It Begins Here

While I was in Canada, I cooked often. My favourite thing to experiment with was curry. With over 20 different spices and books of recipes, I made curry a lot. Though curry was where my passion lied, I cooked a lot of traditional Italian as well.


For me the best place to begin thinking about dinner and what to cook is the grocery store or market. With a multitude of fresh produce available, it is easy to generate ideas on what to cook and possible dishes that would be seasonal. This only works however if you know the ingredients.

My journey begins in a city called Tongyeong (통영) near Pusan. Tongyeong is a small costal city that is surrounded by a multitude of islands. Becuase of its location, most of the local market food focuses on seafood. I decided to take a trip to the local market called SeoHo located downtown. As in Canada, the market can help me to organize my thoughts on what to make and what is seasonally available. The difference between the SeoHo market and Canada’s local markets was that I knew very little of what was in SeoHo market.

From the simply bizarre to the everyday vegetable, SeoHo market opened my eyes to the fact that I am lost in this world of new ingredients. The market began with fish, shellfish, and swellfish (urchins for example). I do not even know where to begin with naming most of what I saw in the first section.

After travelling through wonderland, I entered into the produce section of the market. I felt a lot more comfortable there. From Nappa Cabbage to Watermelon, I knew a lot of what was located within this section. What I did not know, and still do not, is how the ingredients are prepared and paired with the creatures from the previous section of the market.

     Finally, there was a small section of prepared food, dried ingredients and sauces. I was able to recognize the dried anchovies, soy sauce and seaweed or Gim (김) in Korean. It was clear by the time that I reached the weird looking desserts that I need help in trying to uncover the mysteries of these ingredients. Moreover, I will need help finding out how to prepare these ingredients the traditional Korean way. I want to cook authentic (taking into account variation amoung provinces) Korean food which is not adapted to my Canadian taste. This will be a challenge for the foriegn cook but I will make it!!

I have a long way to go in learning to cook this foreign Korean food, but there is help on the way...





For more information on Tongyeong visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongyeong