Day 46

I've still been super-busy at work lately--we're getting two cruise ships in a day sometimes!  It's fun work though, so it's all good.  Things I've been up to in the past few weeks include:

1) Taking (and passing) my Divemaster exams.

There's a two-part exam to become a Divemaster.  Like all other PADI tests, it's extremely easy.  Here's something like what you'd see on the test, see if you can get it right:

                     Your buddy signals that she is out of air.  What should you do?
                     A:  Swim away from her--you need your air.
                     B:  Ignore her, she'll be fine.
                     C:  Pull out your underwater cell phone and call 911.
                     D:  Give her your alternate air source and slowly ascend.
If you can't figure out the right answer, please don't become a diver.  Or at least, don't be my buddy!

2)  Completing all the Divemaster skills.

The skills a Divemaster must do are actually the same skills as in the open water class, but now they have to be instructor-level demonstrations.  Some are easy, like taking the regulator out of the mouth and putting it back in.  The hardest skill for me was a 50-foot no-mask swim, which took me a few times to get right--and I almost killed two people by making them laugh underwater.  I practiced a lot, so I got a lot better!  

3)  Swimming.

A few of the divemaster skills I had to perform were timed swimming exercises.  There's a 400m swim with no gear, an 800m snorkel, and a 15 minute water-tread with hands out of the water for the last 2 minutes.  I didn't get great marks on all the swimming stuff, but I passed.  And I didn't drown, so that's good.

4) Leading snorkel tours for cruise ship tourists.

On cruise ship days (about half of each week) I go to our beach with some other unpaid interns like myself and cater to cruise ship tourists.  Most of them are actually pretty nice and good about listening to our instructions--don't touch the coral, don't walk on the coral, don't feed the fish, etc.  Mostly I give snorkel briefings and help newbies learn to snorkel, but lately I've been leading tours a lot.  This basically consists of me pointing out fish and hoping they don't swim away while I'm talking about them.  The hardest part of these days is setting up the big event tent, and that's not particularly hard.

5) Helping out with Rescue Diver courses.

We have a few new divemaster interns who weren't Rescue Divers already, and being a Rescue Diver is a requirement to become a Divemaster.  I had already been certified a few years ago through my study abroad program, so I didn't need to do it myself, but helping out with the courses is fun.  I get to be the "victim" who injures and/or kills herself in a variety of ways, then gets hauled around and out of the water by the rescue student.  Being a Rescue Diver isn't just about rescuing people in the water, though--you're never safe from your stupid coworkers!  The whole staff tries to get in on the fun.

Oh no!  He's cut off his finger!  (He couldn't find any ketchup, so he used curry sauce for blood!)

Oh, and his 'dismembered finger' was a carrot!

"Diver, diver, are you okay?"

It's important to put the finger on ice and stabilize the victim's head.

Welp, looks like he'll be okay.

In addition to the 'severed finger' incident, we also had someone fall down the stairs, an electrical accident, and more.  Rescue days are long, but fun!

6) Taking photos in shallow water.

Lately I've been sitting in about 10 feet of water and taking close-up photos of tiny things.  The small things are way cooler than the big things.  I'm almost done editing my last batch of photos, so they should be up soon!

7) Changing my flight plans.

This last one is probably the most exciting!  I have been extremely fortunate to have my flights changed to give me an extra month here.  I called United last week to see if it was possible to change my flights, since I wasn't quite ready to come home in two weeks.  It wasn't possible because I had booked through a booking agent.  The deal was that any new itineraries had to match the old one, which wasn't possible because United had changed their flight schedules.  

Fortunately, the girl on the line put me on hold for 40 minutes while she talked to her supervisor.  She came back with a one-time deal to change my flight for free to March 28th.  I hadn't talked to my housemate about staying longer--after all, I was just calling to see if it was possible--but I said yes.  I was expecting a charge of at least $300, which is United's international flight change fee, so I got really lucky!  Plus, my new itinerary is more direct, and gets me home in almost half the time!

So what's the moral here?  Good things come to those who wait... patiently on hold for 40 minutes!

8) Creating new lionfish recipes.

In other news, I was the happy recipient of several lionfish today!  I bought a fillet knife and a de-scaling tool at the local marine shop last week, so I'm glad to put them to use.  I'm a terrible fish fillet-er, and I certainly need more practice.  It doesn't help that I'm scared of spiking myself on their venomous spines!

Today I got four fish (woohoo!) and made two different small dishes.  I don't have any recipes, I just kind of throw things together and hope they taste good.  

Well, they're colorful... but are they tasty?

