Barbecue and pickles: little-known Korean food has trappings to become a star

Nation's Restaurant News, Sept 27, 2004 by Michael Anstendig

One major Asian food-tradition has been on the U.S. scene for 30 years yet remains largely invisible to the mainstream, despite being accessible and, to its fans, addictive. It is the cooking of Korea, which Savour magazine described as "the least-known great Asian cuisine in the U.S.A."

Korea and its cooking were influenced by Chinese and Mongolian cuisines and later influenced the Japanese. For many centuries, the rocky peninsula was closed to outsiders and its gastronomy developed a stubbornly unique character.

"Koreans always recite, 'Our food is pleasingly sour, sweet, hot, burning hot, salty, bitter and nutty,'" according to Hi Soo Shin Hepinstall, author of "Growing Up in a Korean Kitchen: A Cookbook."

She names rice, green onions, garlic and hot peppers as the cuisine's four quintessential ingredients and lists as its three essential sauces: kanjang, or soy sauce; toenjang, a miso-like fermented soybean paste; and kochujang, a hot red pepper paste. Kimchi, which is Korea's take on pickled vegetables, is not only its national dish but also a veritable eating obsession.

Kimchi was developed mote than 3,000 years ago as a means of ensuring a supply of healthful produce to last through Korea's barren winters. It is made by salting vegetables to remove internal moisture, adding spices, like flesh garlic, green onion and hot chile pepper powder, and flavorings, such as salted shrimp and anchovies, and allowing the mixture to ferment. The process creates lactic acid, which renders the food that is being preserved crisp in texture and sprightly in flavor.

While Napa cabbage and daikon radish are the most popular manifestations of kimchi, there are more than 150 varieties, including those made from green onions, cucumbers, Indian mustard leaves, wild lettuce, soybean sprouts, turnips, baby ginseng, burdock root, radish leaves, watercress, eggplant, garlic shoots and perilla leaves, which are better known in the United States by their Japanese name, shiso. Kimchi is ordinarily piquant, but varieties, referred to as mul kimchi-mul means "watery" or "juicy"--are completely chile-free and quite mild, though still acidic.

"Mul kimchi is great for cooling down a barbecue meal," says Greg Jacker, chef-owner of Garden Buffet, who together with his Korean-born wife, Chung Sun Lee, faithfully recreates her family's recipes for kimchi and other specialties in their northwest Chicago restaurant. Generally, two or three kinds of kimchi are eaten as accompaniments at every Korean meal, including breakfast. Indeed, Korean cuisine without kimchi is unthinkable.

Kimchi is a key element of panchan, a selection of small dishes served at room temperature at the start of the meal and replenished throughout. Derived from the Chinese word for "rice accompaniment," panchan were created to add some gustatory interest to the country's staple of short-grained rice. Typically, an eye-popping array of eight to 12 dishes constitutes panchan, with a few invariably being kimchis. The more panchan dishes served, the higher the status and prestige of the host. Panchan present a colorful and bountiful universe, incorporating the crunchy and the chewy, the spicy and the subtle, the salty and the savory.

"Many panchan are made simply with fresh green vegetables, sugar, vinegar, soy sauce or salt and sesame oil. It is very easy to make. All you need to do is to mix the ingredients together," says Joohee Maeng, chef of Korean Temple Cuisine in New York. Spinach, mung and soybean sprouts, eggplants, ferns and mushrooms are popular ingredients. Blanching, steaming and light frying are common preparations. In Korea, springtime mountain herbs and roots like wild rocambole, dropwort and buttercups are used, sometimes raw, and are thought to have medicinal properties. Other panchan dishes include dried baby anchovies, acorn and bean curds, fish cakes, fresh raw crabs in chile sauce and even sliced beef brisket.

To the uninitiated, panchan present a source of confusion, since they are served at the start of the meal. "Americans have expectations of appetizers, so they eat up all the panchan right away," says Byung-Sik Im, head chef of New York Kom Tang Soot Bull Restaurant in New York. "Then they say it's too spicy, too salty, etc. But it should be eaten with rice and soup, which have a mild taste."

Most importantly, panchan, when eaten with those basic foods, can constitute a complete Korean meal. Panchan also add a bright counterpoint to meat dishes, especially barbecue.

"Traditionally, Koreans were hunters, not ranchers, and relied on natural meat rather than farm-raised," says Daniel Ho, owner of Ham Hung Restaurant in Los Angeles. "In ancient times Koreans created a basic marinade of soy sauce or sea salt, sugar or malt, garlic and ginger that tamed the taste of wild meat and was equally effective for fish, poultry and seafood."

Preparation was similarly straight-forward. A metal cover of a rice pot was thrown on the campfire and, when blisteringly hot, became the cooking surface.