My Favorite Korean Dishes
My taste is so coarse that I can’t appreciate the subtlety of Japanese cuisine. I go for brash Korean food! My personal favorites:
1. 비빔밥 = bibimbap (mixed vegetables and rice with red-pepper paste)
All that nutritional goodness!
2. toenjjang (soybean paste)
I put this on everything from soup to Italian pasta. Sssshhh…
3. bindaetteok
Korean mung-bean pancake. It’s so good it can’t be nutritious, but they say it is.
4. Maeil soybean drinks in Tetra-Pak (oops, not a dish!)
5. 떡볶이= tteokbokki (rice cakes in red-pepper sauce)
One of those dishes I was loathe to try because it looks so unappealing, but once I tasted it, I was hooked!
6. kim (seafood wafers)
I only like the Korean kind, not Japanese. I snack on it plain, but I loved it with white rice when I was still eating rice.
7. miyok-kuk (seafood soup)
Love the silkiness, although the very high salt content drives my blood chemistry crazy.
8. guksu (noodles)
Gosh, I devour anything in noodle form whether Italian pasta or Japanese soba. Memil-guksu is Korean buckwheat noodles, but I prefer soba. I do like japchae, which is Chinese-Korean cellophane noodles.
Korean Food I Don’t Care For
1. omerice (omelet + rice)
I don’t like rice except in only a few dishes like bibimbap and with toenjjang.
2. bbondegi (silkworms)
I haven’t tasted it, to be honest. The smell alone is revolting.
3. traditional rice cakes served sweet
The only two dishes I like rice cakes in are tteok-kuk and tteobokki.
4. anything with red-bean paste — can’t stand the stuff