Dish #1, on the bottom, was similar to a fish dish I had in Korea.  I removed the head and guts, rubbed it with olive oil, curry, and garlic salt, then wrapped it in aluminum foil and baked it for about 15 minutes.  I didn't time it, but it came out pretty darn perfectly.

Mmmm lionfish!

I think next time I might remove the skin, because it came out a bit slimy.  But other than that, the flesh was soft and perfectly cooked.  Even after removing the skin, the fish still had plenty of flavor. 

The spines are still on there!

The lionfish has some small bones, but they all pulled out like a dream.  Lionfish garlic curry bake gets a 7/10.

I had trouble cutting off the tail fin, so I left it on.  After the fish was cooked it just fell off!  Perfect!

Dish #2 was a fish cake shindig based on an incredible chicken ball a friend made recently.  When I say incredible, I mean that I could eat these chicken balls every day.  They are probably one of the top ten things I've ever put in my mouth, and considering that they're not made of chocolate, that's saying something.  On a scale of 1-10, those chicken balls were 1000's.  

My fish balls.

Sadly, my fish cakes weren't as divine, but I'd give them a 6/10.  They were made of minced lionfish, celery, carrot, cilantro, salt, and pepper.  That sounds really healthy, right?  Well I even deep-fried them in olive oil.  I'm all about being healthy--stop laughing!

Yummy!

These tasted pretty good, but the recipe could use some improvement.  For starters, fresh cilantro would definitely be better than the frozen stuff I used.  Olive oil wasn't ideal for deep-frying, although it worked better than I expected.  I think the fish cakes also need some kind of binding agent, like egg, because one completely fell apart in the frying pan.  Whoops!  But for a first attempt at fish cakes, I think I did pretty well!

That's all for today, but I've got a ton of really cool photos to share soon, so check back in a few days!

Cheers,

Ashton

Day 12

The bad news is, I've come down with the flu!  Fortunately it's just a mild one, mostly causing me to feel tired, sore, achy, slightly nauseated, and a little confused.  It comes in waves, so I'll feel fine for about twenty minutes and then the next twenty minutes  I'll feel like I've just taken a few Vicodin on an empty stomach.  I've also chemically burned all the fingers on my left hand by cutting up jalapenos without gloves.  Boooo.

The good news is that I've crossed something off my bucket list that's been on there for three years: prepare, cook, and eat my very own Bonairean lionfish!

Those spines are venomous!  Fortunately you can cut them off with scissors.

Now to be fair, I didn't catch this lionfish myself.  Only long-term residents of the island are allowed to take the lionfish hunting class and get a speargun for fishing them.  Lionfish are an invasive species; they have no natural predators, can eat everything, and multiply like crazy.  To help curb the lionfish problem, they can be hunted by divers with spring-loaded spearguns called ELFs, which is an acronym for 'eradicate lion fish.'  Lionfish are the only animals you can go spearfishing for.

Now, on Monday I finally caved to the cold and bought a 5mm wetsuit, and I was very excited to try it out.  I went on a dive last night intending to be a lionfish spotter, but the new wetsuit was too tight around my neck and was making me dizzy, so I had to end the dive after a few minutes.  Fortunately we were a team of three, so my two buddies, one of whom is a legal lionfish hunter, kept going, and came back with the beautiful specimen pictured above.

My buddies exiting the water.  The guy in front has a PVC container for holding the lionfish.  You don't want to stick yourself with their venomous spines!  They can still stick you when they're dead.

Being a kind and generous soul, (and also because I asked very nicely,) he bequeathed the lionfish unto me.  I was so excited that for my entire bike ride home, I sang a little song about my pretty new lionfish and how tasty he was going to be.

It's a big one!

Once home, I realized that we didn't have any knives sharp enough to filet my fish.  My dive knife was perhaps not the perfect choice, but it got the job done.

Isn't my dive knife pretty?  I love that thing.

Lionfish are an easy fish to filet--if you've got the proper knife.  You make a cut behind the gills, along the backbone, and along the belly, then peel back the skin and cut along the bones.  Hopefully next time I'll remember to scrape off the scales first.  I admit that I definitely need more practice!

First cuts made, and skin peeled back to the tail.

Can't believe I forgot about the scales.  What a mess.

Two good-sized filets!

As far as fish go, lionfish are a very non-fishy fish.  Once I threw away the carcass, there was no smell of fish left in the house.  They look fatty and good for sushi (and I've heard that the sushi restaurants here serve it a lot) but I didn't have the stuff to make sushi.  I did, however, remember seeing cilantro, limes, roma tomatoes, onions, and jalapenos in the three grocery stores on the island--all the makings of pico de gallo.  I went out and got my ingredients, but came down suddenly with flu symptoms when I got home.  So sadly, my lionfish filets went into the fridge.

