Coolest Dish of the Year

One of the coolest things about moving to a brand new continent is that you get to try a bunch a food that you probably wouldn't have glanced at before.

The other night on a teachers dinner, in what seemed like an experimental moment, our co-teachers wanted to see what we thought of cow intestines.In all honesty cow intestines was never something that was particularly high up on my list of things to nibble at. However, when you have a Korean co-teacher watching your every reaction, you have no choice but to smile, chew and swallow. "Try cow intestines..." smiled one of the more senior male teachers in anticipation. Its as if they are setting you up to fail all in the name of a good chuckle.
The two other foreign teachers next to me gave a defeated smile before dropping a small chunk of intestines into their mouths. Clunck, it landed on my tongue.
One of the younger Korean teachers joked, " an intestine a day keeps the doctor away"
I smiled sweetly and swallowed. They were definitely taking the piss.
In reality, It just tasted like a very chewy, grizzly piece of something. It wasn't terrible.. but it really wasn't great.. and the worst part? There was an entire grill of it still to go!! I feel the pinnacle of the experience came when eating kimchi soup afterwards. A teacher next to me started to explain that the kimchi (fermented spicy cabbage) soup I was eating had been bottled about 3 years ago. "Oh... um... that's interesting..."

Grilled cow intestines

The good thing about all bad experiences, is that there are normally five good ones to compare them too. A particular one that comes to mind recently is slow roasted rotisserie duck.
It was a treat for the staff on break up day for work done during the semester. At home, duck is outrageously expensive and would never be an entire staff meal. Here it is cooked on rotating stick in front of you, and eaten with an assortment of sauces and wrapped up in lettuce leaves.
Genuinely delicious!

Slow roasted duck

Another great experience a couple of weeks ago was when a friend (Robyn) took me for Vietnamese Shabu Shabu. When I saw the message come through, "We could go for Shabu Shabu?" a number of images went through my head. What the hell was Shabu Shabu I thought? I was in half a mind to message friends at home and sound awfully cosmopolitan," Sorry Skype later.. I'm just popping round to the local Shabu Shabu place"

Robyn cooking up a storm

When I finally arrived at restaurant, it was possibly the coolest dish of the year.
In a nutshell, we were given small pieces of thinly sliced beef, many types of vegetables, a pot of broth and rice paper. The idea is that you are meant to throw the meat into the broth along with some cabbage and let it cook. The restaurant provides you with a bowl of purple looking water that you are supposed to dip your rice paper into, so that it becomes softer and gelatinous. In essence, you are meant to make a type of spring/egg roll, throwing the sauces, vegetables and meat into the rice paper. The entire experience was delicious.