Creating happiness with unmeasured cooking

I believe that the perfect meal comes from mother-side grandma’s hands. She has the special alchemy of making simple 101 Korean foods into the most sophisticated ones through cooking without perfect measurement and recipe. Her daring way of cooking inspired me to do an experiment of recreating her Kimchi Pajeon, a Korean pancake, and Jabchae, a noodle dish – stir fried with vegetables and – flavored with soy sauce.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan says that “For countless generations eating was something that took place in the steadying context of a family and a culture, where the full consciousness of what was involved did not need to be rehearsed at every meal because it was stored away, like the good silver, in a set of rituals and habits, manners and recipes” (411). I wanted my perfect meal to share my stored away consciousness with my dear friends: Eating together while having laughter, comfort, and warmth.

In Korea, our family gathering on Korean Thanksgiving day, Chuseok, was lively with the smell of sizzling kimchi pajeon. I wasn’t part of the cooking scene since I wasn’t successful at flipping it in a frying pan. “The way you flip kimchi pajeon is hilarious! But, it’s not cute if you do that every time,” my grandma giggled. My grandma’s kimchi pajeon was heavily buried in pepper and kimchi, covered almost all the part of yellow batter. Our family casually sat on the floor to eat the steamy kimchi panjeons together. It was as if we were watching a soccer game together. Timing was crucial for not to miss hot kimchi pajeons like not missing the moment when a soccer player scores a goal. The whole family dropped whatever they were doing and ran to eat kimchi pajeons. As soon as she handed the kimchi pajeons to us, we mopped up every bite of its comforting taste. Crunchy! Dazzling! Spicy that we burnt our tongue!

I’d never cooked jabchae before but it is my all-time favorite meal since I was a third grader. My grandmother’s jabchae was the remedy for my addiction to junk foods sold in a little supermarket, a dream place for many kids as they had an arcade with PAC-MAN and Super Mario. Junk foods – artificial rainbow colored candy bars and extremely sour chocolates - were 50 cents so I had easy access to them. Since my mom was a working mom, she barely was at home, but my grandmother took care of me for two years while she and my grandfather lived with my family. It was then that she made jabchae – a refined mix of stringy glass noodles, pieces of fried vegetables, and salted sliced beef. The mellow taste made me slurp constantly as I finished eating it in a few minutes and forgot about the junk food I craved but my mother forbid. Its taste had her sweet voice and generous smile, and I adored the warmth and care that I got from eating it.

Although I’m afraid of flipping kimchi pajeon, and none of my guests has addiction to junk foods, I wondered if I’ve inherited my grandmother’s “natural talent” for cooking exquisite foods. I called my grandma to ask about ingredients for these dishes. She told me a list of ingredients and emphasized eggs are essential to make kimchi pajeon soft. To buy ingredients that I can’t get at usual American grocery stores, I asked a friend to drive me to Pacific Rim Foods, an Asian market in Kalamazoo, a city in Michigan where I live and go to college.

After an hour of grocery shopping, I had less time to cook because the

 guests for my dinner were coming back soon from their beach day. My guests were four of my suitemates, and two of them are vegetarians, so I needed to plan ahead to make good-quality vegetarian Korean foods. Also, most of them couldn’t eat spicy foods, so I had to put less spice in my food. They are amazed whenever I eat spicy food without crying over its hot taste. They look at me like I’m a circus lion that runs through a ring of fire. One time, when I ate a spicy instant noodle, Emma said with her eyes wide opened, “Wow, how did you do that? That’s so spicy… it’s like torturing yourself!” It was sad for me to give up the pork for kimchi pajeon and jabchae because pork would add chewiness. As soon as I arrived at my dorm, I had to roll up my sleeve and get to cooking. I hurried to the basement kitchen in the dorm. Then, I started to cook jabchae, which takes more time to cook than kimchi pajeon.

Cooking without depending on a recipe but depending only on instinct and the memories of – my grandma’s food and her teaching me how to cook jabchae – was challenging. Without carefully measuring the amount of gigantic sweet potato glass noodles I needed, I dropped them into of boiling water and waited for ten minutes. These funny-looking noodles – called dangmyeon in Korean – are brown noodles made from sweet potato starch. These entangled noodles look artificial and inedible like a bundle of brown hair. Tracing the memories of my grandmother in the kitchen, I remembered when she told me that great cooks know how much they should put without measuring. 

I worried about making the food unbalanced in taste from using an inadequate amount of ingredients, but my strong desire to cook depending only on my memories and instinct overcame my worry. While the stiff noodles became squishy, I stir fried, – enoki mushroom, two thinly sliced onions, a carrot, and spinach in vegetable oil. After ten minutes, I strained the simmering noodles and rinsed them with cold water. Though I almost burnt my fingers, I managed to mix them with the stir fried vegetables and marinated them with soy sauce sweetened with a fingertip amount of sugar. Although I was hurrying while cooking, I was careful at trying to pour my warmth into the food for my endearing guests. I got caught up checking the balance between sugar and soy sauce, but it was actually well-balanced, so I began to have confidence on cooking for this perfect meal. This marinating process reminded me of the moments I cooked with my grandmother.