Today was better but I'm still obviously sick, so I got sent home from work.  After a five-hour nap, I finally felt well enough to hold a knife.

Because I'm just one person and I had two good-sized filets, I decided to try two different ideas--because who needs recipes, right?  The first idea was a combination of ceviche and pico de gallo.

Ceviche de gallo!  Pico de lionfish!

Wow!  It's incredibly delicious!  I honestly didn't expect it to be so good.  Plus it's very simple and easy to make.  I give myself a 10 out of 10 on this one.

If I didn't have the flu, I'd have eaten it all already.

My other 'idea' was to just take every spice on the shelf and throw it on.  I rubbed a mixture of garlic salt, oregano, black pepper, and paprika on the filet, then pan-fried it in butter.

Oh my goooooodness it's so good!

Tender, moist, juicy, flavorful, melt-in-your-mouth--this thing was perfect.  And it took less than five minutes to season and fry it.  The only fly in the ointment was that it had a few little bones in it, but it certainly made the house smell amazing.

Mmmmm.  This recipe gets a 10 out of 10 too!

Lionfish is really healthy too; it's got lots of omega 3 fatty acids and protein.  Yum!  I can't wait to try lionfish sushi!

Here's hoping I get better and can help hunt for more lionfish soon!  :)

Cheers,
Ashton

Day 29

I spent a wonderful and exhausting weekend in Seoul!  I hiked at Namsan park and saw great vistas of the city, shopped at the famous Myeongdong, and went to an excellent club in Gangnam.  (Yes, the same Gangnam as the infamous Oppa Gangnam Style.)  Sadly I didn't get many pictures because my camera died, but I'm planning to go back soon and explore more.  The highlight of the weekend, however, was photobombing and scaring the living bejeezus out of a group of Koreans taking a selfie.  (For older folks, that's colloquial for "self-taken photograph to be uploaded to a social networking site.")

Here's a few photos from this weekend.  These are from Namsan, the mountain/park in Seoul:

Seoul is enormous.

The boys overlooking Seoul from Namsan.

Is it creepy to take photos of random Korean children?

They're just so darn cute!

Also cute: cat in a ball.  Gotta get one of these for my Benny-bear!

From Myeongdong, the famous shopping district:

Fried silkworm pupae.  One of the worst smells I have ever encountered.

What the heck is this advertising?

Umbrellas!  So cute!

I simply MUST find this Stitch phone case for my phone.  I LOVE IT.

Sadly, I have no Gangnam photos because it was dark and even my fancy new phone doesn't take good nighttime pictures.  My grandmother is insisting that I return to Costco and get a selfie to prove I was there, so that's the next order of business for me.  There happens to be a Costco semi-near Gangnam, so I'll kill two birds with one stone.  Soonish.

In other news, I have now been in Korea for four weeks!  I feel like I've settled in nicely.  I've got a bank card, a library card, and point cards at all the places I shop.  I know the bus routes, subway routes, and how to make the taxi driver go where I want.  I have a favorite convenience store and a favorite restaurant where the owner/chef makes the jjampong (spicy seafood soup) a little less spicy for me without me needing to ask.

I also have a favorite food, which I've mentioned before: dakgalbi.  After about two weeks of eating dakgalbi almost every night, I think I've finally got my recipe down.  Some recipes call for half a million ingredients, but this is the simplified budget-friendly easy version.  This stuff is seriously tasty, so I highly recommend you try making it.  It's surprisingly easy and nearly impossible to screw up.

TRADITIONAL KOREAN DAKGALBI RECIPE

What you'll need:
- chicken breasts
- 1-2 onions
- 1 carrot
- 2-4 cloves of garlic
- 1/4 - 1/2 cabbage
- white wine
- ginger sauce (or powder)
- curry powder
- oil
- a wok
- gochujang (fermented spicy red pepper paste)
- tteok (Korean rice cakes, pronounced "Touke" with a hard T sound, sounds like a cross between "tuck" and "toke.")

Most of this stuff is probably already in your house.  There is no excuse for not owning a wok and a garlic press, because you can get a wok for $7 at Ikea and a garlic press for a few bucks at any grocery store.  The only 'problem items' are the last two, gochujang and tteok.  Let me be clear: you CANNOT make dakgalbi without these items.  So where are you gonna get them?

