Nau speak: Korea: Simple snacks at home and lessons in simplicity

This may come as something of a surprise to you, but I'm a person who absolutely and utterly adores food. Not only is food a necessary form of fuel to power us through the routine tasks of everyday existence, but it's also a form of entertainment and escape, an art in and of itself. The foods that speak most strongly to each person's soul are going to be as unique to that individual as their thumbprint, due in large part to what they grew up eating but also to the formative food experiences they've had over the years. I know, some of you probably rolled your eyes so hard at the phrase "formative food experiences" that you're reading this sentence through your nostrils. That's fine. I understand your hesitance, the skeptical glare sweeping your eyes. For a lot of people out there, walking around, food is solely fuel and therefore maintains a lowly stasis as something that must be done, not something that should be done, and that's a shame. A formative food experience, however, is a resplendent and unimitable experience, where something simple takes on all new elevation.

Fish was one of these formative food experiences for me. Growing up I was pretty lucky, for a desert dweller, to be blessed with the opportunity to try various kinds of seafood at an early age. I was a pretty adventurous eater from youth, so I was more than happy to mow down mussels or join my dad for a crab leg night at the local buffet, and an obsession with the original Japanese Iron Chef (dubbed over for American television) didn't hurt either. Even so, fish itself wasn't something we ate much of- definitely never was it ever cooked it in our home. It was looked down upon as a diet food, something bland and boring to be breaded and deep fried and only eaten on a whimsical flight of fancy in the form of a filet o'fish on some drunken eve. Plus, there's that notorious smell it's known for releasing, so it just wasn't around much. One fateful day while living in Japan, however, I found myself introduced to a new approach to eating fish- skewered, simply grilled for a long, slow cooking period over charcoal. The skin was crackly, crispy and had that deep, unmistakable charcoal essence while the juices ran down the stick and along my arms. I sat hunched over among the stones at a temple near my home, a festival raging around me, focused on my fish. It was ridiculously affordable, and in the end it changed my approach to fish. Now, any time I confront an unfamiliar type of fish at the market, as I had while living in Korea and found a package of these long iridescent belt fish, I would grill them, simply, with salt. While using a frying pan sorely lacks the charcoal essence, you're still able to get a decent level of crispiness to the skin and the salt brings out the flavor in the fish without burying it in unnecessary extravagance. The method is simply called 塩焼き or shioyaki, salt-grilled. While Korea has taught me to appreciate soups, Japan taught me to enjoy rice and the simple pleasure of a well-seasoned fish.