Piggy Wrap or Unwrap?

 

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 cold noodles and Japanese soba, which is my favorite summer meal. I was curious about fact that many bossam shops also serve makguksu, but I couldn’t find out why. 

According to the history of Korean cuisine, bossam originally referred to a type of kimchi made by stuffing the inside of pickled cabbage. Then, at some point in the past, people began to call boiled pork bossam. Many restaurants mainly use shoulders, legs, and pork neck and pork belly. The quality of the meat is also important, but the taste of the menu with abovementioned bossam kimchi also plays a decisive role in determining the taste of bossam and more often than not, delivered bossam did not come with high quality kimchi at all.

Since it is collagen rich food, many argue that it is good for your skin health and even go as far as to say it is longevity diet. I inclined to believe so, but I think it really depends on the quality of the meat and the way it is prepared before serving. Although the name indicate that it is type of wraps, I prefer to eat meat and cabbage kimchi separately with my favorite drinks.

In this dining, I had a glass of bomb-shot made with Hoegaarden beer and a little addition of Dram Bui, which is golden colored whisky liqueur made from heather honey, various herbs and spices. Of course, this combination is not anywhere closer to well-known method to make cocktails involving Dram Bui, but my creation. I love to have two drinks in this way and have practiced for more than a year. If you are familiar with fruit flavored liqueurs, it couldn’t hurt you and even I think it is recommendable. Owing to addition of orange peel in the Hoegaarden and honey in the liqueur, if the mixing ratio is proper, then it tastes like as if it were something that was produced and come in one bottle of drink in the first place. The taste of sliced port is somehow greasy even if it was not fried and aroma from the bomb-shot made in this way can help neutralize such effect. Next time, I will do experiment further with different beers or ratios of mixing to find out optimal combinations to vanish greasiness of meaty foods.

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