Jokbal: Pigs Feet

Recently I’ve been worried my posts are getting a little pedestrian. Who wants to read about pork skewers, I thought to myself, Internet users vote with their feet and if you’re not careful Danny boy, they’ll surely leg it somewhere else instead. You’ll never get a foothold in the blogging game if you carry on like this, do something different you idiot!

Ok, before I get carried away and really put my foot in it, I’ll dispense with the puns and get on to the post’s real topic. Jokbal is a dish made by simmering pig’s feet (hair removed) in leeks, garlic, ginger, rice wine and water until tender, before being slicing it up and serving with a variety of condiments. I bought mine at our local market where whole joints of Jokbal wrapped up in cellophane compete for space at several different stalls. In addition to a generous tray of Jokbal, my 5,000 won also bought me a tray of sliced onion, sliced chili, a smudge of wasabi and two little bags of soy sauce and bean paste, as well as a tub of spicy sauce and another of saeujoet (fermented shrimp sauce.)



The slices of Jokbal were thick and cold, reminded me of the cold cuts of ham and roast beef left over after Christmas dinner, with clear seams of fat swirling through them at seemingly random intervals. The overall result was an even distribution of fat through a meaty, fibrous slice of pork. Had there been a little pastry involved the whole thing could easily have passed for a Heston Blumenthal deconstruction of a pork pie, such was the easy familiarity of it. The only place where it differed to what I’m used to at home was with the skin. Here it was thick, undisguised and a little chewy, though didn’t put up enough of a fight to be a problem.

Among the condiments, the saeujeot really made me sit up and take notice. Tiny tiny shrimp with big black eyes floated around in a salty, briny liquid concoction that is apparently one of the key ingredients of Kimchi. When introduced to the Jokbal, the saeujeot provided a good counterweight to the greasiness of the pork. The same could be said for the vinegary soy sauce and wasabi, which is fast becoming my favorite dipping sauce ever.



Although Jokbal may initially sound a little alien to the western palate, there’s really nothing strange about it. In my opinion Jokbal would find a great home underneath a lid of pastry or between two slices of bread and compared to some of the other pig bits I’ve tried recently, it’s a real walk in the pork.

Wow for Now (Hot dogs)

I’ll be the first to admit I’ve talked shit about Korean sausages in the past. In my experience, they either amounted to little more than rolled up spam, or they were dripping with so much of that scary looking see-through fat, just looking at them set one arm a-tingling. Why, I often wondered, couldn’t they be more like those little Thai firecrackers I saw on Eating Asia that time?

As usual however, it appears that I was being a little unfair. I came to this realization recently when on a scour of PNU I decided to give a street hot dog chain called Mr. Wow another shot. I’d had one of their hot dogs in Kyungsung soon after I first arrived in Korea, and although at the time I hadn’t been overly impressed, a healthy queue and the smell of sizzling pork was enough to convince me to give it a second chance.



The sausage was good; coarsely ground sausage meat peppered with just enough onion to impart a decent flavour but so much as to feel like you’re getting screwed. Overall, the sausage had a slight frankfurter twang to it and (this being Korea after all) managed to get a good spiciness going. Meanwhile, ketchup, mustard and peanut sauce represented the condiments, with varying results. The ketchup and peanut sauce were good additions to the sausage (the latter staying comfortably low key) but with regards to the mustard, three was most definitely a crowd. Synthetic and watery, it was like getting an earful of background noise while trying to watch TV – quiet enough to still get most of what’s happening, but loud enough to threaten ruining your enjoyment altogether.



Mustard aside Mr. Wow knows how to hot a good dog. While they may not be on a par with the chili dogs I ate at Harry’s Café de Wheels in Sydney or New York’s eponymous hot dogs, while I’m in Korea at least, Wow for Now will do.

A month of soondaes: Kimchi

I recently posted about Soondae, the Korean blood sausage that is a staple of street food stalls right across the country. Then I found it to be a good addition to the genre and definitely worth trying, but a little too jelly-like in consistency to have me running back for more.

I thought that was it for soondae, until that is I discovered these boys selling out the back of a van by our apartment.




I’d never actually heard of Kimchi Soondae, and half hoped that this was a meatier sausage more like the ones we’re used to in the old country (despite being a nation of pork lovers, Korea is notoriously bad in the sausage stakes.)



When I knuckled down to eat some the stuff however I found it to be a different story altogether. Kimchi Soondae has a firmer texture than the black stuff, due no doubt to having a lot less glass noodles packing it out than the original. They also seem to have thrown some onions in, mixing it up a little consistency-wise and making it resemble uncooked chorizo. This for me, made it a little more palatable.

As for the kimchi component, I found it gave a good spiciness to the sausage without being too in your face, though I did expect a better showing from the garlic (I guess it was busy stinking out the subway somewhere else instead.) I also found the small intestine casing to be a little bit too true to its original form for my tastes, but I’m going to fry it up next time to see how it goes.

