More natter
Mar. 15th, 2006 09:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumCold. I don't like being cold, but cold weather is funny, some places I can stand it, others it slices into me, and I hate it.
California is one of the latter, Korea seems to be one of the former. Right now I'm down toward Pusan. Hopped a bullet train from Seoul, and in two hours had done what takes Amtrak almost five. Speeds hit about 300 kph. The terrain doesn't vary as much as it does in Calif., even though I' moved as much inland as I would taking the train from SLO to LA.
I think it's the penninsular nature of the place, there's no huge landmass to change the temperatures. The pigeons are larger, the magpies about the same size. Black bills and bright blue bars on the latter. I hope to get some photos. The landscape is still winter blasted, which has a more severe, and desparate look than the heat death I am used to seeing on the hills of home. As I was doing my PT this morning I noticed the sycamores near my billet starting to bud, so perhaps I can get some pictures of them too. There were patches of green in the dead of winter (and the platic, sort of pop-up greenhouses they use. Frames, about 6-feet hight at the peak, and clear poly, stretched tight, over them. About 50 ft. long, and then dismantled in the winter), with low sheets of green inside. The fields are mostly tilled and there are sprouts showing in the stubble of rice paddies which haven't been cleared yet. Snow lingers in the shade of the trees.
What I was surprised to see, as we headed toward Taegu, was grapes. There were some fields with the disctinctive look of espaliered vines. Quite apart from this not being a wine culture, this isn't really good grape country, the summers are just too short, and the onset of winter too abrupt.
I was thinking, as I ate my "Seafood Spicy Octopus" on the plane, with it's decidedly Korean flavor (garlic, and acid and a fermented pepper paste) about the way post-columbian cuisine is different from pre-columbian. I've thought about it before, and it always comes back to the chile pepper.
Tomatoes, potatoes and maize are certainly a big deal, as is cassavan and all the other fruits and vegetables we got, but the pepper, it's ubiquitous, and shapes the flavor of so much.
Chinese... peppers. Thai... peppers. Japan has them, and Italy, and Malaysia and, and, and...
What, I wonder, was kimchee like before the peppers? Garlic and cabbage and salt and time.
India has a "hot" cuisine which predates the pepper (though the tomato is very common) but the rest of the spicy set... it was black pepper, or lots of cinnamon, or ginger, or not much of anything.
California is one of the latter, Korea seems to be one of the former. Right now I'm down toward Pusan. Hopped a bullet train from Seoul, and in two hours had done what takes Amtrak almost five. Speeds hit about 300 kph. The terrain doesn't vary as much as it does in Calif., even though I' moved as much inland as I would taking the train from SLO to LA.
I think it's the penninsular nature of the place, there's no huge landmass to change the temperatures. The pigeons are larger, the magpies about the same size. Black bills and bright blue bars on the latter. I hope to get some photos. The landscape is still winter blasted, which has a more severe, and desparate look than the heat death I am used to seeing on the hills of home. As I was doing my PT this morning I noticed the sycamores near my billet starting to bud, so perhaps I can get some pictures of them too. There were patches of green in the dead of winter (and the platic, sort of pop-up greenhouses they use. Frames, about 6-feet hight at the peak, and clear poly, stretched tight, over them. About 50 ft. long, and then dismantled in the winter), with low sheets of green inside. The fields are mostly tilled and there are sprouts showing in the stubble of rice paddies which haven't been cleared yet. Snow lingers in the shade of the trees.
What I was surprised to see, as we headed toward Taegu, was grapes. There were some fields with the disctinctive look of espaliered vines. Quite apart from this not being a wine culture, this isn't really good grape country, the summers are just too short, and the onset of winter too abrupt.
I was thinking, as I ate my "Seafood Spicy Octopus" on the plane, with it's decidedly Korean flavor (garlic, and acid and a fermented pepper paste) about the way post-columbian cuisine is different from pre-columbian. I've thought about it before, and it always comes back to the chile pepper.
Tomatoes, potatoes and maize are certainly a big deal, as is cassavan and all the other fruits and vegetables we got, but the pepper, it's ubiquitous, and shapes the flavor of so much.
Chinese... peppers. Thai... peppers. Japan has them, and Italy, and Malaysia and, and, and...
What, I wonder, was kimchee like before the peppers? Garlic and cabbage and salt and time.
India has a "hot" cuisine which predates the pepper (though the tomato is very common) but the rest of the spicy set... it was black pepper, or lots of cinnamon, or ginger, or not much of anything.
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-15 12:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-15 01:01 am (UTC)Ginger they have, but again, it doesn't thrive here, so it would be a trade issue, though Japan has it, so it can either be cultivated (I've never managed it, in Los Angeles, but I'm not as determined as someone might be for a crop with a high value) or traded (and China has no problem growing it).
Pepper... not so much. It doesn't work so well in things like pickling, for one. The bitter remains, but the heat and spice fade, and it would have been expensive. Not so expensive as it was to Europeans, but not trivial.
Spice is such an intersting subject. I wish I was in reach of my reference books.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-03-15 02:08 am (UTC)I have more experience with making sauerkraut, and there are some similarities to kimchee if you toss in extra fixings - sauerkraut with garlic, onion, and mild chili peppers is lovely.
Without the peppers, I suspect you'd end up with a cross between standard German sours and a few of the savory type meat and rice dishes - but this presumes flavors other than the fermented cabbage, cucumber, onion, and so on. I'm greedy, so I tend to mix the flavors around a lot.
As an aside, I note that tien tsin (a thai chili) makes for positively fantastic kimchee - though the Korean version may use the same thing sometimes and call it something else.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-15 07:41 pm (UTC)can i get a "Marco Polo"? whoop whoop
: )
Shooting in Pismo
Date: 2006-03-15 10:29 pm (UTC)LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - At least three people were believed killed and two others were hurt on Wednesday when a man opened fire at a Denny's restaurant in the central California beach community of Pismo Beach, police said.
A spokeswoman for the Pismo Beach Police Department said it was not immediately clear if the gunman was one of those who had died. She had no information on the condition of the two people hurt.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-16 04:21 pm (UTC)