You can achieve quality taste without msg in royal cuisine.  

You may think that the quote above is pretty random or weird.  The sad truth is, is that so many Korean restaurants (I will boldly say majority) in Korea, use a lot of msg.  When I first moved here a few years ago, I struggled with indigestion for a year! Only to find that it was the Korean food that caused it.  Not to say that there aren't restaurants who do it the proper way and leave msg out of the picture all together.  During this course, after carefully learning how to marinate and season food without any additives, everything was quite clean and authentic!  So you can achieve the quality taste at home by using natural ingredients to prepare amazing Korean dishes.

Theme for day 4- '궁중상추쌈' or royal lettuce wraps.

Day 3 & 4.  I just have to say these past few days were a lot of fun.  Not only were the things we had to make challenging, but the history portion of the class was quite interesting.  For those who live in Korea (mainly speaking to ex-pats, foreingers) you may ask yourselves when eating Korean food why everything is pickled, marinated, and you don't see a whole of just 'fresh' veggies.  Well, a bit of history that I learned. During the days when the King ruled the land, everyone had to produce items for 'the palace' or '궁'.  However, since it took days to have the items delivered to the palace, you never found raw fish, fresh veggies, and even some fruits. Everything had to be dried and preserved before it entered the palace.  Therefore once it entered the palace grounds, the chefs had to create dishes soley upon what they received.  So when studying royal cuisine recipes, everything is marinated, fried, cooked all the way trough, etc.  This explains a lot as to what we know of Korean cuisine today.  However, the farmers & peasants ate the most fresh vegetables & fruits, and 'bibim bop' gave birth in that very comnumity (thus I hear they live for a long time).  Interesting how this dish is one of the dishes that is most recoginized today when it comes to Korean cuisine!

Alas, the Korean royal cuisine course that I have been waiting for has begun this week.  I was hoping to do a daily post, however I think I'll update every few days (my friend Tom from tomeatsjencooks will so not forgive me for this!).  Normally this course is offered in a span of 4 months, but for folks like me who is too impatient to endure the 4 months, we do a 2 week intensive 'crash' course instead, haha.  So where exactly am I taking this course you may ask?