TOOLS
The recipes in this book bounce to the tune of each chapter. Collectively, they make an album, and to play this album, you probably don’t need anything too different from what you already have. So, if you ain’t got that much to begin with, which I get, my brothers and sisters, then you can just mix everything up in an old plastic bowl. Or cut a plastic 2-liter Coke bottle and use that. On the real, the food in this book always tastes better when it’s made with cheap-ass tools like 99-cent-store plastic bowls, mismatched utensils, and wooden spatulas. Then you can cook the dishes with anything from an elaborate stovetop to the hood of your car on a hot Cali day.
Wherever you get what you get, these are the tools that will come in handy and connect you to the spirit of the food.
So here’s the list of things you may need:
° Big plastic buckets for marinating
° Plastic bowls and strainers for washing vegetables and making kimchi
° Wooden cooking spoons and spatulas
° Aluminum foil
° Pans
° Big pliers for grabbing hot soup cauldrons
° Rubber gloves
° Spoons (the kind you eat with)
° Chopsticks
° Kitchen scissors
° Cutting board
° Knife
° Yesterday’s newspaper to catch vegetable peels
° Blender
° Electric griddle
° Charcoal hibachi
° Big glass jars or Mason jars
° Tupperware
° Flower-patterned apron
° Rice cooker
° Some gossip to dish out while you peel garlic
ESSENTIALS
As a basic rule, try to hit some farmers’ markets in your town to supplement your staple veggies (ginger, garlic, and scallions) with other types beyond run-of-the-mill onion, celery, and carrots. In Southern California, just east of San Diego County on the Mexican border, lies the Imperial Valley, where many Korean-run farms grow acres of soy sprouts, mung bean sprouts, melons, chile peppers, sesame, mustard plants, ginseng, chestnuts, persimmons, pomegranates, Mandarin oranges, sweet potatoes, and pears.
If you don’t have access to those kinds of farms, try foraging. Dandelion greens and mustard greens probably grow right next to your highways and behind those chain-link fences in abandoned lots. Scour backyards for fruit trees; keep an eye out for garlic chives. Wild food grows everywhere. You just have to look.
Beyond fresh fruits and vegetables, this list of essential ingredients will help you cook Korean food, or your version of Korean food. There is a lot more you can get to stock your cupboards and fridges, but this is a good start. Tear our cuisine up, mess around, take chances, mix and match. These things will bring joy to your life and liven things up. Then you too might be eating rice e-v-e-r-y d-a-y.
NOTE:
BUY WHAT YOU CAN BUY, BUT IF YOU’RE FEELING LOST, THE HAITAI AND MONGO BRANDS ARE GOOD FOR KOCHUJANG, DOENJANG, AND KOCHUKARU.
RICE
My boy PK has this joke where an Asian kid goes to his Caucasian friend’s house and realizes that his family eats bread every day. “You eat bread e-v-e-r-y d-a-y?” Yeah, we eat rice every day, and our differences make us that much more similar to each other.
Now, for Koreans, there ain’t no uncle named Ben. There are two major rice grains in Asia, so let’s get to the long and the short of it.
Korea, Japan, Tibet, Mongolia, and a big part of China more or less eat short-grain rice that’s high in starch. It sticks together and can be pounded into glutinous cakes. It also sticks to your bones, so it’s perfect for cold weather.
As it gets warmer and you head toward the equator, the grain becomes long and loose. Countries like Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and parts of southern China eat jasmine long-grain rice packed in big burlap sacks. Perfect for pounding into noodles or paper for wraps.
Then you got basmati as you head farther west through India.
The most important step in cooking rice is how you wash it. Our Western mentality gets us in the habit of washing fruits and vegetables because they are dirty; washing rice, though, comes from a totally different place. Wash your rice to cleanse, not to clean. Run cold water through the rice and massage the grains, transferring all your energy to the rice as the rice transfers its own energy to you. Try to feel every single grain as you swirl the water.
