Japan and Korea: Compare and Contrast

Remarkably: we were eight students today. Oh well. As Chef Vinita would say, "We are perfectly staffed."

Having finished our China studies last Friday, we commence today with the rest of Asia. First, Japan and Korea, neighbors across the straits but with very different culinary sensibilities. Both were influenced by China, and include tofu, soy, rice and noodles as significant ingredients. But the food of Korea is fiery and boisterous, whereas Japanese cuisine is often understated and elegant. Andrew made miso soup, first thing (it takes all of four minutes, max), and Chef Rhoda personally distributed a little bowl of soup to each of us, as we prepped our other dishes. "Ah, what a wonderful way to start the day," she said.

Kim chee. Need I say more? Korea is a cold northern country and pickling vegetables is the traditional method of maintaining a supply during the long months of winter. We ate it today as part of a "Korean man's lunch," Chef called it, or "Bee Bim Bop." This is an ample bowl of rice covered with little piles of flank steak and tangy salads made from bean sprouts, daikon, spinach, and cucumber. Add a little pile of spicy kim chee, and top it off with an egg, sunny side up. Derrick made a "birthday dish" of braised rice noodles with vegetables (called "chapchae") -- noodles signify long life so they're often part of a birthday dinner. I cooked Korean Mung Bean Pancakes, made with soaked yellow mung beans, ground and mixed with eggs and a little flour and lots of julienned carrots, green onions, and bean sprouts. The tedious part was trimming the tails off the bean sprouts, but it's a zen kind of job. The pancakes are cooked in a 8" sauté pan, then cut into wedges, and they have crispy edges and a little spicy sauce to accompany them. We didn't received the Asian-cut short ribs that Chef had ordered, so she substituted sliced filet in the rib marinade, made with soy, sake, mirin, and sesame oil. Delicious, but the ribs would have been more fun to eat.

We learned a new stock recipe: dashi, a Japanese staple. It's simply made from kelp and bonito flakes, or, simpler still, from hon-dashi, dried granules of very high quality, according to Chef. Dashi, along with soy, sake, and miso, are the fundamental building blocks of Japanese cuisine. We had shrimp and vegetable tempura, teriyaki chicken wings, and a cold somen platter. Somen are the very fine Japanese noodles that come in bundles, sometimes fastened with a red ribbon. Like udon and soba, somen are egg-free: vegan-safe.

Chef Rhoda spent a little time today, as she does every day, preparing us for our Chinatown visit next Monday. She described some of the ingredients we're likely to encounter in the dry goods store: ginseng, one of the most valuable Chinese medicinal plants. Bird nests. Shark fin. Calcified worms. Dried sea moths. Deer tails.

One of Chef's former students stopped by with a football-sized durian, a scary fruit on the outside, and the inside is even worse. The nodes of fruit, when removed from the shell, are beyond imagination. Is it an organ? Some kind of cheese? A mollusk? The fruit's odor is notoriously noxious: you can't bring the fruit into public places like hotels or airplanes in some parts of Southeast Asia. Anthony Bourdain described the odor as "like french-kissing your dead grandmother." Dutifully, I tried a (very very very very) small piece. Having never kissed my dead grandmother, I can't tell you if his description was accurate. But. Very very very very very.... not planning on eating it again.