[Cooking Talk] Toppings That Add Care and Beauty to Food

During school days, in Korean cooking practice classes, before the lesson started, we would thinly fry egg yolk and white sheets, remove moss from black stone mushrooms and roll them up to finely julienne, halve green chili peppers to remove seeds and lightly scrape out the flesh, and neatly cut red chili peppers as the beginning of class preparation. This was to prepare the garnishes to be used in that day's cooking in advance.

We call "foods sprinkled or placed on dishes to decorate beautifully and stimulate appetite" garnishes, and in the West, they are called "garnish".

Depending on the region, they are called by different names such as "utgomyung", "utgi", "kkumigae", or "kkumi".

Although food is not incomplete without garnishes, having garnishes or garnish raises the dignity of the dish, and food topped with garnishes can also mean "untouched by anyone".

Especially, our garnishes focus on visual effects, reflecting Korea’s traditional color culture by harmoniously using the five cardinal colors (Obangsaek): blue, white, red, black, and yellow.

For blue, we use green onions, water parsley, cucumber, and chili peppers; for white, egg whites and pine nuts; for red, red chili peppers, red threads of chili, and jujubes; for black, stone mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, seaweed, and black sesame seeds; and for yellow, egg yolks.

Depending on the shape of the food, the shape of the garnish also varies, sometimes julienned, diamond-shaped, shell-shaped, flower-shaped, or powdered, so garnishes are not only for visual effect but also to convey sincerity in the food.

In this busy era, one might think, "Why bother with garnishes if they don’t affect the taste of the food?" but even just a single egg garnish can add sincerity and beauty to the dish. So, for this year’s Seollal rice cake soup, it might be nice to finely fry egg garnish and julienne it on top.

Cooking researcher Imi Kyung (http://blog.naver.com/poutian), Photo by Naturement