buchu jeon (부추전)

buchu (부추) is fast becoming one of my favorite vegetables. the list of vegetables that i will willingly eat is rather short (cucumbers, spinach, lettuce, just to name a few), so buchu, otherwise known as garlic chives, chinese leeks, asian chives, or jiu cai (as it is called in my house), should feel very special. no doubt my fondness for jiu cai came about early on in life; every chinese new year we would eat plates and plates of dumplings, and the most common type of dumpling includes jiu cai.

the other day i bought a bushel (is that the correct term?) of chives from the local market and decided to make buchu jeon (remember, jeon is sort of like korean pancakes). as i’ve said before, it is ridiculously easy to make jeon and it doesn’t take fancy ingredients. just follow these simple (and flexible) directions:

step 1—wash the chives thoroughly; they are super difficult to clean up, especially if you buy them at the open markets. chop them into inch-long pieces. put away.

step 2—mix together flour (you can also use special buchim mix (부침가루)), water, and one egg in a large bowl. the combination of the three should create a white, viscous batter (in between runny and thick). sprinkle some salt into the bowl, add the chopped chives, and mix. [note: you can also add finely chopped chili peppers  or green onions to the batter.]

step 3—heat frying pan (medium heat). coat the frying pan with a generous amount of cooking oil. after about a minute, slowly pour batter into the pan (it should sizzle!), enough for a good-sized pancake. when the bottom side is cooked, flip the cake over with the aid of a spatula. i personally like my jeon to be super crispy, so i let it sit on the stove until it’s well past golden brown.

step 4—when done, take the buchu jeon out of the pan and serve it on a plate. pair the jeon with regular soy sauce or a korean version of chili sauce, which is a mixture of soy sauce, chili flakes, pieces of finely chopped chili pepper, and a pinch of sugar. [note: add more water, chives, and flour to the batter and make more buchu jeon; it's kind of like the bowl that keeps on giving.]

buchu jeon is usually not the main course of a meal, but what the koreans call banchan (반 찬, a side dish). as with most things, the more you cook something like jeon, the better you are at making it. you realize that the more eggs you use, the more eggy the jeon is (like scrambled eggs). and if the batter is too thick, it will take longer for the jeon to cook all the way through. you learn these things every time you cook it; heck, i’m still trying to perfect the art of jeon-making. but this is a good start.

 

friday feelings

♦ i saw a lot of movies this past week: up in the air, precious, the blind side, the hangover, and the hurt locker. i watched them mainly because they were some of the contenders for this year’s oscar nominations (which were announced on tuesday). i don’t want to get too deep into the films, so i’ll just say a few things about each picture:

• up in the air: a slick comedy-drama about a man who fires people for a living. i thought it was beautifully written, wonderfully acted (george clooney, vera farmiga, anna kendrick are all nominated for acting awards) and thoughtfully directed by jason reitman. it was my favorite of the bunch i saw this past week (but i know it’s not going to win best picture (because it has no nomination for outstanding editing—the editors are the most savvy oscar voters; ya didn’t know that, did ya?)).
• the hurt locker: an action-drama that focuses on sergeant first class william james, a bomb specialist. it is a very smart, very suspenseful film, meticulously directed by kathryn bigelow.
• precious: about a teenage african-american girl who lives with a monster of a mother, and is pregnant with her second child. an intense film with strong performances. i liked it very much, and found it to be more digestible than i thought it would be.
• the hangover: a bachelor party in vegas gone terribly wrong. it was funny and i had a good time, but it also contained a lot of broad stereotypes about asians, gays, middle-easterners, blacks, etc.
• the blind side: a story about a wealthy white family who generously take in a poor black teenage boy. this movie has no business being on that list of best picture nominees. this film didn’t challenge me, uplift me, depress me, or even anger or bore me…honestly, i enjoyed the film while it was on, but afterwards, i felt nothing. sandra bullock is decent in the blind side, but i really question why she’s going to win the oscar for this performance. it’s a one-dimensional character with no big scenes (i mean, even julia roberts had her ‘numbers’ monologue in erin brockovich). this forgettable film is average at best.

♦ went to work yesterday (thursday) and today (friday), but i really didn’t feel like i was there. i had a few classes on both days but it was pretty obvious that a) the students didn’t want/need to be at school and b) i didn’t want/need to be at school. it’s weird that there is this one week in february (after a month-long winter vacation), where everyone is at school pretending like it’s part of the regular school year, when in fact it’s just this one week of nothingness. next thursday is graduation, followed by a closing ceremony on friday, then (two weeks of) spring break begins. again, i ask, why does this one week of school exist?

