[Sca-cooks] New toy!

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Olwen the Odd:
>Hi all, and happy holidays.
>Over the weekend I went to the big oriental market and they had a 
>special guest vendor there from Korea, just for the weekend.  As I 
>walked by and looked over their display items I noticed a flatish 
>ceramic dish looking thing, higher in the center, and slightly 
>sloping down.   It is scored in a pattern which is attractive yet 
>set in such a way so as to act as an irrigation type system leading 
>to a slightly raised lip and a small hole in the valley of that dip. 
>The platter was sitting on top of a butaine burner such as I use and 
>under the hole was a little bowl sitting next to the stove.  I was 
>very curious and asked what it was.  It was explained to me that it 
>was a cooking surface and he pointed out a small piece of meat 
>sitting on the platter and told me how the grooves helped allow the 
>fats and liquids from the frying meats to drain away and down the 
>small hole into the little bowl.  Well, it *had* to be mine!  I have 
>used it each day since I got it and I love it.  It works as good or 
>better than my cast iron skillets.  Now that the merchants are back 
>in Korea I wonder how I can ever get another one!  I don't even know 
>what it is called.  Anyone know??

I think it's called a bulgogi (the same as the name of a dish 
frequently cooked thereon). There's also a Japanese name, but I 
forget what it is. I did a Web search and there's not a lot of info 
(that I could find), and I went down the wrong blind alley which led 
to the whole sin sullo / shabu-shabu / Mongolian hotpot thing. This 
is also intended as a similar kind of communal table-top cooking 
utensil, I believe; it just does dry cooking rather than simmering 
your thinly-sliced ingredients.

Now, of course, any sales rep operating in the West would concentrate 
on the supposed health benefits and not on the idea of plunking this 
glorious thing down in the middle of a big table surrounded by your 
guests...

Adamantius (realizing that there are basically about 4 cooking 
surfaces in Asia; they just have different names)