Wednesday Gourmet (Wednesday Food Talk / 수요미식회)

Welcome to the 221st episode of Wednesday Food Talk.

Welcome. - Welcome.

Today's theme is a dish of well-dried fish...

with rich and spicy seasoning.

It can be a meal and a snack for drinks.

You will find its chewy texture really charming.

It's semi-dried pollack.

We have the perfect guests for today's theme.

She's been working on a drama, as well as a radio show these days.

She is a versatile actress. Please welcome Kim Gyu Ri.

Welcome. - Hello. Nice to meet you.

He's the first idol singer who became the member of Mensa.

His brain is cute and sexy. He is a brainiac.

Please welcome Park Kyung. - Hello, I'm Park Kyung.

Kyung, you were on our show before.

But it's his first time to be here since Seok Jin joined the show.

It must have been a long time since you three got together.

I know. - Right.

You three worked on the same TV show.

Aside from their image on TV, what are their actual palates like?

Hyun Moo says that his palate is like a kid's.

He eats more like a teenager now.

He will have a high schooler's palate soon.

It's somewhere near summer vacation for a 10th grader.

I'm somewhere there.

Seok Jin has a delicate palate.

I have a delicate palate of a man who is in his 30s.

I'm sure you had meals together. What are they like?

We used to eat a lot together.

In fact, I'm so glad to see...

Hyun Moo here at least.

We used to see each other every week...

because of the quiz show.

The show is on a break at the moment.

I haven't heard from him since then.

Didn't you know that he is that kind of man?

I didn't know.

I had no idea. I couldn't reach him at all.

There has to be a red light of a camera if you want to see me.

Then I'd be moving.

I'd ask how you are doing.

I've known him for three years. He's such a different man now.

He is one of the most materialistic celebrities.

He's a monster who only goes after money.

He's a monster.

He's a capitalism monster. - I'm so glad to see him here.

A capitalism monster.

You are happy to see him here. - Right.

Hyun Moo is someone...

you want to have a meal with.

He would be really generous when he gives compliments on the food.

So that makes it an enjoyable meal for me.

I get impressed even before tasting the food.

"Goodness, this is so fresh like the sea."

That's right. You do that.

Today's theme is semi-dried pollack.

There are still many people who don't really know this.

Seok Jin, you got fall in love with semi-dried pollack this time?

When I heard this week's theme,

my reaction was like this. "What? What is semi-dried pollack?"

"Is it such a good dish that...

"it can be the food topic for this week?"

We covered so many different types of food on this show.

But we don't cover something like a horse mackerel with stripes.

That's what I felt. - We should cover that too.

We should cover that dish.

So I searched about it on the internet.

It's another version of pollack.

There are so many types of pollack.

I thought it must be something I've had already.

I tried it again at this restaurant.

I realized that there are so many types of...

dried pollack dishes that I wasn't aware of.

I was satisfied with the meal. - Great.

So this is semi-dried pollack.

Pollacks have so many names...

depending on the way...

you dry or process them.

For semi-dried pollack, you remove the innards of pollack.

It's called kodari in Korean because of the way it is dried.

It's semi-dried.

The flesh gets really elastic.

It also gets more chewy.

We don't have it as it is.

It gets seasoned really well when we add the seasoning.

So we usually have it as a braised dish.

I had it for the first time.

It was really delicious.

Thanks to Wednesday Food Talk,

I got to learn what it is and taste the food too.

The texture...

How should I put it? Its aroma.

It has its unique aroma. - It stinks a bit.

Yes, it stinks a bit. - Right.

But its texture is soft and chewy at the same time.

So I really liked it.

I only eat food that's familiar to me,

and I don't usually eat food that I don't know about.

I didn't know its nickname, kodari,

so I didn't eat it often.

But I wouldn't say that kodari is for meals.

People usually pair the dish with drinks.

You said that the dish goes well with drinks,

but I eat it to cure hangover.

You said that you often get kodari delivered.

Yes, I do. I live in Seongsu-dong.

This restaurant in a market delivers kodari.

Actually, here's how I first tried the dish.

To be honest, I didn't know that it was a type of pollack.

When you look at the food delivery app,

you'd see a restaurant that looked like they'd serve good food.

Those restaurants write on the app, "We speak with our flavors."

That's how I ended up trying that dish.

It's fish, but it's easy to separate the bones from the meat.

It tasted like the fish soaked up the sauce really thoroughly.

I eat the dish three times a month.

Do you eat that alone? - Pardon?

Do you eat that alone? - Does she like that too?

"She"? - Yes.

We weren't supposed to bring her up.

His condition to join us today was not to talk about the lady.

We don't know all the conditions. - I see.

I'm sorry. - Okay.

You said you liked this too, So Eun.

When I was young,

kodari was served for my lunch at school.

It was deep-fried semi-dried pollack.

Back then, I didn't think it was delicious...

because the fish was small,

and the frying batter was too thick.

I didn't get to truly taste the fish.

After I grew up, I went to a Korean restaurant.

That's when I saw the whole fish including the head and the tail.

And I realized this is why people ate this dish...

and that this fish was also big like that.

The standard that determines whether the dish is good or not...

is whether the restaurant has good sauces or not.

The fish itself don't give a lot of flavors.

The highlight of this dish is...

how delicious the sauce is, how thoroughly the fish soaked up...

the sauce, and how much we can taste it with rice.

If the sauce and the fish were to be served individually,

they wouldn't have been that tasty.

When they are cooked together, there's a huge synergy effect.

The recipes depend on the purpose.

When you eat this with drinks,

you'd take off the meat and dip it in the sauce.

And when you eat this with rice, you'd mix the sauce and rice.

And you would put a piece of fish on top of the rice.

Here's how I eat. I get a dried laver ready.

I put a piece, dripping with the sauce on the dried laver.

Restaurants serve bean sprouts too. I put bean sprouts on it too.

And some restaurants would give you sesame oil on the side.

I add a drop of the oil, roll it, and eat it.

It feels like you're eating it...

with rice even though you didn't add rice in it.

The dried laver absorbs the sauce, and it gets stuck in your mouth.

When I eat it like that, I think it goes well...

with both rice and drinks.

I think that's the best way to enjoy the dish.

I can understand...

why Gyu Ri has never tasted this dish before.

Back in the days, only people in Gangwon Province ate this dish.

This dish has spread all over Korea not that long ago.

Right. Let's say that you went to a restaurant before it spread.

You'd rarely see braised semi-dried pollack on the menu.

And you'd be surprised when you see that on the menu.

That's when you'd get to order it.

It was a dish we could eat when we got lucky.

At some point, a lot of semi-dried pollack restaurants sprung up.

As it so happens, a lot of them are restaurant franchises.

I thought, "There's a restaurant franchise for semi-dried pollack?"

I found that really interesting.

Why do you think this happened?

There are no old restaurants...

for semi-dried pollack. - Right.

They don't exist. - Right.

Even frozen pollack stew wasn't served at restaurants...

that only specialized in the dish.

It was treated as a type of side dish.

Pollack dishes began to get fragmentized slowly.

That's how we got semi-dried pollack.

First of all, the fish is cheap, and it's easy to cook the dish.

And it's easy to access the ingredient.