and a prodigious variety of greens for wrapping.

The rice, cooked in a stone bowl, is crisp on the bottom and prettily topped with sweet potato, beans and gingko nuts. Apparently the custom is to remove the rice and pour tea into the bowl to loosen the stuck grains, though I preferred the untainted flavour that comes from a good effortful scraping.

So, how to eat? Take a variety of the greens, layered for flavour, and spoon on some rice and ssamjang, then eat. Ssamjang (쌈장), a thick tasty paste made of fermented beans (doenjang), red pepper paste (gochujang) and sesame oil, is topped with peanuts here and is the key to these green envelopes of deliciousness. Bitter, juicy, spicy, chlorophyllous or crunchy leaves don’t taste like a healthfood shop because of this wonder-paste. That, and the alternating mouthfuls of tender fatty steamed pork, sweet and spicy dried squid and the brightness of the fresh cabbage kimchi.

Really, this should be as boring as bat shit, a meal whose centrepiece is a heaving plate of raw leafy greens doesn’t sound exciting at all. But sitting there in the quiet, with a view of Bukhansan, this fresh, interesting and delicious spread was the salad I’d been craving since I landed in Korea almost two years ago. And despite what Homer Simpson has to say about it, salad doesn’t have to be boring. Ssam bap with its fermented depth and bright crunchiness, focus on vegetables and grains with minimal meat, is a big tick for the healthful claim of Korean cuisine, and all with the added fun of the ssam.

강촌쌈밥
(Gangchon ssambap)
Ssam bap 11,000 won per person.

460-1 Pyeongchang-dong Jongno-gu, Seoul, South Korea
Phone: 395-6467

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Seoult and Pepper

Andong Jjimdak

May 24, 2012

Andong, a city south-east of Seoul, is famous for its chicken stew. Boiled bone-in chicken, vegetables and cellophane noodles in a sweet, garlicky soy sauce all helped along with a spirited ration of chilli. I’ve often passed by a popular jjimdak chain: white walls, dark wood furniture with the table settings housed in a big bowl in the centre of the table. People eating a dark stew off huge communal white plates. Identical, be it in Seoul or Cheonan. And like clockwork, every meal time wandering past one of these joints my queries were answered with “안동찜닭 (Andong jjimdak)” with the added disclaimer of “it’s very spicy”.

Important, really, because you better believe Korean spicy is no laughing matter.

But last weekend I was on the hunt for chilli. We got lost in the night-time exuberance of Yeonsinnae, a bustling tangle of narrow streets lined with shops and cafes and restaurants. With another layer of shops and cafes and restaurants if you’ll only look up. The kind of area so common in Korea, yet so surprising and lively to foreign eyes. We finally convinced ourselves to eat jjimdak as planned, not octopus from the place with fishtanks spilling out onto the street, or red-sauced and fiery chickens feet.

At 봉추찜닭 (Bongchu Jjimdak) the seats may be hard, but the food arrives almost immediately. A huge steaming dark platter of soy sauce chicken stew punctuated by anomalous rounds of crunchy cucumber. The salty and sweet sauce is gloriously pungent with garlic, but the chilli-heat fails to live up to expectation. This was no blow-your-head off experience, whether this is negative is debatable. Unfortunately, though, this jjimdak suffered the common fate of stewed chicken: overcooked, dry meat, Grandma-soft vegetables. What started as a dark viscous sauce, well suited for drenching a piece of wizened chicken breast, was rapidly absorbed by the noodles, which ended up tasting great, by the way.

Andong jjimdak has so much promise as a dish, and although I wouldn’t rush back to eat it at Bongchu Jjimdak this meal did provide a glimmer of just how good it could be. When the weather finally cools, I believe a visit to Andong to eat Jjimdak in its natural surrounds, is on the cards.

 

Posted in Korean, Seoult and Pepper | 2 Comments

Eating in Nakhon Si Thammarat, afternoon.

