Feeding My Passion

Anne and Ryan mentioned, on several occasions, that oisobagi (aka oi kimchi, oi = cucumber) was probably their favorite kimchi when they got back from Asia. Since it’s a Summer kimchi because cucumbers are only in season during the Summer (the produce here is very seasonal, love that, at least it’s easy to love it because it’s Summer), I thought I’ve give it a try before the cucumbers became either 1) scarce or 2) expensive.

Rob T, another foreign English teacher who lives in Byeongjeom not too far away and I picked up 20 cukes and a few more ingredients since I already had most of them in my growing pantry. Oh, but first I had to find a good recipe for it. Not having a cookbook yet (I have 2 good ones on the way from What The Book out of Itaewon.), I did some research online and found one that struck me as the best one for me to do, lots of flavor, not too difficult, and scaling it (doubling in this case) was very easy.

So we shopped and sliced and brined, grated and chopped, measured and mixed, drained and rinsed, until everything was ready for the stuffing. As you can see, we did all the prep in my bedroom, on my bed and the floor since my kitchen really is very small and I don’t have a desk yet. Hopefully I’ll get one this week. But until then, improvisation has been key, and never more so than when making kimchi in my little place with my tiny little kitchen.

I’m looking forward to my next paycheck as well, which I’ll get on the 8th, so I can start doing some real cooking again. I mean, I love rice and tofu as much as the next person, of course, not if that person is Korean, in which case, I love it about half as much as they do. The subject of food comes up in class for a couple of reasons, one of them is our lessons at school often include something food-related. And I don’t exactly discourage any conversation about food. I’m curious what their favorite foods are, if they like to cook, if their parents (overwhelmingly their mother) are good cooks and what they cook. So I asked them what their favorite foods were. About half the class said rice was one of their top two. Rice! I don’t think I can imagine American kids telling me that bread or potatoes was in the top 5, or 10, or 20 even! The love for rice here is deep and strong.

Anyway, I do really like kimchi, tofu, and rice, but not quite like most Koreans do. Though I do like it a lot more than most non-Asian Americans.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 31st, 2010 at 12:58 am and is filed under Cooking, Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.