Drain the water and do it again. Get deeper with it, turn off your phone, fuck the world for a minute.
Drain the water and do it again.
And again.
And again.
Minimum 3 times, up to at least 5 times, and more if you’d like and are feeling kinky about it.
Fill the vessel back up with water till it rises about an inch above the surface of the rice and cook.
I hope that you explore the beauties and spirituality of rice. Really, it’s therapy for every day of your life.
SOY SAUCE
Soy sauce is a fermented liquid made from soybeans, yeast, and wheat flour, and it’s our cultural olive oil. You just can’t cook without it, so it’s very important always to have a bottle somewhere in your home. There are different varieties for cooking, steeping, marinating, and finishing. I like Kikkoman, but explore and discover what suits your taste.
SESAME OIL
Nutty, viscous, delicious. Sesame oil is not really used for cooking per se; instead, it’s a vital element in sauces and marinades. It is an essential component of dumpling fillings. It’s the final splash on a bowl of bi bim bap. You use it sparingly, so don’t skimp on the quality by getting a blended version or some other cheap-ass product. Respect yourself and buy the best that tastes the best to you. Me, I like Kadoya’s sesame oil.
GARLIC
Oh, if I could count the ways . . .
Bottom line: you need garlic in your kitchen to cook Korean food or any food in this book. There was a time, back in the day, when some chefs tried to give garlic a bum rap. Like they were over it. Like garlic was the easy way out.
I’m glad that didn’t fly.
Garlic is onion’s evil cousin, my homie. It’s good for your skin and bad for your breath. You choose your fate.
Get it where there are heaps of it in markets and not where they sell five bulbs lined in a pretty plastic mesh bag on a pretty shelf with a pretty label. American supermarkets trap garlic in a cage, but it ain’t no circus animal. Garlic needs to breathe. It’s gotta hang and stretch its legs in big piles of stank.
If you really wish, you can use the peeled stuff from Gilroy packed in jars or bags, but getting the whole bulb and smashing it, peeling it, and chopping it is a wonderful thing to do.
Smashing, peeling, chopping. It’s a ritual. Make it a part of your life.
SCALLIONS AND GINGER
Ginger Garlic Scallion. The trinity. The mirepoix of a wok. The foundation of flavor. One of my professors at the Culinary Institute of America used to always say, “GGS!” Anyone who went to the CIA back in the day knows Danny Lee. Rest in peace, my brother. Chef Lee always reminded us of our GGS. He’d pop around corners like John Turturro in Mr. Deeds: “GGS, don’t forget!” Light fire, oil, GGS, go!
KOCHUKARU
Long red peppers dried on mesh mats in the dry heat, then ground into coarse flakes. Life is good.
You need this stuff. Kochukaru is to Korea what duck fat is to Gascony. There is no way to imagine that it would never be around. It keeps for a long time, so buy a bag and store it. You need it for kimchi, sauces, marinades—everything. We don’t use much salt in Korean cooking, as the soy provides that saline element, so kochukaru is almost like our salt.
KOCHUJANG
Dry peppers, grind the peppers, keep some ground, then use the rest to make into a paste. That is what kochujang is. It’s a fermented product that combines chile powder, soybeans, and a bunch of other aromatics and is allowed to develop into this amazing postapocalyptic glue that binds food together. You absolutely need it for stews and marinades. This stuff keeps till your kids get to college.
DOENJANG
You can call it miso just like you can call a girl a ho: that is, you can’t. It just ain’t right to do that to this funky paste. Miso is miso and doenjang just ain’t the Korean version of it. No, this is a mashed-up soybean fermentation that can turn water into a meal. Seriously. Try it and get back at me. A scoop of doenjang and some water, heat, boil, reduce, eat. Delicious. You can use it for dips on vegetables or make stews. Like kochujang, this stuff is almost indestructible, so keep it in your fridge and mark it as an heirloom.
