4.014 Seuji Jjim

Cycle 4 – Item 14

19 (Sat) January 2013

Seuji Jjim

3.0

by YYH

at Ganghwa Seaside Hill

-Ganghwa, Buleun, Ganghwa, Incheon, Republic of Korea-

with W and DJ, AHY + KIT + JH, CJH + KKH, LHS + YYH

Ganghwa Seaside Hill is a campsite.  More of a parking lot.  It’s on a cliff overlooking the Yellow Sea.

We would have enjoyed a sweeping unobstructed view of the ocean if not for the fog, which is always a problem on the west coast.

We had the whole place to ourselves.
KIT recently acquired a pellet-burning furnace.
He claimed that the chimney needs to be high but couldn;t remember why.
As always, food and drink were in abundance, all night long.

Seuji Jjim (스지찜) is a Korean dish.  It consists of beef shank and tendons cut into small pieces and boiled in water, along with a simple array of aromatics (e.g., garlic, ginger) and seasonings (e.g., salt, pepper), for a couple hours until tender.  The pieces are then served in the cooking water, now a rich stock, usually with some sort of soy dipping sauce.  For some reason, even though “tendon” is “himjul (힘줄)” in Korean, the Japanese “seuji” is used in the context of food.

When we arrived at the campsite late in the afternoon,  YYH had already been simmering seuji in a huge vat for hours.
It can be served as a soup, very similar to seolleong tang.

The seuji jjiim was good.   Didn’t really taste much like anything per se, more about the chewy jelly-like texture of the tendons.  With loads of fresh scallions, along with rice and kimchi, it was very much like seolleong tang.

(See also GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)

(See also CAMPING)

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