The Edible Expat, Episode 4: Homemade Chocolate and Cheese …and Beets!

Talk about ambition! Chocolate AND cheese!

Thanks to a small series of fantastic gifts – rennet from the states, cacao powder from a departing amiga here, and beets from a co-teacher – these wonderful items wound up on the agenda. I quickly secured a sous chef and got to work. Pro-tip: if, like mine, your kitchen is too small to admit more than one person at once, may I suggest

*Pause the blog writing while I clean up the tea that I just spilled all over… Some things never change! I would say it’s a shame that all those bills got wet, but I don’t have any idea how to read them anyways, so no big loss..*

Where was I?

Oh, yeah, pro-tip. Is your kitchen smaller than your bathroom (see below)? Then choose your sous chef wisely. Mine was around five feet tall, which allows for us to work in the same kitchen by holding our bowls and ingredients at different heights. Just don’t drop anything on her head.

But on to the main course! Between the cheese and chocolate and beets, you’re looking at some combination of two hours consecutively, or less if you have an oven and/or more stovetops to work with. Regardless, you’ll be starting with the rock-solid root vegetable: the beet! Don’t ask me how my co-teacher ended up with beets; she showed up with a large garbage bag full of them one day, and bam! my apartment was immediately full of the delicious scent of simmering beets.

Prepare your beets as you would any root vegetable; my favorite method is roasting, but with no oven available to me, I simmered mine for about fifty minutes. Boiled, simmered, or steamed beets go nicely with the chocolate sauce to come, but roasted beets will make the otherwise too-subtle flavor of the beets really stand on its own.

Slice ’em thin to show off the patterning in traditional sugar beets (or get Chioggia beets next time), but be careful not to get that lovely coloring on your nice new white (insert article of clothing here). My beloved GU Buddhist sweatshirt now looks like I was wearing it when I stabbed someone. As for that matter, so do the walls near my cutting board… maybe I should hang some new posters to hide the evidence…

At any rate, if your beets are soft enough, peel the outer skin off, then slice or cube and set aside some of the meat of the vegetable for the chocolate and cheese.

A good dish to try with the beets as well: tofu stir-fry with cubed beets, walnuts, and lemon juice. Add the lemon juice and some herbs at the end of your stir-fry. Voila! Food for the eyes and for the stomach.

Now that I’ve proven to my mom that I can feed myself a healthy meal all on my own, let’s move on to the next step: Cheese!

Step 1 is to destroy any expectations you may have had about what your cheese is going to look, feel, smell, or taste like. Because it’s not going to. In an ideal situation, you have a large kitchen with very large pots and long-stemmed thermometers, and you can go to the market and buy unpasteurized milk and citric acid.

You are a foreigner in Korea, so none of these things is true for your life and your cheese-making capacities. But do not be afraid! Just because your cheese is a little different does not mean it’s not delicious or otherwise worth it. If you’re using pasteurized milk, you’ll just have to heat the milk a little longer (okay, actually a lot longer), and the curds won’t come together as smoothly. You’re then looking more at a ricotta-ish cheese than a mozzarella.

If you can’t find citric acid here (시트르산), just throw in some vinegar, you’ll be fine.

Everyone’s cheese recipe is a little different but pretty similar. Start by adding a bunch of milk to your largest pot. I say “a bunch of” because converting American measurements to international measurements on top of having a language barrier, well, it’s just too much for my wee little brain. Probably you are looking at somewhere between two and three liters of milk here:

Throw in 1/4 cup of your acid, mix, and gently heat to 95 Fahreinheit degrees (low 30 degrees Celsius). Meanwhile, mix 1/2 tablet of rennet with a cup of water. Store the rest of the rennet in the freezer. Add the rennet to the 95-degree milk, and stir smoothly, slowly for thirty seconds while continuing to heat the mixture to 105 Fahreinheit.

At this point, your cheese recipe probably diverges from mine, or any others you might find on the internet. Also, I didn’t even follow my own directions particularly well, so take all this with a grain of salt. Or don’t. Salt was not part of any recipe that I found.

