The Rice Plains of Jeolla and Gyeonggi

About seventy per cent of the peninsula is upland, and the flat, alluvial ground that carries wet-rice farming lies mostly in the west and south-west: the Honam plain of Jeolla, drained by the Mangyeong and Dongjin rivers, and the lowlands of Gyeonggi around the Han River. Rice (Oryza sativa) has been grown on these plains for many centuries, and the tax grain of the Joseon state was gathered from them and carried to the capital at Hanyang, now Seoul. The cooking of both provinces rests on this grain and on the fields, rivers and tidal coast beside it.

On the Jeolla plain, the fields of Gimje and Jeongeup lie in the basins of the Dongjin and Mangyeong rivers, and Naju lies in the basin of the Yeongsan River further south, all of them level ground given over to wet rice. The West Sea and the southern coast are close to the province as a whole, and the province has long been counted among the richest tables of the country. Its reputation rests on the range of what reaches the kitchen: rice, barley and pulses from the fields, vegetables and wild greens from the hills, and fish, shellfish and salted seafood from the tidal flats and the southern waters. The same abundance supports the long fermenting tradition of the region, in which soybeans become doenjang and ganjang, and rice and chilli become gochujang, all of them made in the earthenware jars called onggi that stand in the yard of a household. Sunchang gochujang, a registered Korean Geographical Indication, comes from this province, as does the dish bibimbap (비빔밥) of Jeonju, where rice is dressed with seasoned vegetables, egg and gochujang. Gyeonggi, the province that surrounds Seoul, belongs to a different history. Its plains fed the court, and its cooking took on the restraint of the palace table, with milder seasoning and a lighter hand with chilli than the south. Icheon rice, a registered Geographical Indication, grows in this province. The rice is a short-grain, sticky variety, cooked plain, and it is the fixed centre of the Korean meal: soup, stew and the many small dishes called banchan are all set around the bowl of bap, and they are judged by how well they suit it. The cook's habits follow from the grain. Rice is washed in several changes of water until the water runs nearly clear, soaked briefly, then cooked in a heavy pot with a close lid, so that the grains swell evenly and cling together when they are lifted with chopsticks. The scorched layer left on the base of the pot is simmered with water to make nurungji, a pale, toasty rice tea that closes the meal. Rice is also pounded into tteok, or rice cake, ground into flour for jeon and porridge, and fermented into makgeolli and vinegar, so that one crop gives the bowl, the festival table and the drink. The two provinces together show how land shapes a cuisine. The flat ground gives surplus, surplus gives the means to ferment and preserve, and preservation gives the deep savoury base on which the whole of Korean cooking stands. The division of the peninsula in 1945 and the war of 1950 to 1953 cut the south from the northern farmland, and the plains of Jeolla and Gyeonggi remained within the south.

The taste of the plains is the taste of plain rice: faintly sweet, clean and slightly sticky, set against salt, heat and fermented depth in the dishes around it. Jeolla seasons boldly, with generous gochugaru, salted seafood and long-aged pastes, while Gyeonggi keeps to a gentler, more balanced seasoning that recalls the court. The bowl of rice stands between the two, and a cook tastes every dish with it in mind.