#1 North Korea
- Jen
- May 3, 2019
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 4, 2022
Really? How is this my first country?! My enthusiasm for the project has just died! I’m writing a food blog about somewhere where there’s no food!
I read a book called Dear Leader while I was travelling last year by an incredible chap, Jang Jin-sung, who managed to escape the regime. It gives a rare insight into the level of human suffering and pure evil of the Kim dynasty and is well worth a read if you get the chance.
The only thing I remember from the book about the food is that there wasn’t much of it; he talks about a woman counting out individual grains of rice to feed her family. Horrible. Thinking about the millions of people in North Korea who are reported to be undernourished, even today, it’s tempting to make a statement and go hungry for this dish but that wouldn’t really be in the spirit of what I’m trying to achieve here. Instead, let’s be thankful for what we have and eat a traditional dish that hopefully one day will be readily available to all North Koreans.
So, what do they eat in North Korea?
Google says: dog meat soup and gasoline-barbequed clams...I’m pretty open-minded when it comes to trying new things but I can foresee some minor issues with these dishes so I’m taking them off the menu.
Kimchi
This is the only thing that I already knew they ate in Korea. Kimchi is fermented vegetables and has been eaten for millennia. It’s a way of preserving veg and they’re pretty keen for it in both North and South Korea, eating it on the side of most meals. It’s one of these dishes for which there is no correct recipe; every family has their own version and you can make it out of anything you feel like. Typically, cabbages and radishes are the vegetables of choice and it’s seasoned with lots of salt, chillis, garlic, ginger and dried fish. The kimchi in North Korea tends to be less spicy and doesn’t include the dried fish, which my housemate, Rhiannon, is probably quite relieved about.
As well as being such a tasty treat, kimchi is also great for digestion. Absolute win because I now have a huge tub of the stuff!
Dongchimi
Dongchimi is a radish water kimchi used quite a lot in North Korea. It’s made from slices of Korean radish rather than whole vegetables so it’s fermenting time is relatively short (which is great for me because I have a lot of countries to get through!).
The ingredients are pictured below (plus garlic, forgot that in the photo). It turns out that I live a very short walk from Cardiff’s only Korean and Japanese supermarket so I was able to easily source Korean radish and Asian pear for my dongchimi. I also invested in some chopsticks as I’ve been to Asia a few times and always been the “can I have a fork please” twat so it’s about time I learned to use them!
The radish for the dongchimi is sliced into sticks and left to rest in sugar and salt for a short while. The brine is pureed apple, Asian pear, onion, garlic, ginger, salt and water. The rinsed radish then sits in the brine along with some chillis and spring onions for a few days. The pureed brine is supposed to be strained through cheesecloth so that the liquid is clear. I did not have any cheesecloth to hand so made my first cook-the-world error by straining it through a colander – it basically didn’t strain anything and the resulting liquid is pretty cloudy. I’m sure it tastes the same!
Six days later et voila! We have dongchimi!
Raengmyon
More commonly known as naengmyeon in South Korea.
Raengmyon is a noodle soup, served icy cold. There are two varieties of this traditional dish: mul naengyeon, originating from the capital, Pyongyang, and bibim naengyeon from Hamhung in the north. Bibim naengyeon is served with a red spicy sauce and the noodles are typically potato starch noodles. The Pyongyang noodles are made from buckwheat and served in a cold, refreshing beef and dongchimi broth.
Naengmyeon became popular in South Korea following the war when North Koreans fled south. The dish found itself in the spotlight during the 2018 Korean summit when Kim Jong Un crossed the DMZ into South Korea. Apparently, he made a joke to break the ice about bringing the famous Pyongyang noodles for President Moon to enjoy and the dish became an unofficial symbol of the summit.
I couldn’t really not make the famous Pyongyang noodles that featured in such an historic moment now could I?!
I used a mixture of the dongchimi broth and beef broth. (Guilty! I used a Knorr stock cube for the beef…but I did jazz it up with peppercorns, onion, garlic and ginger.) Now, the dongchimi juice didn't taste fantastic on its own; it was like very garlicky seawater. However, mixed with the beef broth (and a generous spoonful of sugar, some rice wine vinegar and mustard) it somehow made sense in my mouth. As long as you balance salty, sweet, heat and sour most things will taste good - learned that in Thailand.
Not convinced by the idea of icy cold noodles but keen to do it like a real Korean, the noodle juice then went in the freezer for a while. The assembled dish consisted of: the buckwheat noodles, cold broth, cucumber, sliced dongchimi radish, egg and toasted sesame seeds. I had English mustard (not sure what type of mustard, they use in North Korea but this is what we use in Jen’s kitchen) and vinegar on hand to balance the flavour because the addition of the noodles to the cold broth made it need a bit more flavour.
I decided to try this out on myself only as it was my first one and, surprisingly, I have no friends from North Korea to test it out on! Although, I feel like maybe I’ve missed a trick by not hosting a really un-PC North Korean night where we slaughter the neighbour’s dog and set fire to the house flambéing shellfish. Maybe next time.
It was absolutely delicious! I'm as surprised as you are! I don't have the foggiest whether this was authentically North Korean or not but I loved it! The coolness made it light and refreshing and the egg soaked in that wonderful broth was how I think all boiled eggs should be consumed henceforth.
Success!
The dish took a while to finish, what with my n00b chopstick handling, but I’m getting the hang of it now…I’m ready for you China!
Next up: LESOTHO.
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