breaking the ice

Korea and food is a fascinating chapter for me. Not only because most of it tastes well, but also because I brought back lots of goodies with me! (Took the big suitcase from my mum).
First of all Koreans seem to know only chopsticks and spoons, no knives no forks, and other then we see in some Asian movies, they never get the bowls with food close to the chin or mouth, no, they leave them on the table. Now everyone who has read my miserable attempts to eat Bacalhau knows that chopsticks are not a smart idea for me.
Then there is Kimchi. Kimchi is a fermented vegetable dish that can be stored for a long time. There are more than 160 Kimchi varieties – the ones I tried taste like cabbage with some spicy red pepper paste; this all would not be a bad thing, but kimchi is the sine qua non of Korean kitchen, and I am not good with cabbage for breakfast.
And then there is seaweed. As crisps, as soup, as suckers, as everything. Do you remember that slightly rotten and salty taste of the sea? Well, this is what seaweed is all about. Being woken up in Korean airlines with a rice porridge and seaweed breakfast was not the most pleasant waking up I could imagine.
Teas, the teas, I really do like herbal teas, so Korea is a paradise for me, but there are some flavours of hot drinks that I am not such a big fan of. Rice teas, it is just – well, they taste like when you but rice in water, let it wait a bit and then take the rice out again, I consider this is a very boring taste. Sweet corn tea on the other hand tastes a bit like liquid popcorn, also not really something I missed so far in my life.
But now I sounded very negative, I really liked all the rice dishes, the fruits and vegetables are wonderful and must tastier then the things we get in Austria where they are taken off the plants when far from ready for harvesting and I love Bibimbap.
I was served Bibimbap in the airplane and the hostess was very apologetic that she had only Korean food left. So I was a bit scared when I had it on my tray, especially as I got also a manual how to eat it correctly. I can only say it tasted well, it had only a not so good seaweed soup coming with it, but if you ignore that one, it was wonderful.