ONDA Salmon – a review

If I had a tonne of money, I’d eat salmon every day. Unfortunately, I don’t so when my friend suggested we should try a salmon restaurant for her birthday, I was all ears.

ONDA Salmon is located in the Hongik area of Seoul. I hear that ONDA is from a Spanish word meaning “wave”.

The location of ONDA Salmon is a little difficult to get to if you’re not familiar with the area. The closest station is Sangsu and it’s about a 5 minute walk from there. If you follow this link, there will be a map, http://www.koreanetwork.com/listing/onda-salmon-%EC%98%A8%EB%8B%A4%EC%82%B4%EB%AA%AC

The restaurant has two opening times, 1pm to 3pm and again from 5pm (or perhaps 5.30pm) to 11pm. Luckily we had a made a reservation as there was a queue forming when we arrived in time for the second opening. The interior is not that large with perhaps 10 or 12 tables in total. We were a party of just 5 people so it was very comfortable for us.

Naturally, everything on the menu centers around Salmon. The dishes are a little pricey but worth it. For three dishes, four Sangrias and a soft drink the cost was 115,000 won.  The salmon was fresh and tasty and possibly the best I’ve tasted in Korea so far. Service was fast and the waiter spoke English. Portion size was ok. It could have been larger. One member of our group ate virtually nothing and the rest of us cleared everything but I felt that a little extra would have gone a long way.

I’d go back here again for sure but can’t see myself regularly frequenting the restaurant. As ever, if you have questions, please leave them below!

How to make Galbi Onion sauce.

When I go for Galbi, I eat the onions in the sauce by the bucket load. For so long, I’ve wanted to know how to make the sauce but I could never get it right. I’ve finally got it down so I decided to share it here.

 

What you need;

1. Soy Sauce

2. Apple Vinegar

3. Onions. (You know what they look like.)

The quantity to use depends on you. I pour more vinager than soy sauce but I don’t use an exact measurement.

Simply mix the two together until you find the taste you like, add the onions and enjoy!

 

 

My name is Shauna and I love Kimchi!

I’ve just read an article about the rise and rise of Kimchi. Here is the link .

When first I arrived in Korea, my nose followed the curious smell that simply hung in the air at meal time. I didn’t have to go to far to realise that Kimchi was the source and that any negative thoughts should be kept to myself for fear my lack of love for this unique dish was grounds for deportation. That’s how much the Koreans love Kimchi.

My food teaching revolved around the word Kimchi. “What did you eat for breakfast? Kimchi and rice. What did you eat for lunch? Kimchi and rice.  What did you eat for dinner? Kimchi……………and rice” Can you see the trend here? No other food is actually worth mentioning or eating in the eyes of a 6 year old Korean child.

I simply couldn’t take to it. It was a mental block, really. What put me off was that it was cold and all there in one big pile together. And the smell. Urgh, that smell. I would be a cast off, sitting, eating my bland lunch of rice and vegetables desperate for a bit of flavour. For the longest time I stayed strong but the more and more Korean friends I made, the more it became next to impossible to avoid it. It’s everywhere, especially if we went out to a meal together. Eventually, I started eating Kimchi Jigae (Kimchi soup) which is cheap and cheerful and puts a fire in your belly, the perfect Sunday morning hang over cure. This escalated to mixing some with rice at lunch time and now, I simply cannot imagine my life without Kimchi.

Lunch dishes including Kimchi.

This year, when Kimjang (Kimchi making) was finished, my landlady presented me with the biggest container of Kimchi you’ve ever seen. Daunted by the task of having single handedly eat a mountain of Kimchi, I first took the natural decision to share it out among my friends. Turns out not many of my foreigners friends are partial to the old bit of Kimchi so my mountain was still a mountain after sharing. Taking one for the team, I set out to eat it all and there are so many dishes you can make with Kimchi that I think I’ll run out before I try them all.

My personal favourite is Kimchi Jigae. Easy to make with hardly any preparation time, this is the perfect dish after a day at work. And if you already have the Kimchi, you simply need to add a little tofu or a few spices  or beans or whatever you have in the press to add that extra flavour.

Next is Kimchi Spaghetti/pasta. So delicious, easy to make and especially flavoursome if you add cheese. Sometimes, if I’m going all out Kimchi and ramen is super delicious with cheese on the top.

As a world’s biggest fan of potatoes, Kimchi is the perfect addition. Mashed potatoes and Kimchi, baked potatoes and Kimchi, chips and kimchi, potato salad and Kimchi, colcannon and kimchi, potato pie and kimchi, just so many things, the list goes on and on.

You can simply eat Kimchi and cheese on toast. Delicious, nutritious and so easy to make. That’s a recent addition to my Kimchi list. There are a million others including one dish I like to call “Simply Kimchi”.

