Caveat: Testimonial

I have a 2nd grade student, Jeong-seok, who wrote an essay.  His little essay was posted on the school's web forum, and my co-worker sent me a copy.  It's flattering, and my heart is touched.  I feel proud to be mentioned in a 2nd grader's essay in such a positive way.

영어수업을 할 때 게임을 했다. 동그라미모양종이에 자기가 하고 싶은 동전 숫자를 적으면 그걸 원어민 선생님인 제럴드선생님에게 드리고 진짜동전처럼 생긴 동전을 한국 선생님께 드리면 스티커를 받는다.  10개를 넘게 받은 친구들도 있었는데 나는 5개를 받았다.  나는 10개 보다 많이 받은 친구가 너~무~부러웠다 나는 스티커를 안내장 넣는 파일에 붙였다.   영어가 재미있게 되고 있으니 눈에 빨리 빨리 들어 오는 것  같기도 하였다.   방과후영어도 정말 재미있게 했다.

I guess that makes a good day.

[Comment added later:  Some have requested a translation.  My Korean isn't so good as to offer a translation.  Google's translate-o-matic makes gobbledy-gook of it, which is about what I would do.  I just kind of scan it and get the gist of it, knowing that it's positive.  Here's the result of plugging into google (with a few minor but obvious glaring corrections):  "When teaching English game. A circle on the paper and he'll put the number of coins you want it wiht a native speaker teacher, Jereot teacher, if it looks like a real coin coin Korea figure, the teacher gives a sticker. I have friends who were over 10 coins received five. I received more than 10, friends envied ~ Foreign ~ the invitation I put stickers attached to the file. English is fun may just be coming in soon, so eyes were fast. School English and was really fun."]

Caveat: onion rings with makgeolli batter

I sometimes get very experimental with cooking. Maybe too experimental for my own good.

When I visited my mom in January, I had discussed with her a dilemma I sometimes have had: I love cooking her recipe of chiles rellenos, but the egg-dense batter in which the chiles are coated is hard to substitute with something that would please my vegan friends.

I’m not vegan, myself, but I have in the past worked hard to come up with ways to make much of my cooking vegan, for three reasons: 1) I feel it makes it very healthy, 2) because I have a some friends who are vegan, and 3) just for the challenge of it.

Well, my mom had a brainstorm: beer batter. And I thought about this, and thought it was a wonderfully good idea. And so I filed it away in my brain. But I also had had a strange idea, at the time, about my life in Korea, and the various substitutions that happen in attempting non-Korean cooking in Korea. Now… it must be said, beer is not hard to to find in Korea. It’s hardly the sort of thing that requires a substitution. That’s not an issue. But I nevertheless had a thought – could I make an even more “native” beer-type batter, in Korea?  Specfically, I speculated on whether Korean makgeolli could be substituted for western-style beer.

Makgeolli is beery, in character. It’s often called Korean rice wine, but it’s more like beer (or maybe Mexican pulque) than it is like what I think of as rice wine, such as Japanese sake. It’s cloudy, and it has a slight carbonation to it. This is the property that made me think it might be substituted for beer in beer batter.

Tonight, I went to the grocery store. And I was staring at a refrigerator case, having just grabbed a bag of cheap packaged kimchi. There was a bottle of makgeolli. I remembered my idea, and, feeling inspired, or bored, or something, I bought it.

I came home. I got out some wheat flour, and mixed in some black pepper, nutmeg and salt and a tablespoon of my mexican masa flour for some corny flavoring. And then I dumped in some makgeolli, and stirred it up. Voila. Korean makgeolli batter. Hmm…. it seemed a lot like beer batter, sure enough.

Now, for something to fry. I saw my onions. Hah. Onion rings.

I made onion rings in makgeolli batter. Has this ever been done before? I don’t know.

I won’t say they were perfectly delicious. But this was a first draft. The oil I fried them in should have been a lighter variety of oil – maybe canola oil. And the batter needed more salt. But for a first draft, they were hardly horrible. I felt pleased with my experiment. Here is my plate of home-made makgeolli-batter-fried onion rings.

picture

Note that the squarish item on the part of the plate closest to the camera is a block of colby cheese (imported from America, which I bought at Emart in Gwangju yesterday) that I’d used because I had a tiny bit of batter left over. That was, in fact, pretty tasty, too.

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