Strawberries and Eels

Whenever you go to Korea, there are a couple of things you really need to try. You need to try the Korean barbecue. You also really need to have some Korean fried chicken. Fried chicken is amazing here! They call it 양념 통닭 (“yangnyum tong tak” = '“seasoned chicken”) in some places, but any kind of fried chicken you get in Korea is the best in the world, I think. And another favorite that I haven't heard a lot of people talk about are the strawberries.

Korean strawberries are unbelievable. They are like eating candy. I remember one time walking through an open air market a number of years ago. A guy drove up in a motorcycle with a big container. He opened it up and showed us these strawberries. And they looked gorgeous!! So, on a whim, I just went ahead and bought some. Right then and there, I put one of the strawberries in my mouth - and I could not believe how sweet it tasted!! It's literally like eating candy. There is absolutely no bitterness, no sourness. It is like eating pure sugar, it's unbelievable! It's so delicious. Love these strawberries!!

Now, the brand of the ones I got at the Shinsegae Department Store is called Keumsil. And the price of one package is “only” $24 for 24 strawberries. $1 a strawberry. Would you pay $1 for a strawberry? Well, if they're this good, I would…but 24 bucks though… So expensive. But man, amazing, truly amazing strawberries.

I got another batch of similar priced strawberries. About six of these came in the pack, but these were huge strawberries. The brand was Arihyang strawberries. So, this was about $12, almost $13 for a pack of six. Even though they were huge, they weren't as good. They weren't as sweet. It tasted like regular strawberries, which is not bad, but I wouldn't pay that price for those kinds of average-tasting strawberries.

Now, just for fun, I got some “shine muscat” grapes. Look at that. The grapes look so beautiful, so perfect, they don’t look real. It looks like a plastic set of grapes. Packaged in a beautiful gift box, it cost $26 for a bunch of grapes! I know in Japan they gift fruits. I guess they do the same in Korea. Beautifully packaged fruits. Really expensive. And the taste is incredibly subtle - a lot like the Japanese muscat grape jelly candies I sometimes find in the Korean grocery store.

So, every time I come to Korea, I have to have Korean barbecue, Korean fried chicken and Korean strawberries. So, hope you'll give them a try next time if you have a chance to come to Korea.

Eels

So, for tonight's meal, we are at a 장어 (“jangoh”) restaurant. 장어 is eel, but this is a Japanese-style restaurant. And it's really quite interesting. So, my friend is explaining that there's actually a system for eating this 장어. The first thing we do is just take one quarter, we split this into four, one quarter, put it in the bowl, eat it by itself. You then take another quarter and then we're going to mix it with some Japanese shiso leaves, scallions, and wasabi. And we're just going to mix that up together.

The next step, the third stage is to take the rest of this, and then we put some tea and mix that in there and add some of these 김 (“kim”), which is dry seaweed. We're going to mix that in together. What an amazing, amazing combination!

So, quite an elaborate setup. Then, of course, we've got a little bit of sushi. This is really, really interesting system. I've only had eel just with rice, but never had such an interesting mix of ways to eat this. So, Japanese-style eel. Oh, can't wait to try this!