The Language of Food: Through the Lens of East Asian Films and Drama by Jieun Kiaer & Loli Kim & Niamh Calway

Author:Jieun Kiaer & Loli Kim & Niamh Calway
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2025-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Stew

A stew is a combination of solid ingredients that are cooked in liquid, often slowly, and stews have been made since ancient times. The earliest evidence of stew is believed to be in Japan, found in the lipid deposits of Jōmon pots, the same pots that have been found on several sites throughout East Asia. One such pot, an incipient Jōmon pot from Kubodera-minami in Niigata prefecture in Japan, is currently held at the Tokamachi City Museum in Japan. The pot is around 15,000 years old, dating to the Late Pleistocene. Analysis of the pottery has revealed lipid deposits that suggest the pots were used to boil fish.

Koreans call stew jjigae (찌개), different from the Korean soup, guk (국), with a higher ratio of ingredients to broth. The main ingredients in jjigae are traditionally vegetables, tofu, fish, or meat, in various combinations, although there are also other ingredients that depend on context. It was common for families to share a pot of jjigae rather than buying individual bowls, but increasingly in restaurants, individuals order personal portions. Jjigae is a fundamental dish on the Korean table, often eaten alongside banchan and other dishes. At BBQ restaurants as well, a complimentary jjigae is often served with rice. As at the family table, the idea is that a meal is not complete without a hot liquid-based dish to eat, a stew or a soup.

There are many kinds of jjigae: sundubu jjigae (순두부 찌개) made with tofu (dubu, 두부), vegetables, and gochujang with options of seafood or meat; kimchi jjigae (김치찌개), made with kimchi, pork, tofu, and gochujang; and doenjang jjigae, made with variations of meat and vegetables and doenjang (된장) ‘fermented soybean paste’. A jjigae may be eaten multiple times a day, always piping hot, and at home usually from a single batch that will sit on the stove in a pan until it is eaten, perhaps over a period of days. Jjigae are generally made with meat, seafood, or vegetables in a broth made from water and variations of gochujang (고추장) ‘red chilli paste’, ganjang (간장) ‘soy sauce’, and saeujeot (새우젓) ‘salted and fermented shrimp’. In Korea, jjigae is often served as a communal dish on the table along with side dishes but is also eaten in personal bowls.

Many Korean stews are cooked directly in a dolsot ‘stone pot’, although in homes, they may be cooked in pans. The tools of cooking and eating are therefore also significant in creating food discourses. Traditional connotations, as well as distinguishing between country and city, life, and generations, make these objects particularly important to nostalgia and heritage and as such to emotion and empathy. In the earlier example from Pachinko, in which Sunja’s mother carefully prepares the white rice on her daughter’s wedding day, she cooks the rice in a dolsot and transfers it to the traditional, gold, lidded metal rice bowls that were made to resemble royal dinnerware of the Joseon period and have remained as traditional dinnerware. These objects in moving images, and

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