Applied Food Ethics at Joseon Village

Vegetarians, myself included, often think they have the market cornered when it comes to eating ethical. Killing is bad, causing suffering is bad, and being selfish is bad, so the less meat you eat, the better, end of story. While I do think that for the most part these premises are correct, and that the world would be a better place if everyone tried to keep such principles in mind while making decisions about food, much of my reading and living over the past two years has complicated my notions about what I ought to be eating. My experience at Joseon Village was no exception.

Joseon is the name of the dynasty that ruled over the Korean peninsula – North and South – between the end of the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries. To quote from wikipedia, “The Joseon's rule has left a substantial legacy on the modern face of Korea; much of modern Korean etiquette, cultural norms, societal attitudes towards current issues, and even the modern Korean language and its dialects stem from the traditional thought patterns that originated from this period.” Andy was right on, then, when in his article about the traditional heating systems at Joseon Village he said that he felt we had been sent back in time.

Our bedrooms

We turned in pretty early the first night, having gorged ourselves for most of the day, so I woke up early, determined to explore and get in some good photos before our whirlwind food tour recommenced. As I ambled around, I made an effort to take in all the sights, sounds, and textures of the place. Maybe it's the lack of cars zooming around, or maybe it's the fact that there are no buildings so tall that I couldn't have climbed with my own bare hands; something about Joseon Village feels distinctly human. Things are small and simple: a rabbit hutch with ten inhabitants here, a stable with two cows there, a few chicken coops, some peppers out to dry, pots of fermenting vegetables and sauces. Tall trees, huge rice paddies - everything that's big is also natural, inspiring a sense calm awe and proper proportion. The TV camera guy started following me around, taking footage of me taking pictures of just about everything. He asked me how I felt, and I told him it was nice not to be surrounded by asphalt, concrete, plastic, and glass.

Still full from the previous day's escapades, we snacked lightly on apples, persimmons, and mandarins for breakfast, then got on with the day's work. The first stop was the kitchen, where we observed and helped out a bit with the process of making tofu (details in a separate post). Then we took a stroll and got to do a little hands-on work with perilla, one of my favorite substances on the planet (details also in a separate post). Next came perhaps the most intense experience of the tour, when the five of us told the crew that we wanted to be the ones to kill the chicken that would be prepared for our lunch.

This was the first experiment in food ethics. It's easy to say that we do or don't have the right to kill animals, but it's much harder to do look the issue in the face. Being present at, and being involved in, the moment of slaughter gives you a much truer connection to the feeling and meaning of the act, and furthers your insight into the questions of whether and under what circumstances the taking of innocent life may be justified. Greg, a former vegan and current "there's-no-name-for-this-but-I-try-to-consider-the-effects-of-all-my-food-choices," was the one who snapped the generous bird's neck. His thoughts and impressions can be found here.

After the kill, we dunked the chicken's lifeless body into hot water, swished it around for a minute or two, then pulled it out, plucked it, chopped off the feet and head, removed the organs, and sent it over to the kitchen to be made into Dakdoritang (Greg's post here), chicken soup in a spicy broth loaded with red pepper flakes, potatoes, onions, and other vegetables. We also had Baeksuk (Andy's post here), a milder chicken soup with a few more herbs, and a nice assortment of side dishes.

The highlight for me, though, was that I had the good fortune to sit down across to the owner/philosopher regent of the village, whom I had been thinking all day was just an eccentric who liked to pace around wearing odd hats.

I had had a funny, if tense, conversation with him earlier in the morning. As he walked by the five of us and our translator hanging out and messing around with tofu, we greeted him. Hoping to make a joke at our expense, he said, in Korean "You're in Korea now, you ought to be speaking our language." To which I replied, nonchalantly "OK, not a problem for me." He cracked a big smile, gave me an enthusiastic hand shake, asked me how I had gotten so good, and invited me to come back anytime.

