Iro^H^H^HKorean Chef

My mother has always been a huge fan of drama serials, usually from Hong Kong. Her latest craze is this DVD set from Hong Kong that she picked up recently, a Korean period drama titled 大長今, or Dae Jang-geum/대장금 (thanks, Yahoo! Search and wikipedia!), dubbed in Cantonese and subtitled in Mandarin.

J and I caught segments of it over several dinner visits. The subtitles don't always agree with the dubbing, which we kind of expected, but the show holds its own on the plot. Having watched in bits and pieces up to episode 20, several major plot arcs involve some serious dicing and slicing - of fish, meat, spices and vegetables, somewhat reminiscent of Iron Chef battles. Not particularly surprising since a large part of the story revolves around the imperial kitchen, but I still chuckle quietly when the camera zooms in to detail the food preparation. (There's also a bit of slicing and dicing of the non-culinary sort, but that hasn't happened much so far. Which is a probably a good thing.)

I've always been a bit of a purist (fascist?) about watching undubbed, original-voice anime, so imagine my surprise to find myself enjoying the Canto-dubbed, Mandarin-subbed Korean show. Who would've guessed? But I'll still take my anime undubbed, thanks.

Adapted from wikipedia: Dae Jang-geum has experienced massive success in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and [even] Chicago, further continuing the South Korean cultural fever that has gripped Asia since the early 2000s.

Dae Jang-geum is set to air on Starhub Cable's channel 55 sometime soon, and Crystal Jade Ginseng Chicken And BBQ is looking to cash in on the Korean food wave that they hope the show will generate. Which it probably will, seeing as how the Winter Sonata fever launched the massively popular Korean Winter Holiday craze here and elsewhere.