Speaker 1: M yung Yang is an ancient theory of yin and
Speaker 1: yang and says that the five elements earth, wind, fire, wood, metal,
Speaker 1: and water make up the universe. Korean food revolves around
Speaker 1: this concept, and on the Korean table, garnishes, accompaniments, and
Speaker 1: dishes with five colors represent each of these five elements,
Speaker 1: and traditional Korean cooking food is medicine, and by balancing
Speaker 1: the elements and what we are consuming, we create balance
Speaker 1: and wellness in the body. No other dish evokes and
Speaker 1: represents this theory as strongly as beebum bob. Bee bum
Speaker 1: bob literally means mixed rice and though there's no particular recipe,
Speaker 1: it is a sizzling rice bowl that is topped with
Speaker 1: colorful vegetable garnishes and a fried egg. Yeah, Bibimpa means
Speaker 1: is mixed to rice with the beset of ball. And
Speaker 1: we used a storm pot and we hit the pot
Speaker 1: and it sisily. We make the sizzling storm pot b
Speaker 1: and we meet soon. Mainly, my career name is a
Speaker 1: sun me Lee and my restaurant's name is a chong
Speaker 1: Ju restaurant. And joan Ju is one of the city
Speaker 1: in Korea is very famous for the bibbiing bob, and
Speaker 1: we are specialized in the bibby pub that's how we
Speaker 1: got the name from choon Ju. Yeah Soon Me is
Speaker 1: a second generation owner of Jianju restaurant that has been
Speaker 1: specializing in serving bibbon bob for twenty two years. A
Speaker 1: bowl of bibbing bob at john Ju balances the five
Speaker 1: elements through color, flavor, and texture. White strands of crispy
Speaker 1: day coon radish on a bed of rice, rich yellow
Speaker 1: and eggs, and crunchy raw bean sprouts, red in the
Speaker 1: thinly sliced carrots and spicy hot Korean chili paste go
Speaker 1: to Jong. These warm colors full of yang are balanced
Speaker 1: in a bowl of beeping Bop with cool Yan colors
Speaker 1: like the blue and the black of inky mushrooms, the
Speaker 1: deep forest green of dried seaweed, and the gentle char
Speaker 1: from barbecued meats or seafoods. Actually, this restaurant is was
Speaker 1: owned by my father and mother twenty two years ago,
Speaker 1: and my father is from Janju, is he is a hometown.
Speaker 1: So he got the recipe from his best friends who
Speaker 1: had a very very famous beeping By restaurant in Chongju.
Speaker 1: So he studied the restaurant, but since my mom passed
Speaker 1: away the two thousand and five, I started to have
Speaker 1: an ownership from there. So it's been like more than
Speaker 1: fifteen years. And I really love cooking and I like
Speaker 1: to see people eating my food and make them happy.
Speaker 1: That's why I have still the owner of a Chouanju
Speaker 1: restaurant along with Bimbob. Of today, we are served almost
Speaker 1: a dozen small plates called ban chon. Like many East
Speaker 1: Asian cultures, cream food does not follow a course by
Speaker 1: course sequence. Rather, it's a shared meal where all the
Speaker 1: dishes are served at the same time. Usually, this means
Speaker 1: that most of the space on the table is occupied
Speaker 1: by a full spread of dozens of dishes, ranging from
Speaker 1: larger mains like the aforementioned people up to smaller pickled
Speaker 1: side dishes like the bonchon. The number of dishes usually
Speaker 1: follows a pattern three, five, seven, nine, and twelve dish
Speaker 1: table settings according to the number of side dishes today
Speaker 1: on point of origin. We're exploring Korea's ancient culinary traditions
Speaker 1: and their modern adaptations. Our first guest, Gee Hey Kim,
Speaker 1: is the chef and partner at MS Kim's restaurant in
Speaker 1: Arbor Michigan where she's making a both regional and also
Speaker 1: a revival kind of Korean cuisine of her youth and
Speaker 1: her ancestry. Can you tell us some formative food memories
Speaker 1: from growing up in Soul? One of them is my
Speaker 1: mother making Napa cabbage kimchi during the fall, and remember
Speaker 1: it being very communal. We lived in an area where
Speaker 1: we had a lot of neighborhood woman and and a
Speaker 1: lot of relatives, and they will gather together, and I
Speaker 1: remember their conversations like should we have a hundreds of
Speaker 1: types of cabbage? At the time, I think I was
Speaker 1: like seven years old, So what looked to a seven
Speaker 1: year old like mountains and mountains of Napa cabbage just
Speaker 1: being brind with like older favored neighborhood women and aunties,
Speaker 1: and so that that was very memorable. Kimchi is a
Speaker 1: staple in Korean cuisine as a famous traditional side dish
Speaker 1: made from salted and fermented vegetables like Korean radish or
Speaker 1: Napa cabbage, with the addition of a varying selection of
Speaker 1: seasonings like go to garu, spring onions, garlic, ginger, et cetera.
