Chapter Thirty: East Meets West Thanksgiving

So, yesterday was Thanksgiving. I had been talking to friends about it for a while--I decided there was no way that I wouldn't have Thanksgiving just because I was in Korea. Arthur had the same thought. His parents sent him tons of things that he needed to make Thanksgiving and my mother sent me a bunch of stuff too. Our powers combined, we showed five other people their first Thanksgiving.

Yesterday morning, it was strange to get up and go to work, knowing it was Thanksgiving. Kelly asked me about it before my first class, "It is a big holiday for you, right?" It kind of struck me at that moment that it is a big holiday for us, as Americans. It's not religious, it's not patriotic, it's not overly-commercial. It does have a checkered past, but for what it is now, it means a lot to me. Growing up white in America, you don't have many chances to feel like you have your own culture. When all you ever do is the same thing that everyone else is doing, you don't think about it. It was interesting to explain Thanksgiving not just to the Korean teachers, but also to the other Westerners. It reminded me that I am part of a culture-- the American melting pot (or is it a tossed salad now?).
Above you can see the glorious set-up, complete with very little matching tableware, kimchi, and the turkey center piece.


Arthur, carving the bird. Yep, that is a rotisserie chicken from Costco. Turkeys were like 60,000 won and we had nowhere to cook it. I was pretty excited to have another dinner party in my apartment. I'm amazed that we squeezed seven people at the table, but we did have to borrow three chairs from school to do so.


In Arthur's bowl, you can see my homemade squash soup. Like I made two years ago, except this time without a recipe! I blended up the squash with some chicken broth and tomato paste. Then I added onions and cherry tomatoes. It was a hit!

Arthur gives dinner one big thumbs-up. In the background, you can see that we didn't have enough table or counter space, so my bed held the dessert. Ah, studio apartment living.

The American hosts.

And Korean style!

Dini tells me that sticking leaf confetti to your face is a Thanksgiving tradition. Little known fact.

I really enjoy the juxtaposition of the Corelle Wear bowl of cranberry sauce next to the earthen bowl of Kimchi. East meets West.

"Yes, Mom, I did make the green bean casserole! Lookit that! And no, I am not going to keep it as leftover so that I don't get botulism."

Time for dessert. Arthur got us a pumpkin pie and I made the pumpkin monkey bread that my mom sent me (thanks mom!). Everyone was so full, we took one bite, stared at our food for a while, then took another. Arthur and I assured everyone that it was the proper way to enjoy Thanksgiving.

Monkey bread in the foreground and a very approving Nicole in the background.

What would Thanksgiving in Korea be without the soju...

And the candy corn?

Arthur created a confetti Korea, which is pretty amazing. Complete with some of the islands!

I made my own island. I think that Greenport is the gold turkey between two red turkeys on the North Fork.

Nicole's Australia.

Arthur's Georgia.

I felt like it would be unfair of me not to make Massachusetts after how well she treated me for four years. Long Island, Massachusetts, you will always be competing for the title of "home."

'Merica! ala Arthur.

Last, but not least, Great Britain by Chris.

In the end, I'd say it was a really great Thanksgiving. Definitely better than last year, but merely consuming more than a piece of toast would make it better than last year. I spent a lot of dinner thinking about the folklore about Thanksgiving: the white people present the natives with a feast to thank them for helping them survive. It kind of felt that way having Koreans and non-Americans over for Thanksgiving. Without them, I certainly wouldn't have made it this far.

As the days fly by, I am getting closer to the day in late December when I will leave Korea. I know it is for the best for innumerable reasons, but I will also miss it here. I love this city, I love my students, and I love the whole adventure. Nevertheless, I am happy to be leaving when I know I will still be able to look back on this as an overwhelmingly positive experience.

Chapter Thirteen: Gratuitous Food Blogging

So, it's about time to post about my cooking this week. It all started with last weekend's trip to HomePlus once I overcame another awful kid-virus. Being a teacher means getting sick in ways that you had completely forgotten were possible after elementary school. Anyway, pictured above is the batter for my sesame cookies. I thought they would be a great "fusion" dessert for my Seoul Food night (which ended up being more Soul Food That I Can Make in Korea From Typical Korean Ingredients).