DAIKON RADISH
The Korean type is short, fat, and stubby, like me. The Japanese type is long and slender. Either way, it’s delicious and integral to build a base flavor. It’s also good for crunchy snacking.
Peel it and cut into cubes for ggakdugi, a spicy kimchi. Shred it into salads. My favorite is to slice and braise it in soy or to throw it into beef stock for that extra layer of flavor.
TOFU
Soak soybeans, crush and heat them, then coagulate with seawater. Soft, silken, hardened, pressed, stinky.
People sometimes hate on tofu, saying it has no taste. If you think like that, it’s game over. So let’s shatter that thinking and restart.
Tofu is an amazing product, just like cheese is an amazing product. Sometimes I like to look at tofu as if it were a cheese, with different varieties like burrata and fresh ricotta. If you do that, you’ll cook and treat it with care, working to enhance the flavor with delicate and concentrated touches. And you’ll understand that tofu is not supposed to be eaten like a steak, the way it’s offered in many whack-ass vegetarian restaurants. No, try dicing that tofu and putting it in a stew with anchovies, shrimp, clams, pork shoulder, dwenjjang, and zucchini. Y-U-M! Or slowly braise it, covered with soy sauce, minced scallion, ginger, sesame seeds, and kochukaru.
Silken, cook it in a stew with spicy red pepper paste, oysters, beef, and garlic.
You see? This ain’t Tofurky.
Asian markets have refrigerator cases just for tofu. I love to use the Pulmuone tofu brand.
RICE VINEGAR
Get a natural brown rice vinegar like Marukan’s rice wine vinegar. Not that seasoned crap.
DRIED SEAWEED
Dried seaweed is used for many things and comes in many forms: the salted versions are great for eating with rice or making rolls. Then there is the actual kelp that is dried as is, and you use that as a base for a broth or in a special birthday soup, mixed with beef and cooking soy sauce. We eat that soup instead of cake.
DUMPLING WRAPPERS
Dumpling wrappers are my thing, yo. It’s like having pasta around at your fingertips. Fill ’em, then boil, fry, steam, or stew. Delicious.
SPAM
Spam. Gotta have Spam.
MAPLE SYRUP
Get pure maple syrup from Vermont or New Hampshire. The pure syrup will always, always trump the fake “non-pure” versions, so get the pure one and then experiment with the different grades and shades to find your favorites.
CANNED FRUIT
I use canned fruit a lot in my cooking; ain’t no shame in that. I like Dole’s canned fruits.
CULTURAL SHIT
The farmers in Korea, who have such a profound understanding of soil, land, and growth, have shown us visionary ways to approach a meal: eat with passion and heart. These cultural rules are about respect and ritual, and they connect us to the harvest.
You don’t have to follow any of these rules and regulations, and if you grew up with certain cultural codes, I pardon you for breaking them if you wish. Just remember that whether you stick by the rules or scorn them, there is a proper way to prepare and eat food.
° Elders are served first. Don’t eat till they start.
° Elders leave the table first. Don’t get up until they get up.
° Don’t stick your chopsticks straight into the rice. That means death, and not in a cool, Goth, Siouxie and the Banshees sort of way. No, it’s just straight up rude, a low-level spit in death’s face.
° Don’t point your chopsticks at people. That shit’s also rude.
° Slurp your noodles at a voracious pace.
° Eat all your rice.
° No measuring cups or measuring spoons when cooking. Use your palm instead.
° Taste with fingers.
° Chew each bite twenty times.
° Eat slow; drop the deuce fast.
° Thank each other for the meal before you eat and again after the meal.
° Double, triple dip.
° Eat with your mouth open; talk with your mouth full.
° Reach across the table.
° Wipe sweat with a folded napkin.
° Sit straight.
° Eat a lot.
° Talk about what you’re going to eat for the next meal, even—and especially—if you haven’t yet finished this one.
° Cook with your soul.