With unpasteurized milk, you should be able to turn off the gas and let your pot sit, covered, for five minutes, and voila! Custardy curds already. With pasteurization, the time can take significantly longer (my rennet tablets’ instructions said up to 45 minutes at the same low heat, but my sous chef and I became impatient and only waited around half that time). In either case, the curds should have started to separate from the whey by the time you are done mixing and have covered the pot (pic edited so you can see more clearly):

Ready to unveil? If you’ve achieved separation – for the ideal case, you have a layer of scoop-able, grabbable custard floating on top of the yellowish whey; for my case, I had more like a soup of curds floating around – you have now reached the “scoop-and-squeeze” part of the evening.

Scoop!

Then drain and squeeze. Obviously we all practice grand hygiene, so go ahead and smoosh the cheese with your fingers.

Next, put the cheese through two or three cycles of microwave heating, then more squeezing, getting as much of the whey out of the cheese as you can.

The end product? Cheese! Actual cheese! A small amount of actual cheese!

Look at it. LOOK AT IT!

Okay, stop looking. We have chocolate to make.

Actually, scratch that. This chocolate recipe is a crime against humanity, and I felt mildly guilty serving it to my co-teachers the following day. Nothing that involves corn syrup deserves any place in the sun.

Let’s go with the chocolate mousse instead, not that this is really that much healthier. In a large mixing bowl, whisk a pint or so of whipping cream (생크림) with half a cup of cacao powder, and sugar to taste (probably around a third to a half a cup). Whisk and whisk and whisk and whisk and suddenly POOF! You have mousse. Delicious.

Evidently I got tired of whisking while holding the bowl over my sous chef’s head, so I moved out here to the floor of my room…

You’ve worked hard. Time to sit back and dip those chopsticks into some delicious chocolatey goodness.

And no, I have no idea what the animal on my silverware is. Pikachu maybe? ㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎ

Look at All the Smog I’ve Collected

The lightest of these pads is about five days’ worth of smog particles, at one to two hours per day. The darkest is nearly two weeks’ worth.

Okay, but what exactly is the dark stuff?

Mostly particulate matter, filtered at a rate of 92% efficacy against particles sized 3 micrometers across or larger. The filters may be also effective against smaller particles – which generally cause the most worry – but for a number of reasons, these filters are only rated for 3 micrometers. At 2.5 micrometers (the PM2.5 rating), efficacy claims run up against the reality that most nations’ ability even to measure such small particles is compromised by questions of technological cost and transfer, for one matter among many.

As for what’s in the particulate matter, frankly the only people who really know such an answer don’t publish their data in English. But it’s safe to assume that the Cheongju smog mix includes aldehydes, nitrates, nitrogen oxides, and other nasty cast-offs from our industry, motor vehicles, etc. (which is not to underestimate the effects of other intertwined air pollution issues, including ozone and greenhouse gas emissions). In other words, stuff that you probably don’t want to be breathing.

Now, Korea is no India or China, or even California for that matter – although on some occasions the winds do blow particularly unfortunately, bringing toxic Chinese industrial air pollution into the skies of Korea, as occurred in the first week of last December. In that incident, the Korean government took quite a bit of heat for being caught mostly unawares; after the smog attack hit in the morning, announcers  incorrectly predicted that the smog would dissipate in the afternoon. Instead, it doubled down in intensity and stayed with us from its Wednesday arrival through the following weekend.

So how bad is it, really?

Well, let’s add some numbers to the thing. Air quality – which includes not just the black smog in my filters but other measurables, such as ozone levels – comes on a scale of o to 500, though Chinese smog levels have busted the upper limit over the last two winters. Before you go off a-China-bashing, it’s worth noting that measuring air quality in Asian nations is not an easy task. Much hay was made last month over studies suggesting the air quality in India may be worse than China’s; the truth isn’t so simple. China’s measurements of PM2.5 air quality are publicly available and updated hourly, thanks partly to pressure from dedicated U.S. Embassy air quality measurements; India’s measurements leave something to be desired.

