Yum! What are they eating on K-dramas
MY Love From Another Star, a 2013 Korean drama, is one of my all-time favourite K-dramas that have wholesome elements of romance, comedy, historical, sci-fi, psycho-thriller, family bond – and the glorious and wondrous Korean foods.
It is a melodrama that even sent Koreans to a fashion frenzy but the most amusing thing coming out from this show is the sudden explosion in the craze for chimaek among the masses.
The name’s origin’s is rather amusing because it’s a combination of English and Korean – “chi” being from chicken and “maek” from “maekju” which means beer in Korean.
Chimaek is actually Korean’s serving, the must-have equivalent to the Malaysian roti canai and teh tarik – your Korean table’s Brangelina, so we could say (when they were still an item). In the drama that promoted the food, character Cheon Song-yi played by Jun Ji-hyun has a liking for fried chicken and beer (chimaek) as comfort food (especially when it snows) and the popularity of the drama apparently sent the China market demand for chicken and beer to an astounding level.
This phenomenon exactly represents my two new-found treasures of Korea – Korean drama and Korean food. And how fitting it’s to write up about both for my second article.
I hadn’t had enough experience to be a fan of these two items before moving here so I consider my experience to be as authentic as it gets, without any bias to begin with.
This may get you salivating, so, as you read, make sure you’re prepared to feed the hunger pangs. My Love From Another Star is not the only drama that had set a food rage.
The 2003’s Jewel in the Palace, a story about a palace cook Dae Jang-geum (played by Lee Young-ae) in the Joseon Dynasty had the locals renewed pride and fervour for the royal court cuisine as the epitome of authentic Korean cuisine.
At the international level, people are beginning to connect to the concepts relate to Korean food. Although the typical Korean household do not eat the fit-for-king thirty four banchan (side dishes) on a daily basis but it’s definitely more sumptuous than the common Malaysian table setting.
A typical Korean meal consists of rice and main protein dish with a side of soup or broth, and at least three side dishes that can range from fresh or fermented vegetables, anchovies, eggs, tofu and the list goes on.
The Korean authentic cuisine boasts of healthy ingredients, cooking method, balanced taste and medicinal properties. In fact, for Koreans, food is considered as medicine, and for every ailment, they have food to treat it instead of medicine!
In Korea, I never hear people complain being ‘gassy,’ ‘heaty’ or cold due to food intake, all of which are common complaints in Malaysia. This is because traditional Korean meals are already balanced and are made to fit the changing seasons.
You may think healthy and delicious food as an oxymoron, but Korean traditional food is in fact designed to be delicious AND healthy as will! And Koreans love their food and lots of it.
Traditional Korean food is definitely a topic worth writting in depth so I will move on to the world renowned kimchi. If you watch Korean dramas, you definitely will not miss the sight of this sour-and-hot fermented vegetable.
It’s so much imbedded in the culture that in Korea, you don’t say ‘cheese’ when your picture is taken. You say, “Kimchi!” In Sabah, people don’t even realize that, currently, there are 187 varieties of kimchi as documented by the Kimchi Field Museum in Seoul. There are so many varieties, and the tastes differ depending on the region the kimchi comes from.
Kimchi seriously goes with everything and taken with every meal. Fermentation of vegetables may have started due to the need to supplement vegetable storage duing the winter season when farming was impossible but kimchi is on the dinner table around the year.
To my fellow Momoguns, Kimchi is in fact the Korean equivalent of jinaruk bambangan but the difference is, the ingredient (the most popular kimchi type being napa cabbage) is available in massive supply while bambangan is a more precious fruit, available in fewer supply ad only during the bambangan seasons.
Rather than pickled, kimchi is fermented and that means it has high content of lactic acid bacteria – the good bacteria – which is also present in yogurt but said to be in much larger quantity.
I have suffered constipation before coming to Korea but the first week in itself was the relief of my life when my terrible digestive track turned to tip top working condition! It’s spicy, a little salty, sour, tangy and sometimes sweet. It’s crunchy, fibrous and refreshing and definitely completes a meal.
Kimchi’s use, however, does not end there. It is also ingredient to many dishes like kimchi jiggae (kimchi soup), kimchijeon (kimchi pancake), kimchi fried rice and even newer fusions like kimchi burger and pizza.
How can you not love kimchi? Lately, kimchi has also been available in Malaysia in Korean product stores but it’s actually doable at home with Malaysian local ingredients. Although it may taste differently from those in Korea, I’m sure it’s a nice addition even with rice and curry (which I have done countless times).
There is so much to gut in one article but another popular food to make appearance in Korean dramas is jajang myeon. ‘Jajang’ meaning fried sauce and ‘myeon’ meaning noodles, is a KoreanChinese food originating from Incheon, Seoul.
