20140727-20140817 Incheon/Seoul trip Part 1: FOOOOOODDDDD! =d

I. must. finish. this. post. before. 2014. ends. Okay okay, I know it's mid-winter already, writing something happened back in the summer sounds very dated.. My bad, but better late than never right? Yeah, so I shall present to you, my three-week life in the place that makes you feel like you're a drama character anywhere you go.

It was one of the most memorable holiday I had. 

Aww,, yeeah! I joined Inha Summer School in Incheon, South Korea! alone.. and it was AWESOME!

and the awesomest of all, FOOOODDD!! oh my, the food in Korea is so accessible, and the variety you can find is so wide that we hardly repeat any food during my three-week stay. From street food to high-end restaurant food, from traditional hansik to fusion food (I can't technically call them western or Chinese or whatsoever nationality 'cause there's always a Korean twist to it), you name it they have it. And most importantly, you can just pop into any outlet you see without worrying that you'll get a black hole. Yes, the quality is that good. okay, except certain shops at tourist spots. Anyway, the general guide is to follow the crowd (local, not tourists). LOL! Shops with less people are usually either super good or super bad, that's speaking from my experience. If you're not a risk taker, just go safe I'd advise. =X

Sneak peak of the food I ate there.. Of course it's not all...

Let's start off with the most common food in Korea..

White rice and Kimchi!

White rice is the staple of most Asian countries, and so is it in Korea. We had rice in almost every meal, but personally I never get tired of it. The rice is more of a sticky one compared to those we have in Southeast Asia. The grain is rounder and I suppose, has more amylopectin than amylose. That's why the texture is somewhat between our fragrant rice and glutinous rice. Not only white rice, they also eat a variety of different grains like brown rice, red rice (is it the right name?) and mixed grains. They know how to cook their rice. Look at the rice portion I took in the beginning of the semester vs the one towards the end of my stay.

Day 2 breakfast

One of the breakfasts in the 2nd week

If you were wondering, yes, these are my breakfasts, with a good portion of rice and side dishes. It felt a bit too heavy on the first few days, but I eventually got used to it, and ended up getting more and more. =X Can't really help it, the rice is too good. 

Also, to cater for those who don't wanna take all the hassle to cook rice, they have a whole range of microwavable rice too! I saw families stocking up this from the supermarket instead of buying a whole sack of rice. Their convenience stores (CVS for u is actually more common than 7-eleven here) also sell frozen bento boxes where you can just heat up. The rice are all very similar to those freshly cooked.  

Microwavable white rice. It's dehydrated precooked rice aka pregelatinised rice or parboiled rice. You can eat by simply rehydrating it with hot water or microwave it with water. 

Brown rice version, in a pack of six. 

Then we have kimchi! It's a staple, it's a known fact. You don't even have to search for it, as it is everywhere. you don't say. Anyway, there are different kinds of kimchi, and it's not necessarily red. What I know was that the more 'royal' the dish is, the clearer and less spicy it is. That said, the common red kimchi are actually food for the commoners. The most common one is baechu kimchi, I can gobble up a whole bowl of rice just with this. Other kimchis I've tried included cucumber, raddish, mul (water) kimchi, and perilla leave kimchi (the one I hated the most, ugh! The corriander-like pungency is really an acquired taste though, I learnt to appreciate it the more I'm exposed to the taste). 

different kinds of kimchi:- photo taken from National Folk Museum of Korea

It was entering autumn on the third week: What's better than a hot sizzling bowl of kimchi jiggae on a cold rainy day?

See the black thing in the middle? That's perilla leaf kimchi, I can't even..