Speaker 1: For gh kim the Napa cabbage her mother made is
Speaker 1: the one that she considers to be the gold standard.
Speaker 1: Because when you grow up with a mother who cooks
Speaker 1: everything from scratch, you you tend to think that that's
Speaker 1: all you need to know about clean food. Deep got
Speaker 1: it right, you Your mom's fabulous. Everything is made from scratch.
Speaker 1: But it's only reasonly that I realized that a lot
Speaker 1: of food that she was cooking was actually regional cooking
Speaker 1: from County Providence to where her family is from. That's
Speaker 1: the central part of Crea. So compared to the southern
Speaker 1: more southern Providence, the County Providence recipeople go through a
Speaker 1: balance and it's not as salty or as spicy as
Speaker 1: say like La Providence or kun Kuntsung Providence, uh known
Speaker 1: for more saltiness and more heavier use of fermented sea food.
Speaker 1: So then I realized that all the food that I
Speaker 1: was eating was actually not necessarily standard, but like a
Speaker 1: one part of many kinds of regional cooking in Korea.
Speaker 1: So when I decided to go into the kitchen and
Speaker 1: become a cook, I started approaching it kind of like
Speaker 1: a study subject, because I can be a little nerdy,
Speaker 1: and because my mom was very protective of her own recipes,
Speaker 1: and number two, she didn't think that I should be
Speaker 1: in the kitchen, so she wasn't very upfront with her
Speaker 1: own knowledge. Um, So what I did was that I
Speaker 1: started reading books. I just started collecting all the books.
Speaker 1: And then what really cut my attention was these old
Speaker 1: cook books from like eighteenth century, nineteenth century, seventeenth century.
Speaker 1: I think the oldest one goes all the way to
Speaker 1: like sixteenth century. A lot of it refers to the
Speaker 1: preservation techniques and how to make alcohol out of cranes
Speaker 1: and things like that, and that was just amazing discovery.
Speaker 1: And then I got really hooked because it was breaking
Speaker 1: a lot of my own preconceived notion of what clean
Speaker 1: food is. And by going more in depth into ancine
Speaker 1: cooking and trying to understand the story uh the evolution
Speaker 1: of clean cooking, it almost made me feel more free.
Speaker 1: So one example would be that I have seen American
Speaker 1: customers come in and tell me that Creans do not
Speaker 1: use soatro, but that's not true. And then I have
Speaker 1: clean American customers come in and say that there is
Speaker 1: no cheese and clean coatina. That's also not true because
Speaker 1: there's a very very old cheese recipe and it sounds
Speaker 1: exactly like ricotta to me. Like you take the milk
Speaker 1: and then you eas meat like ocean water, it says,
Speaker 1: and then you curdle it over the over the heat.
