I'd just like to put up a little add for a friend of mine here in Seoul. My friend Blessing, who goes by the name Black Moss has formed a new group called Part Time Cooks. Their style is somewhere between hip hop and jazz. I've heard a few of their songs and I think they should definitely be worth checking out.
Here's the info for their upcoming show:
Here are some samples of some of the group members' music. They've all got pretty nice sound to them.
If I've piqued your interest, see the map below for directions to the show:
Last Saturday, we were invited by a friend to Culture Complex (CulCom) near Sinchon Station, to compete in a cooking competition/ cultural exchange organized by a group called Play with Culture. Of course, the boyfriend, being quite the culinary artist, jumped at the opportunity to prove his skills in the kitchen. So, we found ourselves in CulCom's lounge at 4pm, partnered with other Koreans and foreigners in group #6, preparing to prove our culinary skills.
Playing the ladder game to choose a recipe
After finding our group and getting to know each other a little bit, the event organizers explained the rules of the contest. Each team would be randomly assigned a recipe by doing the ladder game. Some forigners were a little confused by this, but eventually we got it all settled and each team was assigned one recipie. We got chap chae. Other teams were assigned Royal Dukbokki, Haemul Pajeon, Dalkdoritang, sujaebi, and sundubu jjigae. We were a little nervous about our chap chae since it is quite hard to make and involves a lot of preparation.
So Mi asking questions, winners get extra money for their team
The next part was getting money to buy ingredients. While each team was given 30,000 won as a base amount to buy ingredients, you could win extra cash for your team by competing in some games. After several attempts, we finally one game... and got a whopping extra 2,000 won.
Next, the participants were given 2 hours to do all the shopping, cook the entire dish and clean up. We all went racing to the supermarket to buy supplies. Our team members wanted to have a dish that was not only pleasant to eat, but also was also visually appealing. With our 32,000 won budget we were able to choose very colorful vegetables like red, yellow peppers (also known as "paprika" in Korea), bell peppers, onions, carrots and spinach. And we bought an expensive (meaning 2,000 won) bottle of makkoli, too, since we still had extra money. And we still had nearly 10,000 won left at the end... what happened to that money?
Preparing the Spinach
Very colorful assortment of vegetables
Me, cutting meat with an enormous knife...
A shy team member boiling noodles for the chap chae
Then it was time to go back and cook. We didn't expect it to take so long just to prepare the basic ingredients. Working with limited utensils, cutting boards, pots and pans, it took us the full time to cook our dish. The boyfriend instructed all of us culinarily (is that a word?) inept team members exactly how to cut each of the vegetables, how to marinate the beef, and how to fry the vegetables. But, with his help, we started to make some progress.
Frying vegetables
The final stir
Chap Chae, the noodles themselves, need to be fried together with all the veggies and soy sauce once everything is prepared. Having one, medium sized frying pan was certainly a challenge, but the boyfriend skillfully alternated frying one half at a time until it was perfect. As we were tasting it before it was done frying, we started to have our doubts about our work. It was too salty... it was tasteless... we started eying the other group's work wondering if it would be possible to win. But, once we were done frying everything and we gave it one last stir.... we realized it was perfect. There was no way we could lose the contest.
Introducing the judging part of the competition
Sample cups for passersby to taste
In order to avoid bias from judging within our own members, each team prepared small sample cups to bring outside for passersby to taste. While the group organizers took everything to the streets, we stayed in, tasting a little bit of everyone's food. Some groups were better than others... some were completely indistinguishable from what they were supposed to be making (that's not to say they didn't taste good... but...) but other groups had done pretty darn well. We started to get a little worried. But, the free makkoli that started coming out from the back room made us quickly forget that.
Group #6, the winners!
Celebrating victory with a box of Manoffins
After about 20 minutes, the organizers came back from the streets with the results from the taste tests. And who do you think won? Of course, team #6, our amazing team lead by my amazing chef. We were presented with our grand prize... a box of 6 muffins from Manoffin. Well, the prize wasn't much to show, but we had the glory of knowing we were the best chefs in the room.