The AQI (Air Quality Index) has six general levels (again, bearing in mind that the upper limit has now been broken by a few hundred points):

On this scale, Chinese cities range generally among the triple-digit categories, and coal-dependent Beijing is often the worst culprit. On the other hand, the government is decidedly taking action – my Asian Studies thesis related to this, so I have lots of boring thoughts to share; pm me if interested!

Conversely, Korea rarely rises into the triple digits. For Cheongju, most winter days (since December arrived) are between 50 and 80 on the AQI. That’s the dark crap you saw in the photo at the start of this post. Until today, February had been an exception, with most days this month in the 20-40 range. Smog here isn’t predictable, so don’t take the fresh air for granted! Things can change rapidly. In fact, today Cheongju (somewhat oddly) had the worst air in Korea:

Usually it’s Seoul, and maybe parts of Busan or Daegu, that are pushing into the triple digits. Truly a rare day for Cheongju. At 100, the smog is clearly visible. You can’t see individual trees on the hillsides – if you can see the hills at all – while streetlights have an eerie spray of light around them as the particles run interference.

But Chris, Korea is still in the healthy and moderate zones, mostly. Isn’t that fine?

Probably not. This is the part where I remind you that I am not an air pollution expert – but as someone who is an asthmatic, well, let’s just say that I follow this issue closely.

The numbers on that map reflect a measurement of PM10, meaning particles with a diameter of 10 micrometers. Remember, it’s the PM2.5 numbers that worry people the most. Unfortunately, it’s really difficult and expensive to measure PM2.5 relative to PM10, so these numbers are the best we have. In other words, good luck finding data on how much you’re breathing in by way of PM2.5.

On top of that, “healthy” varies by individual, which the scale itself even hints at. I’m a member of the “Sensitive Groups” option, and I will admit that I wear my special breathing mask if the AQI is above 50, and sometimes even in the forties as well. Otherwise, I’m looking at an interminable coughing session and having to break open an expensive inhaler pack to deal with it.

Not worth it in my book. Added bonus to wearing the mask? It’s harder to tell that I’m not Korean, so people on the street don’t gawk as much. No, I take that back. They gawk more, but only because I look like an insect, not because of my skin color.

Here are the US government’s thoughts on what constitutes a reasonable standard in terms of air pollution:

Chris, I can’t read that. What language is that even written in? What is all that nonsense??

The language of science! Do not be afraid. It is here to help you! Let’s dissect this.

“ppb” and “ppm” are parts per b/million, and “μg/m³” is micrograms per cubic meters. Don’t bother remembering – these are just different units for how much of these nasty things is in the air.

“Primary” refers to the air pollution that you generally think of as “air pollution” – the stuff from cars and factories and power plants and whatnot. “Secondary” refers to further air pollution that comes when primary air pollution reacts in the atmosphere in the presence of sunlight to produce new and even more Balrog-esque forms of pollution. Yay, life in the year 2014!

Last, the averaging time refers to allowable or desirable levels of each pollutant over a given period of time. These vary, because for a number of reasons we might have to make a temporary allowance for cities or power plants or factories that face high air pollution levels over just a short period of time, even as we have an obligation to keep mean pollution levels low. For example, the EPA recognizes (and China disputes) that on some days, up to a quarter of Californian air pollution comes not from California but from Asia, blown in across the Pacific – whoa! If all days were set to the same low target, then Californians would be penalized any time their air quality was worsened beyond that limit, whether the cause was Californian or Asian in origin. So there are rolling twenty-four hour, annual, and other targets instead of a blanket target.

You put me to sleep. Just tell me what I have to do.

Whoaaaa, that’s not for me to decide. Like I said before, this is an issue where “healthy” varies by individual. I love my breathing mask (which I wear in conjunction with a ski mask to help seal the nose area, and maybe also to amplify the “you-can’t-tell-I’m-not-Korean” effect), but not everyone feels the need or desire to wear one. I probably need it more than you. I am neither a doctor nor an expert; I have no idea what the negative consequences of breathing smog might be to your health. Okay, maybe I have some idea. You might grow a third arm. Out of your forehead. Spontaneously. Painfully. It will be horrible. Then again, maybe not. I have little comprehension of the hard sciences, which I’m pretty sure refers to the hard-headedness of their practitioners. Pretty sure about that.