Speaker 1: And if it doesn't curdle very well, then you can
Speaker 1: throw in a little vinegar or a little bacco leaf,
Speaker 1: which is a fermented rice wine. And it takes different
Speaker 1: than we catta because we're using different acid, but the
Speaker 1: process itself is almost identical. And then I found recipes
Speaker 1: that look like a friend chep cheese, like cured hymns,
Speaker 1: and so it's just like pretty amazing to see where
Speaker 1: the Clear people has been eating, like what they have
Speaker 1: been eating fews and cheese ago and what they're eating
Speaker 1: now and how that became. Yeah, the use of beat
Speaker 1: doesn't come into play until too was on kingdom and
Speaker 1: that lastic punk on jod years, so a pot of
Speaker 1: five hundred, six hundred years ago. Clear was a Buddhist kingdom,
Speaker 1: so consumption of meat was fairly small, so a lot
Speaker 1: of use of different vegetables was more more prolific. And
Speaker 1: I think as a chef it's more interesting because how
Speaker 1: do you how do you preserve and make things tasty
Speaker 1: when you don't have a lot of meat products, especially
Speaker 1: if you're in the mountain area and your Buddhist what
Speaker 1: do you do? So what I see is like not
Speaker 1: only agriculture, but foraging. So food is medicine, everything stable,
Speaker 1: if it's not gonna tell you accidible um and um
Speaker 1: like many many different grains. So very recently running a restaurant,
Speaker 1: you hear a lot of like celia disease or altoly immune,
Speaker 1: or like people just avoiding wheat. When I see clean
Speaker 1: in they're really versatile at using different grains and different
Speaker 1: grain flour. You know, multi grain mice is an obvious one.
Speaker 1: But you can also make noodles not just out of wheat,
Speaker 1: And there's long history of making like potato noodles or
Speaker 1: like different types of noodles that like those dishes are
Speaker 1: fully formed, the developed and just as tasty as like
Speaker 1: wheat dishes. So when you think about the story broadly
Speaker 1: speaking of Korean cuisine, what are some some highlights or
Speaker 1: some milestones in that history. You don't really see youth
Speaker 1: of chili peppers. I mean there's stories like there's some
Speaker 1: beeries out there that it came from Latin America in
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century, etcetera, etcetera. If you look at the
Speaker 1: coup books, you don't see it probably big pictured until
Speaker 1: like late eighteenth century. And but when it comes in
Speaker 1: like seeing people love that and then they start adding
Speaker 1: to kimchi to give. If she didn't look like as
Speaker 1: fiery and red as it does today, it was more
Speaker 1: of like more akin to sower crowd in a sense
Speaker 1: that it had some Arabatic but it was pretty much
Speaker 1: a salt secure of a vegetable preservation. And then once
Speaker 1: the chili flakes comes in that that becomes like we
Speaker 1: really embrace it and then really take it on, and
Speaker 1: then now we the clean foods have a reputation of
Speaker 1: like being spicy. Gochu which means pepper and Korean is
Speaker 1: very subtle with sweet instituacy notes. It's sort of tangy,
Speaker 1: but not really hot. Put gochu is the name when
Speaker 1: the peppers are young, green and used similar to fresh
Speaker 1: bell peppers. Hongo chu is what the peppers are called
Speaker 1: when they are red and ready to be harvested and
Speaker 1: dried for gochu garu or red chili powder, more so
Speaker 1: than spice. The change that gy c is in modern
Speaker 1: Korean cuisine is the addition of sugar, but that's a
Speaker 1: very very recent development. And I would say another development
Speaker 1: is the import of like black pepper and sugar. Sugar
Speaker 1: and black pepper, like very very like simple kitchen staple,
Speaker 1: but it's not around until very recently before we were
Speaker 1: using high and actually not a lot of sweetness at
Speaker 1: all where But I do notice that there's very little
Speaker 1: sugar in ancient cookbooks. Sweeteners used very sparsely, and it's
Speaker 1: like a tablespoonful of honey for entire part of something.
