Korean American Fest: Colors, Music, and Fab, Fab Food

Yes, yes, I know this is a food blog, but the traditional costumes at the recent Korean American Festival - held in downtown Baltimore on a broiling hot September Sunday - were just too gorgeous, too colorful, and too darn pink for me to resist.
I mean, really:

The sky! The trees! The pink!

Some of the dancers seemed only too happy to let me take a photo:

Others ... not so much:

Is it me, or does the woman on the left look a little bit annoyed with me?

Ah, but with such good food to be had, not even a cross look could dampen my spirits. Poppa Trix and I started out with some kimchee sweet potato pancakes:

These had lots of nice chunks of onion and cabbage, and they weren't at all greasy. While not bland in any way, these babies didn't really pack much heat, though you'd think they would, what with that brilliant color.  No matter - the heat was still to come!

While we were munching on our pancakes, I spied a couple of guys eating a plate of something that looked very intriguing, and because I thought that I could just make out a hard boiled egg in it, you know I had to go and ask them what it was. It's a good thing I did! As it turns out, the dish, dduk bok-kee,  was not written on the menu - at least not in English. "And? What was it, Trix?" I hear you impatiently asking. See for yourself:

Behold the spicy goodness

Those cylinders are chewy rice cakes, the triangles are fish slices, and the sauce is infused with hot and spicy gochuchang. And we mustn't forget the hard boiled egg:

Yep, dduk bok-kee is pretty much my new favorite thing, and I definitely plan to make some soon!

We were pretty full at this point (If you've read my Latino Fest post you may find that hard to believe, but it's true) so we decided to stroll around the fairly small space and check out the various (non-food) booths.  For the most part, these didn't turn out to be too exciting - except for one. The H-Mart booth! I have mentioned here before that Asian superstore H-Mart is just about my favorite supermarket on the planet, and they didn't disappoint. Along with a coupon book, they were giving out these super cool boxes of crackers, which tasted like sweet and spicy shrimp (in a good way):

If anyone can translate the cracker box and the cartoon inside, please leave it in the comments!!

Thank you, H-Mart man!!

But all roads lead to food, and my curiosity was piqued by this sign for North Korean cold noodles:

Given that the day was unseasonably hot, these made for  a refreshing - albeit filling - dish. Almost sweet, the watery broth actually had ice cubes floating in it to keep everything nice and cool. I particularly liked the little slivers of cucumber and bits of onion.

A squid dish caught Poppa Trix's eye, and so he got some, along with spicy cucumber and rice,  to take to work for lunch the next day: