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Jakarta Post

From kimchi and 'bulgogi' to 'rendang'

This platter contains nine different kinds of snack, ranging from egg pizza, tiny spicy fish and rice cakes to fermented mung beans

The Jakarta Post
Sun, October 19, 2008

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From kimchi and 'bulgogi' to 'rendang'

This platter contains nine different kinds of snack, ranging from egg pizza, tiny spicy fish and rice cakes to fermented mung beans. This is a Korean appetizer called goo-jeol-pan, or nine-part pan. (JP/Damar Harsanto)

Korean food and Padang food have at least three things in common: They are multifarious, served cold and spicy.

Both types of cuisine are generally served with a whole assortment of dishes offered on individual plates. The larger the table, the more plates used to serve the dishes. No space on the table is left empty.

In one of the royal traditional Korean meals I sampled, there was one small pan divided into nine parts with a small sample of each dish served in each part. The portions were small, but the quantity -- in terms of the number of choices -- was just enough for a party.

Most of the dishes are served cold because, basically, they are fast food: The cooks have gone and the waiters are in charge of putting the pre-prepared dishes in separate plates. The rice and soup, however, must be kept warm.

And most of these dishes are spicy.

Korea's red, hot salad, kimchi, can match the bite of Padang's chili pepper, sambal.

Just like sambal, which sometimes becomes a yardstick for diners to judge the expertise of the cooks, many Koreans use the taste of kimchi to assess how good the cook is.

"We just know which kimchi is good, which kimchi is not, by experience (of tasting different kinds of kimchi)," said a Seoul resident, Changjun Park.

A senior Seoul citizen, Kwang Yung Choo, joked that kimchi is so popular that there is an old Korean saying that the wife who cooks the best kimchi will be loved by her husband.

With kimchi, diners have to eat really fast to beat the bite and must keep a napkin handy. That takes a local Indonesian joke -- that most Indonesians sweat when they eat rather than when they work -- regional. Koreans sweat too when they eat their hot kimchi.

As in most Indonesian cuisines, rice reigns. People can take it in double or triple helpings and all the side dishes -- rendang, vegetables, fish heads, cow's brains -- just help energize people to eat more rice.

Similarly, Korean traditional cuisine positions rice in the center, too. Rice is like a king with its many subjects surrounding it. Even when only the simplest and fewest dishes are served, a bowl of rice is placed in the center with a spoon, fork and chopsticks by its side. A bowl of kimchi, seaweed soup and meat with several sauces surround it, ready to add flavor to the rice.

I consider again the idea of good food and bad food when I taste Samgetang.

Samgetang, chicken soup with ginseng, is good for preventing people from catching a flu or for maintaining fitness. Seaweed soup provides a lot of fiber, which is good for digestion. Many Indonesian cuisines include oil and other kinds of fatty ingredients to ensure they are tasty. No wonder many people consider those foods harmful to their health, especially as they get older.

But Kwang Yung Choo, an emeritus professor at Seoul National University, seems to disagree with any idea of bad food and good food.

"The fact that these dishes have been around for hundreds of years simply proves that all food is good for the respective people consuming it. There is no good food or bad food," he said.

"So just eat it and enjoy it."

--JP/Damar Harsanto

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