Please Pass the Head Cheese

Last weekend, after church, it was somehow decided that we should eat 낙지 [nak-ji] 'nearly-living octopus' for dinner.  I'd heard of it, but never seen it before.

We took our seats in the restaurant and, all too soon, the dish arrived.  Long tentacles covered in red sauce, squirming.  The 아줌마 [aj-um-ma] 'aunt' "middle-aged woman" whipped out a pair of scissors, snipped them into shorter chunks, and put the plate on our in-table burner to cook.

Wriggling, twitching, fighting for life, the tentacles breathed their last and eventually relaxed - on our dinner table, right before our eyes.

The sight of it was enough to remove every ounce of hunger from my body.  I watched squeamishly as the others filled their plates, satisfying their stomachs.

As I looked on, the long-lived slogan, "When in Rome..." began to cycle through my mind.  Unable to ignore it, and seeing that the other eaters were consuming (rather than being consumed), I mustered up my courage, closed my eyes, and took a bite.

It wasn't bad.

Still, though, picturing it alive in my mind, wriggling on my plate, prevented me from taking bite number two.

Fortunately, we ordered an extra dish of fried rice afterward.

...

Thinking I'd conquered it all, I went to a 수산 시장 [su-san shi-jang] 'seafood market' with a few friends the following week.

"I can do seafood," I thought to myself.  "Nothing can be worse than living octopus..."

The market was filled with sea "food."  There were creatures of all shapes and sizes - some living, some dead, some somewhere in between.

Wet cement floor beneath our feat, a rank, pervasive odor filling our noses, salesmen pointing, shouting, shoving fish in our faces from every direction, we eventually decided to try a few clams and a larger, plain-looking live fish.

The 아저씨 [ah-jo-shi] 'uncle' "middle-aged man" scooped the fish out of its tank and landed it on a cutting board, where the 아줌마 [aj-um-ma] 'aunt' "middle-aged woman" proceeded to chop off its head and tie it up in a plastic bag.

With an unwarranted eagerness about us, we took the plastic bag downstairs to a restaurant and waited, while they prepared our meal.

First came the sashimi (raw fish).  Two bites was all I could stomach.

Next, the steamed clams arrived.  They said they were steamed, but they tasted raw to me.  One big bite of slimy, sticky, suctioning clam was far more than I should have ever attempted.

I got it down, but barely... barely...

Finally, the soup arrived.  It was a boiling pot of spicy liquid where they'd dumped everything else - bones, head, you name it.  Koreans don't waste a thing.

Seeing as how only one out of the four of us actually enjoyed the raw delicacies, we opted to dump the rest of the raw fish, and even the clams, into the soup and let them cook.  I was glad I wasn't alone in my squeamishness that day.  At last, the three of us could eat!

...

So there you have it: I tried it.  But next time I'm offered a dish of this sort, I think I'll ask for a plate of head cheese instead.

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Thanks for reading :)