The wheat based noodle is topped with thick starchy black soy sauce cooked with chopped meat, carrots, potatoes and onions and mixed with chopsticks before eating. In Coffee Prince of 2007, the petit but tomboyish female protagonist Go Eunchan played remarkably by Yoon Eun-hye sits to a five-bowl jajang myeon eating battle with a tall athletic character Hwang Min-yeop (played by the late Lee Eon).
It’s a messy competition, sending black sauce to their faces and hands but Eun-chan proves as the winner despite her size. It’s a highly filling food as the noodles similar to the thickness of spaghetti is this chewy, springy textured carbohydrate, and gravy that is salty, starchy and yummy.
It’s a quick snack for the hungry stomach, much like our chicken rice, but like most food in Korea you can order this and have it delivered to you instantly.
Typically it’s a cheaper meal but prices can soar with premium ingredients. Frequently but not exclusively, it is food parents treat their children with on graduation day and end of exams, and the first food to eat when you move into a new house with your belongings mostly because it’s a convenient meal on moving day.
We even see the latter in a newer drama, The Producers, a 2015 drama, has a scene with Tak Ye-jin (played by Gong Hyo-jin) moving into her new apartment and enjoying a meal of ordered jajang myeon with Baek Seungchan (played by Kim Soo-hyun) while sitting on the floor. We will continue to see this black noodle starring again and again across Korean drama and movies.
Another noodle star is ramyeon. A less healthy option, this instant noodle to me is more like a bad habit than a real meal. Malaysians have their share of this bad habit with so many instant noodle brands to choose from. It’s as characteristic of Koreans to have ramyeon for a quick bite and even for fill-ins between meals.
The difference with Malaysian’s instant noodles is, a packet of ramyeon is bigger and much more filling to the stomach and for longer satiety. It’s also common to have the cup versions in convenience stores when you need something piping hot to warm you up on a cold winter day.
I also have weakness for ramyeon and watching a Korean dramas certainly does not help. However, this is also because Korean ramyeon taste very different from Malaysian instant noodles, so a lot of the time I am experimenting a new taste. The noodle is thicker and chewier too. I was watching a medical drama, Golden Time which was shot in a Busan hospital which I go to quite often.
You can’t believe everything in dramas but in this one, despite being resident doctors, who should know better than to binge on instant noodles, seem to be eating quite a lot of it, probably due by their busy schedule as residents. It’s just the way they eat and slurp with eagerness and on top of that with a side of kimchi that makes me running to the kitchen to boil myself a packet.
But I should finish with a healthier note. My first idea of the magic of Korean food is when a younger Song Hye-kyo played an aspiring writer Han Ji-eun in Full House of 2004, threw together food leftovers with some (probably) cold rice and mixes them in a large bowl and scoops it out with a spoon and mouths it up deliciously. I had no idea how it tasted like then but up to that moment it was the most interesting thing I’ve seen in regards to eating.
Koreans often eat with huge bowls and I think it’s strangely cute how adults tend to look like children trying to eat out of the oversized bowls.
I learned later than Ji-eun was not exactly using leftovers but rather side dishes which are made in huge quantities and can be kept in the fridge for a week, or a month, if it’s fermented. Hers was a quick form of bibimbap. ‘Bibim’ means mix and ‘bap’ is rice, thus its ‘mixed rice’.
Firstly, Korean rice is of the short grain variety, sticky and much sweeter than the Malaysian and Thai long grain rice.
Bibimbap is rice topped with different combination of vegetables, meat, sunny side up egg and gochujang (fermented chilli paste).
This all-in-one meal is versatile but the secret to a good bibimbap is always quality ingredients. A healthy lip smacking bowl is always colourful not only to please the eye but to achieve balance in taste and nutrition. Amazingly, my picky eater son usually would happily gobble up a bowl suitable for his size. Truly, it’s a happy meal.
As you see, Korean dramas offer more than love stories but also enticing windows to Korean food and culture for the international audiences. I barely delved into the long list of other delicacies but quite often it’s an accurate representation of how much Koreans love their food as much as a Malaysian love their own. Korean food has gained much popularity in the last decade due to these K-dramas, proven with more and more Korean restaurants opening in Malaysia, even around Kota Kinabalu itself.
If we were to emulate accordingly, we should also exemplify this pattern of making less known culture and food to become more popular through TV and movies; it should not be only in cooking and food travel shows. Besides, food is a vital part of our lives and depiction of them in small screen is what makes it more part of the Malaysian realities.
Our Sabahan Youtubers and movie makers can incorporate local food and cuisine and make it better known in other parts of Malaysia and even the world.
Food connect people and that is why, in my opinion, it is a subconscious part of the Sabahan message to get the rest of Malaysia to really know us or have interest in Sabah’s culture as a whole.
Similarly, Malaysian TV producers and movie makers can also take this idea a little more deliberately for the similar effect we see in Korean dramas.
------------------Laura, a Sabahan who hails from Tuaran, having been in Korea for many years with her expatriate family with two sons, has gained a consummate knowledge of the glorious Korean foods.