-
Kimchi - Source: Thinkstock
My visit to Korea has been as much a gastronomic journey as a business news-gathering trip, so if you'll indulge me a little, this blog will focus on some very important business, and that is the business of food.
Korean barbeque and kimchi was about the extent of my knowledge of Korean food before I came here - if you can call it knowledge - basically I'd heard of both and tried neither.
Korean barbeque is reasonably self explanatory - although the rituals of eating it aren't much like a Kiwi barbeque, the basic grilling-of-meat bit stays the same.
Kimchi is a traditional Korean side dish of spicy pickled fermented cabbage, which to me sounded like pickled, fermented hideousness. But I'm reasonably adventurous and I can report it's really not that bad.
On our first day here we tried a soup called samejaetang - chicken with ginseng served in a boiling pot.
The chicken is stuffed with sticky rice, chestnuts, garlic and dates. I'm not much of a fan of chicken skin - and there was plenty of that to pick through - or of waterlogged rice so suffice to say it wasn't my favourite.
We had Korean barbeque for dinner that night and it too failed to get my juices flowing, so by the end of day one I was expecting to be hankering for western food within days. How wrong I was.
Instead, at the end of every meal I find myself not only genuinely satisfied, but also marvelling at the myriad of things I've tried that previously I'd either never heard of, or had never before considered eating.
At an amazing little restaurant started by a former Buddhist monk, tucked down alleyways behind a city market, they serve temple food - no meat, but each meal consists of about 20 different dishes. There I tried all kinds of roots - ginseng, lotus flower root, bellflower root.
At a restaurant at the city museum called Congdu - which means 'bean', or actually 'beanbean', as it's a blend of the Japanese and Korean words for bean - I tried black bean and tofu ice cream.
Yes, black bean and tofu ice cream - I was dubious but I was rewarded for my derring-do with a beautiful dessert.
Then there's the tea.
Possibly the best tea I've ever tasted is called Omija, which literally means 'five tastes' as that is what you're meant to experience when you drink it.
It was a little sour as it first hit my lips, then I got a touch of bitter, which morphed into sweet, finished off with a bit of spice. I could not taste a fifth taste - and apparently that indicates I'm not in perfect health. What you taste in the tea changes depending on your physical state, apparently.
I could go on, but instead I'll attempt a tenuous business-link.
In business you have to take risks to succeed - you also need to take risks when trying Korean food. If something sounds like pickled, fermented hideousness, it may instead be a pickled fermented delight, if only you'll try it.
Nadine is visiting Korea as part of the Korean Culture and Information Services Bethell Fellowship programme.
