The West Sea Tidal Flats

The West Sea, known in English as the Yellow Sea, lies between the Korean peninsula and China, and its shallow floor and very large tidal range have laid down some of the broadest tidal flats in the world along the coasts of Gyeonggi, South Chungcheong and Jeolla. The salt pans of Sinan, in South Jeolla, sit within this archipelago of islets and mudflats, and the coast has fed the peninsula's kitchens with salt, shellfish, small fish and seaweed for as long as the cooking has been recorded.

The tidal flats are the West Sea's defining feature. At low water the sea withdraws across kilometres of fine mud and sand, and what it leaves behind is a working larder: clams, cockles, small crabs, octopus and mudskippers, together with the fish that come in on the flood. Much of the peninsula's coastal cooking begins with this exchange of tide and shore, and the cook who understands it understands why the western table leans so heavily on shellfish, brined and fermented seafood, and salt itself. Salt is the great product of the coast. In the pans of Sinan, seawater is let onto shallow beds and left to the sun and wind until the crystals form, and the coarse sun-dried salt that results is the salt of the Korean kitchen: it seasons the brine in which napa cabbage (Brassica rapa subsp. pekinensis) is soaked before kimchi is made, and it cures the fish that become jeotgal, the salted seafood condiments. Maangchi's Big Book of Korean Cooking specifies coarse sea salt for salting the cabbage, and the reason is practical, since the salt draws water from the leaf evenly and leaves it pliable but crisp. Fine table salt, by contrast, penetrates too fast and gives an uneven result. From the same waters come the small salted shrimp, saeu-jeot, and the fermented fish sauces that give depth to kimchi and to many soups and banchan. These preparations belong to the coast, but they travel inland with the salt, and they explain why kimchi differs in character from region to region: the western and southern kimchi, made near the salted-seafood supply, are typically more pungent and savoury than those of the north. The flats also support cultivated seaweed and the gathering of laver, gim, which is dried in thin sheets and toasted with oil and salt, a staple of the everyday table and of rice rolls. Blue crab is salted in soy sauce to make ganjang-gejang, and small crabs and clams go into soups and stews whose broths are clean and briny. The principle in each case is the same: the product is taken fresh from the tide, and the cook intervenes lightly, with salt, heat and a few aromatics. The flats are a landscape of labour as well as of ingredients. The rhythm of the tides, not the clock, sets the working day, and the harvest of shellfish, salt and seaweed follows the seasons and the moon. It is a coast whose cooking was shaped by what the water gave and withdrew, and whose salt reached every household on the peninsula.

The taste of the West Sea is brine and sweetness together: the clean salinity of sun-dried salt, the sweet flesh of clams and crab, and the deep savour of salted shrimp and fish sauce. At table it appears in kimchi seasoned with jeotgal, in briny clam soups, in soy-cured crab eaten with rice, and in toasted gim, where salt and sesame oil carry the sea flavour onto the rice bowl.