 |
| Chef Marcus Freminot, left, explains briefly about the Seychelles dishes he prepared, as Julie Kim, regional manager of the Seychelles Tourist Office, Korea and Japan, interpreted, at the Tuesday event in Seoul. / Courtesy of Korean Food Foundation |
By Kim Ji-soo
The Seychelles is a paradise of a destination in the Indian Ocean, but too isolated and expensive a place for many travelers. Many would remember it from Prince William and Kate Middleton's 2011 honeymoon.
If any medium works best to familiarize the unfamiliar, it would be food. The Korean Food Foundation, working in conjunction with the tourist office of the Seychelles, held an event in Seoul demonstrating how Korean sauces can be used in Seychelles's Creole dishes and vice versa.
"I find the fresh spices common between the two foods, and also the Korean sauces and rice," said chef Marcus Freminot, who flew in Monday for the demonstration.
The demonstration was held at the Korean Food Experience Hall, which is located at the Korea Tourism Organization's former downtown building Seoul.
The cooking demonstration eventwas also to mark the opening of the 10th anniversary of the Seychelles tourist office in Korea. Seychelles Creole food has influences of African, French, Indian and Chinese cuisines, and boasts of a range of tastes and flavors. It also uses a lot of spices such as ginger, onion, garlic, parsley and coriander, meaning the Creole dishes may be suitable for the Korean palate.
For attendees at the demonstration, Freminot cooked three representative dishes — vegetable and chicken soup, the spicy accra known also as chili cake and salmon fish cake served with Creole sauce made with tomato. Using onion, garlic, curry powder, cumin, parsley, oil and other spices, he cooked up the three dishes fast.
"This chicken soup is what Seychelles people have on Monday after a long weekend," Freminot said.
"It's a total food with rice as carbohydrate, the chicken the protein and lots of veggies," he said.
The soup tasted remarkably like the traditional Korean dish of samgyetang, without the sharp taste of the garlic.
Of the spicy accra, Freminot explained how children as early as ages 5 to 7 first start eating the chili cake in Seychelles.
Then, for the fourth dish, Freminot used "gochujang" or Korean red pepper paste for the Creole chicken curry dish. Gochujang is one of the best-known Korean sauces along with soybean paste and soy sauce. The result was a slightly salty but also a creamy-tasting curry dish.
Freminot was a professor at the Seychelles Tourism Academy and also worked as chef for the French Embassy there.
In return, Korean chef Tony Yoo of Dooreyoo restaurant demonstrated two dishes using the sauces such as curry, tomato and coconut and the Korean red pepper paste and soybean paste. He first cooked sweet and sour fish with red pepper oaste and coconut sauce using rockfish, which is used for main dishes in Seychelles.
Then Yoo cooked a Creole-style "tteokgalbi" by combining the Korean soybean paste with the Creole curry powder for the short-rib dish.
The Korean Food Foundation has been holding such cross-culinary exchanges and this latest one between the Indian Ocean nation was the third. The past two were with Turkey and Ireland.
The next one will be with the cuisines of Denmark and Sweden around October.
The Korean Food Foundation, responsible for promoting Korean food, earlier this year announced 10 representative Korean dishes ahead of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics. The dishes were grilled dried pollack with rice, potato bibimbap (mixed rice with vegetables) in buckwheat wraps, mushroom and corn porridge, simple glass noodles with sauteed vegetables, modern bulgogi or grilled beef, beef garlic kimchi rolls, rolled chicken in soup, tteokgalbi with soup, three types of white kimchi and marbled rice
 |
| Chef Freminot's creations including chicken curry using Korean chili paste (on the right) / Courtesy of Korean Food Foundation |
![[INTERVIEW] 'Now is time for Koreans to unlock potential in Africa'](https://img.koreatimes.co.kr/upload/thumbnailV2/9236a17d88ea472b862b237c9788069d.jpg/dims/resize/178/optimize)
![[INTERVIEW] Meet the man behind giant rubber ducks that once took over Seoul](https://img.koreatimes.co.kr/upload/thumbnailV2/df32c60c8204448e98ccdb9841366bec.jpg/dims/resize/178/optimize)
