Taking Korean cuisine global
KOREA HERALD
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| [Illustrated by Nam-Kyumg-don] |
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One Sunday morning many years ago, I had a conversation with a Korean woman at a church service in Belleville, Nebraska. She was married to an American Air Force captain. At that point in my life, the only information I had about Korea was the way the Korean War was portrayed on the television show M*A*S*H, so I asked her if she’d met her husband in a bar. The second it came out of my mouth, I realized how terrible it sounded. She gave me a look I will never forget and said, “No, I was his Korean tutor.” I was mortified! Desperate to remedy the situation, I apologized and explained that my family was all set to move to Korea in a few months, and that I was just nervous about the culture shock. She was kind, understanding and immediately forgave my lack of knowledge about life in Korea. Yon was happy to invite me to dinner and help me learn more about the country that would become my home. That was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. Yon now lives in Tennessee, and I live in Seoul, but we still talk regularly about our lives and experiences.
Every country has its own line-up of great dishes; some have been modified over the years because of the popularity of the dish and the desire to make it more interesting and exciting. Some countries, such as Italy and France, are rich in foods that have been developed and improved for centuries, and are now internationally popular as a result. Written history is what gives certain cultures an edge. France and Italy both have extensive written histories, with enough cookbooks to fill Seoul’s Olympic Stadium. Partly due to this, their cuisines are well known around the world. The same can be said for the cuisines of Russia, China, and Britain. Korea has a long history as well, but the devastation of wars, occupation by other nations, and lack of industrialization kept it in a depressed state for a long time. Korea remained unknown to many other countries until only a few decades ago. The 1988 Olympic Games put Korea firmly in the limelight, and it has been growing as an international power ever since. Today, Korea is a strong presence in the global community, thanks to its focus on education and rapid technological development.
Korea also deserves to be recognized for its food, and I mean for more than the easily accessible Korean barbeque, which has made such an impact on American pop culture. Korean food is complex and textured, with a variety of exciting flavor combinations - but how do we get it out into the international community?
It stands to reason that Korean food could spread to other countries just as its cars, electronics, and films have. Unfortunately, food has not been as successful yet. After living in Seoul for many years, I’ve developed a deep appreciation for the many fine dishes Korea has to offer. But of course, this doesn’t stop me from experimenting with Korean ingredients and traditional dishes to create new taste sensations. Fusion cuisine, in addition to being fun to develop, carries the added benefit of creating new ways to introduce foreigners to Korean food.
I decided to experiment with adapting a challenging Korean ingredient and dish in order to make it more palatable to the Western palate. I chose to work with doraji (bellflower root), which looks much like ginseng and is known to be very bitter. Korean recipes tend to load it up with red hot pepper flakes to counteract the bitterness. I could not accept the idea that the root’s bitterness could not be removed without using such a powerful flavor to disguise it. I bought 400 grams of doraji and set about developing a new recipe to feature it. I cleaned the roots, sliced them, and crushed fresh tangerines on them. Then, I rubbed salt into the roots and boiled them. I sauteed them in olive oil, and added persimmons, salt and pepper. Finally, I garnished the dish with green onions. I tasted it, and-voila! There was no bitterness whatsoever.
My taste-testing session with my Korean friends went well, but of course, we argued about the method and ingredients used. Each lady had a different reason why my recipe wasn’t proper, according to Korean standards. I finally explained that I wasn’t experimenting to please Korean taste buds, and that it’s the foreign palate that needs time to acquire the taste for foods of other lands. Eventually, even the most stalwart traditionalists of the group agreed that this was a great way to introduce these healthful roots to foreigners. It’s still Korean food, but with a delightful entwining of different flavors.
I’m not the only one exploring this issue. I’ve been to several Korean restaurants that are creative with their menus. In some cases, the quality, taste, and presentation were excellent. Some would say that these gourmet fusion dishes were not true Korean food, because they don’t represent the traditional style. I believe that this kind of thinking is flawed. These recipes, like my recipe for doraji, are not brand new creations, but rather variations on the traditional dishes. They are developed to meet the needs of foreigners who are not familiar with the taste of Korean food.
I had a wonderful experience walking around the parks in the Sambuk-dong area one Sunday around noon. I came across three happy-looking people sitting in a shaded area eating tofu and kimchi and drinking makgeolli (Korean rice wine). I said hello in Korean. They said hello back in English, and we all laughed. One asked me in English, “Do you want to eat lunch?” I had built up an appetite with all the walking and was happy to take them up on the offer. The combination of tofu and kimchi was so delicious, and this was partly due to its simplicity! This is another great way to introduce Korean food to foreigners - keep it simple.