Speaker 1: And my only guess, and this is just a guess,
Speaker 1: would be that, like you see a lot of changes
Speaker 1: to Crean cooking with making like nineteen fifties, with the
Speaker 1: modernization in Korean War, US trips come in. That's when
Speaker 1: you see like more use of dairy and butter and cheese,
Speaker 1: which is now quite popular in Crea. And I'm wondering
Speaker 1: if that would be the point. It's only like after
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties cookbooks that I start seeing like about
Speaker 1: proportions of sugars going in and then the proliferation of
Speaker 1: a strong culture. I think that also kind of like
Speaker 1: pushes more use of sugar, but also more use of salt,
Speaker 1: and more use of MSG and more use of spaces. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just more and more and more. And I think that
Speaker 1: time period that you're speaking to kind of like mid
Speaker 1: twentieth century, even in the States, where we start to
Speaker 1: see the proliferation of grocery stores and a lot more
Speaker 1: consolidation of the food chain and supply as people are
Speaker 1: now being encouraged to, you know, eat food from packages
Speaker 1: and boxes as a means of convenience. So it's the
Speaker 1: commodity tion of food. Yeah, you see the United States
Speaker 1: to around the same time, that's right. Yeah, so that
Speaker 1: it seems to check out. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: the same thing is happening in lots of places around
Speaker 1: the world for the same reason. And you know, up
Speaker 1: until like late career was in Clues, we were known
Speaker 1: as the hermit Kingdom. It was not a whole lot
Speaker 1: of things coming in from like West. Definitely mean a
Speaker 1: lot of trades were with China and Japan a har
Speaker 1: mm hmm. The swift labor because a long time ago,
Speaker 1: we didn't have much sugar in our food. But these
Speaker 1: days the young generation they want more like impact on
Speaker 1: their palate. So our food is getting spicier and to
Speaker 1: make get balanced. Then they need more sweet flavor. So
Speaker 1: the true spicy flavor from our ancestor is from from
Speaker 1: the chili powder or chili paste. It's the spiciness. It
Speaker 1: was very heavy and then it comes, you know, very slowly.
Speaker 1: But these days, the spiciness of Korean food it comes
Speaker 1: very rapid because they are using you know, capsize and salts.
Speaker 1: They take out on the the spiciness from the chilies,
Speaker 1: and then they make really hot spicy sauce. So to
Speaker 1: kill the spiciness, you know, they use abundant amount of sugar,
Speaker 1: you know, or like a cone syrup. But the true
Speaker 1: sweetness of our cuisine comes from like rice zerrup, which
Speaker 1: needs to spend a long time to make it, rather
Speaker 1: than like in a very easy product like a consuup things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's changing a lot. When I was young. That's
Speaker 1: a young Jong who is the co founder of Bury
Speaker 1: Kitchen Bori and Korean means route through their website Bury Kitchen,
Speaker 1: which is young and her co founder Sonja, who you
Speaker 1: will hear from later in the episode, share what they
Speaker 1: learned and talking to farmers, fishers, and vendors about the
Speaker 1: history of Korean ingredients. Her explanation of modern adaptations of
Speaker 1: Korean cuisine all can be explained in the evolution of taste.
Speaker 1: A global increased in a taste for sugar has also
Speaker 1: meant that those traditional recipes like the ones that g
Speaker 1: He researched extensively before opening Miss Kims, are now harder
Speaker 1: to find. Way, but you pronounced it right, And do
Speaker 1: you have memories from your childhood of this cuisine before
Speaker 1: it became so sweet and spicy? Yeah? Of course when
Speaker 1: I was young, my mom's food where my grandma's food.
Speaker 1: It wasn't sweet. It was a savory rather than spicy
Speaker 1: and sweet. But these days the Korean food is described
Speaker 1: as mostly spicy food or you know, spicy and sweet food.
