So Gop Chang

Another Korean food adventure but in Korean food rather than Korean attempts at western food this time. Last Friday I was on my out of the school at home time when once of the other teachers called me over and asked me if I wanted to come for some food and drinks with them, having no other plans I thought why not. It was a good group, just me, the art teacher and geography teacher both of who speak good English and the Chinese character teacher who speaks almost no English, I get on well with all of them. We wandered down to a restaurant in Gwangju, close to the 'Italian' place I went to the other week.

Starters were some cold kimchi soup called mul kimchi (물김기) -literally water kimchi which was delicious and spring onion kimchi (바김기) which was also nice, and a few other bits and bobs.

Then they brought out the main sizzling on a hot plate.

So gop chang (소곱창)The picture is midway through the waitress cutting it up into little pieces, what comes out looks a bit like a Cumberland sausage, it's a big meaty spiral.

So what exactly is it? Well the teachers who I was with weren't really sure how to tell me what it was but they eventually settled on cow's stomach pipe. I think it is small intestine but maybe its esophagus, either way some part of a cow's digestive system. Considering where it comes from it is surprisingly tasty! Its basically just beef fat surrounding a chewy tube, the fat is lovely and tasty but the tube doesn't taste of much and lets the whole thing down a bit by being very chewy. The potatoes and onions that came on the same hotplate were very tasty having cooked in the beef fat, nom nom!

So the moral of the story is, cow intestines can be tastier than you'd think!