One lazy Sunday afternoon, my grandmother taught me how to cook my favorite dish - jabchae. She pulled out tangled glass noodles with her cracked palms, while telling me about her hardship of doing housework and sewing jobs since she was eighteen. We started to shred fresh vegetables and stir fry them. While we were marinating noodles with soy sauce and sugar, her wrinkled fingers that – looked like crumpled raisins – and my small fingers collided together. She kept cheerfully chatting while we were cooking together. “There is great nutritional value in this meal. Mushroom juice probably smeared on this mix, and that helps to lower your blood pressure,” she affirmed. She is like an living cookbook. My grandmother likes everything to be fast because she lived busy life raising my mom and her other three children, but when it comes to, cooking she has always been deliberate and careful, making sure people who ate her food felt satisfied. Whenever she cooked, she was careful to wipe out each accidental drop on the edge of the plate. Her life revolved around cooking. Since my grandmother is a perfectionist, she taught me to never take short-cuts in cooking, but she taught me cooking sincerely.

After my suitemates arrived to the dorm, they informed me that they were starving and ready for dinner. My expected end time for cooking was 6:30 pm, but it was already 6:45 pm. The hot weather heated up the kitchen. My back and forehead were sweating from anxiety. I felt dizzy but wanted to accomplish my goal. Sliced old kimchi that was sleeping in my dorm’s refrigerator finally found its destination. I hate the taste of old kimchi, so I haven’t eaten it for a while. However, my grandmother always used old kimchi for kimchi pajeon, so I put my unattractive kimchi into a big container and mixed it with chopped fresh green onions and chives, a little bit of minced garlic, flour, and two eggs. I kind of put water and flour with a one-to-one ratio. I crushed tofu with my hands and infused it with the pile of raw ingredients. Swirling the mix with a fork, substituting a balloon whisk, I could see bubbles coming up from the mix, so I stopped. In front of a sizzling frying pan with the oil, I poured out the mix. It spread around the pan like magma erupting from a volcano.

I feared that this beautiful red liquid of kimchi pajeon mix would be ruined if I didn’t flip it well. I worried about finding the right moment to flip it, but I had to try. I held up the handle of the pan and magically flipped it with quick momentum. Success! It was indeed victorious to see that the crunchy yellow and red kimchi pajeon didn’t break. However, each pajeon was too thick; kimchi pajeon is usually thin and crunchy.

After intensely cooking for two hours, my suitemates finally could fill their empty stomach. My fingers were tired from using the tiny cooking knife that doesn’t cut vegetables easily, and my sweat kept coming down my neck. Setting up for our Korean dinner party, I put a traditional Korean fan to decorate the dull-looking wooden coffee table in our suite’s living room. I put down silverware and plates really quickly and threw utensils to the corner of the living room. I summoned my suitemates while sweating, “Dinner time!” After my shout, my suitemates and I sat down in a circle. They listened to my explanation of each food. Then I served fresh and cool Milkis, a sparkling creamy soda, right from the refrigerator for a hot summer day. My starved guests aimed their forks and knives toward piles of kimchi pajeons and jabchae. The kimchi pajeon was too thick but had a crunchy texture at the edge. It was well-flavored and wasn’t too spicy – as I’d intended because my suitemates wouldn’t be able to handle too much spiciness. In contrary to my concern, jabchae was well-balanced with soy sauce and sugar, and my suitemates wolfed it down. I was proud of myself of for succeeding in cooking this sensitive food.
Most of my guests had never eaten Korean food before, but they were highly satisfied with their full tummies. That was the first moment of me actually treating my great friends who have survived crazy college life with me. The air was different. Sharing time together with my suitemates eating a home-made dinner was a treat. My suitemates and I are away from home. We all have memories of our own home food, and I hoped they received the warmth and comfort I always felt eating this food. I also wanted to regenerate the atmosphere of togetherness with my endearing friends. My grandmother loved cooking for everyone, including friends, strangers, and neighbors. Cooking was connection for her with others. She was like a god mother in her town because she became friends with many town people by cooking for them. She liked to cook and let them share her food altogether as a big community. Following another tradition of hers, I wanted to connect my friends through eating and sharing home-made foods. We casually sat in a circle around the coffee table and chatted for two hours about the difficulties we went through and the happiness we shared in our suite 309. “It was a great year after all. I will miss you guys so much,” Natalie, one of my suitemates, said.
Although the taste of my foods wasn’t even near the breathtaking taste of my grandmother’s food, my ability to create a quite decent crispy kimchi pajeon and glistening and a of deliciously salty and sweet jabchae made my day. Cooking without obsessing about the perfect measurement and recipe, like my grandma does habitually, was an adventure. By trusting my memories and instinct, I conquered my kitchen fears and created a shared experience with friends that would now be stored away in my consciousness.