Kimchi etc

There were some very bleary eyed people at breakfast this morning but there were lots of happy stories and videos to share.  We sadly fare welled Davey who left for London this afternoon - two lots of major jet lag in less than 4 days for him!!!

I felt about 80% today (from the virus not a hangover!) so had a quiet morning. Ros and Pete hosted a  family post wedding lunch at the Italian restaurant attached to the hotel. Joel and Kay emerged looking very handsome and happy despite their huge day yesterday...... 

Mr and Mrs Kang brought the wedding cake - a lovely (and delicious) thing for us all to share for dessert.

Kay organised a traditional kimchi making class for us this afternoon, which proved to be a complete cultural experience....starting with flavoured teas and rice cakes......

...a chance to try wearing beautiful hanbok costumes.....

Ollie was pleased to try out a version of the costume Joel wore at the ceremony last night.

It was not quite as much fun being required to do "cute" poses by our very strict Korean tutors for this experience.

The 3 sisters were a little less than impressed by now with all the posing!

I just think we were all too tired today to fully enter into the spirit of this - no posting to FB anyone!

Then it was on to the kimchi making class......

The flavourings are a mixture of salty (fish sauce) spicy (chilli), sweet (sugar) + garlic, rice powder mixed with water and sesame seeds. The mixture today also had some salted shrimps added to the mix.

We started by cutting up radish and spring onions.

Then the fun part of mixing in the flavourings. Once it was starting to get juicy we added some Chinese cabbage (that had been soaking in salty water for a day(20% salt to water). We had to layer the cabbage leaves with the radish mixture..it was a very messy process the way we did it.  Once it was all thoroughly mixed the kimchi is stored in an airtight container for a while to ferment. Apparently we could eat our very young kimchi in about 3 days!

We'll definitely try this at home - but standing at a bench please .......

Our class ended with more tea and some kimchi and seafood flavoured pancakes - great fun and so lovely to do it with Ella and Ollie.

Love Seoul!!!