07. 12. DINNER

광어회: flounder sashimi

My mom and my brother went out for dinner to meet an acquaintance of mine’s mother and her daughter. So basically it was a party of connections once removed. With the heart of a saint my mother felt some pity for me and Dad, stuck at home with nothing in particular to eat, so she gave me money to get something from — oh, the suspense — across the street. She suggested sashimi. I couldn’t possibly say no. The good thing about white-fleshed fish as sashimi is that they’ve got a flavor of their own that you don’t get sick of as fast as you do with red fish. Not that I’ve ever gotten sick of sashimi made with red fish, but you get my drift. Actually salmon might be my least favorite. Not counting the usual deck of lies, like octopus, egg, shrimp and all the other ridiculous accoutrements that are only there to give you less for your money. Anyway, white fish are also chewier, and flounder is probably the steady-seller of this genre. I am also not a fan of eating sashimi with the vinegary hot pepper paste that people who don’t know what sashimi is all about will often say goes best with the fish. Based on my keen powers of observation and the confessional statements gathered from a few such people, the only reason there is to prefer that over soy sauce is that they prefer the taste of the sauce to the taste of the fish. Which completely negates the point of eating sashimi in the first place. You could have a fridge full of that freaking sauce for the cost of a plate of sashimi. And then I could have the fish and the world would be well. I am a purist. I insist upon this classification.

07. 12. LUNCH

메로구이: grilled Chilean sea bass

Coincidentally, we had mero fish again today. It was because we went out for lunch, since my dad’s leaving for Canada in a couple of days — and since the primary item on the menu comes in bountiful servings and is rather determinedly overpriced, we had to order two other main courses to fill out the quota. This way of grilling it makes the fish a lot harder, and the flavor is more from the sauce than the fish itself. It wasn’t bad, but as my brother and I agreed, the kind sold across the street was better.

삼합: fermented skate, pork belly and old kimchi

As soon as I realized that this was on the menu, I knew my mom was going to get it. She is almost irrationally drawn to it, kind of like how I insist on ordering creme brulee everywhere I go. But according to her, an opinion seconded by my father, the kind we had at the restaurant near home was better. I’m no great connoisseur so I can’t say for sure, but there wasn’t anything special about this. Maybe the ammonia was less pronounced than last time, but on the whole it was unremarkable.

간장게장: crab pickled in soy sauce

But this — this was what we were there for. This is what I’m here for, and this is why this blog exists at all — the taste of frivolous nightmares. God. I’m home. Does it make you lonely to hear it? There are no adjectives to describe it, favorable or not, in Korean or any other language. Because really, it’s nothing, and it’s not salty, not sweet, not sour or bitter or spicy, it’s not fishy, it’s not quite anything. But it’s unmistakable. You forget it, and it reminds you, heavy in the back of your throat. At the bottom of things, I think it’s something rather like Seoul. It’s overpriced, it’s not fancy, and it doesn’t even have the good grace or sense to look appealing. It makes absolutely no sense and thinking about what it is for too long will only make your head hurt. But all the same, you’re in love with it. And when you hear it call, it’s not like the beckoning of a siren, nothing like a song in the slightest. It’s uninviting, it’s irresistible, and you can’t rationalize it even to yourself. But all the same, there are people filling the city that feel the same thing you do, and you’re together in this second-rate adoration. It is undeserving of your heart and your heart is not nearly enough to do it justice. It’s an acquired taste; you’re born with it in your blood; you’ll never grow to like it.

게딱지: the shell

Whose fault is it that you eat the cartilage off drumsticks, the innards of lobsters — do you even remember? And eggs. Tiny eggs. Millions and millions, and you with no remorse. This is less a meal and more a ritual, a precise way of dining that has nothing to do with manners, history or culture. It’s just the way things are, you were taught sometime further back than you can recall. Like white tuna and sesame oil, or fresh honeycomb and nori. It’s just the way things are done. And what have you done, you people, for the thousands of years you spent huddled in a peninsula amongst yourselves? How have you had so much time to devote to food, how have you made a religion out of it? And what am I doing, what is this ridiculous blog, there is something in the taste of the crab that floods you with pangs of perspective. What is, even, what is food — why do we take it so personally? How, in a land smaller than Kentucky, have you managed incomprehensible dialects, unnamed dishes, so much squabbling and petty division and this overwhelming bloated sense of self-importance? I have nothing but love for you. And you rend me to pieces. You love me back.