Perfect meal [first draft]

I had believed that perfect meal comes from my grandma’s hands. It always seemed like my mother-side grandmother and my mom have special alchemy of making simple 101 Korean foods into the most sophisticated ones. Their cooking wanted me to do an experiment of regenerating same taste of Kimchi Pajeon (Korean pancake) and Jabchae (noodle, stir fried with vegetables – flavored with soy sauce) that my grandmother made.

I’ve cooked kimchi pajeon before but I failed because I wasn’t successful at flipping it on a frying pan. I’ve never cooked jabchae before but it was my all-time favorite meal because in Korea I had my grandma’s jabchae for my birthday meal. In Korea, jabchae can be easily found in someone’s birthday or ceremony. Although I’m afraid of flipping kimchi pajeon, and it was nobody’s birthday, I wondered that I have genetic of “natural talent” for cooking exquisite foods like my grandma and my mom do. Thankfully, I learnt cooking process of these two dishes from grandmother who believed that kids need to know how to cook – which belongs to basic life skill. 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 markets, I asked one of friends to drive me to Pacific Rim Foods, an Asian market in Kalamazoo.

After an hour of grocery shopping, I had lesser time to cook because my guests for my dinner were going to come 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. It was sad for me to drop out the pork for Kimchi Pajeon and Jabchae as pork would add chewiness. As soon as I arrived to my dorm, I had to roll up my sleeve and get down to cooking. I hurried to bring utensils from my suite – a knife, pan, pot, three plates, two containers, and fork. Then, I started to cook jabchae, which takes more time to cook than the time taking for Kimchi Pajeon.

The gigantic sweet potato glass noodles needed a place to boil but I didn’t have a big pot, so I had to borrow one from the kitchen of Crissey dorm. These funny-looking noodles – called dangmyeon in Korean – are brown noodles made out of starch of sweet potato. It looks almost artificial and inedible by its entangled noodles, looking like a bundle of brown hair.
Without carefully measuring the amount of noodles I would use, I put dangmyeon inside of boiling water and waited for ten minutes. Tracing the memories of my grandmother in the kitchen, I remembered when she taught me about great cooks know how much they should put without measuring. 

For me, cooking without recipes was hard mainly due to possibility of making food unbalanced in taste, which comes from inadequate amount of ingredients. However, my strong desire to cook depending only on my memories overcame my worry. While the stiff noodles becoming squishy, I stir fried, enoki mushroom, thinly sliced two onions, a carrot, and spinach with Crisco vegetable cooking oil. After ten minutes, I took out the simmering noodles into a strainer and washed it out with cold water. Though I almost burnt my fingers from this process, I managed to mix them with stir fried vegetables and marinated with soy sauce and sweetened with fingertip amount of sugar. While cooking it, I was caught up with checking balance between sugar and soy sauce.

After my suitemates arrived to the dorm, they informed me that they were starving and ready for this dinner. Because of tight cooking time, my back and forehead were sweating from anxiety. My expected end time for cooking was 6:30 pm, but it was already 6:45 pm. The hot weather heated up the kitchen. I felt dizzy but wanted to accomplish the goal of testing my instinct of cooking great taste of food without recipe. Sliced old kimchi that was sleeping in my dorm’s refrigerator finally found its destination. I hate 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 shortly chopped fresh green onions and chives, little bit of minced garlic, kimchi pajeon power (flour), and two eggs. I kind of put water and flour with one-to-one ratio. I crushed tofu with my hands and infused it with pile of raw ingredients. Swirling the mix with a fork (a great utensil 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 as fast as the magma erupting from a volcano.

I had great fear of flipping pancakes in general. This beautiful red liquid of kimchi pajeon mix would be ruined if I don’t flip it well. It was overwhelming to find right moment to flip it, but I had to try. I held up a handle of the pan and magically flipped it with quick momentum! It was indeed victorious to see crunchy yellow and red kimchi pajeon didn’t break. However, each pajeon was too thick although 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 was kept coming down on my neck. Setting up for our Korean dinner party, I put a traditional Korean fan to decorate dull-looking wooden coffee table in our suite’s living room. I couldn’t bring legitimate Korean-ness into this dinner, which might be a culinary tourism in a college dorm room. At least I put down silverware and plates. I summoned my suitemates, “Dinner time!” After my shout, my suitemates and I sat down in a circle. They listened to my explanation of each food that would be foreign to them. Then, fresh and cool Milkis for beverages were served right from a refrigerator for a hot summer day. Starved guests aimed their forks and knives to piles of kimchi pajeons and jabchae.  They had bites, I had a bite also. The kimchi pajeon was too thick but had crunchy texture at the edge. It was well-flavored and wasn’t too spicy which I wished it to be because my suitemates wouldn’t be able to handle too much spiciness. 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 succeeding in cooking this sensitive food. If I put less soy sauce, then it would taste dull because the glass noodle originally doesn’t have taste.

My dear guests also loved Milkis since its sparkling creamy soda calmed kimchi pajeon’s subtle spiciness. Most of them didn’t have Korean food before, but they were highly satisfied with their full tummy. 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 to eat home-made dinner was worthier than eating café food together.  

Although taste of my foods weren’t even near to breathtaking taste of my grandmother’s food, crispy kimchi pajeon and glistening and elastic texture of deliciously salty and sweet jabchae made my day. Cooking without obsession of perfect measurement and recipe, which my grandma does habitually, was adventurous. I felt like I conquered the kitchen by cooking independently with trusting my memories and instinct. 

A complete view of the dinner

Kimchi pajeon

Jabchae