As before the soondae came with a bunch of tripe and other bits, of which the steamed liver particularly stood out and to my mind was worth the 3000 won on its own. I’ve never seen it anywhere else and would love to investigate it further.

All in all it was a pretty good tray of body parts, and coming on the same day as a particularly bad pork experience, managed to almost erase the trauma from my mind.

And I reckon I’ll go back for more.

Pork Skewers: Today wasn't a good day.

To paraphrase Ice Cube, today wasn’t a good day.

My troubles started when I when I went to see the Doctor to inquire about vaccinations for my upcoming trip to South East Asia as I’m short a Hepatitis B and Japanese Encephalitis jab. Despite assuring him I’d never had any sort of Hep B vaccination, the good Dr nevertheless insisted I have a Hep B blood test, to the tune of 10,000 won.

I’ve had my doubts about this guy for a while – he never seems to close the office door no matter what state of undress is required, and he once removed a fish bone from my throat without any gloves on. Despite my qualms however, before I could object this happened (I know this photo is a little gross for a food blog but bear with me.)



Afterwards, I took the bus to PNU (home of Busan’s best Takoyaki) to get one of those spicy Pork Skewers I’ve been thinking about so much recently.



They weren’t how I remembered. The pork was creepily soft and tender, leading me to the conclusion that it was in some way reformed. It was also for that matter cold inside, something that wouldn’t have bothered me too much if it wasn’t a balmy May evening. As for the spicy barbecue sauce slathered on during cooking, it did little to stimulate my taste buds. And I was left holding a skewer I had no means to dispose of.

Then I got my ass kicked in Tekken 6 (I'm the one with no shirt on.)

Soondae Bloody Soondae

OK, I know this pun is both ripped off from the Simpsons and in slightly bad taste (it is, after all a U2 song) but given the subject matter, I really couldn’t title the post anything else.

Soondae is a Korean sausage consisting of pigs blood, barley and glass noodles stuffed into a casing of small intestine. It is a popular street food, and with a soondae van making regular appearances in the street by my school, one I just had to try.

I love blood sausage. A thick slice of black pudding nestled underneath a plump queen scallop or drenched in brown sauce next to my bacon and eggs is one of the things I miss most about home. I’m also quite partial to a few slices of Morcilla now and again and am open to a relationship with any other member of the blood sausage family that comes my way. As such, it was with some deal of excitement that I found myself striding towards the van on a muggy and wet Tuesday afternoon.

Once there negotiations began in the usual vein (name the cheapest price displayed, point and grin) but the vendor on this occasion seemed to take genuine pleasure from my obvious novice status. As he pulled each item out of a mammoth steam-belching pot he displayed it for my approval, before deftly slicing it up at speed and piling it thick and high on a polystyrene tray.

First came the soondae, a good-sized length of glistening black tubing looking a little like Morgan Spurlock’s intestines must have after eating McDonalds for 40 days straight. This was followed (to my surprise) by a few pieces of tripe, then some bits and pieces explained comprehensively as “small intestines.” The whole lot was sliced up and packed away with a sachet of pinkish salt and a tub of sauce for a mere 3000 won, making it by volume the best value food I have written about to date on this blog.

Naturally I tried the soondae first, finding it much more jelly-like and glutinous in texture than the dense, blood-cake character of the stuff I’m used too. This was undoubtedly due to the effect of the glass noodle filler, but also probably had something to do with the fact that the soondae was steamed as opposed to grilled or fried, leaving the intestinal casing almost as slippery as was intended for its original use. Despite this textural difference however, the soondae left a familiar and welcome iron-y taste in my mouth akin to the other blood sausages I’d tried elsewhere. When dipped in the salt and sauce, a spicy, watery ssamjung (bean paste) however, the effect was entirely unfamiliar and for me, a little at odds with the rest of the flavours.

Next came the extra bits. I’ve never been a committed nose-to-tailer so for me this was a little further away from charted territory. For it's part the tripe was pretty inoffensive; Mild and chewy it reminded me more of an oyster mushroom than anything which might come from the wilder and more unpalatable parts of an animals anatomy. Next to find themselves between my chopsticks however were some of the pieces that the vendor described as “small intestines.” These ranged from a wobbly jelly-like cut that was rather mild but pleasant in flavour, to a denser, richer cut that was much more flavourful. The later was much darker in colour and incredibly tasty, reminding me unmistakably (but perhaps erroneously) of roast beef. Not being a connoisseur on the finer points of intestines I am at pains to find out just exactly what this was, and have to date spent some time trawling the web in a fruitless search for an answer.

Although I found the huge portion a little too rich for one sitting, all in all it was a pretty good tray of animal parts. Soondae and its accompanying unidentifiables was a tasty and worthwhile diversion on a wet Tuesday and definitely something I will eat again.

As street food goes, not even a bad pun can eclipse that.