Snapshots from South Korea: Vegetarian Temple Food at Sanchon

Last period I visited Seoul, South Korea, for the prototypal time. Here's a countenance at something I ate from my one-week trip.

It wasn't until I had asked friends for matter recommendations in Seoul that I prototypal heard of tabernacle cuisine, tralatitious vegetarian (or vegan, to be more specific) matter served at religion temples. Because I can't meet take cooked things and noodles every the time, I was glad to become crossways Sanchon ("Mountain Village"), digit of the most famous restaurants in Seoul (and worldwide) that specializes in temple-inspired cuisine, patch travel around Insadong with wife Yang and her care on my terminal flooded period in South Korea. The edifice was unsealed in 1981 by Kim Yon Shik, a past religion monk, who divagation from existence a proprietor has also cursive threesome cookbooks most vegetarian cuisine. (For more information, you crapper feature an discourse with Kim Yon Shik at Hi Seoul.)

When I was leaving the restaurant, I saw a Negro gluing on apiece petal by assistance at the review counter.

The edifice is settled at the modify of a rotation line in an old-fashioned house, making for a calm, private region in what is mostly a laboring area. After attractive soured your position you start the house's courtyard—aka the dining room—decorated with bonny handstitched lotus-shaped lanterns. You hit the pick between movement at a lawful plateau with chairs or baritone tables with cushions on the floor, but when I was there everyone chose the latter. (I desirable it; it prefabricated me see fireman to my intake companions and my food.) Keeping with religion tradition, the utensils and most of the bringing dishes are prefabricated of vegetation from the zelkova tree.

For â‚©22,000 ($17.84) per person, the prix fixe nutrition provided us with more than 20 dishes. They were mostly diminutive portions of cured seedlike dishes, or namul in Korean, but it was ease a aggregation of food. And to be honest, I don't undergo just what I ate. There were some unclassifiable land and elevation vegetables cured with benni oil, digit of my selection seasonings. Aside from the difference of cured vegetables, there was also japchae, pan-fried pancakes, noodle stew, and tofu.

My selection ply was the sugary fried kelp for its initially concise texture that dissolved into softness at prototypal bite, and compounding of course and salty. The wholesome tofu stew was especially satisfactory to take during that cold, wet morning. And then there was the recreation of having a picture strike of substantially embattled vegetables at my fingertips. While I could never fuck the more taste greens, I idolized having much a panoramic difference of flavors and textures, and, for a anorectic moment, not opinion fancy and fruitful after my nutrition ended.

Clockwise from crowning left: rice porridge, japchae, seedlike fritters, rice pastries, curd stew, steamed tofu.

If you're peculiar sufficiency though, here's the flooded schedule as it was cursive by the edifice with my comments in brackets:

1. Appetizer: Porridge of the flavour [lightly cured rice porridge] 2. Watery stark kimchi 3. Radish mushrooms, peppers, and another vegetables enwrapped in anorectic vermicelli flapjack [We were presented something added instead of this dish, a variety of rice and vegetables enwrapped in spinach-like leaves] 4. Seven disorderly vegetables, apiece with its possess seasonings 5. Kimchi 6. Seasoned firm lettuce 7. Cooked roots of expand flowers and fern braken 8. Fried kelp 9. Steamed noodle curd with burdock, mushrooms, and carrots 10. Jelly [acorn] 11. Small potatoes vitrified with soja sauce and millet syrup 12. Seasoned disorderly elevation roots 13. Special chopsuey [japchae] prefabricated with assorted vegetables and mushrooms 14. Three kinds of fritters of cooked seasonal vegetable 15. Seasonable religion monk's selection vegetables 16. Three kinds of belittle cooked seasonal seedlike pancakes [basically same #14, but with assorted vegetables] 17. playwright with beans, millet, etc 18. Soybean lather with mushrooms, radish, flushed peppers, noodle curd, etc. 19. Tea 20. Sticky rice dough [one of my selection Asiatic desserts, a cooked fancy rice eat titled yugwa]

The schedule also notes that they ingest destined ingredients titled "The Five Stimulants" ("osinchae" in Korean) that you wouldn't encounter in tralatitious tabernacle food: onions, naif onions (scallions), child garlic, naif peppers, and honggo (dropwort). You crapper take that you poverty dishes without the stimulants. (I institute another sources that didn't itemize naif peppers as digit of the fivesome stimulants, but included leeks, chives, and patch rocambole. I would adopt that anything in the onion and flavoring categories aren't allowed, but that the fivesome stimulants specifically intend to Asiatic ingredients.)

Although Sanchon's schedule is pricier than most of the another matter I ate during my trip, it's farther from unreasonable. As digit of my selection meals during my trip, it's a locate I'd convey to if presented the chance.

Sanchon

14 Gwanhun-dong, Jongno-gu 110-300, Seoul, South peninsula (map) 82-02-735-0312 sanchon.com There's a Sanchon class at the first of the street you invoke onto to intend to the restaurant.

Vegetarian Culinary