Fusion April. 2014 | Page 22

kimbap

Have you ever seen or heard of kimbap? When some American people saw it, they would often call it sushi. Although that sounds so weird to me, I understand that it is hard for Americans to distinguish the difference between kimbap and sushi because they could look similar to them. However, kimbap is a very unique Korean food that differs with sushi in shape, ingredients, and taste. You can think of a basic shape of kimbap as typical sushi roll, which is round shaped, filled with some ingredients inside, and covered by rice. Almost similarly, kimbap is also round shaped, filled with many kinds of vegetables and usually a choice of one type of meat, and covered by seaweed sheet on the top of the rice. As food is getting modernized, kimbap’s shape is getting fancier with different kinds of taste these days. However, I have my own, unique story about kimbap that recalls memories of my childhood.

About 10 years ago, I went to supermarket with my mom a day before my elementary school’s field day, which is very special day that is held only once in a year. As my mom pulled a shopping cart to begin shopping, I ran to the snacks section. With my eyes focused on the all different types of snacks, I started scanning each of them with great concentration. After few seconds of quick scanning, I would pompously walk along the snacks section and basically pick up everything that I wanted to eat. By this time, my mom looked for me, yelling at me to stay with her. We then started choosing some vegetables, ham, tuna, cheese, and most importantly, a dried kimbap seaweed layer. Before checking out, my mom asked me what kind of kimbap I would like to eat. I said that I like beef kimbap. Then my mom would get some meat from the butcher’s shop. This is the first step to make kimbap: we need to have the ingredients.

Minho Cho

Food Memories

Foodsion/April, 2014 21