Foreigner Foodies - Day 3: Gangwon-do!

It’s 3:30AM, and I’m in a taxi riding to the offices of a media production company in Dongsan-gu. I have with me an overnight bag, computer, electronic accessories and a sense of mild unease. During the week I received a string of texts, emails, and phone calls from Ginny, our translator on the show. At first these were to resolve questions of translation but then, as those started to become more frequent, a phone call on Friday to say that the producer wanted us to speak more Korean, and so would I mind doing some studying for the show? This was followed by a text asking us to meet at 3:30 in the morning, and to bring anything we needed to sing a song from our country.

         These developments significantly dented my enthusiasm for the experience of travelling and appreciating Korean food, but I filed them away under my prior resolution not to be concerned, and simply to act as I felt comfortable. Under which mandate I decided that I would under no circumstances be induced to sing on camera for a potential audience of 50 million. I have my Korean books in the front pocket of my bag for reference, but there has not been time in the last 10 hours to do any studying.

         A light snowfall had slicked the streets during my brief sleep, making walking the pavement treacherous, and taxis scarce. As a result of which I arrived slightly late to the production office, but was warmly welcomed, and given my new team hoodie, that we would all wear for the rest of the weekend. Presumably these hoodies – in a crisp, stainable white – had either been a weekday innovation on the part of the production team, or else had simply not been available the previous weekend. Either way, I suspect our uniformity of dress will promote a very Korean-style team unity, which may actually be successful in drawing from us the kind of overblown drama the producer is always encouraging. Never mind, they’re warm.

Eating eggs at the back of the bus.

         After briefly filming us “arriving” and getting onto the bus, we spent 30 minutes conversing at the back of the bus, stretching our Korean as far as possible. On my part at least, and I suspect on several others, there was a lot of nodding and laughing at comments and jokes we didn’t fully understand. Nobuko led the discussion as by far the most proficient Korean speaker among us. Personally I used Korean when I could, but didn’t feel at all bad about supplementing it with English. As I would later remark, I’m nervous enough about elocuting in English on national television, my Korean is nowhere near broadcastable. I worried slightly about how our (my) Korea mistakes would be represented on television. This tied into the general concern I had about the tension between sincerity and entertainment that arose the previous weekend.

         We managed to get an hour or so of uncomfortable sleep before arriving at our first destination for the day: Pyeongchang in Gangwon-do.

황태구이 Grilled Hwangtae

Grilling some hwangtae.

The spread,

Falling from a helicopter

         In Pyeongchang we were investigating 황태: A type of fish that has been hung outside for four months in order to allow it to freeze and defrost over and over. This procedure give the meat a chewy texture not dissimilar to a soft jerky. In South Africa we might call it fish biltong, but this fish is used in a broad range of meals: soups, stews, fried with spicy sauce, added in to 불고기… essentially, the technique arose from the need to preserve food over winter, essential for food security in rural parts of Korea until very recently, and the local cuisine hasn’t developed very far beyond it. This combined with Korea’s intense nationalism, which causes it to resist a lot of the cultural changes that open relations with the western world could bring mean that these foods remain immensely popular.

         That said, the process of preparing this fish is culturally and gastronomically fascinating. There is a different name for the fish at every stage of preparation: The live fish is called 명태, the fresh version 생태, frozen 북어, and the cured final product 황태. It of course is also very revealing of what must be millennia old Korean practices of food preparation and production, which speaks to the great influence that food played in Korean, as any agrarian, society.

         After doing our eat and interview routine in the 황태 restaurant, we went to the great fields where the fish is hung out to freeze and defrost. The local farmer was friendly, though toward the end was getting frustrated at the sheer number of pictures and walking shots the producer asked us to do. We estimated that the temperature, after wind chill, was below -10C, and great stinging sprays of snow would be periodically driven through the shooting, causing everyone to turn their backs in unison.

Cold? Yes, damnably freezing.

The confection in question.

Interviewing Nobuko.

Hanging some fish.

The rank and file of fishy kind.

         Our interview at the end of hanging fish and chatting with the local fish “farmer” was awkward. The question asked of each of us was, “Do you think this food could be popular with foreigners overseas?” and we were left with the task of having to prevaricate around the answer “No, definitely not.” The follow-up question: “In that case, what can we do to make it popular?” left me, at least, with a few seconds of gaping helplessness. The obvious answer was, “make it out of something that’s not freeze-dried fish.” I suspect this would not have gone down well. My personal opinion of 황태 is that, while it is edible, and can even be cajoled into being tasty, I would never choose to eat it over the range of foods available in any modern society. Also, it has fish bones, which are for me a major turn-off. I suggested in the interview that the food might be more successful somewhere like Norway or Iceland, but the truth is that those countries probably have a well-saturated market for local seafood products.

         Our final destination for the day was genuinely exciting. We drove for another two hours to reach a spot high in the mountains where sat a traditional Korean hamlet, roofed with wooden shingles. We explored the hamlet, investigated the mill, all the while doing the usual camera shuffle, and then got to try our hand at making some shingles. This was done with a hammer and set of iron wedges. In the bitter cold swinging a heavy mallet at a piece of wood was good warming exercise. It was really fascinating to see how Koreans used to roof their houses back in the day, and the elders who showed us were really friendly, happy old folk.

Nobuko investigating the shingling.

Splittin' wood like it aint no thang,

         The meal we cooked that night under the tutelage of the 하모니 was made largely from vegetables and roots that had been harvested wild from the mountain, combined with potato. We cooked over fires in a traditional old house, in massive ancient iron pots sunk into the kitchen fireplaces. Smoke filled the large building, forcing the camera crew to open the windows so they could see, which loosed in the building a biting breeze that penetrated every layer of clothing. We thoroughly looked forward to getting to sit down and eat the hot meal over which we had labored. Yet by the time the camera crew had finished taking super-closeups of the various foods, they were fairly stone cold. We oo’ed and aah’ed over them appreciatively through chattering teeth anyway, and were thoroughly relieved when we were told we could go to our pension.

That's a lot of tofu.

Enjoying some facsimile of heating.

David and Cynthia stoke the fires and stir the cauldron.

Twice the brinded cat hath mewed...

Steamy goodness.

The final result.

         The day was far from over, however. We had been given some hint of nighttime activities and games to be played for the camera, to which I had been looking forward, and then we were given some sets of acrylic paint, some oddly shaped pieces of bark, and told to do a painting. Of anything. I knew then how my students feel when I place a task in front of them without any warning or direction and say: “go!”

         It was good fun, although the producer was disappointed at how little talking we were all doing while focusing on our paintings. My piece of bark was shaped something like a fish, and so I painted it into a fish. Then we got to be interviewed on why we had chosen to paint what we had, and I had to waffle a metaphorical meaning into the fish (penguin?) I had chosen almost at random.

         That done and the filming finished for the day: Party in the Pension! It was the Producer’s birthday, and so we all sat around, eating snacks drinking beer and soju, and playing drinking games. There was also a 노래방 machine in the room, which got some use later on.

         The next morning I woke up with a hangover, the first time I’ve even done so on Christmas Day. I largely blame the dryness of any room with 온돌 heating, but I probably should have drunk some water before going to sleep the previous night..