A taste of Korea

While this is a cooking blog, and I mainly want to feature my kitchen experiments, I couldn't resist sharing some of the spicylicious food that I sampled during my recent trip to Korea. Who knows, maybe I can replicate them in the kitchen sometime, although I have no idea how to knock up a Korean concoction.

Moving right along, here is a meal that I enjoyed in a small sidewalk restaurant, run by a gruff but very kind old lady about half my height. You can see the main dish is some spicy fish. I'm not sure what kind of fish this is, or what it was flavoured with exactly, but it was very spicy and delicious! All Korean meals are served with plain steamed rice, which I found to be quite similar to that of Japan. Also, there is always a variety of condiments to go with the meal, a few of which you can see in this picture. The most common condiment is the ubiquitous Kimchi, which I can't say I'm a big fan of, but I was glad to try it.

This meal, and several meals thereafter, was served with "Hite" beer - a crisp and clean Korean beer which was refreshingly well paired with the food. In fact, I consumed far too many Hites on the first night, along with some Korean Soju, so I felt slightly unwell the next morning. This was my hangover solution:

I walked into the first traditional style restaurant that welcomely ushered me inside.

It was still breakfast time, but I sat down to a full meal. I was starving! The main dish was some kind of transparent noodle with shredded meat (beef, I think). It had just the right amount of kick to really kick my hangover in the butt. Served with rice and a variety of side dishes, it was a very satisfying and hearty meal.

Overall, I found Korean food to be very tasty, fresh, healthy and varied, and I'd love to go back there to try out more dishes and get to know the country a lot better.