Korea, rice and shine!

After my posts about the best aspects of Korean cuisine (here, here and here), I promised I'd tell you what the absolute best thing we ate during our trip was.

Well, here it is. The best thing we ate was... rice. 

Bear with me. 

Rice was ubiquitous in Korea and we certainly ate a lot of it. It was available with every meal, served every way imaginable. You could have it hot, cold, fried, steamed, in a weird savoury slop, and even in different colours (but watch out for purple barley). There were certainly plenty of options - if you like rice, that is. 

And because it was everywhere, rice became a bit of a gluten-free, low-FODMAP lifesaver for us. 

At our hotel in Busan, for example, there wasn't much I could eat for breakfast. Just black coffee, orange segments, and - you guessed it - rice. I also can't have too much fructose so I couldn't go crazy on the oranges, either.

So... rice. 

Me going wild at the breakfast buffet.

It was a simple, staple necessity. 

Yet humble old rice surprised us in its gourmet applications, too. 

The best rice we had we discovered on our last day in Korea. We were in the Busan suburb of Gwangan-Dong when we found it.

It being the rice bakery. Should I say that again for emphasis? The rice bakery. 

Apparently there is also one of these marvellous inventions in Seoul, but we didn't stumble across it (it is a city of 10 million people, after all). In Busan, all we had to do was take the train to Geumnyeonsan, walk towards the water, turn right at Starbucks, then wander along the beach path - there it was.  

And, trust me, we didn't want to leave. 

Happy bread!

The only way to describe the goods at the rice bakery were, well, "normal". Like they were filled with delicious, gluteny goodness, coated in sugar, and made with love. And don't worry, we triple checked to make sure it was for real - we couldn't believe it either.

They had everything. Pastries that actually flaked. Cakes that were moist. Bread that was actually doughy. Fruit loaves that were - actually I'm not quite sure what people see in these, but they were there aplenty.  

Childhood treats you can only dream of (before the nightmares of gluten-induced stomach pains give you cold sweats).

This is Ross's custard cream pie. 

Happy place.

And here's my soft, squishy cream donut. 

This delicacy was a happy reminder that gluten-free living shouldn't mean deprivation from sugar-induced food comas. 

Cream donut.

Food this amazing should not be so far away. 

And so we finished our trip with a dilemma. 

Do we cancel our trip home and relocate to Busan? (Hmmm possibly a tad extreme.)

Or should we just eat the next week's worth of food all at once? (I know, I know, donuts are a sometimes food.)

Perhaps we could try and smuggle them into New Zealand and hope that it isn't stale in four days time? (The customs fine can't be that bad, right?)

Or - achievable goals - maybe we should just aspire for more in our gluten-free cooking? 

Korea manages to produce better gluten-free baked goods than I have ever seen, and it's not even a "thing" there!

Maybe we just need to get creative. There must be more that can be done sans gluten. Using ingredients like, I don't know, rice.

So we left Korea with a new appreciation for rice, inspired by the endless possibilities.

Oh, and with full bellies too.   

Bye, Korea. It's been a blast.