Speaker 1: Just wondering for people who aren't familiar with Korean food,
Speaker 1: what are what are some dishes or ingredients or some
Speaker 1: characteristics of the of the diet that really are typical
Speaker 1: in Korean food. People usually they started with like prugogi
Speaker 1: or tap te or kim tie, those kinds of recipes, right,
Speaker 1: but also something like you know, tap te and prugogi
Speaker 1: will be away sweeter at the restaurant and saltier, and
Speaker 1: if you go to someone's house in Korea, you will
Speaker 1: find out, you know, the prugo will be pretty blend,
Speaker 1: and you will be pretty surprised, you know, with the
Speaker 1: difference of the flavor difference. And obviously you know, fermentation
Speaker 1: plays such a central role in Korean food, and most
Speaker 1: notably in kim chi. Korean cuisine has a long and
Speaker 1: rich history of fermentation which dates back thousands of years.
Speaker 1: It's part of what makes the food distinctly Korean and
Speaker 1: also incredibly delicious. These recipes range from light and tangy
Speaker 1: to deep and complex. I think it's the flavor that
Speaker 1: you can remember from even your mother's womb for Korean
Speaker 1: And even though when I was really young, my generation
Speaker 1: was eating kim ti, even though I was too young,
Speaker 1: and if I couldn't eat it because it was too spicy,
Speaker 1: then my mom's generation they rinsed it in the water
Speaker 1: and then they they feed us, you know, kimchi. But
Speaker 1: these days, you know, young generation, the young mother, they
Speaker 1: never forced, you know, there are kids to eat kimchi
Speaker 1: like that, So the memory of the kimti is also changing.
Speaker 1: It's Young Jung guides us through a regional tour of
Speaker 1: South Korea from the vantage going three distinctive styles of
Speaker 1: preserved fish. Their methodology and curing are all unique. It's
Speaker 1: a story that ran as our cover for wet Stone
Speaker 1: Magazine Volume two. So the first one that we have
Speaker 1: is the guamegi which is from the southeast coast. Pamegi
Speaker 1: is a dried fish you can dry herring or sorry,
Speaker 1: it is dried near the seaside because you know, the
Speaker 1: sea breeze, you know, it's freezing the fish and throwing
Speaker 1: like you repeatedly. It gives really interesting texture of the fish.
Speaker 1: So if you go to the the Pohan area where
Speaker 1: is famous for drying this fish during the winter time,
Speaker 1: then you can't see like in a thousands and thousand
Speaker 1: thousands fishes hang outside and then drying there like you're
Speaker 1: dripping oils in the outside. Is that a methodology that
Speaker 1: is practiced in coastal areas around Korea or is that
Speaker 1: just in this point particular region. You can say it's
Speaker 1: one of the methodology in Korea. Yeah, But Hamegi is
Speaker 1: very famous from hank because the Poan is the city
Speaker 1: where it is near to the sea and it has
Speaker 1: the perfect condition you know to try this, you know,
Speaker 1: phreezing throwing, drying method for this fish. And then if
Speaker 1: we were to go to the northern part of the country,
Speaker 1: we see winte which is a kind of polic Can
Speaker 1: you tell us about that? The hunt is really interesting
Speaker 1: fish because it's um paula Korean people. They have you know,
Speaker 1: maybe about more than forty two different names you know,
Speaker 1: only for this fish because we you we use so
Speaker 1: many different methods, you know, to process the fish. So
Speaker 1: depends on the dried condition where whether it's a frozen
Speaker 1: where like it's fresh. This wish has so many names.
Speaker 1: I actually love that that depending on where it is
Speaker 1: and it's life cycle, there's a different name associated with it.
Speaker 1: How is this wine tape preserved? It's a freezing dry method.
Speaker 1: But this area where we make this special fish, it's
Speaker 1: amazing cord and we say this area has uh the
Speaker 1: kind of blade cord. The wind is so brooder, so
Speaker 1: you feel if you have the wind during the wintertime
Speaker 1: in this area, you feel almost you know, the blade
Speaker 1: strike to your face. It's so cold, it's so sharp.