We went our own separate ways for a while - that conversation actually took place before the chicken slaughter - but we started chatting a bit again when he sat down at the table. I asked if they grew all the food nearby, and he said of course, that he and a team of about eight others, including his wife, took care of it all. Then, thinking back to the time when I lived in a similar eco-village in India where we composted all our (human) waste, I asked him about the toilet system in his village. Somehow this really set him off (in a good way): he mentioned how they used to have a traditional composting system, where you just do your business into a big pit, but that city people weren't careful enough, and kept dropping their keys and cell phones in and demanding the staff go get it. They also apparently used to draw their water from a well, but the younger guests often took to dropping stuff in and ruining it for everybody. It also seemed to me that he mentioned something about someone committing suicide, but he was on such a roll that I couldn't stop and ask him for clarification. He continued, complaining that they used to serve real traditional Korean food, with different spices and with kimchi over a foot in length. In the old days, people would have stuffed the whole thing into their mouths; now, though, they want it cut up into bite-size pieces before it's plated. A lot of guests in the village even bring in their own snacks and ramen; if the The Chief (his name is written in Chinese characters on the business card, but I can't read it) sees them, he kicks them out, saying they clearly don't know how to appreciate his village. What a guy!

That was just the beginning. He went on to explain why he thinks that our general lack of appreciation for is a serious problem. Up until recently, most people spent a significant portion of their time working with food, either by sowing, harvesting, hunting, preserving, or preparing. Household relationships were also culinary ones; men, women, and children would each have their separate roles, and would work together towards the common goal of feeding one another. It was the man's responsibility to provide the food, the woman's responsibility to cook it, and the kids' responsibility to do whatever they could. This may sound a little sexist, but The Chief insisted that the system of obligations was mutual, and that different roles didn't mean different statuses. True, women were expected to cook; but, by the same token, men were required to return home to eat. Not eating a meal that had been cooked for you was as great a sin as not preparing a meal for your family in the first place. If a man missed a meal and wound up eating leftovers and complaining that they didn't taste great, shame on him for failing to place appropriate value on his wife's work and on the food itself. If a man was strong and wealthy, and his children in good health, then all credit would go to the woman, who was clearly feeding them well (in addition to all the other work she would have been doing to maintain the household).

This was all very interesting to my modern ears. I do have a few reservations about what he said. In particular, I doubt that men and women really need so many pre-defined expectations and set-in-stone rules in order to cooperate, and I wish that I had had the opportunity to talk to my two female teammates about the guy's speech. Still, every day I think about the ethical and environmental implications of what I eat and where it came from, but I find it harder to keep in mind that there's a whole 'nother dimension to the story, which The Chief got me thinking abotu: that my food choices and eating habits affect my family, my community, and spiraling outwards, my society as a whole.

Now, in our age of instant noodles and microwave pizzas and canned beverages, all of which are pumped full unpronounceable ingredients combined in factories using processes we can't imagine, from plants picked and planted by we don't know who, how is it possible to be authentically, deeply grateful for your food? Who can you look in the eyes and thank? Who can teach you the history and the meaning of what you eat? How much other knowledge is left for parents to pass down to their kids? And what pretext can bring the family together repeatedly, day after day, year after year? We often think that we're saving time, effort, and money when we pay others to do the majority of our food work. We're often right. But we also pay for this convenience with our health, with the health of our relationships, and with the health of our environment. I don't know what the answer is, exactly (edit: there's surely more than one answer), but I'm glad to have been given a chance to continue looking for it.

Why Kimchi Is Good for the Soul

I never gave much thought to kimchi before I moved to Korea. Just miles from my house, there were loads of Korean restaurants and Asian supermarkets where, unbeknownst to me, thousands of foodies (did they exist in the 90's?) and Korean expats must have been getting their fix. Personally, though, if it couldn't be cooked in the microwave or toaster oven, I just wasn't interested.

