Gamja Tang (Pork-On-The-Bone Soup): Quite a Misnomer

Some dishes are named after their main ingredients, such as mashed potato, eggplant parmesan, and chicken fingers (not fingers, obviously). Although the dish I had for lunch, Gamja-Tang (potato soup), uses potato, its main ingredients is pork.

The word gamja has two definitions: the more common meaning is potato, while the less known meaning is the spinal cord of a pig. The Gamja-Tang is made with broth from a pig's spinal cord. It is apparently a great hangover food.

The waiter set the table with basic banchans, which included cabbage kimchi, radish kimchi, sweetened anchovies, and long green peppers.

After a while, she brought a pot full of all the ingredients in the soup. The soup technically wasn't cooked yet, so we had to wait until it boiled and all the juices came out. The soup had clear noodles on top with huge scallions, chewy flour dough, and big chunks of back bone in the bottom.

The soup finally begins to boil, and you can see the spicy red broth emerging on top! The soup had very rich flavor from the juices from all these ingredients.

Even though the pig's back bone was rather fatty, the pure meat itself was so tender and juicy from being boiled in the water. It also had lots of savory flavors from the spicy sauce.

The best part about the dish is the very end when the waiter makes fried rice with the remainders from the soup. There are vegetales, seaweed, fish roe, and kimchi in the fried rice.

Waiting for the rice to crackler at the bottom...

The fried rice was full of rich flavors from the soup. You don't need to add any extra seasoning or sauce.

Diligently scraping the pot with a spoon. Yummy!

HOWEVER, because I don't particularly enjoy pork, I packed my own food from home: Bibimbop! Every day I have been at home and not dining out, I have eaten bibimbop and yet still don't get sick of it. This bibimbop had spiced radish, regular radish, squash, and lotus root.

I'm really going to miss this delicious food once I am back at Harvard...