♦ it’s official: my parents are coming to korea in mid-april and leaving in early may. though i’ll probably see them for only a few days during their entire visit (they have things to take care of), i still dread being responsible for their well-being. they’re at the age where my older sister and i take care of most of the things at home, so it’s like we’re the adults and they’re the children. sigh.

♦ the IRS sent me a book of tax forms and directions, which means they know where i live. yes, it takes me like, a mere 2 hours to fill out my tax forms, but i still hate to do them.

♦ my former desk partner mr. do (he worked at our high school for one semester last year as a temporary english teacher) did not make it onto the list of new teachers for this school year. i believe he passed all three tests, but his overall score just wasn’t high enough to fill one of the (coveted) open spots for this coming school year. because every year, only like, five teachers get hired by the daegu metropolitan office of education (because there are limited positions available), which is kind of bullshit. ugh, i am sad for him, but sad mostly for me.

♦ i plan to finish ha jin’s waiting this weekend. i am really liking it. join in on the discussion(s) over at my other blog if you’ve read the novel!

 

it’s the most wonderful time of the year 2010 (results)

best picture: 8/10 (the blind side, a serious man)

best director: 5/5

best actor: 5/5

best actress: 4/5 (helen mirren)

best supporting actor: 4/5 (christopher plummer)

best supporting actress: 3/5 (penélope cruz, maggie gyllenhaal)

29/35 (ain’t too shabby)

immediate thoughts: big wave of love for crazy heart with maggie gyllenhaal’s nomination (which means jeff bridges is a sure thing for the win). avatar did not get a screenplay nomination (like titanic). the blind side got a best picture nod, which means sandra bullock will walk away with the statue later this month (which also means i gotta see this friggin movie). i really screwed my predictions by not giving the last station enough credit (ugh, it got two acting noms). up got a best picture nomination, becoming only the second ‘animated’ film ever to be nominated for best picture (the first was beauty and the beast). (500) days of summer did not get a screenplay nod, which is a shame!

both the hurt locker and avatar have nine nominations. the edge goes to the hurt locker based on past precedence—it has a screenplay nomination and an acting nomination, both of which avatar is missing (very few films win best picture without these nominations—the last movie to win best picture without an acting nomination was slumdog millionaire, but that was an anomaly—and really, who the eff remembers last year’s oscars? ::yawn::). but let’s not forget that avatar is breaking box office records the world over. it has a fair shot.

looking forward to the ceremony on march 7th, which i will probably miss thanks to work. thanks work. thanks.

 

it’s the most wonderful time of the year 2010

it’s that time of the year again. i’ve been slowly watching all the potential oscar movies and i must say it was a solid year for films. either that or my standards have gone soft. come early tuesday morning (february 2nd, 5:30am) anne hathaway (and some suit) will announce the nominations for the 82nd annual academy awards.

it’s way trickier to predict the list of best picture nominees this year because they decided (a while ago) to expand the list to ten films (like they did in the old days, if you weren’t aware). here are my predictions of the top 6 categories (if you recall, i was 26/30 in 2008 and 24/30 in 2009):

best picture:

• the hurt locker
• avatar
• precious
• up in the air
• up
• inglourious basterds
• an education
• invictus
• district 9
• the messenger
• alternative: star trek

best director:

• kathryn bigelow, the hurt locker
• james cameron, avatar
• lee daniels, precious
• quentin tarantino, inglourious basterds
• jason reitman, up in the air
• alternative: clint eastwood, invictus

best actor:

• jeff bridges, crazy heart
• colin firth, a single man
• george clooney, up in the air
• morgan freeman, invictus
• jeremy renner, the hurt locker
• alternative: michael stuhlbarg, a serious man

best actress:

• sandra bullock, the blind side
• meryl streep, julie & julia
• carey mulligan, an education
• gabourey sidibe, precious
• emily blunt, the young victoria
• alternative: helen mirren, the last station

best supporting actor:

• christoph waltz, inglourious basterds
• woody harrelson, the messenger
• stanley tucci, the lovely bones
• matt damon, invictus
• alfred molina, an education
• alternative: christopher plummer, the last station

best supporting actress:

• mo’nique, precious
• anna kendrick, up in the air
• vera farmiga, up in the air
• diane kruger, inglourious basterds
• julianne moore, a single man
• alternative: samantha morton, the messenger

 

friday feelings

♦ the 9-day teacher training program up on palgong mountain has finally come to a close (for me anyway) and i’m free at last! i can finally go to bed at 2am (simply cuz i can) and wake up whenever i feel like it. it’s amazing to spend winter mornings in bed with the heating blanket on. amazing!

i taught at that workshop last winter and had a pretty good time. this year, though, was more of a chore for various reasons that i won’t get into. on the last day of class (this past tuesday), a few of the students (who are actually teachers) gave me letters of thanks and i even received a lovely bottle of wine. so maybe a few enjoyed my class.

