Adventures in Cuisine
This past weekend I took four of the fencers from my club and headed up to northern Virginia for a rather large tournament. WE had a lot of fun despite the long ride and did reasonably well at the tournament. (Not well enough but that is another story)
On Saturday night we were looking around for a place to eat and I, being a culinary adventurer pulled into the Korean BBQ place. After all the obligatory jokes about dog being on the menu the the others with varying degrees of acceptance gave into my choice. One of the other fencers is equally open to new food experiences. Two prefer standard food, and the fourth thinks Wendy's is more than adequate for most meals.
Needless to say some of them were a tad less than excited by the meal. But overall it was quite good. We told the waitress we hadn't done Korean food before (mostly true)and she steered us towards simpler fare: Beef, chicken, and pork. The food is cooked at the table which everyone thought was cool. All were amazed at the variety of food brought out with the meat. There was radish kimchee, cucumber kimchee, regular kimchee, picked radish, water cress, bean curd, tofu, bean jelly, spiced grape leaves, romaine lettuce, minnows with a hot sauce, and surprisingly enough, macaroni salad. ( I am leaving something out but of course if I could remember what it was I wouldn't be leaving it out.)I highly do not recommend the bean jelly. It is a flavorless gel with a fairly nasty texture that did not encourage a second spoonful. (If we had had spoons, which we didn't. Chop sticks were the order of the day)The tofu wasn't much better. We quickly learned that we were supposed to take pieces of the meat, and place them on pieces of lettuce and wrap them up with some bean curd and other goodies and eat them. It was better that way then eating things straight. The water cress I could handle in small bits but if you took a lot it turned into a seemingly expanding blob of stuff that couldn't be chewed into submission. The grape leaves could be eaten but I am not really into fuzzy food. And the leaves were fuzzy. The chicken was pretty bland. Just plain pieces of chicken. There were two kinds of beef, one fairly plain and one heavily marinated in something. The marinated beef was EXCELLENT! The pork was good too. I learned later by looking on the internet that we were committing a few faux paus in our consumption as you are not supposed to take a whole lettuce leaf and pile stuff on to make a burrito like object. (Which we were doing) One is supposed to tear a smaller piece of lettuce off, place one piece of meat with a small amount of bean curd et al on it and savor it. Oh well, live and learn as they say.
I rather doubt the less adventursome threesome will try Korean food again. I and the other adventurer certainly will and next time we will go for the fancier stuff.
On Saturday night we were looking around for a place to eat and I, being a culinary adventurer pulled into the Korean BBQ place. After all the obligatory jokes about dog being on the menu the the others with varying degrees of acceptance gave into my choice. One of the other fencers is equally open to new food experiences. Two prefer standard food, and the fourth thinks Wendy's is more than adequate for most meals.
Needless to say some of them were a tad less than excited by the meal. But overall it was quite good. We told the waitress we hadn't done Korean food before (mostly true)and she steered us towards simpler fare: Beef, chicken, and pork. The food is cooked at the table which everyone thought was cool. All were amazed at the variety of food brought out with the meat. There was radish kimchee, cucumber kimchee, regular kimchee, picked radish, water cress, bean curd, tofu, bean jelly, spiced grape leaves, romaine lettuce, minnows with a hot sauce, and surprisingly enough, macaroni salad. ( I am leaving something out but of course if I could remember what it was I wouldn't be leaving it out.)I highly do not recommend the bean jelly. It is a flavorless gel with a fairly nasty texture that did not encourage a second spoonful. (If we had had spoons, which we didn't. Chop sticks were the order of the day)The tofu wasn't much better. We quickly learned that we were supposed to take pieces of the meat, and place them on pieces of lettuce and wrap them up with some bean curd and other goodies and eat them. It was better that way then eating things straight. The water cress I could handle in small bits but if you took a lot it turned into a seemingly expanding blob of stuff that couldn't be chewed into submission. The grape leaves could be eaten but I am not really into fuzzy food. And the leaves were fuzzy. The chicken was pretty bland. Just plain pieces of chicken. There were two kinds of beef, one fairly plain and one heavily marinated in something. The marinated beef was EXCELLENT! The pork was good too. I learned later by looking on the internet that we were committing a few faux paus in our consumption as you are not supposed to take a whole lettuce leaf and pile stuff on to make a burrito like object. (Which we were doing) One is supposed to tear a smaller piece of lettuce off, place one piece of meat with a small amount of bean curd et al on it and savor it. Oh well, live and learn as they say.
I rather doubt the less adventursome threesome will try Korean food again. I and the other adventurer certainly will and next time we will go for the fancier stuff.
posted by exMI | 07:55
3 Comments:
Im with you! I think you shouldnt be afraid to try new things at least once.
I have eaten some pretty strange stuff by most peoples standards. Mostly things found here in the US. When you get past the idea of what you are actually eating..its usually pretty good.
Whats the weirdest food for you so far? And what are you going to try next?
Weirdest so far... taht is hard to say. The most risky (and quite good) was eating locally prepared food in an Afghan village somewhere in south east Afghanistan. One of the weirdest at the time was back in about 84 I was in California and I bought an octopus in the grocery store mostly just to sit on my plae and take a picture. I knew a girl from Samoa who offered to cook it for me and she did. IN some sort of a cream sauce. It was excellent although it was a bit offputting for some as the suckers would stick to your teeth. I got her to make it for me again before I left that area and wish I had gotten her recipe.
It's all good. As for what is next, well that depends on what crosses my eye at the right moment.
I was at a place in New Hampshire that served seafood and I ordered calamari....They deep fried the small ones whole.
So I kind of know what you mean about the suckers.. For me it wasnt that they stuck to anything..but they looked strange and so it felt weird eating them.
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