If you believed Korean food was all about that spicy cabbage condiment found everywhere in Korea, think again. A sleek and efficient cookery school in Seoul cheerfully demystifies this ancient and wonderfully nutritious cuisine.

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Professor Kim Soo Jin salvages my pancake as I attempt to flip it effortlessly as I have seen her demonstrate moments ago. Mine has cracked down the middle and risks turning out as two semicircles rather than the crusty golden round she created.

We speak different languages, but in this kitchen - at least for the couple of hours our group is in tuition mode - food is our common tongue.

With a deft action, she places a broad spatula on top of my seafood-topped pancake and another underneath and, with a twist of her experienced wrist, inverts it to cook the other side. It is saved.

Our group has come to Seoul's Food & Culture Academy for a short lesson in Korean cuisine. As we enter the upstairs room we pass a display of foods each traditionally served according to the month of the year. In January, for New Year, it's tteokguk a beef soup with thinly sliced rice cakes; in April, the fourth lunar month, the feast of the lanterns dictates bubble-shaped rice cakes steamed in alcohol, and others topped with brilliant azalea flowers, and so it goes, dishes dictated by seasonal produce and special events.

We have come in November, however, close to the winter solstice, which Koreans believed is an auspicious day, marking the sun's resurrection.

"An old proverb says you must eat dongji to grow another year older," Professor Kim, the academy's CEO and a well-known professional cook in Korea, tells us through an interpreter as she prepares to show us how to make red bean porridge. "Once people would smear this on their doors to scare away ghosts."

We shiver appropriately, and she laughs. This is the good thing about these classes it seems. While Professor Kim and her highly experienced team move easily around this modern kitchen, the spirits of their ancestors must be smiling too, for now the culture and traditions of one of the world's oldest cuisines is being passed to new generations as well as visitors like ourselves.

Making a traditional soup like this is time consuming business, but in the ways of cookery schools worldwide, we have been spared the hours needed to boil the dried red adzuki beans until tender. Within a few minutes the already cooked beans are drained then mixed and stirred with rice to create a smooth thick mixture. Professor Kim then rolls little white balls of glutinous rice to float on top of the soup. We taste it later and it is sweetly satisfying, perfect for long winter nights. 

The tables at the back of the room already groan with dishes appropriate for other months of the year, which we will taste later, but for now we have work to do, and separate into two groups of about a dozen students. The others will make a beef stirfry but I am happy with our allocation of hae-mul pajeon, a seafood pancake which appears something like a cross between a panfried pizza and an omelette. 

Our own spaces on the long table are already set up with ingredients and utensils. Carefully Professor Kim takes us through the basics, explaining the ingredients and demonstrating how we should cut the onions, slice the seafood and mix the batter. It's a surprise to learn that a lighter pancake is possible by using some commercial tempura mix. I note this on my mental shopping list.

Then we are on our own. Well, almost. I am happily chopping onions - my way - when an assistant hovers over my shoulder.

"Curl your fingers," she whispers, "you could cut yourself."

With such attentive help, what could possibly go wrong, I think? Pour the batter into the pan (already heated and waiting on the gas burners nearby), swirl it around, top with the onions and seafood, and wait for the bottom to cook before flipping it. Ah, yes, the flipping! But even here help is a step away in the form of our all-seeing professor. 

As I guessed, my pancake is not the prettiest on the display table when we have all finished, but it tastes OK. Surely the ancestors would approve of that.

- by Sally Hammond

ABOUT FOOD & CULTURE KOREA 

Based in Seoul, this academy offers various programs to educate locals and visitors in different facets of Korean culture and traditional food as well as food styling and table setting.

Many short and long courses are provided in food, culture and food business. Specialist classes include food styling, food business, and food writing as well as TV hosting and restaurant consultancy. 

All classes are conducted in English, Japanese and Chinese.

Level 1 classes (2.5 hours duration) take place morning, afternoon and evening.

5F, El-Hung B/D, #95 Shin-Gyo-Dong, Jong-Ro Gu, Seoul, South Korea Tel: +82-2-720-6704, www.fnckorea.com/English/main.asp

Have you learned to cook a national dish in another country? Did you get it right?