Thoughts on Korean Cuisine

The Flavour Bible (by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg) lists the following foodstuffs as typical for Korean cuisine:

• chili
• fish
• garlic
• noodles (esp. buckwheat)
• rice
• sesame seeds
• shellfish
• soy sauce
• sugar
• pickled vegetables (e.g. kimchi)

Compared to other cuisines in that book, this list has a short and rustic feel to it. The ingredients are cheap and easy to some by (even in Sweden). So far, I really like cooking and eating Korean food. The food makes sense somehow. Maybe it's because it's a cold weather cuisine and now we're having a very cold winter here in Sweden. The chilli warms one up and the multitude of flavours in the pickles makes the meals feel interesting and alive. Then, of course, a part of Korean cuisine is eating animals alive, as seen in one of my favourite movies ever "Oldboy" by Park Chan-Wook, but, don't worry, I'm not there yet.