Other than kimchi, another signature of Korean food is CHILLI!!! The hotness of Korean dish is a different kind of hotness compared to other regional dishes. It's characterised with a rounder and fuller body as the hotness mostly come from gochujang, which is a fermented chilli paste. Fermentation 'tenderises' the sting and gave the paste more layers. I'd say it's less direct that Southeast Asian dishes, where chilli is used directly. You can feel the sting (which I enjoy dearly) eating Southeast Asian cuisine, while the spiciness appears at the back of the tongue while eating Korean dish. It also doesn't have the smokiness like Mexican dishes have. It's somewhat closer to the Chinese kind of spiciness which has a strong garlic taste, but without the numbness from Szechuan pepper and it's less oily. I admit, my taste bud is very insensitive to spiciness, (I eat bird's eye chilli as a condiment) I don't think Korean dishes are spicy in general, but many of my Indonesian friends could not accept it, for the spiciness is 'weird'. LOL! Anyway, I enjoyed their food when it's spicy. It really wakes you up on a hot summer's day!

Been hearing people saying how hot is this fire fried ramyun, finally got to try! It's so hot that it's good! 

Spicy ddeokbokki, it looks innocent, but I can hardly survive eating this,,, LOL

Luckily I had this, 

this, 

and this to 'distinguish the fire'.

LOL! The pictures above are all conventional street food sold at a pojangmacha (Korean food truck), ddeokbokki (fried rice cake), twigim (tempura), odeng (fish cake), and sundae (blood sausage). Often times they also sell baby kimbap and other fried stuff. Oh, have I mentioned how much I love sundae? I love the chewy texture of the sausage, and if dipped with the ddeokbokki sauce, it provides spiciness to it and makes everything taste so different. I mean if you really can't accept the fact that it's made of blood, try masking it with ddeokbokki sauce, but trust me, it doesn't taste bloody or metallic at all. What's better was that it came with all sorts of pork innards (my fav again!), okay, maybe it's time for me to do a body checkup, cholesterol.. T.T
Speaking of pojangmacha (布帐马车), I've always imagined it as a place filled with drunkards, thanks kdrama, but surprisingly I can hardly find that kind of pojangmacha, all I visited were technically just macha (without pojang). There's one in front of our dorm at night, but they don't serve alcohol, so yeah, the atmosphere was kinda different.

A view of pojangmacha taken from the net, but why couldn't I find this during my stay?

The stall at the back gate that we always visit at night, right, there's no seats, nor is there a tent.. picture courtesy of Tracy.

So we've been talking about food truck, how can we miss other street food? You don't have to find them, street food is everywhere as you walk along the street. Of these, the common ones are like gaelan bbang (egg bun), heoddeok (pancake?), bungeo bbang (fish bun), yak gwa (sunflower pastry), and all kinds of soft ice cream. Oh, waffle too! I especially loved the one at the back gate of Inha University, served with whipped cream and flavoured syrup (peach or plum is nice!) and it's just KRW1000. But I don't see anyone selling sweet potatoes though, it's too hot for summer. 

yachae heoddeok (deep fried vegetables 'pancake'): tasted a bit like chai kueh deep fried version

Honey comb ice-cream: there're many different brands, and I heard this is the original (whatever, it doesn't matter to me, LOL!) To me it's just sugar in honey comb shape, and it's waaayy too sticky, ice cream is smooth and milky though. 

Sikhae, barley drink: it's really really refreshing, I love it!

Mango and yoghurt ice cream, they boasted to be 30cm, but it seems like they don't enforce a strict QC.. =X

Closer view of gaelan bbang: an egg baked on top of sponge in a small oven. I like that the egg and the sponge complements each other, especially the yolk makes the whole thing taste so much richer.

Waffle at the back gate.

Bungeo bbang: waffle-like batter baked into fish shape, traditionally with red bean paste as filling. This is a variation with ice-cream.

Speaking of red bean paste, I love this red bean croquette to pieces. Crispy on the outside (but not greasy), and smooth on the inside, plus it's sweet! =D

Enough of hot food, let's move on to some refreshing food. It's summer anyway. 

Seolbing! the very heavily 'featured' brand in Pinocchio, despite it being winter now in Korea.  This one is black sesame and dates, taste wise, good but nothing phenomenal. 

