Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest |

THE RELUCTANT GOURMET

Get a taste of Seoul

Photo: N. BALAJI

KOREAN CHARMS Direct, proud and generous are some of the words that describe the cuisine

Asia’s all about chicken fried rice, peas pulao and pad Thai. Peking duck, butter chicken, green curry. Dim sum, samosas, satay. The continent’s most obvious cuisines have been Chinese, Indian and Thai for a surprisingly long time. Then came posh Japanese: beautifully constructed rolls of fresh sushi, sizzling teppanyaki and slick soba noodles.Fortunately, the world is quickly discovering that Asia has many more cuisines: all marked by the Continent’s trademark extravagant flavours, luscious colours and vibrant presentation. Korean food is the latest to take a bow on the world stage. And since India’s now home to so many expatriates, it’s only natural that the cuisine’s slowly creating a league of desi kimchi addicts.

Chennai alone has seen the rise of various popular Korean restaurants, including Kyungbokgong, with its huge fish tanks to ensure fresh seafood and stylish Pure. Thanks to the city’s Hyundai and Samsung factories, the food is authentic, and most restaurants barely bother to push English menus, or fiddle around with lengthy explanations. But that could have something to do with Korean culture, which is marked by quiet self-sufficiency.Jason Perlow, Founder of eGullet.com and The eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters (“dedicated to increasing awareness and knowledge of the arts of cooking, eating and drinking, as well as the literature of food and drink”) says “culture informs cuisine, and Koreans are much like their food. Direct, proud, generous, straightforward, blunt, passionate.”

They’re also a relatively closed community, happy in themselves. Charlie Wang from The Shilla Hotel in Seoul explains why Korean food is relatively unknown, saying “the Chinese travel all around the world before 1900. The Japanese from 1950. The Koreans: we only travel now… from 1990.”

All three cuisines are distinctly different, regardless of what your chop-suey specialist from the Chinese restaurant around the corner says. Korean food is assertive, with brash, non apologetic flavours.

David d’Aprix, author of the handy “The Fearless International Foodie Conquers Pan Asian Cuisine,” states that it has five flavours: salty, sweet, hot, bitter and sour, as well as five main colours: green, white, red, yellow and black. There are also six main ingredients, which are garlic, ginger, soya sauce, sugar, scallions, sesame oil and seeds. Charming young Chef Youngran Baek, who with Wang, was recently at Chennai’s Taj Connemara to orchestrate their Pan-Asian restaurant Hip Asia’s ‘Soul of Seoul’ food promotion, says she’s convinced that Korean food will be the next big thing because of it’s bold flavours, rather than instead of them.

“We use chilli paste and bean paste, cooking and then fermenting food for three years,” she says. The fermentation, adds Wang, helps with digestion.

He also says their ingredients, spices and cooking methods help prevent cancer besides adding great flavour to the food. Chef Youngkran says since Korea has eight provinces there’s plenty of variety.

She’s from Jun Ra do, where there’s a lot of seafood and a great emphasis on marination.“Korean people are traditional,” she says, “men work, and women cook. So my father made me learn cooking in University.” It worked out well. She’s cooked for CEOs, royalty and heads of State. Though she’s flown in with all her ingredients this time, she insists that cooking Korean food isn’t difficult. Especially nowadays, when Korean companies are working on packeted foods to make creating meals easier on the Korean women, who work long hectic hours. “In April, we sent a lady to space,” she grins. “She took kimchi, bean paste and chilli. And she made the rest of the astronauts a full Korean meal in the microwave!”

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail