Just because you move to a foreign country doesn't mean you can't enjoy making your favorite comfort foods from home--whatever they may be. You can find ingredients at the foreign food market, or venture to your nearest Costco if you prefer to buy in bulk. Many big grocery stores in Korea like E-Mart, Lotte Mart, or Homeplus, have been increasing their foreign food selection to cater to the growing number of foreigners in the country. You can even find foreign food items online at sites like GMarket. Korean websites have started becoming more foreigner-friendly, with English options and easy navigation. It's also easy to order with your Korean bank card (just make sure it has the Visa logo), and it offers cheap (or free) delivery.
Part of the fun of cooking in Korea is finding ways to adapt recipes to fit to Korean ingredients. Many times, you can discover a whole new way to make a favorite dish you never would have thought. This is also how you can end up creating complete new dishes, just by experimenting. When I go to the grocery store, I'm always thinking about what would go well together to make a tasty dish. Sometimes a trial run isn't successful, but my mom always used to tell me that cooking was a constant learning process.
There have been many successes, however. In the past three years, I have made and enjoyed fajitas, enchiladas, burritos, orange-honey chicken with couscous, lemon-garlic herb chicken with German potato salad, Sloppy Joe's, macaroni and cheese from scratch, fried rice, chicken and vegetable stir-fry, garlic mashed potatoes, stuffing from scratch, and tiramisu. The biggest successes of the cooking adventure have been a delicious turkey dinner with the trimmings and a king crab dinner with cocktail shrimp and homemade cocktail sauce. Both meals required some preparation beyond the norm, but in the end, it proved worth it. The question now is: what to attempt next? My boyfriend and I like to try new things and overcome any cooking challenges that might come our way. Possibly next on the agenda: roasted chicken with potatoes and vegetables or a pot roast with gravy.
If you are interested in any recipes, please let me know and I can post them!
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