Inner Journey

  Now, spring seems to be everywhere despite chill air early in the morning and at night. The most obvious harbingers of seasonal change are blooming of cherry blossoms elsewhere in our apartment complex, attracting attention of villagers. I took picture of cherry flowers against backdrop of clear spring sky. I thought flowery image of early spring matches honey taste well and decided to drink something other than soju or beer this weekend. This time we chose something sweet to drink with broiled fish. When I really want to drink sweeter liqueur, it is usually bokbunja wine, but this time I ordered mulberry wine made from mulberries from Buan County in Jeonbuk province. It comes with slim bottle that resembles Canadian ice wine bottles. Mulberry fruit is called "Odi" in Korea and the bottle has the name “Odi Wine” on it. Mulberry is used not only as a general food ingredient but also as a medicinal resource because it contains alanine and asparagine acid that decomposes alcoh...

  This time, we went to fusion sea food restaurant Hoepocha to enjoy fresh raw fish dishes before weather gets too hot to have them. It is March and the best season to have Hoe or Korean style raw fish cuisines will be over soon.   The fish, however, we had this time was Japanese seabass (Nongeo in Korean) and it is known that one of the exceptionally best summer raw foods.   In Korea, the bestseller fish in the seafood markets are olive flounder, rock fish, sea bream, sea bass, and salmon.   Among these, seabass is more delicious during summer days because this fish spawn in fall and consequently, they begin to prepare for reproduction in summer and same is true for croaker (Mineo). In fish markets, both wild caught, and farm raised seabass are available. There are few species that show different characteristics when they are served as raw fish dishes and seabass is one of them. The muscle of wild caught seabass is bright and back is light gold, but farm raised bass...

  If you are a foodie looking for unique taste and texture, then puffer fish dishes are for you. Fugu sashimi and other Japanese cuisine are famous and have a long history. Today, I am talking about Korean puffer fish dishes. Because of its potentially lethal poison in many parts of this types of fish, they are considered edible only in few countries including Japan, Korea, and China in the world with strict restrictions in treatments and cooking. In Korea, puffer fish is called bokeo and is served in both cooked and raw. There are 21 species that can be used for cooking, but only three or four species are found in menus in Korean restaurants. I recently visited bokeo restaurant Namdobokguk, which specialize in puffer fish soup. That is near subway 7 Sinjungdong station. As in the photos below, I ordered Milbok (Green rough back puffer fish) set menu that comes with soup, fries and salad made with puffer fish with several side dishes. Each table in the restaurant has electric stove...

  At the time of this writing, Korea is in love affairs with whisky and it is felt almost everywhere we go. We always had some kind of family gatherings on weekends, and last weekend we chose a beer hall (Kmbyul Maekju) as our meeting place. Unlike before, beer halls in Korea had tendency of having quite a lot of highball menus and corresponding side dishes. The picture below shows earl-grey highballs we had there. According to the Korea Customs Service, there is significant increase in whiskey imports lately, the highest in 15 years. As a result, not only liquor companies and restaurants, but also convenience stores are releasing various highball products targeting customers. During the Pandemic, due to the lockdown of most of establishments they used before, people developed habits of home drinking and drinking alone and a moderate amount of alcohol with carbonated drinks became suitable for such trend. This was the time when highball gained their popularity and it continued even...

  We had bossam for dinner yesterday. bossam is a Korean pork dish consisting of boiled pork and vegetables. The most common way to eat this food is to have your meat wrapped in salted cabbage leaves or cabbage kimchi. Usually, restaurants specializing in bossam also serve jokbal (steamed pork feet) and these days, bossam-jokbal combos are very popular late-night snacks and delivery foods. It is always the case that the bossam is more expensive than jokbal because parts of pigs used for making jokbal is cheaper. The picture below shows many side dishes such as ssamjang (mixture of red chili paper paste and soy bean paste), salted shrimp source, raw gallics, raw green papers, kimchi, salted cabbage, seasoned dried radish, lettuces and sesame leaves delivered to my home as well as main dish, bossam.   They also brought makguksu which is buckwheat noodle with hot sources dotted with pine nuts. Buckwheat is very useful ingredients for different types of Korean noodles including ...

  From time to time, we need calm and cozy places that could be retreat from hectic life of urban craziness.   May they be localized Irish pubs or conventional bars, I strenuously found out several establishments and have been regular there.   One of such is place is the localized Izakaya style bar in the Anyang city not that far from hometown Bucheon.   There, under rather dim illuminations, I enjoyed friendly stare of figures of various animals and characters from famous animations, bottles of different liquors, atmosphere surrounding me and other customers as well as chefs & bar tenders.   It seemed all of us may be connected in a subtle, inexplicable way I never understood but I could feel it.   I guess it is partly because of magic of Soju I drunk (figure below shows Hwayo of 17% alcohol content version) there, but also due to warmth of welcoming minds, which is an invisible gift given only to regulars of the place. Having several glasses, I was re...