서울 음식 제1탄: 홍어회 Seoul Food Part 1: Hongeohoe

Monday 2/16/2015

Korean cuisine, with its abundance of meat, spice, salt, and meat is unsurprisingly extremely popular wherever restaurants purveying its wares pop up.  Meat.  I was not truly acquainted with it until my first year of medical school, but don't worry, I've done a fantastic job of making up for lost time.  I know many of you are avid foodies with a weakness for kimchi, kalbi, and jiggae, so fear not, I will have a recurring segment in this blog dedicated exclusively to my gastronomic triumphs and catastrophes.  Unfortunately, the first experience I'm going to write about falls into the latter category:  hongeohoe (pronounced "hong-uh-hwey").

The first clue I had to tip me off that something was amiss was the smell.  Mr. Goo was throwing a small party to celebrate the arrival of Peter and myself, and the departure of Sophie and another girl that left shortly after I arrived.  Even as I walked into the common area, I sensed a fell presence in the room.  I was naive and unsuspecting at the time, attributing the smell to trash outside, some kind of detergent used to maintain the apartment's pristine state, or someone's private Korean-food-adjustment-period bathroom misfortune--basically to anything that I wasn't going be putting into my body shortly.

Well we sat down to the spread, which in its entirety--Korean fried chicken, oysters, makgeolli, soju, and Korean (read: shitty) beer--was really quite impressive.

The second clue was the sadistic, maniacal glint in Mr. Goo's eyes as he said, "Hongeohoe, eberyone has to tdry; why nut?  Jusut do it!"

One of the things I was looking forward to most about Korea was trying all of the food, so I (being stupid), was quite excited about trying the thing Mr. Goo was gesturing toward, which looked so fucking deceivingly like fresh, delicious sashimi:

The third and final clue came in Peter's reaction to my naive enthusiasm for this new culinary experience, and it went something like this:

Peter, with a look of grim recognition:  "Do you know what that is?"
Me, still stupid:  "Some kind of sashimi..."
Peter:  "It's hongeohoe, I had it with my grandparents last time I was in Korea.  You eat it with raw garlic, bean paste, and hot peppers."
Me, waiting for him to voluntarily say something about how good it is, which didn't happen:  "Is it good?"
Peter, concerned and shaking his head:  "I didn't have it a second time."

Well in my zeal for being adventurous and culturally competent (stupid), I did not heed the clues, nor Peter's impeccably tactful, yet clear message of warning, so I picked up a piece with my chopsticks, dipped it in 초고추장 (chogochujang), a mixture of vinegar and Korean sweet chili sauce, wrapped it in a perilla leaf, and popped it in my mouth.

Zoology Lesson Time:
Immediately after Creighton, Sophie, and I had passed the point-of-no-return, Peter told us that hongeohoe tastes like ammonia!  Here's why:

Hongeohoe is a traditional dish from the Jeolla province of South Korea (the southwest coast basically) made from skate, stingray-like cartilaginous fishes in the Family Rajidae.  Skate, while uncommon, is not the rarest of fare as you'll sometimes see texturally interesting skate wing steaks offered at fancier restaurants in the US, and "sea scallops" are a jargony loophole that some less-reputable fishmongers will use for cookie-cuttered chunks of skate wing passed off as more expensive diver scallops.  However, hongeohoe is cuts of fermented skate.
 A clear-nosed skate which you can often see in Florida.

Now don't get me wrong, some of the best things ever are fermented--beer, wine, cheese, kimchi--but to my largely Western sensibilities, meat is on the short list of things that should never, ever be fermented.  Yet, hongeohoe is fermented either in traditional clay pots or modern walk-in refrigerators for a month, sliced up into small pieces, and shipped off to avid Korean enthusiasts and unsuspecting hongeohoe virgins alike, but it's not even just that.

(Shoutout to Dr. Carrier) The vast majority of fishes are bony fishes.  They have kidneys much like ours which serve two major purposes:  to filter nitrogenous wastes like urea from the blood and excrete them as urine, and to regulate the osmolarity (concentration of dissolved electrolytes and nutrients) of the blood.  This second point is important because without active osmoregulation, free water from a fish's body, which has a lower osmolarity than seawater, would be sucked out into the environment by the more concentrated seawater and the fish's tissues would shrivel and die.

Cartilaginous fishes are physiologically very interesting in that they don't possess kidneys like ours, so they do not excrete urea in urine, and they do not actively try to maintain bodily fluids that are less concentrated than seawater.  Instead, the evolutionarily primitive cartilaginous fishes don't even try to change the osmolarity in their blood from the osmolarity of the surrounding seawater; instead they concentrate the urea into their tissues, thereby increasing the osmolarity of their blood and tissues to that of seawater.

This has several implications:  it means that their bodies are isotonic to their surroundings and they don't have to worry about losing or gaining unwanted water or dissolved substances from the environment, essentially obviating the need for urine-producing kidneys.  It also means that their high-osmolarity flesh is, in effect, already pickled, which is why hongeohoe became a thing in the first place, as Jeolla fisherman noted it stayed edible much longer than the rest of their catch.  It also means that it tastes like piss.



Back to the story.
After a cartilaginous fish dies, bacteria start converting urea into ammonia, you know, the adorable NH3 that gives you that streak-free shine on windows, or is used to make industrial fertilizer or explosives?  That ammonia.

Though I was unable to capture my own reaction, this is what immediate, overwhelming hongeohoe-induced regret looks like:

And here's how the tasting experience plays out inside your head:
Stage 1:  "Okay, this is not that bad, pretty chewy, but I expected that.  I'm going to not breathe very much because it seems like one of those foods that's only really bad if you inhale through your nose while you chew."
Stage 2:  "Shit, it's so chewy; I won't be able to get it down before I have to breathe.  I'm starting to taste the ammonia."

Stage 3:  As the end-stage effects of the rubbery urinal cake made corporeal rampage through your mouth and sinuses, and your tongue starts to feel fizzy and tingly, as only happens when you accidentally splash something in your mouth during chemistry class, or run to the garbage to spit out a mouthful of 1.5 day-old guacamole that you gambled on (just me?), "WHY DIDN'T I LISTEN TO PETER?!  OF COURSE YOU FUCKING EAT IT WITH RAW GARLIC AND HOT PEPPERS, IT'S SO YOU KILL YOUR TASTE BUDS BEFORE THE HONGEOHOE CAN GET TO THEM WHY GOD WHY!"
Stage 4:  You finally swallow and sit there ruminating over the surely inevitable downstream gastrointestinal consequences (a day later?  an hour later?).  Trying and failing not to betray too much weakness as Mr. Goo cackles unabashedly and takes pictures of your face, you give a non-committal nod and say aloud, "It was okay."

Korea.

Until next time friends,

Mark

P.S.  Happy Lunar New Year (설날)!!!