Pro’s of eating Kimchi include;

• Healthy
• Cheap (especially if a kind Korean will give you some for free)
• Easy to prepare
• Long lasting
• Delicious
• Is suitable to all those who are vegetarian, vegan, and other things that end in “an”

Con’s include

• It’s kimchi….uurrrghh
• The smell…..
• It can make your food taste funny if you keep it too close and don’t have a fancy Kimchi fridge
• There’s just so much of it

Some can tell the difference between the different types of Kimchi but I don’t think I’m quite at that stage yet, hence failed one requirement of bring a Kimchi Grand Master like the adjumma in the article. Never mind, I’ll continue to eat my Kimchi and encourage other foreigners I meet to do like wise.

Irish Girl in a Korean supermarket- Part 2

What’s worse than one Irish girl in a Korean supermarket? TWO Irish girls in a Korean supermarket.  Since most foods are pretty familiar to me now, I thought I’d walk around with Clare, who arrived a few months ago.  I tried to focus on the normal foods so people would be reassured that they weren’t going to starve if they came here.  So here’s what we came up with;

Yellow Melons; Although they’re called Yellow Melons in English, I had never seen them a day in my life before coming to Korea.  They’re super popular in summer and surprisingly enough, they are also quite delicious. 

Boiled Lotus Root Slices; Here’s one I just learned last night.  Honestly, I’ve been eating these things at school for ages and never knew what they were.  Until last night of course.  Thankfully, my English is pretty good so I simply read the name.  What do they taste like? I wouldn’t know.  Although I eat them, they look kind of dangerous so I mix them in with rice and other food stuffs.  Are they healthy? Well they haven’t made me a Ninja yet so they can’t be that great. 

Ho duk; I really don’t know what to call these in English.  I think it’s sweet pancakes (although a Korean can correct me if that’s not accurate). They are super delicious. Pancake mix with cinnamon in the middle. Great in the cold weather and if you buy them from a stand they are only 1,000won or less.  They also come with Green Tea mix as well as the regular mix.  And you don’t need an oven to make them, only a frying pan.  Win win. This packet was on sale also so for less than 2,000won I’m going to have some delicious Ho Duk.

Kimbap component; This is the radish that goes into Kimbap.  If you’re making a million kimbap, buy a packet of these and your sorted.  Some people are actually brave enough to eat this by itself but personally I prefer mine mixed with all the other stuff in Kimbap. 

Another Kimbap component; I could have called it Seasoned Burdock but chose not to because I didn’t know what it was called until I took the picture.  Again, it goes in Kimbap. I’ve never seen it eaten on its own (or maybe I have but didn’t connect the dots).

 

Dairy Items; Just to prove that things here are super normal, I took a picture of the dairy section.  You can find yoghurt and all kinds of drinks and the like.

Snack Foods; The first one is like a Honey Pancake.  Unlike the one before, you buy these ones already made and it’s not cinnamon on the inside.  The picture on the right are sugary balls of flour mix.  It’s really hard to describe. 

 

Tea; The top one is Honey Citron Tea which is like Marmalade but you add water and drink it.  The bottom one is Honey Chinese Quince Tea.  Quince is a type of pear, same deal here, add water and drink it.  I’m sure its good for Vitamin C and all but there’s a lot of sugar in it so don’t go mad drinking it. 

The fish; This was definitely the highlight of the trip.  We were walking around the frozen foods and stumbled across these fish tied together.  Many questions came to mind, 1. Why? 2. How would you get this home if you didn’t have a car? 3. How would you go about cooking this? 4. Who buys this? 5. Why? 6. Where would you keep this when you get home? We must have looked like we were in distress because  the very friendly lady came over and we asked how you would cook/eat this.  She gave us this look, as if we were stupid and said “oh you just cook it”. Excellent, thanks, that really clears it up for us.  Any Korean reading this might be able to answer the question. 

Octopus and Squid; This is exactly what it says on the tin.  Octopus and squid, in a regular packet and in a form where you don’t need directions on how to cook it. 

Mandu; Mandu are dumplings in English.  Possibly one of my favourite foods in Korea.  And you can cook and eat them in loads of different ways.  You can boil them, fry them or eat them in a soup.  They come in pork flavour and Kimchi flavour.  Super handy and super easy to cook. 

If you’re looking for toothpaste, look no further.  You can find Bamboo Salt, Tiger Herb, Forest fresh and all kinds of other equally attractive toothpaste flavours. 

We finally made it to the sweet aisle.  As Clare pointed out, they really love My Chews in Korea (picture on the left).  But they also have loads of other random sweets  and crisps.  No Taytos and no salt and vinegar flavour but shrimp, pizza, original and all other kinds of random flavours. 