If you have a Korean or Asian grocery store near you, try there first.  If you're like my family and don't live in an area with a sizable Asian population, fear not!  Hmart is here to solve your problems.  For $11 you can get a kilo (2.2lbs) of gochujang, and for less than $6 you can get a kilo of tteok (rice cakes).  Shipping costs $9 regardless of weight, so you might want to stock up--this stuff is awesome.

Click here to view gochujang (spicy red pepper paste) at Hmart.com.

And click here to view tteok (rice cakes) at Hmart.com.

Okay, now that you've got your gochujang and tteok, let's get cooking!

Let's start with the tteok.  I really, really like tteok so I add a ton of it.  I recommend you do the same.  I generally add ~20 pieces when I cook a single serving for myself.  In Korea you can buy fresh tteok, but this isn't fresh and we need to prepare it. Relax, it's easy: throw them in cold water.  Honestly, that's all you do.  Get a pot of cold water and toss them in for 20 minutes.  Leave them to soak while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

In addition to the boring round tteok, I've also got cute shapes!  Hearts and stars and... dumbbells, maybe?

Next, chop the cabbage into long, 3/4-inch wide strips.  Did you cut them wider or thinner?  No worries, it'll taste the same.  Oil the wok (a tablespoon or two should do) and then toss in your cabbage.

I realized after I soaked my tteok that I was out of cabbage and had to go out in the rain to buy some.  :(

Cabbage in the wok, tteok soaking in the pot.  (That's almost a poem, right there.)

Next, chop up your onions.  I just make 1/4-inch wide slices and cut them in quarters, nothing fancy.  Also cut the carrot into thin strips and toss 'em on.

My carrots and onions are in big slices because I am lazy and very hungry.

Sauce time!  Start with these guys:

Curry, ginger sauce, white wine, and gochujang.  Not pictured: garlic and onion.

Spoon about 3-4 tablespoons of gochujang into a bowl.  Grate or finely chop some onion.  (Mine's not that finely chopped because as previously mentioned, I am hungry and lazy.)  Add 1-2 teaspoons of white wine and ginger sauce--I never measure, just pour a little in.  Don't forget to throw in a clove or two of pressed garlic.  

Don't measure.  Follow your heart.

Stir that hot mess up.  Mm-mm.

Cut up that chicken into bite-sized pieces and throw it in.  I used half a chicken breast because I am working on portion control.  Chicken and tteok are the only real substance in this meal, so if you're trying to fill people up, use more of those.  The veggies, while healthy, are not filling at all.

Delicious raw chicken.

Drain the tteok and throw it into the wok.  No need to rinse or dry, just toss 'em in.  Mix the chicken into the sauce so scoop the whole mixture on top of the veggies and tteok.

Most everything in here is white before the sauce goes on.

Now turn up the heat to medium and let's get cooking!  Pretty soon it will look like this:

Stir it every few minutes.  Don't worry if some pieces burn, they taste great.  You will immediately think, "Oh no, I need more sauce!"  But fear not, intrepid chef.  The cabbage will cook down and there will be plenty of sauce.

Your dakgalbi is done when the chicken is fully cooked (use a wooden spoon to check) and when the veggies are cooked the way you like.  I like my veggies a bit snappy, so I don't cook it as long as others might.

Yummmmmmy.

See?  I told you it'd be plenty of sauce.

So how does this recipe differ from other dakgalbi recipes?  There's a few notable differences.

1. Traditionally dakgalbi is made on a gas burner at your table, right in front of you.  This is great because the chicken and tteok cook faster than the veggies, so you can eat things as they cook.  Your food never gets cold and you can throw rice onto your leftovers and make another tasty dish.  I make it in a wok and throw it in a bowl, so it does get cold--or it would, if I ever ate it that slowly.

2.  Many dakgalbi recipes call for more ingredients.  Other recipes I've seen have included things like brown sugar, refined rice wine (whereas I use normal white wine), soy sauce, potatoes, sweet potatoes, chicken stock, red pepper flakes, mozzarella cheese (less traditional but tasty), sesame oil, etc.  The list goes on and on.  I am a chef of the cheap-simple-easy persuasion and if it tastes great, I'm happy.

You might be wondering, Is this really traditional?  The answer is yes.  Why?  Because anything Korean is automatically 'traditional.'  Honest to goodness, it's a thing here.  The hip new thing to do with dakgalbi is to use the leftovers to make a pizza-shaped rice patty, then melt mozzarella on top, but it's still 'traditional.'  Even foreign foods have been hijacked into 'traditional' Korean foods.  My favorite soup, jjamppong, is called a Chinese soup, although you'd never find it in China, and it's traditional Korean food.  So don't sweat the terminology.  It's authentic(-ish).