♦ i ‘found’ a copy of nancy meyers’s it’s complicated, which stars meryl streep, alec baldwin and steve martin. i was thinking it was going to be a dumb, predictable, commercial film. well, i was pleasantly surprised. it’s funny, well-acted and charming. yes, it’s commercial and predictable, but not in a frustrating way. it’s a good time, this one. plus, meryl is really good in it.

♦ i took turns having conversations with all four members of my family this morning on skype. i hadn’t done that in a long time. i was instantly rejuvenated afterwards (so much so that i mopped my floor!) because i felt reconnected with them in some deep way. i got to talk to my older sister about family stuff and the dogs, and i got to talk to my little sister about her school work and report card.

i was told by my older sister (last week) that my parents will be visiting korea in april, and since then, the butterflies in my stomach have been going insane. it’s not that i don’t like my parents or enjoy their company, it’s just that drama surrounds them and then i get sucked into their vortex of dysfunction. sigh.

♦ i am not happy with abc for deciding to cancel ugly betty. i adore ugly betty.

♦ i have precious, the hangover, bright star, the road, the hurt locker and up in the air available to me, so i’ll be spending most of my weekend watching those and reading ha jin’s waiting. yay for winter vacation!

 

avatar on the imax

i just came back from seeing james cameron’s latest sci-fi extravaganza, avatar. the significant other and i managed to score pretty good seats a week in advance (seriously, IMAX 3D tix are sold out on a daily basis) at CGV theatre in downtown daegu (probably the best movie theatre in the city). due to the fact that it was my first real IMAX 3D experience, i didn’t know what to expect from the big-ass screen and the funny plastic glasses.

it was an amazing experience.

it took less than a minute to get used to the 3D glasses, and i was completely absorbed in what was happening onscreen. though i like to be a smart-ass about certain things, i don’t play any games when watching a movie (you have to respect the movie). i let the film unfold as intended by the director; i never try to outsmart the script or predict the outcome (it damages your viewing experience when you do that). during the entire 3 hour ride, my eyes just danced—and i wanted to touch everything i saw. the skin of the na’vi, the floating forest wonders, the waterfall. my eyeballs were fantastically raped this afternoon.

so kudos to the technical effects in this film. not so much praise for the story, which is essentially pocahontas on a distant planet (pandora). the characters are 2-dimensional (oh, the irony), and the plot is predictable. but you know what? i don’t really care. i’m glad that millions of people are seeing how awful it is to pillage the rainforest, how wrong it is to go into someone else’s territory and claim it as our own, how war is a bad thing. it’s a simple story told in a visually stunning way; anyone can relate to it.

i had a blast, and thank god koreans are the best movie-goers any film lover could ask for. no talking, no cell phone rings—just silence and awe. this surely ranks up there in my top movie-going experiences of all time.

[note: i one hundred percent recommend the IMAX 3D experience; it's definitely well worth the ₩16,000 ticket price. also, i hear that the regular 2D screenings aren't displaying the english subtitles when the alien language is spoken. the IMAX 3D screenings, though, have the english subtitles.]

 

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snow crabs in pohang

the significant other and i met yumi at dongdaegu station last saturday morning, a crisp, cold, azure morning. there, we boarded the slow (but clean) mugunghwa train, departing at 9am, to pohang (₩6600), a mid-size city on the eastern coast of the korean peninsula. i’ve been to pohang many times for numerous reasons, but our mission for the day was simple—to enjoy some steamed snow crabs, which are now in season.

after arriving at pohang station, we strolled through the city’s downtown area to work up an appetite. for some odd reason, i really enjoy visiting other cities’ downtowns. i say odd because all of them look pretty much the same; the same stores, restaurants, coffeeshops. there, we found the signs for jukdo market, the largest open market on the east coast, and headed in that direction. the smell of the ocean was refreshing and surprising at the same time. my family lives in league city, texas, which is just a 10-minute drive from galveston bay; somehow, it didn’t occur to me that i might miss the fragrance of saltwater.

jukdo market, ginormous at approximately 150,000m², is comprised of 2,500 independent vendors, most of whom sell fresh seafood all year round. as you walk through the market, you kind of have to have your guard up. the countless tanks of fish (and various other creatures) are knee-high and the fish in there aren’t complacent. they splash water everywhere, making the market a very wet place. you also have to wade through the many shop owners who call to you and try to drag you into their stores.