How strange then that, now, I see so many fantastic things about kimchi, and almost, if resentfully, have to nod my head when Koreans say that it just might be the perfect food. First of all, it's just great to eat. Spicy like salsa, crisp like an apple, sour like movie theater candy - no matter what you're eating, something about kimchi will compliment it. Second, it's versatile. Eat it raw, eat it stir-fried, drop it in a stew, make pancakes out of it, slap it on your burger or pizza. Third, it's healthy. Made (in its most basic incarnation) with cabbage, salt, red pepper paste or flakes, and a bit of shrimp or anchovies, it's got nutrients a-plenty and calories a-few. The fermentation process loads it up with all sorts of little bacteria that provide your body with nutrients that you might not get in a diet of exclusively raw, cooked, or processed foods. Fourth, it lasts. Whether you make it yourself or buy it elsewhere, you can keep it refrigerated for up six months in an air-tight container. It may grow sour, but it would require some serious neglect for it to grow inedible. Fifth - and this is a somewhat subtler point - cabbage can live in the ground long into the winter, even surviving when the temperatures drop below freezing, which means that it thrives long after sweet potatoes, pumpkins, and carrots have given up the ghost. Over the centuries, during the months of December, January, February, and even March, when there wasn't really a lot of stuff to harvest, cabbage and Kimchi probably saved a great number of Koreans from starvation. Now, we're more likely to think in terms of food independence, but either way, it's unarguably a good thing to have some grub growing nearby.

So, what would a Korean food tour be without some time spent immersing oneself in cabbagey glory? As I detailed in my last post, Lee Hee-cheon of White Crane Farm was kind enough to let us swipe a few of his cabbages (even though technically they were just babies whose time hadn't quite come), which we then took down to the restaurant run by his wife, Park Yang-yoon. Mrs. Park is a fantastic cook: as interested in her husband in providing clean, safe, healthy food, but probably a bit more talented when it comes to making it scrumptious.

Thanks to a giant bibimbap spread earlier in the afternoon and some raw carrots and garlic just before at the farm, we Happy Bears needed to work up a bit of an appetite before we could begin chowing down. So, Mrs. Park set us up with a table outside the restaurant and gave us a crash course in making kimchi. The photo record is somewhat incomplete, since all of us were busy washing and chopping and slathering, but here's the gist:

1) Chop the butt off of the cabbage and remove the outer leaves, which were the most exposed to dirt and bugs. These leaves can be cooked and eaten in sides and stews, but apparently don't make great kimchi.

2) Then cut the whole head in half along the vertical axis. Make another cut like you're going to quarter it, still along the vertical axis, but stop about 2/3 of the way down. This allows you to open up the cabbage for the next step, without completely disassembling it.

Andy and Anina work on Step 1 while me, Greg, and Tanya work on 2.

3) Rinse the not-quite-quartered heads thoroughly, then rub salt on each and every leaf. This kills bacteria and opens up the pores, allowing the spices to soak in later.

Andy's a'washin', Tanya's a'saltin'

4) Stack all the wet, salted cabbage halves and then apply pressure by leaving a heavy rock or pot on top of them. I guess it takes some time for the salt to do its work.

5) Prepare the sauce. Normally, red pepper paste, ginger, garlic, shrimp, and anchovies, but we also chopped up some other veggies for extra goodness.

Knife skill contest time.

6) Don your plastic gloves, let you burn off your fingers. Lie the cabbage on its back (with the outermost leave touching the plate) and lift up all but the last leaf. Rub some sauce on it, and also on the back of the leaf above it. Let the next one down and repeat, making sure to slather a bit of spice on the front and back of every leaf.

This stuff was still in the ground, alive and growing, less than 2 hours beforehand!

7) It's ready to eat! Or, you can wait a few days/weeks/months.

