Curry, and Fishy Goodness as Fresh as it Gets!

I dropped by Itaewon the other day to check out a bookstore that sells books in English. While in the neighborhood, I dropped into a "foreign foods market", and found that they had Thai curry paste and coconut milk/cream. So I grabbed some and decided to make some curry.

Normally I would probably use some beef or lamb, but pork is what I had on hand here, so pork it was. It was ok, but not as good as it usually is. I don't know if it's because I don't have all of my normal ingredients here with me (no fish sauce, no basil), or if the curry paste I got had a slightly different flavor. It satisfied my curry cravings in any case.

Tonight, after roaming the streets a bit trying to decide on a place to go have dinner, Younggyun, Paul and I went to a "Korean Sashimi" restaurant. Basically a raw seafood joint, but most westerners are more familiar with the term sashimi.

Here are some of the hapless victims.

So one dish that we got was San Nak Ji (산닉지), which is super fresh octopus tentacles. Basically, we saw the chef grab an octopus out of the tank (similar to the previous picture), slap it on a chopping board, chop the tentacles into pieces, throw it on a plate and throw it on your table. The time from tank to table is so short that the tentacle pieces are still squirming about while you eat them! The suckers still function as well, so they will latch on to the inside of your mouth. It's important to chew thoroughly so that none of them decide to latch on to your throat while you attempt to swallow. For a better idea of the wriggliness, I uploaded a brief clip on to YouTube:


The other dish we got was flounder sashimi, which according to Younggyun is a very typical fish for Koreans to eat sashimi-style. There was also some sort of fishy stew to finish off the meal (no picture) that was very spicy. A good time was had by all (except for Mr. Octupus).