But there are people who do have great comprehension of the natural sciences. And they think that breathing air pollution can be worse for your chances of developing lung cancer than passive smoking can be.

Things to think about: What am I doing to protect myself and my loved ones from any risks associated with air pollution? Do I need and/or want to wear a mask? Does my child need one? Do I have a way to tell how bad the air actually is, or am I just guessing (here’s a hint: use this website that updates every hour)? Am I working to increase or decrease my air pollution footprint? Do I minimize my pedestrian time spent on the busiest roads?

Serious thoughts, today, gang. Please take this issue seriously and keep yourself safe.

A Country Obsessed

Day 25: It is everywhere. I search in vain for an escape, with none to be found. It blares at the gym. It seeps under the apartment door. I hear it at work, on the bus… …I even see it in the eyes of my little students.

Day 26: The end is near. I sit on my bed, holding a jar of rubber cement. It will only take a few moments, I tell myself. Pour it in your ears and be done with it already. If only I wasn’t such a coward.

Day 27: I give in. I cave. A man can only take so much. They have gotten to me. I have sold out. Now, I, too, like all other denizens of this forsaken land, am obsessed. And like them, I shall not rest until all other human beings are likewise entranced by the greatest pop cultural blip since top hats.

___________________________________________________________

Frozen was released in South Korea on January 16th. Today is February 11th, and it’s already the highest-grossing animated film in the history of a country that knows quite a bit about animated films.

Today I’ve heard the song “Let It Go” already thirteen times, and it’s not even 3pm. I can actually hear it playing in the room next door – the school’s principal asked us English teachers at lunch to teach the song to our sixth grade students… as if they all haven’t already memorized the blasted song.

How obsessed is Korea? Well, let’s just say we love it.

We love it in music practice rooms:

We love it from female pop stars:

We love it from male pop stars:

We love it with bilingual subtitles:

We love it on reality TV:

We love it with Kyopos:

We love it from Ailee (my fav Korean singer), even though this is easily her worst performance ever:

We love it in a mashup with two Korean songs and the Beatles’ “Let It Be”:

And (my favorite) we love it with one guy and his guitar:

Oh, I’m sorry, is that too much for you? Well, then, why don’t you turn away and close the door? I don’t care what you’re going to say. Let the storm rage on. LET IT GOOOOO*

………….

…………………….

……..

……………….

*someone put me out of my misery

Adventures in Creative Chopsticking

I stopped being vegetarian the day I came to Korea. Before I left, the big question had been, “what the **** will I eat?”

When I arrived, the question became, “how the **** will I eat?” With the students and their homeroom teachers on retreat, the principal took the English and PE teachers to lunch. Lunch made of a half a crab, boiled whole in some soup. This was the moment at which it became obvious to me that chopsticks were first and foremost a tool for entertainment and were utensils only insofar as that might aid in meeting the first goal.

My principal delighted in saying, “HMMM. I think, maybe, you are some not good at eating Korean food.”

In my head, I thought, hmmmm I think, maybe, Korean food has evolved an exoskeleton to protect against chopsticks. Even the stainless steel ones. Especially the stainless steel ones.

Back then, the math was simple. Crab + chopsticks = hungry foreigner.

With six months under my belt, I’ve observed much. Dare I say, the young grasshopper is now the master. Here to double your quality of life in Korea I provide my hard-earned lessons.

General Rules of the Game:

1. Get over it. Or be hungry.

You will look like a fool. You are a fool. You will learn, young grasshopper. Give it time.

2. It is not a war.

Do not play the game of chopsticks war with your coworkers. Every time you drop something, they will smirk a little. Do not smirk when they drop something. You have nothing to gain.

Okay, maybe you can smirk just a little bit.

3. Default position is always, always, always the Grab. Squeeze the food with the chopsticks. Apply gentle, consistent, precise pressure. Lift to mouth. For best results, deposit food in mouth, not in lap.

Sidenote: chopsticks + salad > fork + salad.

4. Never leave your chopsticks plunged into your food, pointing upwards. This position is for food offering made to the ancestors, mostly. It consequently looks either really odd or really offensive (or both) when you do it in the lunch room.

