Seafood

Alternate Title: The Stumbler Brings His Chopsticks to Biology Lab

I've been wanted to try some more sushi-style seafood besides tuna, which is very popular here. There is a chain restaurant that specializes in only tuna sushi, but I wanted to branch out. Also, in preparing a list of candidate sightseeing locations for the Stumbling Parents' trip this Fall, I realized that after all this time in Korea I have never visited the famous Noryangjin Fish Market, which surprisingly is pretty close to where I live.

I had a short outing there yesterday, and brought home some seafood to eat. Alas, I forgot to bring my camera to the market. But fortunately, I discovered an excellent article from another Blogger, the FatMan Seoul. He appears to have quit blogging, but his articles are still around. You can see great photos of the fish market here.

While the purpose of my trip was to buy a crab to eat, I ended up bringing back shrimp and various strange see creatures as well. Next time, perhaps with the Stumbling Parents, I'll have to try out the on-site "restaurants" that cook your purchase for you.

Here's the crab being rinsed off prior to boiling. By the way, this was a King Crab, which according to FatMan's article comes from Russia. This was my first time preparing a live crab, so it was a little freaky cutting off the legs of a wiggling critter. But, I guess it is no different from when I fillet fresh fish.



Here is an annotated photograph of the various "other" seafoods, before and after preparation for eating. I did my best to translate the Korean names into English. Some of these might sound more familiar to my American friends as subjects of study back in high school Biology class, not from the local restaurant menu.





Now here are the more normal foods. This is the crab and shrimp (which are probably well hidden under the crab). You can see it was a tight fit for Mr. Crab. My biggest pot is only 24cm diameter, but the crab was much larger. That is why I had to cut off most of the legs to make him fit in the pot.



Here are the cooked shrimp. These little guys were HUGE, and they were not even the largest shrimps available at the market. No, I don't eat Tootsie Roll Pops with my shrimp, I just put that on the plate as a size reference.



Next time, if I can pass up the crabs and shrimps, I really wanted to try some of the many fishes. Although I have in mind a fried fish fillet, not sushi. I'm sure one of those restaurants will oblige me.

Edit: Reviewing the annotated photos, I may have a mistake. I'll have to do more research - I'm sure of the names of the critters, but I may have two of them swapped in one of the photos.

Edit#2: Correction Made. I had two of the seafoods in the bowl under running water swapped around. The annotations are now correct.