On last week's episode of Top Chef, Bravo TV's reality show/cooking competition, the contestants were divided into two teams that had to prepare Korean and Vietnamese dishes. The funniest part of the whole show was when they announced that they would be doing Korean and Vietnamese, the contestants all had looks on their faces like, "What crawled into the wall and died? Where is that odor coming from?" To put it mildly, they were not pleased.
What they came up with on the Korean team (aside from mushy rice and a hockey-puck like gelatin dessert) was a braised pork and kimchi. You can find the recipe here. I'm no expert on Korean food by any stretch, but I am curious to know if anyone else thought the chef's recipes were way off base for Korean food. I mean, the ingredients for Otto's kimchi sounded like the spices my mom uses, but he was cutting up red cabbage. Do other people use that? And exactly when did panna cotta and gelatin become Korean desserts?
I originally posted these questions over at Kimchi Mamas, and the moms over ranged from mildly amused to completely outraged that our native cuisine was being misrepresented. Nobody uses red cabbage in kimchi and lychee is more a Chinese thing than Korean. The pork dish still sounded pretty good to me, and maybe worth trying. Lien of The Lotus Life chimed in that the Vietnamese dishes were no more authentic than the Korean (and she would know, being Vietnamese and all). So, Top Chef gets a resounding thumbs down from Moms Who Ought to Know
And, since we're on the subject of Americanized Korean food, I once saw a Korean woman on TV making Kalbi using Coca-cola as the sweetener instead of sugar. According to the commenters over at Kimchi Mamas, soda or fruit is sometimes used as a meat tenderizer for bulgogi. You learn something everyday. I learned that you internet people are totally smart.
Photo from BravoTV website. Cross-posted in part at Kimchi Mamas.