Speaker 1: But this this area has very cold area and so
Speaker 1: you dry them in the outside during the winter time
Speaker 1: and then this wish becomes you know freeze with the
Speaker 1: more sister. And then when you help the moisture when
Speaker 1: when it is frozen, then it becomes you know, bigger, right,
Speaker 1: and then during the daytime this fish cut though it's thawing,
Speaker 1: and then you lose this moisture again because of the
Speaker 1: repeated freezing and thawing. Huang Tang, which is the pollock,
Speaker 1: develops a unique and fluffy texture. When cooked into a soup,
Speaker 1: it produces a milky like stock. Yes, it's a very face.
Speaker 1: So Young's cope. Founder at Boori Kitchen, Sonia Swanson elaborates
Speaker 1: on the different preservation methods here Sonia to further exploit.
Speaker 1: And the three fish that we kind of center for
Speaker 1: this piece are Kanwondo unt so Hunti meaning dried pollock,
Speaker 1: and Kanwondo is a region in the north of South Korea,
Speaker 1: So if you're looking at the entire United Peninsula, it's
Speaker 1: kind of central, but in terms of just South Korea,
Speaker 1: it's on the northern part of the country. So what
Speaker 1: happens is in the winter time, pollock from the east
Speaker 1: coast are brought into this really snowy, cold like valley
Speaker 1: in Kongwondo or one of a few valleys where they
Speaker 1: have this really cold wind that they call a like
Speaker 1: a translation is a knife wind. It's so cold it's
Speaker 1: like biting like a knife. And they hang it in
Speaker 1: these like on these like wooden racks that are in
Speaker 1: the middle of a snowy field. So you're just like
Speaker 1: walking down these roads and you can hear like the
Speaker 1: rustling sound of these like dried fish kind of moving
Speaker 1: in the wind, and it's such an incredible feeling. It's
Speaker 1: almost like you're in this like library of dried fish. Um,
Speaker 1: what does that smell like? Exactly? You know, if there's
Speaker 1: very well, we went when the fish were pretty dried. Um,
Speaker 1: I've not been out there when the fish were like
Speaker 1: fresh and freshly hung. But it's like so cold, you know,
Speaker 1: you don't really smell that much. And then moving to Tolado,
Speaker 1: which is a more southern West Coast region that's actually
Speaker 1: where my family's from. Um, and that's where we go
Speaker 1: down for like all the holidays, and so is a
Speaker 1: little bit warmer, and it's on the west coast which
Speaker 1: has a much shallower sea that's more like mud flats.
Speaker 1: And the fish you get there are these small croakers. Um.
Speaker 1: When you dry those, it's called crowby and so crowby
Speaker 1: are salted and then they're hung to dry for a while,
Speaker 1: and it drives very slowly because it's very a more
Speaker 1: humid region. And what's kind of interesting about crowby, and
Speaker 1: this is one of those like examples I think of
Speaker 1: like how in some ways, like Korea has become like
Speaker 1: a hyper capitalist, is that there's this special kind of
Speaker 1: grouby called body groupy or barley grooby that's like dried
Speaker 1: and barley, and it's like a very labor intensive product,
Speaker 1: like process. It's a very like luxury product. But if
Speaker 1: you go to like department stores in Soul and go
Speaker 1: into the basement where all the food stands are, you
Speaker 1: can find, especially around the holidays, boxes of crouby, like
Speaker 1: a box of ten gruby that is like over five yeah,
Speaker 1: for a single box. But the reason why I think
Speaker 1: those are so expensive is because around the holidays, especially
Speaker 1: like for certain kinds of business relationships and transactions, you're
Speaker 1: supposed to give the very expensive gifts to like be impressive.
Speaker 1: And so that is one of the very expensive gifts
Speaker 1: you can give, and it's it's usually given in like
Speaker 1: you know, very specific business contexts you know too, and
Speaker 1: occasionally for bribes, although some laws of and passed to
Speaker 1: outlaw how much you can spend on a gift for
Speaker 1: certain government employees. There's a region called kung Fu and
Speaker 1: kang Zongu is also like you know, got a lot
Speaker 1: of like seaports sits on the east coast, like near
Speaker 1: the East Sea, which has like very cold, deep blue waters.
