The Art of Fermentation

This past Saturday, as I sat in my apartment catching up on doing nothing, Young Sook called. It wasn't her usual habit to call if it wasn't close to a Thursday night, so I wondered what the special occasion could have been.

"Jenny-pah," she said in her heavily-accented, broken English. "Today my home lunchtime thirty o'clock you... possibility? Menu, pig and..." her voice trailed off.

I have chores to do, I thought, hesitating to give up my alone time so unexpectedly. It was the first Saturday in nearly four weeks that I hadn't been busy. My plans were to work extensively around the house--then write, write, write for the rest of the day. And I hadn't even gotten out of my pjs yet. "I have to wash my clothes and wash my dishes," I started slowly.

"Jenny-pah," she interrupted, nearly incredulous. "Three ow-ers. Twelve P.M. now. You go my home thirty o'clock possibility?"

I was loathe to put on something warmer in oder to make the thirty-minute trek to her apartment. But niether did it seem I could refuse her. She was my friend; and I could spend extra time with my friends, couldn't I?

"Okay," I told her.

"Okaaaayy," she said by way of goodbye.

"Thirty o'clock" rolled around and and just minutes later there I stood at her door, fresh from the taxi ride with a srpinkle of nune on my hat. Once instide, she introduced me to the special occasion--a man-friend of hers who had come in from Seoul an hour before to spend the afternoon in Dongtan. He had gifted us, Young Sook explained, with copious amounts of pork barbeque and all the fixin's, a delicacy expensively brought from the capital city. I had thus been invited to a son-gup-sal feast.

The meal was quite delicious, with the heaviness of pork meat balanced out by lettuce wraps in doenjong sauce; small cuts of hot dogs dipped in fish cake batter, straight from local street venders; and bite-sized banana slices. True to Korean form, everything was in its own little platter and pushed into the middle of the table, intended to be shared. Rice was served as we ate, to complete the meal. And miniature cups of coffee were offered at the end as a form of dessert. In every way I have learned to recognize in this country, it was wholly a Korean meal.

My two friends seemed pleased that I was interested enough in the day's cuisine. They even commented that they both liked me to try new foods. Nothing that had been served that day was any longer foreign to my waegukin palette, however. Even the shrimp sauce made from tiny aged crustaceans in liquid go-chu-jang, I had tasted at my hagwon. The only reason I hadn't tried it that day was because, aside from the unpleasant saurkraut taste, it was burn-your-mouth-off hot--just the way Koreans like it. I felt I had adjusted myself rather nicely to the culinary habits of the ethnicity surrounding me. Though I appreciated my friends' comments, after fifteen months there's not much left that's new to try.

I was in for the shock of my life when, after our micro cups of coffee, Young Sook stood to the left of my periphery at her kitchen's countertop, preparing yet another dish. Moments later, as she chatted in excited Korean to her friend, she approached the table with an open plastic produce container which was wet with recent condensation. In it nestled something that I seriously thought she was getting ready to throw away: a pair of mushy, pock-marked, well-overripe grey-orange pieces of fruit.

"This," she said enchantedly as she poked at the bouncy flesh, "Is very special. Gam. In freezer very long time. Today morning take out and put in ice box." She then looked intently at me. "Ice-jelly. Very special."

They were hardly recognizable, these orbs of rotting fruit. Their skin was opaque and sickly, diseased and marred by distinguishable black circles every so often--not especially appealing to a Western appetite. How could this be special?

I was still unsure if I would eat it when Young Sook started her delicate opperation: peeling off the hard, spade-shaped leaves that distinguished the squishy mass. She then carefully divided it into two gooey portions. "Jenny-pah!" she exclaimed as I looked on in quiet disbelief. "Very cold!"

You actually want me to eat this? I thought as I took the ooze from her fingertips. By this time, her other guest had torn the top off his delicacy and contendedly sat slirping the orange goo. Young Sook herself began sucking the fruit as my portion silently seeped through my fingers. Could this be a fermented persimmon? This time I was the one incredulous.

In my head I pictured all of the encounters I had had with this fruit--from first being introduced to it by name a year ago, to courageously buying my own in late summer and early fall. I remembered the fruit's firm crispness as I had sliced through its seed-sized pit. Its texture was like a peach, I recalled--only more fibrous, like a pear. Its taste was less tart than either, with a rounded sweetness like an apricot or a very ripe mango. How could such a solid fruit morph into the melting ooze before me?

I tried not to think about the crunchiness of my summertime persimmon slices as I slurped up the orange-y slop. It was oddly smooth--and much, much sweeter than any of my previous tastes. It wasn't as bad as I'd thought, yet I was still skeptical. My mind went back to a photo from one of my students' schoolbooks: that of a perfectly squished tomato with its viscous juices and seeds spewed everywhere. As my fingers circled up for yet another grab, I averted my eyes to the Korean television blaring across the room. I still couldn't look upon the desecrated produce I held to my lips.

"How long was it in the freezer?" I asked Young Sook after I came up for air.

She stood there computing for a moment. "Hard to remember," she replied. "Three--three month?"

That meant that she had put the persimmons in the freezer just about the same moment the two of us had met in Byeongjeom--a sizable amount of time, considering the shelf-life of fruit. I couldn't help but think, as I sat contemplating my half-eaten, carotene-rich blob, that what I had injested that moment was really slow decomposition. Mm, tasty.