Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Warty Sea Squirt Anyone? (3 May)

Part of the adventure of living in a country as different as Korea is accepting that food is probably going to look very different.  I’m used to being uncertain about the identification of many of the dishes served in the cafeteria but today’s offering makes me very hesitant and very curious. 
I tend to avoid the soups at school lunches mostly because they usually contain shellfish of some sort.  Today’s soup, however, contains something that I have never before seen.  It’s an ambiguous looking nugget-shaped gray-ish coloured type of seafood.  It also has little bumps all over it giving it a really unappetising appearance.  I spend most of lunch eye-balling my colleagues’ soup and trying to figure out what on earth this curious addition is without much success. 

As we leave the cafeteria, I ask my co-teacher about the things that look like little brains much to her amusement.  I’m told that they are called mitodok in Korean, and they are good for anti-ageing.  When we get back to our office, she googles a translation for me and a few pictures: In English, they’re called “warty sea squirts” – an even less appealing name than their appearance and not something I’ll be tasting anytime soon. 

1 comment:

  1. I just bought from Korea store in Chicago and thought it is snails but come out it is sea squirts. I do not know how to cook it and it look so scary. Can anyone teach me how to cook it pls. I want to try

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