Speaker 1: And the Song and I went down to this really
Speaker 1: cool area of of Kiangsuan Province called Koyong Harbor, and
Speaker 1: in that area, it's like very traditional famous kind of
Speaker 1: dried fish. There's there's a very traditional famous dried fish.
Speaker 1: They're called quameggi. And I had actually not had had
Speaker 1: quameggi outside of the Korea before coming to Korea ever,
Speaker 1: because it's one of those things that doesn't ship very well.
Speaker 1: So the way that cameggie has made it was usually
Speaker 1: traditionally made with herring, but the herring populations kind of
Speaker 1: started to drop off in the last few years, so
Speaker 1: they started to replace it with Pacific story, which is
Speaker 1: a little smaller, but I think they're both both herring
Speaker 1: and sorry are known for having a lot of like
Speaker 1: oil um. They're very oily fish, and this is like
Speaker 1: why this fish is so delicious. I don't know about you,
Speaker 1: but I love oily fish. What's cool is that they'll
Speaker 1: like filet these fish, and they'll so rather than drying
Speaker 1: them whole as you do with hunt and crooby, Quameggi
Speaker 1: is dried as a filet, So they will hang up
Speaker 1: these filets by the ocean. And what's cool is that
Speaker 1: the temperature kind of fluctuates and you get you know,
Speaker 1: sort of similar kind of like freezing and warming that
Speaker 1: results in a little bit of expansion and contraction the flesh,
Speaker 1: similar to hunk pick. But this fish is like again
Speaker 1: really oily. Like when we went there, you could see
Speaker 1: like the oil literally dripping off of the filets that
Speaker 1: were sitting in the salty you know, ocean breeze in
Speaker 1: the sun. And so because of that you get this
Speaker 1: like really cew really intensely flavored fish filet. And it's
Speaker 1: almost like this really amazing fish jerky man, It's like
Speaker 1: so good. What's interesting about Korean food that I think
Speaker 1: is not always seeing as broadly in the US is
Speaker 1: that it's such a seafood centric cuisine, Like it's surrounded
Speaker 1: on three sides by ocean, Like there's a ton of
Speaker 1: seafood in the diet. And one of the ways, I mean,
Speaker 1: there are many ways of preserving seafood, like one of
Speaker 1: them being salting and um preserving in brine, but one
Speaker 1: of the most popular ways is by drying them um.
Speaker 1: And there are different techniques of drying fish for different
Speaker 1: regions and different kinds of fish. So for example, the
Speaker 1: most common dried fish you'll find in almost every Korean meal,
Speaker 1: and even if it's just in the form of soup stock,
Speaker 1: is dried anchovy like that is a staple, Like every
Speaker 1: Korean kitchen will have dried anchovy um. And here's young
Speaker 1: to talk further about the problems and devastation caused by
Speaker 1: over fishing in Korea. Fishing it was very common fishing
Speaker 1: Korea a long time ago, and we used to catch
Speaker 1: them so much. That's why I think, you know, people
Speaker 1: started developing a new method, you know, to preserve this fish.
