Posts tagged as:

winter

Tastes better than it looks

by Cat on December 17, 2006

Today Seoul got its first major snowfall of the season. It’s been snowing off and on for weeks now up in the mountains and some provinces to the north of us, but we’d only gotten flurries before last night. Just before we went to bed, we looked out the window and noticed these huge snowflakes falling almost in sheets of snow from the sky. We woke up to a snow-covered city.

I had the best of intentions, planning to take the camera and go to the nearby park that overlooks a good section of southern Seoul. But I ended up just venturing out briefly to the store and taking a few cheap shots from our window. (You can see them in my Flickr photostream, above.) I’m really not a cold weather person.

It proved to be a good excuse to stay inside and try some new recipes. I managed to do a pretty decent version of dak galbi (닭 갈비) a spicy chicken stir-fry. Thanks to this excellent recipe at My Korean Kitchen. (The food was yummy, but the picture I took turned out blurry so I’m not posting it.) My version wasn’t quite as good as the one at the restaurant in COEX that we regularly go to when we’re craving this. But, it was very good, if I do say so myself. I especially like the flavor from the sesame leaves. When I’ve had this dish before, I noticed that it has a sweeter, deeper flavor—even when it’s made with a lot of spicy gochujang—than a lot of other dishes. I think the sesame leaves are most of what I was tasting.

Dubu jolim

To go with it, I also followed Sue’s recipe for dubu jolim (simmered tofu, above), and it was delicious. David even ate several pieces, and he doesn’t really like tofu. I do, but I’ve never had it served in a way that still lets it taste like tofu—smooth and kind of slippery, but with flavor. It’s also really simple to make. I think I’ll probably make this again and just serve it with some side dishes and rice for a simple, light meal. I thought we’d have leftovers, but we ended up eating all of it in one sitting. A whole package of tofu.

I mean, we are talking about sautéed bean curd here, so you know the recipe is good!

Saturday couch blogging

by Cat on December 9, 2006

Well, the kimchi finally failed me. I’ve enjoyed almost seven months here unbeset by colds or allergies—nothing but some pretty serious mosquito bites. This I do attribute, at least in part, to regular ingestion of the spicy, vitamin C laden cure-all/side dish. But this week, the germs, weather and crowded conditions finally got the better of me.
David and I are both holed up in the apartment, laid low with head colds. I don’t anticipate writing anything coherent in the near future, so let me use this post to point you toward more interesting scenes of Korean expat life:

Stay tuned . . . regularly scheduled blog updates will resume shortly.

Umbrella ajumma

by Cat on November 7, 2006

Some things you see here in Seoul just make so much sense I am amazed that the trend hasn’t caught on elsewhere. (Or, at least in the places I’ve visited, admittedly, only a tiny percentage of the planet).

One of these would be the small metal stands with plastic bags placed outside department stores and office buildings during rainy weather. Usually manned (well, womanned, actually) by an 아줌마 wearing a matching coat and cap ensemble. The ones I’ve seen are greyish (the outfits, not the women), but look similar to the yellow ones worn by women selling yogurt and drinks near the subway stations.

Yesterday, winter finally arrived in Korea, the fall sunshine vanished, temperatures dropped into the 30s and 40s and a drizzling rain fell almost all day. I had an early morning appointment and had to walk 10 minutes to a subway station and another 15 at my destination. I’ve never been so glad to see the women who, upon my arrival at different doorways, gruffly shoved my closed wet umbrella into a slot containing a narrow plastic bag. There’s nothing worse on a rainy day—short of being caught without an umbrella—than to have to drag a dripping one around with you on errands. Ensconced in plastic, the umbrella can then put in your bag or coat pocket or whatever.

I’m actually not surprised that this service developed here. In my experience, Koreans are meticulous about keeping the floors clean. Given that many of them still eat and sleep on or very close to the floor, that’s not surprising either. But it’s still impressive to see. People mopping the floor at the office two or three times a day, restaurant workers cleaning the floor during slow times, or market vendors mopping the walkway in front of their stall between customers. Once when I was waiting with a group of people to board the neighborhood bus at the subway station, the bus driver made us wait on the curb while he ferociously swept every speck of dust from under the seats. When we boarded, I swear the floor looked clean enough to eat off of.

So, it makes sense that they’d develop a method to keep people from wandering through their establishment dripping water and mucking up the place. I am curious about who the umbrella ajummas are, though. Is it part of some employees’ job description that they have to do umbrella duty? (Is it one of those “female staff” things, too, because I’ve yet to see a man do it.)

Or, is there a special group of umbrella stall people that businesses hire to work outside the door during the rain? Whatever the case, ‘umbrella ajumma,’ I salute you.