And it’s really painful for your food.

Alternative Strategems for when the Grab simply won’t cut it:

1. The Stab.

Fruit. Large blocks of ddeok (rice flour creations). Anything oversized and inflexible. Stab it, let the blood drain out (or not), and consume. Plan your stabbing to maximize the number of bites you can take before the chopsticks are awkwardly positioned near the edge of the food.

^ The Stab in action.

2. The Scrape.

Poultry. Chicken drumsticks can be eaten by hand in informal situations, e.g. with your friends or even with the other teachers in the teachers’ lounge after class, but at lunchtime they must be tackled with chopsticks.

To execute a scrape, hold one chopstick per hand. The dominant hand will scrape, while the sub hand with hold the food in place. This may be preceded by a Stab to sever the chicken flesh from the chicken bone.

3. The Pry.

Fish. It comes with bones. Gently insert both chopsticks in between the spine (?) and the flesh. Pry gently, so that the bones stick to the spine and not to your food. Nom it.

4. The Scoop (For Advanced Practitioners Only)

Ravioli, and other foods that are slippery but will disintegrate if grabbed or stabbed or pried.  What do you do if you have no spoon? The Scoop! This will likely require either a plate with a sloped edge to push against, or else you can slightly tilt the plate. There is no dignity one can salvage if one is going to use your chopsticks as a spoon.

5. The Shovel.

Rice. Things mixed with rice. Things mixed with other things. Depending on your East Asian country of current location, you can either pick up your bowl, or not. If you can – pick it up and shovel that ****. You are a garbage disposal and the chopstick is your conveyor belt. Have at it.

Sounds easy? It is! Now prepare yourself for an entire year of this:

I am Sisyphus.

My life as a remake of an ancient Greek myth.

Goal: Remit money to an American bank account.

Step 1: Get Korean bank account.

Korean coworker is instructed by boss to take me to the Korean bank at the beginning of the year. I lay out the desirables: basic checking account, internet banking, English language customer service, ability to remit. We arrive at the bank and she sends me to the teller on my own, saying 와이팅!! (“Fighting!” This word is basically “You can do it!” but has come to be associated in my mind with “I’m screwed.”).

Step 2: Get internet banking.

Wait until enough time has passed that your boss will let you leave after class to go to the bank. This turns out to be three months. Within that time from, going to bank = docking hours from my vacation time. Welcome to Korea!

Step 3: Log on.

Pull open Chrome. Go to Nonghyup internet banking. Insert digital security certificate USB. Input passcode. Click “???? ?? ?? ??? ?” on every box (approximately 123812 of them) that pops up. In field marked “???????? ????????????????? ????” input password. Repeat process until you reach a page with about twenty fields labeled variously “???????????? ???” and “???????? ??? ?? ????????????”. Give up.

Step 4: Realize you have to install Internet Explorer, because of some obscure and ancient South Korean internet security law. Laugh away, my friends. Laugh away.

Step 5: Gather your strength.

It has scattered all over the classroom and will be needed. Go pick up the pieces and put your strength back together.

Step 6: Pull up the Microsoft Download Center.

It’s in Korean. Click on random things until English appears! Hooray!

Step 7: Download the .exe file.

Step 8: Find the .exe file on your computer, which is navigable in Korean. COME OUT COME OUT WHEREVER YOU ARE, .EXE FILE!!

Step 9: Run the file.

Uh-oh, the program tries to execute, but then it tells you you must have Microsoft Service Pack 3 or higher.

Step 10: Repeat steps 5 to 9 with the download .exe for Service Pack 3.

Uh-oh, the program tries to execute, but then it tells you you must have Internet Explorer 5 or higher.

At this point you are feeling very ??? ????????? ???????? in your feelz.

Step 11: Find a computer with Internet Explorer already on it. This is your laptop. Unfortunately there is a 99% chance that your computer is too new for this edition to be remotely compatible with Korea. Gather your strength and try anyways.

Step 12: Log on to Nonghyup internet banking.