As if the act of eating weren't reward enough, there's one more thing I'd like to point out about kimchi. The actual process of making it was also a blast! I knew two of my team members going into the project, but I had never even exchanged emails with the other two, let alone met them. We were all friendly, but, personally, I didn't quite know what to talk to them about while we were listening to the farmer and chopping our own cabbage heads off. But, when we joined together to make Kimchi, we really hit it off. All being involved in learning something together and, even more, sharing knowledge and hints and tips while working towards a common goal, gave us a comfortable atmosphere in which to get to know one another. When you're on opposite sides of the table preparing kimchi with someone, there's no need to ask awkward questions and try to figure out what you've got in common. You're already there, together, doing the same thing. It's all right in front of your eyes. The bond is more instant, and more tangible, than any "me too." It's much easier to come together over production than consumption.

I'm sure everyone else has good, if not quite this exotic or preposterous, memories of this sort. Cooking with parents in the kitchen, with the extended family over the holidays, with roomies in college, or out at some backyard barbeque. Whatever the specifics, just hanging around food with other people is one of the simplest and most satisfying pleasure life affords us. This is also one of the pleasures that we risk losing as we outsource our cooking to restaurants and corporations, leaving independence, tradition, and solidarity by the wayside. I feel lucky to have had the chance to realize this. And also to eat (some of) the following:

Tofu, fresh kimchi, and steamed pork



From 12 o'clock, going clockwise: candied lotus roots, cucumber pickled in soy sauce, radish leaf kimchi (I believe), old/sour cabbage kimchi, sauerkraut (first I'd ever seen in Korea), fern bracken with perilla dressing, and, in the middle, pickeld garlic.

Time to eat!

Translator, foodie, foodie, chef, farmer, foodie, foodie, foodie

Team Happy Bear Goes Organic

At Hangukjib, my teammates and I got a chance to put our own meal together. Not all the way from beginning to end, since so many of the vegetables had already been sautéed for us, but, in any case, more than usual. By learning about the people, history, and techniques that lay behind it, we had deepened our relationship with our food, and had been reminded once again that everything we eat can be appreciated in various ways. We can enjoy the taste, of course, and get lost in the sheer beauty of the dish, but we can also develop respect for and gratitude towards the people who put it together. We can note our sense of nourishment and satisfaction after the meal has been completed. Last, but not least, even as foreigners we can feel ourselves embedded in hundreds of years of history. Bibimbap was formerly eaten in various incarnations by peasants, by kings, by the bereaved. Now it's being eaten by people like us. The world is indeed a strange place.

Even such a deep experience, though, fails to address what is for me the most important question: what was the effect of my meal on the earth and all the other beings on it? Did it do more good than harm? Are the practices that brought it about sustainable? Are my choices contributing to others' ability to eat well, or am I detracting from it? Of course I want my food to bring happiness and wellbeing to me; but if it does so at the cost of sickness, deprivation, or destruction for others, I'd prefer to opt out.

Luckily, we're not caught up in some zero-sum game in which our health necessarily results in other's misery. It is possible for eating to benefit the earth and everybody on it. Or, more accurately, it's possible for farming to. Good farming, on a small scale, done with care, attention, knowledge, respect, and patience, can rehabilitate land, recover topsoil, recreate space for animals to graze on, and restore health to people. Team Happy Bear wanted to see this kind of work up close, in context, and in action, so Hansik graciously offered to take us out of Jeongju and into Jeong-eup to meet Lee Hee-cheon.

Meeting Farmer Lee

Farmer Lee started 백학농원 (White Crane Farm) some-teen years ago (that's a direct quote, not my memory faltering) because he wanted to feed his family food that was healthy and safe. I asked him if he had done conventional farming before switching over to organic, to which he replied, more or less "I would never farm anything except organic. What's the point?" Here's a dude who understands what it's all about! Non-organic farming methods, in the long run, create and exacerbate a host of seemingly disconnected problems, from oil depletion to water pollution, from topsoil loss to political instability, from starvation to obesity. Organic, sustainable agriculture is the only foundation upon which we'll be able to build strong, healthy, enduring communities in the future. If I were more of a historian, I might also try to make a similar claim about the past. In any case, Farmer Lee said that he had been successful: his kids are healthy and energetic, and his land is becoming more fertile year after year.

