Banchan Primer

When I was in Texas for Christmas, I filmed my family eating dinner at a Korean housemade tofu place. My intention was to make a little video about it which I finally did this weekend, but it was bigger than the 100 MB than youtube allows. So I divided the piece into two, compressed one of them, and I'll post the longer version shortly.
This first part is a short description of the banchan we got at the restaurant. Banchan are the side dishes that come with a Korean meal. Here in NYC, when I go to a Korean restaurant, I get angry if the banchan cost extra. Generally the hipster Korean places like Do Hwa (55 Carmine bw Bedford & 7th Ave.) charge extra for sides and even rice! They should be free and if you want more, you should get more! I have to admit though, I'm a little embarrassed when my mom asks for a 3rd refill of something. Especially if we haven't finished it in the first place.
Banchan aren't always the same every time you go to a restaurant. One hopes the restaurant makes their own, but you never know. It's a lot of work so maybe they have a vendor that does the work for them. Restaurant's commonly serve some kind of vegetable namul which I think means seasoned salad or something like that. Spinach, fiddleheads or bean sprout namul generally contains soy, vinegar, sesame oil. Obviously if there's something in a red sauce, it's spiced with kochujang, Korean hot pepper paste. My favorite banchan not pictured are dried anchovies, black beans, and my favorite is something I don't see often enough, potatoes in soy and jalepeno.
I should explain something, when my mom talks about going to the mountain to pick fiddleheads, this happened when we were growing up. We'd be in the '79 black Econoline van on one of the endless drives my parents liked to take and they would stop in the springtime and make us pick the young fern shoots (I've seen them called fern bracken as well) that grew on the side of the road. That was embarrassing at the time, too. Now, I think it's kind of charming.