Immortalizing the prize winning chap chae
The Recipe:
1 package of fresh spinach
1 medium sized carrot
1 onion
1 red pepper
1 yellow pepper
1 green pepper
1 package of mushrooms
100g of beef
1 bag of sweet potato glass noodles
soy sauce
sesame seed oil
sesame seeds
cooking oil (vegetable oil, grape seed oil, etc)
(other vegetables as desired)
Cut all vegetables and meat into thin medium sized strips. Put the meat in a marinade of soy sauce (add oyster sauce to the marinade for extra goodness). Saute the mushrooms in soy sauce for several minutes. Boil the spinach for a few minutes. Add a little soy sauce and sesame seed oil to the boiled spinach to taste. Fry onion, peppers, and carrot together in a frying pan with a little soy sauce. Fry marinated beef separately. Boil the noodles until soft. Wash and rinse noodles thoroughly under cold water for several minutes. In a bowl, add cooking oil to the noodles and mix thoroughly. Fry noodles in a frying pan with soy sauce, to taste. Fry for several minutes, but don't allow the noodles to burn. Remove from heat and add the fried vegetables, meat, spinach and mushrooms to the noodles. Mix. Add more soy sauce if needed, add some sesame seed oil to taste and sprinkle sesame seeds on top. Enjoy!
Not hard, but it is a little time intensive! Good luck! If you try this recipe, blog about it and leave a link here!
Jessica Steele, author of ROKin' Around Korea being interviewed by Arirang News
As you may know, I'm one of the "Worldwide Korea Bloggers" for The Korea Blog. The nice thing about blogging for the Korea Blog is the opportunity to take parts in various cultural events around Korea. I've been invited on many trips, including a trip to Jeju last year, but it seems I only ever have time to fit in the actual welcoming ceremonies that they hold each year due to my work schedule. On March 25th, they held a welcoming ceremony for the second batch of bloggers. Now there are 50 bloggers in Korea and around the world who contribute to this blog. When I walked in, I was a bit surprised to see Arirang News there on hand to document the event. You can see the whole press release here, including a video featuring an interview with me!
We were asked to introduce ourselves and our blogs, all while being filmed by Arirang AND the Qi Ranger. Needless to say, I don't think I'll ever be able to be a celebrity. I lose what little ability I have to speak articulately once the camera is on me. Probably for the best, I suppose.
We even made the English Language Newspapers, page 20 of the Korea Herald on March 26th.
After the event at the KCOIS office, we hopped in a bus and headed over to the National Museum of Korea for a guided tour and an art lesson.
Anyone who wanted to film in the museum needed a press pass. I didn't want to film, but I just wanted to look special wearing one...
It was somewhere around this crown that I was interviewed. I kind of wanted to hear what the tour guide was saying, but I guess Arirang is more important..
I learned a bit more about Buddha statues from this tour, and I hope to blog on the topic more... if I ever have time to blog again, that is...
The last activity of the day was a painting activity. As this is the year of the dragon, we were taught how to paint a dragon. Actually, it mostly involved tracing, but I'll pretend that we're all really good artists for the sake of the blog. Mine came out pretty good, but unfortunately I was in a rush to get back to work for the night shift so I didn't really get to finish it properly.
You can learn more about the event from the Korea.net press release here, and see my blog posts from last year's event here and here. If you like the sound of becoming a blogger for the Korea blog, they'll probably be accepting more bloggers next year. It's a great opportunity and has inspired me to get out more and find exciting events to blog about. Now if only I had time to write....
Namsangol Hanok Village at the base of Namsan in Seoul offers many cultural events and usually has fun events on Korean holidays. This Seollal, (Lunar New Year) was no different, and they held events every day during the four day holiday weekend. I went over to check out the festivities on Tuesday, the last day of the Seollal holiday.
There were plenty of hands on activities for kids and grown-ups alike. First thing I tried was telling my fortune for the new year with the sticks used to play Yut-Nori.
Unfortunately, my fortune for the new year is not looking so good. It told me that I would not be able to accomplish my goals this year because I am lacking the tools to complete my goal. Not too good, though I don't know how much I should trust these giant plastic sticks.
Another activity was making a new year's wish by writing a message on a piece of colored paper and tying to to the strings. Perhaps I should have wished for a better new year's fortune....
Namsangol Hanok Village always has fun, traditional games to play. Here you can see people trying their luck spinning the traditional Korean top called 팽이치기 (Paengi Chigi). This top is spun by hitting it with a whip to keep it spinning as long as possible. It's harder than it looks!
And, of course, it wouldn't be Seollal without a good game of 윳노리 (Yut-Nori). This game is quite simple to play once you learn the rules. Sticks are thrown instead of dice and whether the sticks fall flat side up or round side up decides how many places you can move. The first team to get all four playing pieces back to start is the winner!
But, the most interesting part of the day for me was the performances of traditional Korean dances and instrumental performances.
Even a little less traditional group made it in the mix, these Korean B-Boys had their own take on traditional dancing by using fans and dancing to a modern song that used some traditional Korean instruments as well.
Below is a video of some of the performances, including the B-boys. Enjoy!