It would take a full year on an organic farm to really begin understanding anything, but, unfortunately, we only had a few hours together with Mr. Lee, so we quickly got down to business in the cabbage patch. He explained that he doesn't use any chemical pesticides or fertilizers. Instead, to control bugs, he creeps through his fields, searches for clues like eaten-up leaves and little insect droppings, spots the invaders, and plucks them out with a pair of chopsticks. It does sound like a lot of work, but actually, it's not particularly harmful to eat a leaf that bugs have already nibbled on. In fact, Mr. Lee says, the fact that bugs eat it means it's probably good enough for us, too. Would you want to eat something that even a roach wouldn't go near?

This is neither here nor there, but it was at about this point that Mr. Lee picked a grub off of a piece of cabbage and said that it was probably pretty healthy, since it had been feasting on organic food. Greg then took the grub and scarfed it, more or less blowing the farmer's mind. Apparently he hadn't been given the full dossier on Team HappyBear!

Andy hoists a cabbage-trophy. In less than 4 hours, it will be Kimchi...

After harvesting some cabbages together, we walked down the hill, flanked on either side by persimmon trees just about ready to lose their leaves to the autumn and their fruits to hungry tourists. We moved on to the next stop: the carrot and garlic patch. The five of us all planted garlic together by pushing cloves about an inch into the dirt then covering them back up, while Mr. Lee explained that, as deplorable as the plastic (they call it "vinyl mulch" here) is, it helps the plants a lot by retaining moisture and warmth and keeping out weeds, which essentially steal nutrition from the garlic, keeping it from growing as big as it might. It's still not clear to me whether this kind of farming can really be called "organic" in the fullest sense of the word, but it's a whole lot better than the alternative.

Working up an appetite / earning our keep

Me and Tanya after eating a fresh clove of garlic each, wishing the cameras were equipped with smell-o-vision technology.

After planting garlic, we dug up some carrots, scrubbed them off on our pants, and, much to the amazement of Farmer Lee and the Hanisk crew, chowed down on the spot. Some were a little concerned about the dirt, but we told them: not only is organic produce healthy; so is the soil it's grown in. After all, all the vitamins and minerals in fruits and veggies come from one of two places: the soil, or chemical reactions within the plant. (Botanist friends: correct me if I'm wrong here). Our smiles and "mmmmms" probably did more than our arguments to overcome the crew's skepticism, but either way, they joined us, munching on the freshest and healthiest carrots they'd probably ever had. Unfortunately, I was too busy eating to take any pictures.

Slight Change of Plans Regarding the 1KFTFFF

UPDATE: NEVERMIND THIS POST. I'm gonna post everything here, and post whatever seems to fit well onto Hansik. I'll also be posting everything over at our team blog, http://happybeareats.blogspot.com. Tune in over there if you want to see how Anina, Andy, Tanya, and Greg's takes differed from mine.

_____________________________________

From now on, all my posts regarding the First Korean Food Tour for Foreign Foodies are going to appear exclusively on the Hansik website in the Hostpot Review section. My team has made this decision in order to make sure that our posts are pulling traffic towards the Hansik site, rather than away from it. It should also make it easier for the people at Hansik to see how hard Team Happy Bear is working.

Thus, the post just under this one about brekky has been reposted here.

Eventually, after a ten day or two week delay, everything will get republished here; in the meantime, though, please follow the links I post to my articles on the Hansik website.

Much appreciated! Happy vicarious food tourism!