Step 13: Click “??????? ?????” on the various things that pop up. Three of these will install things on your computer that not even a Korean will be able to help you with, because instead of Korean everything is written in some strange language made entirely of question marks. Beats me.

Step 14: If done properly, the browser now displays lots of things in Korean, with two words in English: “Global Banking.” CLICK THEM. CLICK THEM AS IF YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT. Actually, given your mental state at this point, your life pretty much does depend on it. Otherwise you will devolve into a psychotic mess.

Step 15: ENGLISH. YES. FOR REAL. ENGLISH. OH BLESS THE LORD MY SOUL SINGS OUT WITH JOY TO THE WORLD THE LORD HAS COME.

Just kidding, don’t be happy. The only reason your website is now in English is to taunt you with how close you are.

Step 16: Click on your account number.

Now, this is very, very, very important. DO NOT under any circumstances try to pull up your statement or search your transactions or perform a transfer. The site tells you these are options. IT’S A TRAP. It will suck you in, much like quicksand, as you squirm through trying to accomplish a simple task. Each time the website will tell you some input or other is incorrect. You will select your account from the drop-down menu a million times, and only one of those times will it be recognized. Save your mental strength.

Step 17: Proceed to the subheading for foreign remittances.

Step 18: Fill in all required fields. Note that there are too many fields. Fields that will be required before you can submit. But these fields are not information you have. You can only fill in the fields for American banks, but there are other fields that simply do not apply… yet the system requests you provide inputs!

Step 19: Weep. Silently. Loudly. Wail. And give up.

Step 20: Hear rumor of Korea Exchange Bank accounts set up specifically to help foreigners accomplish this.

Step 21: Repeat steps 1 to 19. Estimated time of wait until you will be allowed to go to the bank without your vacation time being docked: February 24, 2014.

Step 22: Repeat steps 1 to 19 on a closed loop.

For more information, please see http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/samsara.html

Back to the Future!

Or at least that’s what it feels like when you land at the world’s best airport, in the world’s most wired country, for the second time in your life.

This is just a quick update post to let you all know that I am, in fact, still alive (or perhaps someone is pretending to be me online! Quick, let me make some sarcasm at you so that you know it’s me. I loved watching the Super Bowl! Plus, I firmly believe Georgetown basketball is going to the Final Four next month! I appreciate the coherent, logical, compassionate policies of the Republican Party!). See, it’s still me.

I’ve been busy being not busy on my first adult vacation, and now that I’m back in the good ol’ Cheongju I’ll be scrambling for a bit getting my life in order. All of which is to say, patience, my dear sloths. I’m not withholding the blog out of spite and will do my best to provide more content for all your procrastination needs. I will admit that I was shocked to see people still read my blog over the last three weeks, and so I am ashamed that you have no new shenanigans of mine at which to chuckle.

To tide you over, here’s a lovely story from today:

Me, sitting at work, taking a quiz for my calculus course: wtf is an asymptote… hm… asymptote…. hmmmmm…..

Coworker, entering room: “Chris, do you want to go to the third floor?”

Me, thinking wtf is on the third floor?: “Um, sure. …why exactly?”

Coworker: “He wants to make a toast to us!”

Me: what is this nonsense?? “Oh! Who is ‘he’?”

Coworker, thinking very hard about this: “Hmmmm… ummmm… he was wearing a blue coat today.”

Me: -_____- “What is his name?”

Coworker: “Oh! Lee So-and-so.”

Me: “Oh! Great! Yeah!”

*heads upstairs with two coteachers, expecting Mr. Lee – who is the newest teacher in the school, which is the only reason it almost makes sense that he wants to toast us, since he hangs out with the English teachers all the time, or so my brain figures – to have some sort of alcohol for the toast. Probably this is a mandatory event for me and my coteachers, or else I would think it strange that the coteacher who is a tee-totaler seems rather enthusiastic about the whole deal.

*enters teachers’ lounge.

Me: O____O

then

-_______-

Instead of alcohol, Mr. Lee is literally making toast for us. As in, he is putting slices of bread in a toaster, spreading apple jam on them, and handing them out to teachers.

#Welcome back to the crazy.