mouthfeel
Currently based in Seoul, Korea.
My personal blog is hereabouts.
I enjoy e-mails almost as much as I enjoy eating.
Nov 11
Nov 06
What is this blog, the David Chang variety hour? (via Twitter)
Nov 03
food flag, via wc
Oct 28
Oct 26
Chang: You look at menus all over the place, like a French restaurant. Look at any three-star Michelin restaurant in America and there are Asian influences, Spanish influences, all over—a very global menu. It just shows you how categories fail to really describe the food. But going back to grits and Southern flavors it was a lot about imagining what if our ancestors moved to Charleston, South Carolina—would they not be using Anson Mills grits? Would they not be using the local shrimp? Would they not be using butter in their food? Of course they would, eventually. That’s how food evolves. And vice-versa. What if people from the South moved to Korea? How would they replicate certain flavor profiles? For us it was a matter of trying to figure out what food might taste like—it was a little bit of a leap of faith. That’s how a lot of the recipe took place.
“The Momo Touch: Talking with Momofuku’s David Chang and Peter Meehan” (via bemusings)
Oct 02
제주 돼지 항정살: Pork collar — also known as neck or jowl — from Jeju island, famous for its black hog. There’s not much you can say about pork that hasn’t been said a thousand times over. If you’re an omnivore, you’ve already experienced how crap most of it can be. Dry pork-chops that belong in a Raymond Carver story… you know how it goes.
So if you haven’t had the opportunity to eat Jeju black pork in Korea, you’ve been gypped a thousand times over. It is special. It has an intense, free-range, Berkshire-ish flavor. (My limited research indicates that there is some relation between Jeju pork and the famed Berkshire/Kurobuta breed.)
And the collar? It’s out of this world. In contrast to the crispy/chewy thing going on with the common belly (also delicious), the collar’s fat distribution renders each piece texturally consistent, juicy, tender, melt-in-your-mouth, religious experience, etc., etc., etc., and so on and so forth. I’ve been habituated to the taste by the steady availability of the stuff — meat crack is what it is — though I can tell you that the first time I tried a bite, fresh off my pitiful electric stove-top, my eyes totally bugged out and I gasped and everything. Now, lesser pork will not do. A bit sad, but once you go black pork…?
Sep 25
Paulina gives a brilliant deconstruction of the NYT Chocolate Chip Cookie over at _mphatic!!!
Sep 23
꿀사과: Koreans call the particular fruit above, in direct literal translation, “honey apple,” which is not to be mistaken for literally honeyed apples (happy belated new year). Slicing one open reveals threads and globs of translucent tissue, as if drizzled honey were suspended within the flesh. The apple itself boasts a crisp, crunchy texture and subtle moisture release: sweet, but not juicy. I feel like I keep repeating myself here re: fresh produce/seafood/etc., but the Korean apple just tastes clean.
I used to have this thing for Pink Lady; I still do, for its tartness as well as the lovely and distinctive shade of its peel. Ironically, these qualities call to attention the fact that I am eating an apple that does not really look or taste the way I think an apple should. However much the Pink Lady charms, it strongly asserts its thoroughly modern conception upon first glance, then bite. The honey apple, in contrast, tastes like what you imagine an apple would have tasted like before mass agricultural industrialization rendered many a common fruit bland — the neo-original, with its frills discreetly contained within.
“ The problem was the Hello Kitty lettuce container. […] At this point, you’ve lost me. I’m asking too many questions. I’m overthinking both the fridge and its owner. I’m wishing the fridge only carried sparkling water. I’m feeling like the fridge is trying too hard. I’m thinking Don Draper would never allow a Hello Kitty lettuce container in his icebox. I’m wondering how many shoegaze LP’s are in this Hello Kitty lettuce container-owning dude’s record collection that I might be forced to listen to.
— Disgrasian’s Jen, responding to the question, “Will a clean fridge get you laid?” (No, she says, it will not.)
» Korean Kimchi and Le Cordon Bleu
I’ve been looking for the official hard copy forever now, but you can access Korean Kimchi and Le Cordon Bleu: Taste Meets Culture in English online in either book format or straight-up html. (Beware: the html version seems to be missing key sentences.) The cookbook features a couple handfuls of recipes incorporating some form of kimchi or another.
[In which I hold discourse for a bit] [please ignore]
I made the cream-based kimchi sauce the other day using the high-qual, long-fermented type kimchi that had acquired that extra-savory air about it — a real mellow buzz aftertaste. But the cream felt heavy-handed; it masked both the earthy undertones and the initial sharpness of the side dish. Adding another serving of kimchi into the blender seemed to help, but in the end, you could have used some store-bought stuff and it wouldn’t have made a difference. Furthermore, the combo of fatty Hanwoo beef and rich kimchi cream sauce resulted in an unpleasant mouthcoat (is it just me, or does that sound kinda dirty? I think it’s because I’m thinking of a mouth that serves as a coat. To genitals). To be fair, I’m pretty sure the recipe’s celeriac purée, which I did not make, was intended to cut the overall fattiness of the dish. All in all, forced and disappointing. I had had such high hopes.
