Chefs whip up Korean dishes at Aryaduta

Chefs whip up Korean dishes at Aryaduta

By Ati Nurbaiti

JAKARTA (JP): Korean dishes are not new to Indonesian
restaurant-goers, who have found this a delicious alternative for
their Asian palate along with Japanese and Thailand cuisine.

To eat in classy surroundings, as well as really liking the
food, has been easier with these neighborly choices. But for
first timers, entering a restaurant and wondering whether or not
you will really enjoy the experience, with no way out until it
ends, can be daunting for some.

The on-going Korean food festival at the Aryaduta hotel, until
Feb. 3, requires less courage. It's a simple promotion in buffet
style at the Aryaduta's Teratai Cafe Restaurant, held jointly by
the hotel and Garuda Indonesia. There are even some Western
dishes mixed in, for the more curious.

A beginner's knowledge is limited to kimchi, the salty cabbage
dish that, like A in the alphabet, is the starter of Korean
cuisine.

Kimchi has become well known to non-Koreans because it seems
to be everywhere, somewhat like our sambal, which is a mix of red
chilly and other spices.

To accompany the warm rice, the buffet, at Rp 34,000 per
person, offers various dishes from fish, rib, beef (the barbecue
is called bulkogee) and chicken to what Indonesians surprisingly
recognize as their humble ikan asin (salted fish) served on
shimmering dinner ware. The difference: it's not salty but dipped
in a spicy sauce.

There is an unusual tasting dish of raw fish, cut to fit atop
a rounded serving of rice, which turns out to taste nothing at
all unless dipped into the special sauces. Accompanying the
boiled fish and shrimp are an assortment of cooked, seasoned
vegetables, which you can eat with thin noodles. Not everything
thin is noodles; an element of surprise is found in thinly cut
radishes.

Rice cakes are served with fillings mixed with ornately rolled
seaweed and pieces of fish and meat. There were pa-jeuk, freshly
fried battered snacks, using greens and oyster, which Indonesians
found similar to bakwan, vegetable fritters.

Visitors are introduced to two kinds of Korean soups, a kind
of porridge soup and a seaweed soup called mi-yeuk-kook.

Desert is disappointing because it is limited to su-chung-gwa,
a refreshing drink made with persimmons, and you hunt in vain for
what might be Korean on a table loaded with mousse and pastries.

"The variety of ingredients at the Korean supermarket was
limited," chef Soo Chun Lee said. Chun Lee and his colleagues
from the Hyatt Regency hotel in South Korea arrived late the
night before the promotion opened on Jan. 26, dropped by one of
the Korean supermarkets and dashed on to the Aryaduta's kitchen.

"At first we had to use the Japanese Kikkoman sauce," Chun Lee
said.

Back up

Luckily Indonesia's Korean community came to the rescue and
they now have the special sauces which Lee noted were lacking in
the supermarkets.

It was also this community, consisting of Indonesian speaking
Koreans, who provided the first day's guests with personal
knowledge of Korean culture, namely a tea ceremony and dances.

Sang Seuk Shin, a resident of Lebak Bulus, says he is among
the few number of men who can still perform the slow, complicated
crane dance, called dong-rae hak chum.

He and the performers of the tea ceremony are members of woul
hwa cha he, a group preserving the tradition of tea ceremonies.

"Our message is that people must not forget this tradition,
which teaches youngsters to respect elders, in the serving of the
tea."

Traditional etiquette should be learned when you enjoy Korean
cuisine. "If you find something uneatable among the dishes,
remove it quietly, do not cause any trouble," writes Woul Young
Chu in the book Traditional Korean Cuisine.