Typical dishes from Korea and Spain

Welcome to our blog again! Today we are going to talk about our culinary culture and introduce our typical dishes. The reason we pick this subject is that both of us feel happiness when we eat delicious food. Also, we can relax stress from hard working by eating what we like. Therefore, for us, food is very important in our lives and sometimes it affects even our productivity at work. That’s why we choose this topic and we will talk about characteristics of food in our countries.

At first, in Korea, most of the people like to eat spicy food with Korean peppers so you can see red, red color in your Korean dish. The features of dishes are different and it depends on regions. In the north, people eat a little bland food. It means less salty. On the other hand, in south, people eat dishes seasoned with more salt than in the north. Even though they have different levels of seasoning, it is same that typical dishes in Korea are made with ‘Kimchi’. Se young will introduce this later. Spain is characterized by the Mediterranean diet, in which some of the typical ingredients are tomato, oil, vinegar, and bread. Patricia will explain more about the typical dishes of Spain.

In Korea, like Se young mentioned, there is lots of spicy food. Most of the people are extremely excited about a spicy taste because they relieve their stress through eating. If it were really spicy, they could forget their concerns or distracting thoughts from their work because they just concentrate on food while sweating.

And most Korean typical dishes are made with ‘Kimchi’. Kimchi is also made with Korean pepper. In the right picture, you can see various kinds of soup with Kimchi. It is a very common dish in Korea. It is called ‘Kimchi stew’. We put pork or tuna, kimchi, onion, garlic, water and just boil them together for a while.

However, there are also not spicy foods. The left one is ‘Bulgogi’ and the right one is ‘Bibimbab’. ‘Bulgogi’ is made with beef and soy sauce. Actually, soy sauce is a very commonly used ingredient in Korean dishes. People use it in most dishes and sometimes use it instead of salt. ‘Bibimbab’ is well-known dish in Korea. It needs lots of ingredients. The difference depends on regions or people who make it. People cook vegetables and season them with soy sauce, pepper powder, salt and sesame oil. And put them above rice. You can also put a fried egg or a raw egg yolk in the middle. The way to eat ‘Bibimbab’ is mixing everything together and the taste will be amazing.

In Spain the weather is very hot during summer. For that reason, we eat cold soup like gazpacho (made with tomato, pepper, cucumber, garlic, cumin, water, and oil), ajo blanco (made with garlic, almonds, water, and oil) or salmorejo (made with tomato, garlic, oil, vinegar and bread). On the top of gazpacho you can add parsley, while on the top of ajo blanco the typical accompaniment are grapes. Finally, on the top of salmorejo we usually add boiled egg and ham, which is another food typical from Spain.

Other typical dish from Spain is called paella and its main ingredient is rice. There are different types: with vegetables, with meat, with fish, black rice, etc.

Finally, we could not end this post without talking about the Spanish omelette, which is made with 3 simple ingredients: potatoes, eggs, and oil. The result is great.