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With the advent of modern fusion cuisine, many traditional ingredients are now used to prepare an array of richly varied dishes, combining the best of international cuisine to create dazzling new culinary experiences. Fusion has greatly enriched international cuisines. Being able to add exotic ingredients that were not available in the past has moved Korean society into a new exciting era. You can keep it simple by taking traditional Korean ingredients and adding them to traditional Western recipes, as I did with my recipe for a summer pasta salad. Instead of using vermicelli, I used Korean japchae noodles (made from mung beans). My daughter snubbed her nose at me when I said I was making the salad with mung bean noodles. She loves Korean food, but she’s never liked those slippery mung bean noodies. I challenged her to try it in the new context of a Western summer salad. To my delight, she loved it - although she did credit the deliciousness of the dish to the feta cheese. I didn’t care - I’d found a way to make this traditional Korean ingredient accessible to a foreign palate.
Korean food also has an edge because of its nutritional makeup. Koreans believe that eating many vegetables makes for a healthy nutritional balance and good health. They’re absolutely right! Koreans also believe that food in the right combinations brings harmony to the soul and body. The concept of yin and yang is a Taoist principle that is based on the idea of opposites set in balance. For example, in a dish made up of bok choy and ginger, bok choy is the yin and ginger is the yang, offering harmony both in the body and on the table. Cooking methods are also classified into yin and yang. Steaming, poaching, and boiling are yin, and frying, stir-frying, pan-frying, and roasting are yang. To that end, when Koreans prepare a traditional meal, the rule of the five flavors is followed. The five flavors are sweet (like sweet potatoes), salty (like soy sauce), sour (like vinegar), hot (like chili peppers), and bitter (like ginger). Food is also arranged into the five traditional colors: black, red, green, yellow, and white. (Black is not easy to find in nature, so you’ll find a lot of black sesame seeds and foods such as dried cloud-ear mushrooms in Korean food.) Following these flavor and color guidelines leads to dishes that never boring.
Obviously, Korean food has a lot going for it. That being said, the best way to gain an edge in the foreign market is to be able to analyze the foreign mind and develop strategies and networking capabilities to work with it rather than against it. The ability to analyze what flavors people like is an advantage. One of my friends is a foreigner who does not like kimchi, but others love it - including myself. To have knowledge and experience of the preferences of foreigners, along with the ability to analyze foreigners’ reasons for liking and disliking different flavors and dishes, is a critical factor in the internationalization of Korean food. If we can put inflexible traditionalist viewpoints aside and focus instead of modifying Korean food to appeal to people from all nations, we can spread Korean cuisine around the world. Remember, it’s still Korean food - modified to please the foreign palate.
The complexity of internationalizing a country’s traditional cuisine is mindboggling at times. I called a friend of mine who is a journalist, and we talked for 30 minutes about how to internationalize Korean food. We went back and forth, on what it would take to move Korean cuisine firmly into the international arena, eventually making it just as well-known and well-liked as Italian, French, or Chinese food. We agreed that a few things must be done to internationalize Korean food. One major point we agreed on was that menu descriptions of Korean dishes could stand a little fine-tuning. Instead of calling kimchi jjigae “kimchi soup” or “kimchi stew,” why not describe it thus: “Kimchi, tofu, and braised pork in a fiery broth, served in a clay pot.” This helps to give the foreign consumer an idea of what to expect when they order this dish in an appealing way.
Another thing that can be done, as I stated before, is to modify traditional recipes to make them more accessible to the foreign palate, and to feature recipes are already accessible. For example, most foreigners can appreciate bibimbap, haemul pajeon, and bokgeumbap. These dishes feature easy on the stomach ingredients like rice and vegetables (that’s all bibimbap and bokgeumbap are), and haemul pajeon is pretty much the Korean version of a seafood crepe. On the other hand, dwenjang jjige and haejangguk can be challenging. Doenjang jjigae has a strong smell that not all foreigners find appealing, and haejangguk features congealed ox blood - unless you’re accustomed to eating blood pudding, that can be startling. Keeping accessible recipes traditional and putting a twist on challenging recipes is a good way to create a Korean menu that most foreigners can appreciate. Haejangguk becomes immediately more accessible when you eliminate the congealed ox blood, and doenjang jjigae could easily be re-seasoned to more fully accommodate foreign taste buds. In this way, you bring lesser-known Korean dishes to the forefront, instead of ignoring them totally in favor of more readily accessible dishes like galbi and bulgogi.
In summary, there are three strategies that can be used in concert to bring Korean cuisine into the international spotlight. First, we can take traditional Korean ingredients and feature them in Western recipes. Second, we can take traditional Korean recipes and modify them slightly to appease the foreign palate. And third, we can be sensitive to the preferences and desires of foreigners when designing and writing menus for Korean restaurants in other countries.
The best way to gain an edge in the foreign market is to analyze the foreign mind and develop strategies and networking capabilities to work with it rather than against it. If we can put inflexible traditionalist viewpoints aside and focus instead on modifying Korean cuisine to appeal to people from all nations, we can spread these deliciously unique dishes around the world.
By Samia Mounts