Wait, that's not the point, lol! Everyone knows patbingsu, you can even get it in here, what I wanna introduce was cold noodles! A must during the summer! There's different kind of cold noodles too, but the ones I tried were mul naengmyun (cold noodle soup) and kong guksu (bean noodles). Usually, there's bibim naengmyun too, but Joo Jangmi told us that if naengmyun, it must be soup!

She's right! (mul naeng myun at the bottom right corner) The sourness of the soup really boost up your appetite and the ice is so soothing on a summer's day. One thing is that the mung bean noodle is long and chewy, so better be careful while eating or you might get choked! Okay, you can cut them into shorter strand, but where's the fun when you can't slurp it up?

Kong guksu in the white soupy bowl: taste like noodles in sesame paste with soy taste. It's a bit too gluey to me, definitely can't finish one serving on my own. The other one on the top left was kkal guksu (knife cut noodles): tasted exactly like pan mee. >.<

Towards the end of my stay, it was already entering autumn, plus there were also typhoon attack during that time, so I didn't get to eat cold stuff much. Instead, I had lotsa hot soupy meals served in a stone bowl. 

Super nice seafood budae jiggae, have I mentioned how generous they are with their mussels? I feels like it's as cheap as chicken, you get loads of mussels in soupy dishes.

Kamja tang (potato soup): I like that I can graze the big soup bone they use to cook the broth, flavourful and tender. 

Vegetable doenjang jiggae (bean paste soup) at a random place in Hongdae: meh, really, it's just salty, no bean taste at all.

Typical Korean table setting: excuse the blurriness, I was too eager to eat! >.<

That's about all the 'Korean' food I ate, but mind you, there're still many Koreanised regional food that I'm not sure whether should I consider it as Korean or not. LOL! Case in point: Chinese food in Korea! I'm sure first thing that came to mind is the famous jajangmyun. Not sure if the ones I've tasted were not properly cooked or it just tastes as it is, I just don't get the hype over jajangmyun. It's just noodles flooded in an overly thickened soy sauce with an overwhelming onion and pepper taste. To be honest, I think Chinese takeout in Korea is bad, everything tastes either onion or pepper or soy sauce, and the sauce is always so gluey that you might get choked if you gobble too fast. 

Lunch in campus cafeteria, Chinese fried rice with jajjang sauce and mandu (dumplings): pure saltiness, nothing else.

Jajjang myun! Its taste is like its appearance: meh.

Sweet and sour pork! One dish that can rarely go wrong, but it could be better if the fritter is tossed in the sauce over the wok before serve. 

Dumplings and seafood noodles (jjambong): I have only one comment, there's a hell load of mussels in there! Taste good too if you don't think it's Chinese food.

Same goes to Japchae (mixed vegetables) with rice: not what I expected but at least acceptable.

Something's missing yet? Ramyun! and a bunch more of convenience food! Right, treating convenience store as a restaurant is a common practice in anywhere of Asia, except Malaysia (which I still can't exactly get why). So, how would I miss the chance to try all the food they sell in convenience store? I spent a few lunch in a convenience store and can't even covered one quarter of the item.

Frozen ddeokbokki: this is bolognese flavour, taste not bad actually. 

I found Koreans have this obsession with banana too. Banana flavoured corn snack, it's weird but it's good. LOL

Jappaghetti (jajjang myun + spaghetti): Hoo ya, you cheated me with your oh so delicious face, this just tasted salty, like every other jajjang I've tasted. T.T

Japaghetti: before adding in the seasoning.

Bingeurae: famous Korean snack brand. I had melon milk because banana was too mainstream. =X

Frozen fried rice

Inside: it's a bit too sticky and bland, but otherwise it's fine. Thailand is still better in this.

Yeap, I thought I had more to share but that's about all. Seems like 3 weeks were not enough, I haven't get to try hongeo (fermented stingray) and sannakji (live octopus)! Fine, I had the chance but it was too damn expensive. Anyway, you can visit my story for more pictures.

Cheers!

Dong