Here they are cooking. For this little bit of alchemy, I figured that I would need to make it so that the bottom of the cookie pan (or aluminum foil pie dish, as it were) did not touch the bottom of the pot. If it had, I'm sure they would have just been badly burnt and never turn out like cookies. What I did was line the pot with an inverted pie dish, then place one right-side-up on top. That way, the heat filled up the whole "oven" instead of being focused at the bottom of the pan. Pretty ingenious, if I do say so myself. This recipe wasn't even for stove-top baking, but I successfully made an oven that cooked the cookies nearly as evenly as if they were in a real oven. It did take about 40 minutes to cook a tray of four, but it was worth it.
The recipe, if you're interested, came from Martha Stewart, my favorite domestic goddess. I don't care what that says about me. Actually, I might be a proud fan.

As you can see, I added in some dried cranberries. Sesame seeds have such a nutty flavor and I thought I needed something tangy to balance it out. I'm quite pleased with the results.

My HomePlus purchases! I've never seen vanilla powder before, but it was the only kind of vanilla I could find. I kind of like it now, though. I can add it to just about anything that could benefit from a hint of vanilla-and it's much easier and cheaper than real vanilla. Next to it is my baking powder! Sweet nectar of the gods! I am so excited about all of the things I can do with real baking powder instead of my baking soda+acid concoctions.

Finished cookies! Don't they look tasty and perfect? On Thursday, I took the left-overs to work. No one seemed phased by the idea of sesame cookies, so I must have picked well in my choice of foods that are both Soul Food and Korean food. Hmm. The next dessert is the real link between the two. When I was searching for recipes, all I got were sites about Soul Food and Korean food.

Preparing the ingredients to make the custard base... What could it be?

Cooking up some Korean sweet potatoes. They have a really great, unique flavor. It kind of tastes to me like cardamom. They are definitely not your grandma's sweet potatoes, but they will work.

Making a puree.

Mixing it all together... More on this later.

I need to pause for a moment to show so photos of how beautiful cooking can be!

This stainless steel pot full of cherry tomatoes just waiting to be stewed down to be a red-bean chili base is so pop-art, isn't it? I love the way that the pot reflects the tomatoes.
It's just pretty! And the chili turned out pretty good too. It was too sweet, though, from the red beans and the sweet tomatoes. Next time, black beans and regular tomatoes.
Now, back to the sweet potato dish:

Ice cream! It was amazing, even if I did screw it up because I fell asleep before I was done churning it and it turned into one big rock. I spent a lot of time moving it from fridge to freezer and back again. Unfortunately, I cannot find cream in Korea so I couldn't get it nice and smooth. It's also really difficult to make without an ice cream maker. It turned out okay in the end anyway!

Another dish that I kind of made up: Corn custard! Corn is just about the only canned vegetable you can get in a normal Korean grocery store which leads me to believe it's a pretty popular one. Also, they're big on eggs. Since I don't have an oven in which to make a real corn pudding (don't be fooled by the name, it's a nice savory side-dish), I had to make do on my stove top and cread a corn custard. I think it was really tasty and Chris ate a ton. Also, I made this entirely without a recipe. I just threw stuff together in a pot and saw what happened. Think, corn quiche without the crust.


But wait, there's more! It's Saturday. I had planned to go hiking today, but after a long night of Outback Steakhouse, Ice Bar (where you throw your ice beer mug at a target to try to win free food and drinks), and Norae Bang (Korean karaoke), I slept in this morning. I got up and thought, "Saturday, overslept, can't go hiking... French toast it is!" It was the best idea ever. Korean bread is also very thick, I can't imagine it being used for anything else! Luckily, at HomePlus last weekend I also bought Korean "cake syrup" which was certainly not Mrs. Butterworth's, but it'll do.

Mmm, happy Saturday!

Lastly, what the ice cream really looks like. It looks freezer burnt, but you can't taste it because of the strong flavor. Did I mention that it really tastes like chai? I put a decent amount of vanilla and cinnamon in, plus the natural sweet potato flavor made a nice chai taste. It even looks the right color to be chai ice cream... maybe next time I'll make chai ice cream for real?

