When you enter an Italian restaurant, you see tables set with tablecloths, napkins, and cutlery.
In some Korean restaurants, there are no tablecloths, napkins, or cutlery. This is because customers boil or grill the food by themselves on the stoves set in the tables. The restaurant serves a lot of side dishes. If you want to wipe your mouth you can take a paper tissue on the end of the table. On the other hand, you don’t need cutlery, because the food has already been chopped into small pieces and you can eat it with spoons and chopsticks.
We boiled a big saucepan full of various kinds of mushrooms, meat, and vegetables, and when the food was well-done, we ate it in our dishes. It was hot and delicious. After that, we moved to a cafeteria to eat Korean Patbingsu, similar to Sicilian granita, but with red-beans (the Korean name is Pat) on the top. It was very delicious.
The ways of cooking in Italy and Korea are different. But to cook well, whatever country you belong to, you just need three things: good ingredients, love for cooking, and love for those you are cooking for. Love is the basis of everything. It is the main ingredient!
Ettore Grillo author of these books:
– November 2: The Day of the Dead in Sicily (English version)
– A Hidden Sicilian History (English version)
– The Vibrations of Words (English version)
– Travels of the Mind (English version)
– Una Storia Siciliana Nascosta (versione in lingua italiana)
– Viaggi della Mente (versione in lingua italiana)
Ettore Grillo's Blog and Books 