To see past events from Namsangol Hanok Village, see my previous posts:
For those of you who remember my post about the House of Sharing when I visited back in December, the International Outreach Team will be hosting a free screening of the movie 63 Years On, a documentary about the Halmoni. It will be held at Dongguk University this coming Saturday. I can't be there, but it's a great opportunity to and learn more about the sexual slavery during the Pacific War. I hope some of you get out and check it out!
After visiting the Amsa Prehistoric Village, we made our way over to Banpodaegyo bridge (the rainbow water bridge) where they had stopped traffic on the lower deck of the bridge for pedestrians and were holding a final "non-verbal performance" to the side of the bridge in the Hangang park.
We really got there in time just to see the final act, we though it would go much later than 7:30, since the bridge would be closed until 10pm. But, that final act was quite spectacular to say the least. A combination of a huge Traditional Korean music group plus a French drumming group which performed suspended from a crane with an acrobat over their heads.
It felt like a wild party with everyone going nuts on their respective drums when the drummers descended from their lofty position in the sky and joined the Korean drummers. Awesome vibes all around.
I hope you had the chance to check out the Hi Seoul Festival for at least one day over the past week or so. It was a really great chance to see performing acts from Korea and all over the world. If you're interested in other events from Hi Seoul Festival, check out my last post on the subject as well.
This season's Hi Seoul Festival is "Non-Verbal Performance". Catching performances seemed to be a combination of luck and knowledge of the fact that you need tickets to view any of the major performances in Yeoido.
We headed first to Gwanghwamun, since that's walking distance (45 mins) from my house. When we arrived there were a million people crowded around one small stage in front of the Cheonggyechong. We didn't know what they were showing, but we knew we didn't want to stand around in the crowd waiting for it to start. We walked around Gwanghwamun some more. They had some other performance areas set up, but nothing seemed to be going on, so we jumped on the subway to Yeoido to see what was going on over there.
First thing we found was Seoul Art Space: It wasn't too exciting, but maybe worth a 5 minute spin through...
We started wandering around looking for a performance to watch but we weren't really sure where to go or what we wanted to see. We were feeling a bit dissapointed until we accidentally walked into a performance space for Ko Jae Kyung's Mime Show. They were just setting up, so we got almost front row seats.
I can't think of a time when I've ever seen a live mime performance. It's usually one of those silly things you see in movies, but never in real life. This guy was great, by the way. We were fully entertained for the whole 30 minute performance.
After this performance finished, we saw people rushing to queue in front of a tent. We weren't sure what it was all about, but we figured it must be something worthwhile. I waited in line while the boyfriend investigated. Apparently, to see the big acts which are performed in the big tents, one must procure tickets beforehand. Tickets were all free, but given first come, first serve. At this moment, they were giving out tickets to a performance called ScrapArtsMusic, an act from Canada. While we were in line, we picked up tickets to a later performace called East Wind, Soul Beat.
First we headed over to the blue tent to watch the ScrapArtsMusic. We didn't realize the seating predicament before going and apparently we arrived too late to get good seats. We were forced to sit on the side where visibilty was kind of low. We basically watched the show from behind.
The set up of all the performance viewing areas is quite poorly designed. The stage was built very high, but all the seating is on lawn chairs on level ground. Therefore, when you're sitting close, you can't see because the stage is above your head, and if you're sitting far away, you can't see because there are too many heads in the way.
We stayed for most of this performance, but headed out a little early to make sure we got decent seats for the next performance, East Wind, Soul Beat. Here, the stage had better placement, but it was still hard to see over all the heads. Oh, if only I were one of those tall foreigners...
This show was only mildly entertaining, so we didn't feel so bad when we ducked out at 7:30 to make sure we got tickets for the free performance for Nanta at 9:00. We secured our tickets to the show and then headed for dinner because we were starving by this point (the food selection at the festival was not what we'd hoped).
After a dinner of Chinese food with mandu service-uh, we rushed to line up to get good seats for Nanta. While we didn't get the front, like we'd hoped, we got a kind of side view along an aisle where, once the show started, we (not so) discretely moved our chairs into the aisle in order to actually see the show. All in all we had a decent view, considering the fact that we paid nothing to get in.
As we left the performance and headed back to the train, I snapped this quick photo of the Han River at night. It's quite beautiful!
The Hi Seoul Festival is running until Sunday, October 10th, 2010. Be sure to catch some of the performances this week in Yeoido or Gwanghwamun, and check out the International Fireworks display on Saturday night form 7:30-9:00 pm too! You can view them over the Han River near Yeoido from either side.