Chapter Eleven: The Lone Ranger Does a Dinner Party or Kitchen Alchemy

The first night I was here, I said something to Cordelia about exchanging food for favors. The fact that I cook quickly spread to everyone else. Apparently, no one else here really cooks. When Arthur first got here, nearly two years ago, he was asked if he cooked because everyone was hoping he would be "that kind of person for the group." Now, a few generations later, I am determined to be that kind of person for the group. On Wednesday afternoons, I have absolutely no classes and it makes me feel awful because everyone else is working. So, I've decided to spend that time preparing dinner for the other Western teachers. Since I only have one burner, I needed to start in advance. On Tuesday night, I made some zuccini pancakes. I left out the cheese and used flour instead of breadcrumbs so that they would have the very subtle Korean style. They turned out perfect and definitely had clear Korean inspiration. This first picture is after I shaved the whole zuccini. Normally, I use a cheese grater but since I don't have one, I had to make do. I shaved it, then used my scissors to make it a little smaller.

Frying them up and packing them for tomorrow!

Making caramelized bananas to go on top of my cake for dessert.

The containers still steaming, sitting in my fridge getting ready for Wednesday!

The cake in its "oven." In order to make the cake, I found a recipe online for stove-top coffee cake and modified it. First of all, I had yet to find baking powder so needed to create my own. This is where the alchemy comes in. Baking powder is a combination of a salt (baking soda) and an acid (or two) that creates the reaction causing instead leavening (rising). I needed to find an acid to react with my baking soda, so I chose yogurt. I wasn't sure how well it would work or how the cake would taste. In the end, it worked pretty well: the cake rose, it baked all the way through, and it tasted like cake. It was a little funky from the baking soda/yogurt combination I think, but when topped with banana, you could hardly tell.

Before it started to rise.

Meanwhile I chopped up tons of vegetables for my soup. I must have had a pound of everything here: potatoes, onions, peppers, carrots... okay, maybe not a pound of garlic though.

I had to taste a piece of my finished (and risen!) cake before declaring it a success. It took about 2 hours to cook, more than twice the time the recipe called for, but that's okay. It worked! Who would have thought I could make it on a stove-top?

The soup cooking, mm, nice rolling boil.

The last piece of completed cake. Everyone loved it.

Arthur did so much that he's on his second piece here.

On Thursday, I decided, "Let's try this again." Since the other cake was kind of dry and the batter was more doughy, I added more juice. Also, I added a ton more sugar to cover up the baking soda/yogurt taste in the last one.

Gettin' ready to go in the "oven."

To show that this cake is actually made from batter instead of dough.

Cooking, next to my totally sweet cereal box. For some reason, Korean Kelloggs brand cereal comes like a normal cereal box but has special scoring so you can fold it and make it all flat at the top. I had to try, but I'm not really sure why I would want it this way.

My spice collection, of which I am actually quite proud, salt, pepper, turmeric, garlic, and sesame oil. What else do you need? Morgan probably remembers from my college cooking days that I really don't use much else. I've always believed that turmeric makes anything taste better.

Left-over soup! This is all that's left after I made Arthur take some since he was getting sick. Huge pot down to one little container. Tonight, I finally finished it off. Many, many days of chicken soup.

Cake #2 cooking away. Look, you can see how much it rose!

Cake #2 finished. It was very gooey on top and definitely had an orange-creamsicle taste from the orange juice and yogurt. I kind of liked it, though! However, it took over 3 hours to bake this time. I'm not sure if the added moisture was necessary or good. Friday night, I got some chocolate and melted it down to put a nice ganache on top. We ate it on the roof and it was quite nice.
Today, I got baking powder so the alchemy of replacing baking powder is no longer necessary. It's good because then I don't have to worry about a yogurt taste in my cake. Next time, I think I'll make it an aloe juice cake-yum!
I've already started cooking for this week's dinner (really, one burner, you have to plan way ahead) which will be themed "Seoul Food"--a combination of American Southern and Korean.