Speaker 1: But overall a sudden, like during eighties or seventies, we started,
Speaker 1: you know, catching too much, like over first seeing it
Speaker 1: and then the said, sadly, we don't have it anymore
Speaker 1: these days. But that's part of your I mean, that's
Speaker 1: really part of the beauty of your work is that
Speaker 1: you are helping to keep these traditions and the awareness
Speaker 1: of these traditions alive. So another fish that I was
Speaker 1: really interested in because of the salt cured methodology is
Speaker 1: we used yellow corbina fish to make this one, and
Speaker 1: a long time ago, we didn't have a refrigerator system,
Speaker 1: so people started you know, cure with the salt, and
Speaker 1: then they started trying it's the same method, like you
Speaker 1: can keep it longer time, and you can eat it
Speaker 1: like you know, all year round. But again and sadly,
Speaker 1: we are losing because of the overfishing, you know, we
Speaker 1: are losing this fish too. So these days mostly it's
Speaker 1: you know, we import a lot from China, uh, and
Speaker 1: then we curate in Korea. Yeah, Sonya. I think this
Speaker 1: is a very important but nuanced point that you've brought
Speaker 1: up here, because often the immigrant experience is conveyed in
Speaker 1: terms of loss or sadness. But what I'm interested in,
Speaker 1: which is sort of what your mother has instilled upon you,
Speaker 1: is the ways that we can make new what was
Speaker 1: previously lost. And I think that becomes one of the
Speaker 1: central questions and the central work of many immigrants to
Speaker 1: in effect make their own history. Part of their contemporary
Speaker 1: work like Gee Hey and so Young. Sonia has her
Speaker 1: own memories of kim chi being made by her mother.
Speaker 1: I mean, I grew up eating Korean food, so there
Speaker 1: was always kimchi in our fridge, Like we would have
Speaker 1: kimchi on the Thanksgiving table next to the turkey. You know.
Speaker 1: It was like sort of there. But I don't think
Speaker 1: I really understood like the process by which it was made,
Speaker 1: like the ferment the fermenting, and like the fans behind it,
Speaker 1: the fact that you know that so much time goes
Speaker 1: into it. And I think, like I've been thinking a
Speaker 1: lot about just about like what Korean American food is
Speaker 1: because a lot of places where we were living growing up,
Speaker 1: my mom didn't have access to like a Korean grocery store.
Speaker 1: So like I remember sometimes she would make um kimchi
Speaker 1: using like Chinese cabbage, Thai fish sauce, Mexican red chili pepper,
Speaker 1: you know, and it was this this like really American
Speaker 1: blend of ingredients that was an approximation of the kimchi
Speaker 1: she had growing up. And it's just not to say
Speaker 1: that like one thing is more authentic than the other,
Speaker 1: Like I I don't think that my mom, you know,
Speaker 1: americanized Kim. She was not authentic. It was authentic to
Speaker 1: like our lived experience, right. Um. So for me to
Speaker 1: go back though and taste a different kind of Korean food,
Speaker 1: like taste you know, kimch that was made from ingredients
Speaker 1: that were cut in the field like two days before,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, for me to like taste this ten
Speaker 1: jung that was like straight from an earthenware pot that
Speaker 1: was sitting in the sun. Those flavors made me realize,
Speaker 1: I think, more than anything, how much my mom lost
Speaker 1: by immigrating, Like the things that you lose, like the
Speaker 1: flavors and the tastes and the food that you lose
Speaker 1: by moving to a new country. Um, just maybe kind
Speaker 1: of a little bit more aware of like the subtletyes
Speaker 1: of like the hardships that she experienced too, you know,
Speaker 1: the distancing she had from her homeland. Cushitty shitty party.
Speaker 1: We'd like to thank our guest today, Son me Lee,
Speaker 1: the owner of John John beephim Bop in Los Angeles, California.
Speaker 1: Chef g Hay Kim of MS kim and in Arbor, Michigan,
Speaker 1: So Young Jong and Sonya Swanson, the co founders of
Speaker 1: Barrie Kitchen, and I would like to give a special
Speaker 1: thanks to my business partner, Melissa she for helping me
Speaker 1: bring this episode together. That's all for this episode of
Speaker 1: Point of Origin. Thanks for listening and supporting the wet
Speaker 1: Stone podcast, where we travel the world to champion food
Speaker 1: as a means of expanding human empathy. Please, if you
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Speaker 1: To Gabrielle Collins, are provising producer, and to Christopher Hasiotis,
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Speaker 1: and we'll be back here next week with more from
Speaker 1: Whetstone Magazine's Point of Origin podcast.