April 3, 2012

Hot weather has the unpleasant effect of retarding the appetite, but Nakhon Si Thammarat has plenty to coax it back. It’s best to start lunch early, before the afternoon heat and humidity overwhelms and take advantage of the very controlled portion sizes that this town offers. Drink plenty of icy water and thai tea, and even if you think you’re not hungry, give it a go.

First is a kind of all-Asia line up, pork satay, wonton soup and an interpretation of chicken rice all with a Thai bent. Thin pieces of pork take on a new persona when a dressed in a spicy peanut sauce so good I want to eat it with a spoon. Add a sweet cucumber and shallot pickle for freshness and acid and this could just be the perfect light summer lunch.

Chicken, red-roasted pork, and meaty, rich liver on rice get soy and sweet chilli sauced, a different take on the classic comfort of Hainanese chicken rice. We share a soup (geaw nam), loaded with as much flavour as ingredients. Wontons, pork, insides, fish balls and green vegetables are barely covered by a light, cleansing broth. I leave the add-your-own flavourings up to the experts, and the result is an extraordinarily good blend of sour, meaty, herbaceous freshness and chilli-hot. A kind of China meets Thailand by way of everywhere in between.

We swat the flies away and linger over the iced-tea and peanut sauce dregs. It’s cool inside, but although lunch is winding down this place is still packed, popularity deserved.

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Khao Mok Gai

Our next lunch may be similar to the first, rice and meat with a shared soup, but it’s on the other end of the spectrum. Today we’re in a Khao Mok shop (Muslim food shop) to eat Khao Mok Gai (pictured above), a kind of Thai Biryani first brought, along with Buddhism, to Nakhon Si Thammarat by Sri Lankans lifetimes ago. The rice and chicken is pleasant but ground breaking only in the fact that these tastes are unexpected, being more subcontinental than Thai. Unfortunately the chicken and rice is served cool, which dulls the flavours and hardens the grains, so this dish is only a shadow of what it could be.

Beef soup (soop nua, pictured above), on the other hand, arrives steaming hot and punchy. It’s is all great viscid hunks of beef, tender enough to bisect with the touch of a spoon. The rich beef stock is robustly flavoured with fresh coriander, spring onions, fried shallots and chilli. It’s firmly in ‘last meal’ territory, and paired with raw cabbage is clarity and simplicity in a bowl.

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This Ran Kanom Jeen (Chinese noodle restaurant) is understandably popular. Kanom jeen are round rice vermicelli noodles classified here as Chinese, though they’re most similar to Vietnamese bun. Served with curry sauce, of which there is a range available: green, coconut, peanut and more. My dish is a mix of coconut (nam ya kati) and peanut (gaeng nam prik tua) curries, which frankly look a bit like kimchi vomit, but tastes spicy, creamy, rich and nutty all in the right measure. It’s served on the cool side of lukewarm and the noodles are a touch too soft for my liking causing first impression disappointment. I had high hopes for this dish as we’d been turned away at lunchtime the previous day when we’d arrived too late and they’d already run out of food.

I felt let down, until an enormous platter of fresh, raw vegetables is brought out. Some parts recognisable, green and winged beans, baby eggplant, cucumber, green peppercorns and herbs. The leaves of the cashew tree which seem to suck all the moisture from your mouth, not yet opened flower buds and baby green fig-like fruit, purple on the inside, were all new to me and the kind of interesting flavours I crave. Also provided was a light pickle of beansprouts, cucumber, chilli, cabbage, carrot and more. A coconut milk and softened greens side dish was vegetal and comforting, while the dark liquid curry with potato was just plain delicious. Mix any of these additions into your curry as desired and the tepid sauce and soft noodles seem intentional. The firey and deep curries and the generous side dishes combine to create a wholesome and altogether outstanding meal. Though I still would prefer a bit more bite in my noodles.

I finished with a sweet taste of grass jelly in iced syrup, a refreshing dessert similar to those enjoyed in Malaysia and Laos. With that I retreat to my hotel room, with plastic bags of pre-cut mango and pineapple, to wait out the heat of the day, full and relaxed and ready for what comes next. Dinner.

 

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This is the second post in a short series about my time in Nakhon Si Thammarat. The first, morning edition, is available here.

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