Korean Dishes

IN Bali, the menu usually shows a good range of Korean restaurants available including soups, noodle dishes (some spicy, using cold noodles), stewed meats (including intestines and cow gristle), and pork, beef, chicken or shrimp barbecues, which can be cooked at the table. Kimchi (cold sliced vegetables pickled in a fiery sauce) is served with every meal as no Korean would dream of sitting down to eat without it.

Drinks available included a range of sake (rice wine), whisky and Jinro, described on the bottle (the size of a small beer) as Korean liquor, and tasting a little like gin or cold sake. It is served in a whisky tumbler with ice and a slice of lime or lemon and is a good accompaniment to the kind of food described above.

As soon as diners are seated, the waiter are presented with an impressive array of complimentary appetizers in circular dishes, including kimchi and various kinds of other pickled or steamed vegetables, a salad and fried potato cake. If you'd eaten all of these, you would not have been able to manage anything else!

You can bring to the table a complimentary dish of omelet, sun dubu jige (beancurd soup), which turned out to be as fiery as the kimchi, and sour vegetable soup. The bokum bab (Korean-style fried rice) was a little sticky, but had plenty of diced vegetables and egg in it. Jab chai consisted of slightly sweet glass noodles cooked with various vegetables, including chili, carrot and onion, and left a somewhat fiery aftertaste.

The highlight item of the meal was bul galbi (barbecued rib of beef Korean style). The meat, still on the bone, was removed, then cut into small pieces, about the size of large postage stamps, using a pair of scissors. Meanwhile the charcoal (not gas) barbecue was heated up. A bucket of hot coals was lowered into a well beneath the perforated circular hot plate and was kept glowing by the draught from an electric fan below.

When done, the meat, dipped in a tasty savory sauce, together with the garlic were grilled alongside the meat, are wrapped, Korean-style, in lettuce leaves, rather as Peking duck and hoisin sauce are wrapped, Chinese-style, in pancakes. It was worth the effort, though, as the result was a delicious combination of juicy meat and refreshing lettuce, pepped up by the piquant garlic.