Last year, right as winter was setting in, our gourmet club had a cod soup gathering at Maknae Hoe Center in Singil-dong. Which means it was already two months ago. Honestly, another blogger has written it up far better than I could, so there’s no real reason for me to post about it.. but I’d feel bad leaving it out, so here’s a rough write-up anyway. I have about 40 more posts like this to get through before I can finally post in real time..
If you want a more detailed write-up, have a look at Nokdujanggun’s blog. I leaned on it a lot while writing this..
http://hsong.egloos.com/3271429
Sausage brought along by one of the members
As always, the contributions were overflowing. But since I know instinctively that every gourmet gathering at Maknae ends with me eating myself to bursting, I tried to pace myself at the start. (I ended up giving up halfway..)
Donated wine
By the book you’re supposed to drink white wine with fish, but drinkers like our members never fuss about that sort of thing. And since wine doesn’t pair with doenjang or soy sauce, as long as you watch out for that, red wine matches just fine too. The one in the middle is apparently a Thai wine.
Fresh sea cucumber
At any other restaurant this one plate would have emptied a bottle of soju.. here it got completely ignored. We did finish it in the end, though.
Mackerel sashimi
The mackerel sashimi had a lovely springy bite. It was so good that I polished it off, and then they brought out another plate.. yikes.. I hadn’t even laid eyes on the cod, the main event of the meetup, and I was already in danger of filling up..
Mullet, stone flounder, mullet and filefish sekgosi, sliced thin bones and all
Winter really must be the season for sashimi. The flesh is perfectly firm.
Pufferfish
They said they happened to pick it up at the auction that day. It came sliced paper-thin, but pufferfish is only so-so for me.. I prefer it in a stew or deep-fried.
Whole steamed squid
It comes out every single time, but it’s a dish you can’t pass up no matter how full you are. I’ve heard there’s a squid specialist over in Sadang, but apart from there and Maknae I’ve barely heard of anywhere that serves it like this.
Yangmiri (sand lance)
Inside the softly crumbling flesh it was packed with milt that tasted like cleanly melted cheese. The cod soup was of course unbelievably good, but the yangmiri was my best dish of the day.
Yangmiri, dissected
You can see how packed it is inside, right?
Langoustines
I’m almost getting tired of them by now.
Cod jeon
There’s no way seasonal cod jeon could taste bad. I’d actually eaten about two portions’ worth by this point, and this was the moment when I was pleasantly full and in a good mood. After this I had no choice but to push it a bit..
Sandfish
The yangmiri was so good that I wolfed it down, and then they brought over another pot of seasonal sandfish packed full of roe.
Sandfish roe
And once again I ate myself half to death.
Cod liver and milt
It’s an enormous amount, and four plates like this came out. Maybe because they’d landed a big cod, the quality was in a different league from your average beef suyuk (boiled beef). A true delicacy of the sea. (I very nearly asked whether I could take some home..)
Cod soup
At last the main event of the day, the cod soup, arrived. The broth is so incredibly rich that it reminds you of gomtang. I could hardly believe it was made from fish. And one bowl of this is enough to fill you up properly, yet I was eating it after more than three portions of food.. it was touch and go, but I still emptied the whole bowl. I surprised myself with my own eating capacity.
To finish, seafood ramyeon as always
I couldn’t manage a single bite of the seafood ramyeon in the end.
Thanks to the club members I got to go to the cod meetup I’d wanted to attend for so long, and I was thrilled. I did eat myself to bursting, but that’s only because my capacity is small.. I’ll have to start working on expanding it.