After seven years, I finally got used to Kimchi

Korea's wonderful stone pot rice

October, 1999, was our first trip to Seoul. Almost as soon as we got into the city, we noticed the unbearably sour kimchi smell (fermented, pickled cabbage). We were feeling hungry after the flight from Taipei, but everywhere we looked, we couldn't avoid kimchi. Finally, we found a fried rice shop in a food court, so we could have some normal food. But what arrived in front of us was kimchi fried rice. It was sour, spicy and disappointing.

So after that, we were forced to eat in the fake Italian restaurants that were very popular in Korea then. At least there was an English menu, and we had a chance not to order kimchi pasta or kimchi pizza.

March, 2006, was the second trip to Seoul. The temperature was often around 0 degrees. The freezing wind was unbearable for me. Growing up in Taiwan, I really needed hot meals to comfort me.

We saw many traditional Korean restaurants, with colorful photos of their food in the windows. I saw a photo of one dish which was rice with variety of vegetables in a black pot. It looked like this was a great deal: for only US$5, a warm place to sit and warm meal to eat. Especially as I could simply point to the photo to communicate with the waiter. It was very difficult to order a meal in ordinary Korean restaurants sometimes, because people didn't speak much English.

After I ordered, they brought us about six different small side dishes, like soup, green vegetable, bean sprouts, seaweed, and three different kinds of kimchi. I was wondering if I would be over charged, as I only ordered the black rice pot from the photo. But right away, they brought the black pot to me, it looked exactly like the one on the window photo.

The black pot was made from stone, it was burning hot like the Japanese tepanyaki iron plate or skillet. The rice in the pot was almost burned where it touched the pot, as well topped with different vegetables, it was a little crispy like pop corn. And there was a golden sunny egg on top of everything.

Actually, this was freshly made food. To serve food fast and fresh, deep frying is a very common cooking method. But the serving the rice pot usually took about only five minutes, and the food was burning hot.

To prepare this dish, Koreans first put the cooked rice in this thick, heavy pot, topped with assorted cooked vegetables, seaweed, and beef, finally break an egg on the middle. The pot is heated on a gas stove, with very high flame. In Korea, the dish is called Dolsot Bibimbap (돌솥 비빔밥 in Korean letters or 朝鮮拌飯 and 石頭拌飯 in Chinese).

A dish of chili paste was always served together with the stone pot. Although staff in most of the restaurants did not speak English. They would always remind us to eat the dish with the chili paste.

If they didn't see us pick up the spoon within 5 seconds, they would usually come right over to help us.

Without our permission, they would pick up the spoon and stir in the big chunk of chilli paste, vigorously mixing it with all the food in the pot. Then confidently smiling, and telling us this was right way to eat Korean food. The food in the pot had been nicely arranged, but now that was destroyed in a second - it became a red messy black pot.

The black rice pot was also the way we were introduced to eating the smelly Korean kimchi. Since it was already on the table in front of us, so we we might as well try the spicy kimchi. It turned out to be the best accompaniment to the black pot rice, even though the chili paste already made the food spicy.

We most recently visited Seoul in December 2008. On these freezing cold winter days, we looked for the black pot photo on restaurants windows. As soon as we found the photo, we went into the restaurant, and point it out to the waiter. In traditional Korean restaurants, we looking forward to our burning black pot, spicy smelly kimchi, and we have our spoons ready to stir the chili paste. Now I even buy authentic kimchi in Korea to bring home to Taiwan.