For those who do not enjoy lists, skip this post. Ah, probably of interest to none of my readers, and stolen from Christine Lee Zilka, who stole it in turn from aiyah.net‘s which was inspired by wilco’s favorite fifty foods.
1. favorite main entree:
I am thinking I’ll have to say a nice big platter of raw fish, though I could also answer a good dalk doritang (spicy chicken-and-potato stew) or shish taouk.
2. favorite salad:
Greek salad. Or maybe a nice chicken salad.
3. favorite soup:
Kimchi jjigae, or a nice chicken soup. Dalk kal guk su is also delightful.
4. favorite appetizer:
Bread and cheese do it for me, but I only rarely eat anywhere where I’m given any kind of appetizer.
5. favorite dessert:
Ha, living in Korea, you get used to a much more sparse notion of dessert. (Maybe that’s why people are less fat here?) Of the choices commonly availablegreen tea, coffee, ice cream, cola, su jeong gwaI like the latter, which is a kind of sweet cinnamon drink. I prefer it cold.
6. favorite fruit:
Mandarin orange, known here as gyul.
7. favorite vegetable:
Maybe the kind of spinach you find here, braised, in side dishes or on top of be bim bap.
8. favorite sashimi:
Eel sashimi.
9. favorite sushi roll:
Eh? They’re all the same here, except, once I had a really cool roll that used odeng (boiled fish cake) instead of a long slice of ham. That was pretty good. That was in Busan.
10. favorite soda beverage:
Orangina.
11. favorite non-alcoholic beverage:
Water.
12. favorite alcoholic shot:
Tequila.
13. favorite alcoholic drink:
White Russian, or a simple glass of decent whiskey on the rocks.
14. favorite cake:
Chocolate cheesecake.
15. favorite pie:
A nice beef pie with onions, potatoes, and peas in the mix. Failing that, an apple pie.
16. favorite ice cream:
I think it may well be mint-chocolate-chip, though sometimes I rather fancy the more complicated flavours available at Baskin Robbins.
17. favorite milkshake:
I haven’t had one in years, but I remember a really nice chocolate one I had in Banff many years ago.
18. favorite cut of beef:
Eh? I wouldn’t know, I eat it so rarely now.
19. favorite cuisine:
Korean… then Lebanese… then Indian… then Tibetan… then Vietnamese. Oh, God, and of course Italian belongs in fourth place.
20. favorite part of chicken: (leg, wing, thigh, breast)
Breast is where the meat is at. And you can tell I live in Asia when I say my least favorite part is the neck.
21. favorite fried food:
Fried chicken, to be had with beer of course. And now, I prefer to have little pickled white radishes on hand in case the chicken is very greasy.
22. favorite cookie:
Cinnamon-flavoured cookie from, I think, Tous Les Jours.
23. favorite indian curry:
Butter chicken, I think. Or this wonderful Mughal dish with cheese and vegetables that I had at Ritu and John’s house one day.
24. favorite gum:
Hmmm. I think it’s this coffee-flavoured gum that all my friends seem to find ridiculous. Or Korean acacia-flavoured gum.
25. favorite candy:
I don’t eat candy much, but I remember liking Nerds back in the day.
26. favorite crepe:
Strawberry, with cream. But I haven’t had one in years.
27. favorite sandwich:
A good chicken club sandwich.
28. favorite pizza:
Homemade vegetarian pizza with a couple of kinds of cheese, and a better selection of vegetables than any pizza joint ever offers, piping hot from my own oven. (Ah, the days when I had an oven…)
29. favorite mexican dish:
Well, for the Americanized Tex-Mex stuff, I like chicken burritos, which is something I can make on my own. As for real Mexican cuisine, I had a wonderful seafood soup at an “authentic-Mexican” place in Montreal that shocked and delighted me.
30. favorite vietnamese dish:
I like the spring rolls so much you might not get any.
31. favorite korean dish:
Oh, God, the decision is so hard. For daily life, kimchi jjigae; for something less spicy, be bim bap; for a really wonderful meal, dalk doritang.
32. favorite chinese dish:
Ha, even though it’s fake Americanized stuff, I long for the General Tao Chicken served at the little diner beside my old campus in Montreal. Which, by the way, Lime has also craved from time to time.
33. favorite filipino dish:
Lumpia, which were some kind of deep-fried spring rolls. Pansit (Noodles) were fine too.
34. favorite southern food:
Whatever my buddy John’s making, it smells like crawdads and a fine reaux, I think some kind of etouffée…
35. favorite instant noodles brand:
Shin Ramen, which is what anyone in Korea will tell you. How other ramen noodle manufacturers survive, I have no idea.
36. favorite juice:
White grape juice, though it’s too expensive here. Here, I like a nice mandarin orange juice.
37. favorite snack food:
Pringles. But I’m cutting way, way back.
38. favorite fish:
Eel.
39. favorite cereal:
I really like a nice crunchy granola cereal, but I can’t be bothered to make a trip to Costco to get it, so I make do with almond slivers and cornflakes.
40. favorite pho:
Anything with some nice chicken in it is good.
41. favorite breakfast food:
This may sound weird, but the most refreshing breakfast I had was some kind of weird octopus soup, slightly vinegary, cold. Oh, how refreshing that was. Lime tells me it’s a very unusual thing to serve in the morning, and was probably prepared on account of me visiting with the family who offered it to me.
42. favorite french food:
Don’t get me started on how much I miss good French cheeses.
43. favorite mcdonalds food:
Quarter Pounder with cheese. Which unfortunately is not on the menus in Korea, though, these days, they have this newfangled McWhist, which tastes like a Quarter Pounder but with some lettue and tomatoes in it. Lime wanted to go to McDonald’s after I showed her the movie Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, so we ended up going there and I was quite surprised by the McWhist. But really, I almost never got to McDonald’s…
44. favorite pasta dish:
I used to make this mediterranean pasta dish with feta cheese, olives, oil, spices… quite refreshing and not at all heavy.
45. favorite bread:
Rye bread. Which I can now buy here in Jeonju. Ahhhh.
46. favorite tea:
Indian chai… the spicy masala kind.
47. favorite 7-11 slurpee flavor:
Eh? Haven’t had one in years. Used to prefer 7-Up, though.
48. favorite hershey’s kiss:
The ones with the bits of cookie in it.
49. favorite flavor of m&m’s:
Peanut.
50. favorite candy bar:
I suppose it might be the Korean Crunky! bar, which has much less chocolate and a really crunchy filling.