Friday I had a bit of a craving for some dark chocolate, so I popped over to the grocery store next to the school. Due to the recent dark chocolate craze here in Korea, it's easy to find, although I must say I was a bit thrown off by the packaging:
No, I wasn't thrown off by the 72% cacao (that made me pretty happy, actually) but by the "cacao polyphenol chocolate" in the fine print. I don't know what you think of when you hear polyphenol, but that word makes me think of something petroleum based. Or possibly a barbituate. So I checked wikipedia. Turns out that polyphenol is a chemical found in cacao (among other natural things) with antioxidant properties. [read more] Anyway, Dream Cacao is damn good chocolate. Not as good as Бабаевский (what is?) but still scrumptious. Also, I highly recommend dropping a chunk in your Maxim or Taster's Choice. It'll improve the taste of said beverage exponentially.
Donna eats shabu-shabu
This afternoon, Gwen and I took Donna out to favorite restaurant: a shabu-shabu place just east of the Banyawol subway station. Now those of you who are familiar with Daegu might think that trekking all the way out to Banyawol would be a waste of time... But trust me, this place is wonderful. What you see in front of Donna are very thin pieces of meat, which you cook in that bubbling pot to the left. The meat is sliced incredibly thin and each piece takes about 10 seconds to cook. You then put the meat in one of those little "bowls" made of lettuce and stuffed with rice. You can also add mushrooms and greens (from the bubbling stew) to your lettuce bowl. Then you eat it, kind of like a Korean taco. I love this stuff. Come on out to my neck of the woods and chow down.
4 comments:
Mmm, Shabu-shabu. I wonder if it was originally Korean and came to Japan, or was originally Japanese and went to Korea. My guess is it started in Japan because they don't use the lettuce bowls here, so that would have been a Korean addition to the dish, and also "shabu-shabu" is a Japanese onomatopoeic word that means 'swish swish.' Whatever, it is good.
I've gone to shabu-shabu restaurants twice with Korean friends. Each time it's been so frustrating, because they don't get the idea of "swish-swish" and instead dump all the ingredients in to boil. You're right,...those nice thin pieces of meat take about NO TIME to cook. Imagine then, the leather I was pulling out of the hot pot (and not eating.) So sad!
But shabu shabu done right is awesome!
Catherine - Yep, this is something that came to Korea from Japan. Given the animosity that Koreans feel towards the Japanese, it surprises me that the shabu-shabu places are so popular. But perhaps the fabulous taste has something to do with it!
Jelly - Gwen was telling me that Koreans tend to dump all the ingredients in at once - Boo!! I like to cook mine one piece at a time. Of course, you have to hold onto your meat with your chopsticks or else it will vanish into your boiling pot of yumminess, never to be seen again!
(Blush) Samson and I dump everything in when we go, and then dip up our portions all at once in the little bowls. It makes the process much more expeditious. He likes rice, and I like noodles. So I try to get my "gook-su" out of the way for him.
However I agree it is fun to do it the slow way on a lazy afternoon with no where to go.
Post a Comment