we found the restaurant that i’d patronized before and selected three healthy-looking snow crabs (박달대게) from the tank, each weighing over a pound and costing ₩15,000 (i didn’t name mine). the restaurant was busy and seating was scarce; people from all over the country stop by jukdo market to delight in fresh seafood. about fifteen minutes later, our crabs arrived on a silver platter, red and steaming. we were given crab picks, scissors, and a brief lesson on how to get the meat out. after that, we dug in.

i don’t eat seafood often because it’s usually difficult to eat (shells, bones, exoskeleton). luckily, i had the significant other with me to do the dirty work. during our meal, other customers kept looking our way, i assume because here were three korean-looking adults speaking mostly in english. it’s a good thing that that kind of stuff doesn’t bother me because that shit can get old.

soon, the only parts of the crabs that remained unmolested were the shells of the main bodies. the waitress took these shells, which still had crab juice in them, away. minutes later, they came back as bowls of crab mixed rice (게장 비빔밥). we paired that with maewoon tang (매운탕), a spicy seafood soup, and together, these two dishes gave me that hearty satisfaction that the crab alone could never provide.

all in all, our meal came out to ₩57,000, which included crabs, rice, soup, and soft drinks. had we gone to a restaurant in daegu or another city (not in a market), it would’ve been way more expensive (maybe ₩25,000 for one crab), so it’s definitely better to eat crab in the marketplace.

after the savory meal we walked around the rest of the market, had coffee at starbucks in downtown pohang, and took a train back to daegu. i love that we can just get on a train, go to a completely different city, have lunch, and be back before 4pm. this is one of the things i love about korea.

 

friday feelings

♦ this past work week was long. we had classes on palgong mountain monday, wednesday, thursday and today. waking up super early in the morning kind of drained me, and it didn’t help that mother nature decided to freeze daegu’s ass off starting last night. two more palgong classes to go (next monday and tuesday) and i am friggin done. yay!

♦ one of the advantages of this palgong training has been getting to know some of the other native english teachers who work daegu. in particular, i’ve gotten close with the teacher from daegu science high school (another specialty school in the city, for math and science kids), yumi. she’s a korean-american (from LA) in her 30s, and i respond well to her independent, confident, honest vibe. i picture her as the cool cousin i never had in the states, the one that would let me crash on her couch in new york city on lazy weekends.

a good part of the reason why i get along with her is because she’s korean-american, straight-up. that probably makes me clique-y. so sue me. but it’s more to do with the fact that we have similar attitudes about the united states and korea; we don’t romanticize either nation and we’re comfortable belonging to both places. and because she’s older i feel comfortable listening to her; i don’t care to listen to people my age.

anyway, we hung out a lot this week, ate lots of food, went to noraebang (karaoke), and since she’s interested in taking the TOPIK eventually, we’ve been helping each other study. she’s fluent in speaking korean but she needs work with hangeul and writing (especially spelling). i’m not fluent in speaking but i’m very good with writing (spelling in particular).

tomorrow morning we’re going to pohang to eat snow crabs. it’s going to be insanely cold—awesome.

♦ magnus arrived on wednesday. i was excited and relieved at the same time. this small package was just sitting in my unlockable mailbox, untouched, and inside it contained my iPod Touch. and i named it magnus. because that is a good, strong name.

♦ 800 index cards and counting. still haven’t completed compiling all the korean words i do know already. looking forward to the day when i start on unknown words. then it will become challenging, and i need a little challenge.

♦ last weekend i saw michael haneke’s newest german-language film the white ribbon (das weiße band), which lone scherfig (director of an education) was reported as saying, “i think it may be the best film i have ever seen.” i love reading about one artist praising another artist. the film is amazing.

i only know haneke from his 2005 french-language feature caché, which i found disturbing and thrilling at the same time. the white ribbon is right up there with caché. it is about a rural german community in the days before world war I. horrible crimes start to happen in the village, and no one knows who is responsible. the plot is basically a whodunit, but only an idiot would read the film that way.

the director is so precise with his composition, so patient with the unfolding of the chilling story, so subtle with his camerawork…you’re forced to pay attention and you know you’re in very capable hands. the word “austere” gets thrown around a lot by critics when they discuss the films of michael haneke; it’s a very appropriate word to describe his directing style. also, did i mention the gorgeous black & white photography? friggin gorgeous. i highly recommend.

 

you and i

2NE1, korea’s premier girl group, debuted last year to much success. one of the members (four total), park bom (박봄), released a solo single in november called “you and i,” which i lurve. i am practicing this song in my apartment so that i can kill it next time i go to karaoke. enjoy.