Purify your blood with seaweed soup, cure digestive problems with some fermented kimchi. At Hyatt Regency’s Korean food festival, enjoy a healthy and hearty meal.Eram Agha reports
It seems like cooks in ancient Korea were doctors too because the food they prepared had a therapeutic mix of herbs and spices. At Hyatt Regency’s Korean food promotion Chef Ik Sun Son introduced the flavours of South Korea. He said, “Today we see Korean food joints in different parts of the world because it is healthy and easy on one’s system. Not much oil is used in Korean dishes; herbs are good for our health.” On a healthy note we indulged in banchan an assortment of side dishes that doesn’t include soups and stews.
Korean cuisine is full of small side orders that go well with interesting conversations on the table and with steam-cooked short-grain rice. My plate had jabchae glass noodle salad made from sweet potato noodles stir fried in sesame oil, onion pickle called yang pa ah cha, cucumber namvl or oinamul and sook chu which was made of bean sprout sesame seed. All three were fresh and called for a second helping.
In the middle of enjoying these side orders the chef presented seaweed soup. “It is good for purifying blood. Post-delivery women in Korea are served this for the same reason. Among other medicinal things, some 1,000 years ago a famous doctor introduced ginseng root to cooking, which keeps us warm in winters. There is samgyetang traditionally served in the summer for it restores our energy lost through excessive sweating in summers.”
Then the widely popular kimchi was served. The café had three varieties — Bacchu, made of cabbage, oisabaki made of cucumber and geotijeoli made of Korean cabbage. It was tossed in sesame oil and was as fresh as the vegetables. In fact the taste of veggies is best experienced in Korean cuisine as they are not too spiced or cooked. Kimchi is for all three meals in Korea — breakfast, lunch and dinner — as the dish is good for digestion. All those used to having pickle with paranthas and pooris in breakfast and with vegetables for lunch and dinner would understand the concept of kimchi well. “Earlier it was made by being kept underground since there were no refrigerators back then,” said Son.
We soon came to the main course, for a change I picked vegetarian dish, bibimbap which means mixed rice, for a novel experience. I added a spoonful of barley rice, instead of sticky rice, in the bowl of sautéed and seasoned vegetables called namul, and added red chilli condiment Gochujang over it. Snapper made in sesame seed sauce and spicy chicken stew was later clubbed with sticky rice.
The mildly sweet Korean dessert “rice pudding” brought the Korean delight to an end. The pudding was round and coated with sesame seeds. I tried to experiment by adding some chocolate sauce over the pudding. On seeing my action the chef remarked, “We are very strict about our recipes. We don’t really change them, but now that we are travelling and introducing our food to different parts of the world we are slowly opening up to fusion so that others can adjust to the taste of Korea.” Some fusions that Son has tried are introducing tomato kimchi or making curried dishes when in India!