Earlier this decade, I had my first taste of Korean fusion at the defunct Temple on La Cienega. I remember how stoked my high school self was to see the food I’d been eating all my life styled so elaborately on large, thick white plates. The fare itself, however, had nothing on the best K-town bbq joints. It wasn’t exactly disappointment I felt, but a frustration — I wanted to skip forward and get to that place where the inventiveness of the cuisine could stake new claims in my imagination, where I wouldn’t be reminded of good home-cooking. Dressing up Korean food in French or Euro-style accoutrement doesn’t seem to work. Incorporating foreign elements into existing Korean dishes also has its flaws (apple kimchi at Ssäm Bar, anyone? Since removed from the menu, thank the Chang). But it’s happening. We’re getting there. Like some sort of all-American, neo-Korean-Vietnamese-Mexican-French/Californian hybrid that is going to fucking ALTER YOUR PERCEPTIONS OF EVERYTHING. (I’m very tired right now. The link points to a reference to LSD in “The 30% Iron Chef” episode of Futurama.)
So here we are. I’d say that, in general, the ascendancy of Momofuku and the whole Korean taco truck thing is this crazy food fantasy come to life. In this fantasy, we all dance the “bibim”-bop, snort lines of red pepper, and rub soybean paste into our gums, while brown rice vinegar mists us from underneath an outdoor rave canopy of fermented cabbage. Tall flames lick the edges of the tent as we bow down to the glory of thinly sliced leaves of bloody meat hanging upon metal chopsticks. It looks like hell and tastes climactic.
Despite the sploogey nationalistic Corean reverie, all I really want right now is a tri-state heirloom tomato. I’m very disappointing as a person.
I hope this will serve as a future memo-to-self that people only want to peep foodporn and maybe my 100-word descriptive paragraphs, but not long missives on nothing. This post is over. [BYAHHHHHHH!!!]
Addendum: After some time in the freezer, the sauce became a decadent thing to pour on top of stuff like eggs benedict. So much umami. No good with beef, which tastes better alone anyhow. The end.
“You can’t just eat good food. You’ve got to talk about it too. And you’ve got to talk about it to somebody who understands that kind of food.”
— Kurt Vonnegut, Jailbird
(via slaughterhouse90210)
Sep 12
The NYT covers the “toothache-inducing cuteness” (their words, not mine) of bento boxes, but Luxirare has the illest version I’ve seen yet.
Sep 08
한우 (Korean beef): I don’t know if you can tell from this crappy cellphone pic, but high-quality Korean beef is elegantly marbled, with taste and texture similar to Wagyu. Look at that gorgeous, even distribution of fat. Marinating it should be a crime; all it needs is some downtime on the grill.
The guy who figures out how to export Korean beef to the rest of the world gets to cut the Kogi line in perpetuity.
Via McSweeney’s, an NYC restaurant dubbed A Taste of Pyongyang:
“The menu is full of North Korean delectables like, Kim Chee and Pesto ragout over broiled Tilapia and Bulgoki and pheasant eggs over mushroom medley. However, don’t bother too much with deciding what to order because in the end it won’t really matter, as the only dish served is the Patriotic Rice Dish, which consists of several rice grains that were personally inspected (and rejected) by the food tasters of Kim Jong Il. It’s served in a lacquer bowl with a stone spork.”
Selecting the live crabs.
Shrimp, too.
Steamed.
Crab stew
Last Monday, my extended family took me to Incheon for lunch. After selecting live crabs and shrimp from a stall in the covered fish market, we headed to one of the many restaurants in the purlieu that cook whatever live sea animals you bring in.
I know there are people in this world who complain that steamed crab is more of a hassle than a treat, that its succulence is not really worth the pains of cracking then digging out the edible bits while crustacean juice runs down your arms. To those people, I say: you fucking slackers.
With its springy texture and near-buttery flavor, the crab meat needs no accompaniment. Sure, if you can’t handle the seductive simultaneity of fresh and unctuous, you can always cut a morsel every so often with something mildly acidic, like wasabi and soy sauce. (Confession: I couldn’t handle it.)
A couple tips:
- Koreans make sure to buy some extra crabs for that mandatory stew at the end. To my delight, my grandfather even smuggled ramen in his bag to add to the dish, but it was all too steamy to photograph well.
- Don’t make the mistake of buying the large snow crabs in Korea; the smaller crabs, though inconvenient in their paucity of flesh, carry the umami you’re craving in denser form.
