Food to Try... in Seoul!!! :-) # 1

<< Street Food and Others in Seoul >>
Seoul's one of the major characteristics is having "street food." Especially starting from fall, many carts come out on the streets loaded with mouth watering food.

So what are the major street food???
1. << Boo-eung uh BBang!(Boo-eung uh=fish Bbang=bread) >>
We call this Boo-eung uh Bbang not because the filling is made of fish but the shape of the bread is fish! This bread is simply made up of bread mixing(flour, butter, water, etc depends on the maker/seller) and sweetened red been paste filing!
And simply eating is the best way to find out why this is the long time favorite street food of Korea~

2. << Hoo-dduk(rice cake) >>
Although the name of this food indicates that this is a rice cake, I would say this is more like bread than rice cake. This is a round bread/rice cake that has sugar, honey, sesame powder, and cinnamon power mix inside. The batter can be made in many different ways depend on who makes it. It can contain rice powder or sweet rice powder making Hoo dduk more rice cake like. However, the batter can be made only with flour very ironic to be called "dduk." The Hoo dduk maker shapes the batter roundly and then put the filling inside the center hole that he or she makes inside the rounded batter dough. Then the maker closes the hole and shapes the filled dough round again. And finally, he or she puts the dough on the hot frying pan and presses it with round presser. So the hoo dduk looks like a fried pancakes with sweet filling inside. Along with Boo-eung uh BBang, Hoo Dduk is a long time favorite winter street food in Korea!

3. << Gooeun(baked) Bam(chestnut) and Gooeun Goguma(sweet potato) >>
When people have to worry over high calorie intakes while eating other street foods, people can simply turn over to comparably healthy street food such as Gooeun Bam and Gooeun Goguma! As they are called, chestnuts and sweet potatoes are just simply baked not adding other extra sweet or salty calorie boosters!Also those vegetable and nuts are known as healthy food! It's not a bad idea to have them instead of sweet or salty other street food if you worry about those extra pounds~

4. << Pojangmacha(a street stationed cart selling street food) Food >>
People can't talk about Korea not mentioning Pojangmacha! Pojangmacha sells a variety of food...
1. << Ddukbokki >>
As many people know already, ddukbokki is string shaped rice cake cooked in red peppered sauce. What's special about it is that each pojangmacha shows different tastes although the name of the food is the name and even looks (well it's always red! almost...)2. << Uh-muk >>
It is fish cake! Although its name sounds weird, it sure tastes great especially in winter! Uh muk made up of fish! Fish is scrambled and shaped into a flat square or round string. And then Uh muk is boiled and cooked in soup(made by pojangmacha owner-usually the soup base contains water, fish, onion,radish,sea weed,etc). People can drink the soup when they eat Uh muk and it's the best to have them in winter!3. << Sun Dae(Korean style Sausages) >>
At first, people would not be able to eat it easily because unlike usual sausages, it is black. However, it is a sausage made of sweet potato starch based noodles stuffed in pig intestine. Most Koreans love it. And when they eat it, they eat with liver (steamed along with sun dae)and others too. They may not be too pleasant to look at but they are healthy food so try them!4. << Gimbap >>
I hope everyone knows about it now. It is Korean style sushi.

5. << Bbopggi >>
I am afraid that it's not so easy to find it nowadays. However, some places, it's still available! It is simple sweets that little kids enjoy (and adults enjoy them when they want to reminisce their childhood).Bbotggi is made up of baking soda and sugar. In a steel dipper, Bbotggi maker puts two or three scoops of sugar and a smaller scoop of baking soda and put it over a fire while mixing them. Then the mixture creates golden colored liquid. Then the maker puts it on the cooling pan and presses it with presser(yes, the same presser for Hoo dduk!) then before Bbopggi hardens, the maker presses different shapes of smaller version of cookie cutters to make a shape on Bbopggi! In old days, it was a tradition that if a person succeeds to cut Bbopggi around thd cookie cutter shape, the successful person gets another Bbopggi! So, it was always a battle betweem Bbopggi maker and Bbopggi buyers!