28 May 2010
Eggs, Actly
(DPRK Army Vice Chief of Staff and Socotra, 1995, Pyongyang)
We are on the verge of a holiday, as you know, and I have a recipe for deviled eggs I want to give you. But I am literally all aquiver this morning, so bear with me. All the nerve ends are firing, seemingly at random. Emotions ran high over the sale of the little condo, naturally enough. It was not a place so much as an idea, and a project as I attempted to re-invent my life.
It was the place I started cooking again, among other things, and I designed the new kitchen with all that in mind. I don’t think I ever did prepare a meal down there in the upgraded facility, but that doesn’t matter. It was fun just to have done it.
I don’t have enough bandwidth this morning to really freak out with you, but if I wasn’t so tired, I would be really uneasy about the Koreans, both flavors of them. The latest out of Pyongyang yesterday scraps all the confidence-building military assurance agreements with the South, and there is bluster about an immediate attack over the disputed maritime borders.
The Northern Limit Line (NLL) in the west and the eastern Military Demarkation Line- Extended (MDL-X) have always been problematic, but the tension now is extraordinary. Worse than after the October 9, 1983 bombing that nearly killed ROK President Chun Doo-hwan and succeeded in murdering 21 others during an official visit to Rangoon.
Worse by far than the slaughter caused by a bomb smuggled aboard a Korean Air flight, which detonated over the Andaman Sea in 1987, killing 115 souls on board.
The North is clearly in desperate straits. I met some of the men who were behind those incidents, notably the genial General Secretary of the Noth Korean Worker’s Party, Kim Yong Sun, or Army Vice Chief of Staff , General Kwon Jung Yong.
It was a one of those wild veers in policy by the North that opened up the dialogue on the Agreed Framework of a prospective nuclear deal. But it was a false promise, as everything is that comes of out the North.
I actually have a great deal of admiration for the way the Northerners have managed to steer with impunity between conciliation and murder down through the years. They have an implacable will, and the ability to apparently believe the most extraordinary things.
You have to actually approach them in their natural habitat to understand that they live in a parallel universe to the one that we inhabit. There is no incompatibility between negotiation and military action to them.
Here is my concern: for the most murderous acts perpetrated down through the years, the kidnappings, the bombings and all the rest, there has never been an accounting. The latest and possibly the last straw is the sinking of the ROK Frigate Cheonan by a North Korean submarine that killed 46 sailors.
The ship was a huge symbolic target for the North, since it had been involved a decade ago in a shoot-out that killed 40 North Koreans.
One could argue, I suppose, that there is no peace on the Peninsula, only the long armistice, punctuated by periodic gunfire on the DMZ, infiltrations and acts of terror far away. An an act of war while still technically in a state of war is not intrinsically an escalation, but that would be buying into the peculiar world view of L’il Kim and his advisors.
And that is an extraordinary one. Pyongyang is the center of the world, and that world is changing. L’il Kim’s son, Kim Jong Un, needs to put some points on the board in his own right to ascend to the throne of the Hermit Kingdom.
The succession issue is linked to dissatisfaction on a naval encounter near the NLL last November in which a North Korean was killed. Generals have been relieved since then, the currency replaced and public unease about what is coming next may have called for a bold stroke.
None of L’il Kim’s three sons has had the benefit of the more than a decade of grooming that Daddy had by the time it was right for him to succeed The Great Leader, Kim Il Sung. I’m nervous. They might think the U.S. is tied down in Afghanistan, and the time to act is now.
Thoughts about Task Force Smith and the awful American retreat from Seoul in the 1950s has crossed my mind.
I would normally expect another wild veer from the North to forestall the outbreak of war, but the Center of the World is at stake, and the old comrades like Sun and Yong are long retired. Maybe the calculations are not so precise this morning. Maybe this one is when the balloon goes up.
Anyway, thinking about Korea, and the proximity of all this bombast to an American Holiday makes me uneasy.
I cook when I am uneasy, and while doing some research on the Rangoon bombing, I got interested in an indigenous hot sauce. Sriracha comes from Thailand, right next door, and if we are not surprised by something horrible out of the Koreas this weekend, you might want to try this out this recipe to go along with your barbeque.
The fiery sauce from the seaside city of Si Racha, in the Chonburi Province of central Thailand adds a real flair to deviled eggs. Sriracha is a general-purpose hot sauce, appearing anywhere from a condiment for Vietnamese ph? soup to a topping for sushi rolls and pizza in the United States, where it can stand in for ketchup. Here we call it "Rooster Sauce", or "Cock Sauce," due to the rooster featured on its label. Try this out for a Eggs-acting zing:
Fiery Rooster Sauce (Sriracha) Deviled Eggs
8 large free-range eggs
1/3 cup Hellman’s original mayonnaise
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon sriracha hot sauce
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon rice wine vinegar
1 scallion, finely scliced
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds
Directions
Place eggs in a medium saucepan and cover with cold water. Place over high heat and bring to a boil. Once boiling, shut off heat and leave eggs to sit in the hot water for 12 minutes. Remove eggs from pan and place them in a bowl of cold water until fully cooled. Peel and discard shells. Carefully cut eggs in half lengthwise and scoop yolks out into a mixing bowl. Reserve whites on a serving platter.
Here is a cool way to do the filling: take a plastic sandwich bag and mix the ingredients in it until they are well blended. Then snip off a corner of the bag and use it like a pastry filler. It is really slick, and you can just toss the bag when you are done.
Add mayonnaise, sesame oil, hot sauce, vinegar and salt to the yolks and mash together with a fork. Once everything is combined in the sandwich bag, use it to pipe the mixture into the bowl of the egg whites. Garnish with toasted sesame seeds and sliced scallions.
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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