The Hungry Vagabond Gets Treated Like a King

Whenever I tell Koreans that I'm a veg*an, they generally ask the same question: what do you eat? Most of them don't seem to realize that Korean cuisine is full of awesome vegetarian goodies: pancakes made with green onions, chives, kimchi, potatoes, or lentils; noodles hot, cold, creamy, or spicy; all kinds of soups porridges; tofu in various guises. Then, of course, there's also 정식, or Jeongsik, or Table d'hôte, or the "set meal." No matter what you call it, it means rice, soup, and anywhere from, say, five to thirty-five side dishes, almost all of them veg-friendly.

However, the king of Korean vegetarian fare is, without question, Bibimbap (literally, mixed rice). Normally, I wouldn't take it upon myself to write about it, given that it's probably the simplest, most well-known, and most widely-diffused Korean food out there, with the possible exception of LA Kalbi. Thanks to Hansik, though, I recently underwent the most extreme and regal Bibimbap experience of my life:

Bibimbap with a master. This Granny (a term of respect in Korean) has been making Bibimbap for 52 years and claims that her mother invented it, or at least the high-class version.

Your standard Bibimbap - even the one I ate on the airplane on the way over here nearly five years ago, which, incidentally, was the first Korean food I ever tried - is vegetable heaven. Julienned vegetables like sauteed radish, carrot, and bracken, along with steamed and seasoned spinach, some bean sprouts, and a bit of roasted seaweed sit atop a bed of rice. Throw an egg on top if you'd like, drop on a dollop of red pepper paste, and stir it all up. Voila: a natural, low-maintenance, delicious vegetarian meal. At a cheap restaurant, this will run you about 3 dollars; at a fancy one, closer to 6.

For Kings, or, in this case, a bunch of vagabond foodies, Bibimbap can really be scaled up. Check out our table above: everything I just mentioned, plus sweet and spicy balloon flower root (it's OK if you have no clue what this is), sauteed zucchini, sautéed shiitake mushrooms, thin-sliced egg, mung bean jelly, ginko nuts, pine nuts, crushed sesame seeds, and a special broth made right there at the restaurant.

Some of the high-class toppings

Listening attentively to half a century of wisdom.

Being that everything will eventually get all stirred together, you'd think you could just throw in all the ingredients any which way. It's not so, though! The master insisted that we put each ingredient in its own place, paying particular attention to color symmetry. White radish slices and bean sprouts should be on opposite sides for optimal aesthetic appeal; sauces and nuts at the end to give it that just-completed look.

Me, Greg, and Tanya enjoying the lesson. Unfortunately (for them) Andy and Anina had not yet joined the festivities.

Can you believe I made that?

It turns out that even mixing it requires a particular technique. In addition to stirring everything up and mixing it evenly, one has to be sure to smush it together just so, in order that the perfect balance of soy sauce, sesame oil, and pepper paste will be mashed in to each grain of rice.

I got a little help from the boss on this one. Oh my god was it good.

It turns out, then, that Bibimbap has a fairly unique quality: no matter who puts the dish together for you, the final result is the outcome of your own skill. Even if you go all the way to Jeonju, search out the "Hangukjib," (the name of this restaurant) and order the most deluxe bibimbap on the menu, it's up to you to make it or break it! I see a little something symbolic in this: money can't buy you the best bibimbap; only familiarity can. Good food calls for good cooks, but also for good eaters, eaters who know something about the story and the theory of their food. Eating is consumptive, of course, but at its best, it's also participatory. More than many other places I've been, Koreans seem to be intent on holding on to this respectful, if not quite reciprocal, relationship between eater and eaten. Not as much as they should, given how many treasures their cuisine contains, but enough that just living and eating here as made me aware that people can, in fact, approach their food in different ways, some better than others. I owe many thanks to this Grandma in particular, and to others like her all around the country, for helping me learn how to really enjoy and appreciate food. Now, go get a bowl for yourself.

Me, Tanya, and Greg with two generations of Bibimbap Matriarchs.