Our best find on the sweet aisle was………

 

I can’t find the words……..

 

Having a supermarket adventure is hungry work so we took a well deserved rest and had some food with the other cool kids who were also hanging out in Home Plus,

Huge thanks to Clare Gaffney for coming along on the supermarket adventure.  As ever, leave your comments below.

An Irish girl in a Korean supermarket- Part 1

I will never forget the  first time I went to the supermarket in Korea. I  walked around aimlessly because I didn’t recognise half the foods. There I was, all the way from Tipperary standing in a supermarket in Paju looking like I walked in from another dimension! I think I came back out after an hour with a bunch of bananas, some apples and a carton of milk.  In 3 years, things have changed so I decided to write a blog on the things I didn’t recognise when I first arrived in Korea. 

For anyone who reads this from outside Korea and actually knows what they all are, well done. Remember I came from Ireland where these types of food don’t exist (or do but not in my part of Tipperary).

The reason this is part 1 is because I looked like a seriously random individual walking around the supermarket taking pictures of items and not actually buying them!  When I feel it safe to return, I’ll take more pictures. 

Lets start with 유부. You can read the English on the packet, Fried Soybean Curd. Its delicious with thick noodles, 우동, and you find it a lot on soups and the like. At the time I didn’t know that so I spent quite a while standing there thinking of creative ways to eat such a random food.  Thank goodness these packets have pictures otherwise I might still be there!

Moving swiftly forward to my favourite aisle;

About 80% of this aisle is dedicated to tuna or 참치 in Korean.  I love this aisle because how many different variations of tuna can there be? Quite a lot is the answer. In fairness there are other things on the shelf, but still a lot of tuna.  The rest is Spam, and other tinned fish and meat. Here’s a picture of Spam which is so great, it deserves a picture of its own

Hhhhmmmmm…….disgusting. Or delicious depending on you. But what is Spam?? Lots of Americans are already familiar with Spam but until September 2009 I had never heard of it. For those who are currently sailing the same boat I was, Spam  is “chopped pork shoulder meat with ham meat added, salt, water, modified potato starch as a binder and sodium nitrite as a preservative”  For Lunar New Year, Spam came in amazing beautifully decorated boxes.  Nothing says “I love you” like a great big box of Spam. In case you still don’t understand how brilliant Spam is, watch this youtube video;  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anwy2MPT5RE

These white things are 떡 and you can tell my reading skills are amazingly brilliant. They come in different shapes but they’re the same thing.  These are actually deceiving delicious and can be eaten lots of different ways.  They are usually used to make 떡볶이 which looks like;

                                                       

Ddeokbokki comes in a variety of spiciness and of course if we get it at school it’s the “not at all spicy” version.  Ddeokbokki is great street food and nothing warms you up on a night out in winter like Ddeokboki!

 The only milk I drank in Ireland came from a cow and with a complete stretch of the imagination, a goat.  So imagine my surprise when I walk in to the supermarket and find an entire shelf dedicated to Soybean milk!   It’s super popular here and I constantly have people offering me cartons of it. It’s got a “special” taste and after a while it’s not that bad.  And probably really healthy. 

Whenever I go back to Ireland, I like to eat food prepared by Mammy Browne.  When I saw these dressings, I  heard my mother’s voice going; “You’d want to be an awful eejit to put Kiwi dressing on your lettuce”  So imagine the  astonishment as I stood looking at the Kiwi, strawberry, peach and other randomly flavoured dressings.  I’ve actually tasted them since and they’re not so bad( a little delicious if I’m being honest) if you don’t think  about how weird it is.  For 2,380won you can’t go too far wrong……..

 

 

No school lunch is complete without a few Quail eggs.  Quail eggs are three or four times more nutritious that regular chicken eggs.  We eat them all the time here.  Personally, I don’t see much of a difference in taste but that’s just me. 

At this stage you’re probably asking yourself why I didn’t recognise the foods when the labels are in English.  I took these at a large supermarket which I didn’t know existed until about 6 months into my contract.  The one I usually go to is a totally Korean supermarket with none of these fancy English labels. 

Red Pepper Paste, a staple in the Korean diet.  This is used as a base in a lot of foods here.  The most common uses are in Ddeokbokki and bibimbap.  I know that now but at the time I was thinking why anyone would need such a disgusting looking food in such a large quantity. 

One last item, Mangosteens.  If it wasn’t apples or oranges, I hadn’t heard of them before I came to Korea.  And I still hadn’t heard of mangosteens until I went to Thailand in  December 2011 (Don’t judge me!).  These are the most delicious fruit I’ve ever discovered.  They taste better bought from a street vendor in Thailand but when all goes to all the ones in the supermarket here will do. 

That’s about it for part 1. Tune in soon for an Irish girl in a Korean supermarket, part 2!