KOREAN TREATS, WESTERN-STYLE
Add a little bit of that ‘kapow’ into your diet,
“Korean food is that ‘kapow’ in the mouth,” author Kim Sunée says with a laugh. “It has such bold flavours — there’s nothing subtle about it.”
In her third book, Everyday Korean, Sunée and co-author Seung Hee Lee illustrate how they incorporate Korean flavours into daily cooking. They offer original interpretations of traditional dishes and creative uses of leftovers.
Inspired by their respective travels and dishes they’ve enjoyed together, these are the foods they like to cook and eat.
Leftover kimchi fried rice becomes arancini (Sicilian fried rice balls). And scraps of roasted salmon with gochujang (fermented chili paste) mayo become a savoury Dutch baby.
“It’s a thrifty cuisine — you can reuse a lot of your banchan and make (excellent) leftovers,” Sunée says, referring to the Korean table’s trademark small side dishes and condiments. “It’s aesthetically very beautiful, but it’s also hearty and rustic.”
Fragrant notes of chili — central to “Korean mother sauce” gochujang and gochugaru (chili powder) — bring depth to dishes but not unbearable heat, Sunée emphasizes.
“It’s not necessarily always spicy. I think that’s one of the misconceptions,” she says.
Many of the recipes in the book are based on Lee’s family favourites, “but with a modern twist using fresh, seasonal ingredients.”
Lee, a cooking instructor and epidemiologist in Atlanta, Ga., was born and raised in South Korea.
A nutrition expert, she also studied Korean royal court cuisine with an emphasis on cultural preservation and adapting historic recipes for today’s kitchens.
In some ways, Everyday Korean was a decade in the making. Born in South Korea, Sunée was brought up by her adoptive family in the southern United States.
The co-authors met in 2008 during Sunée’s book tour for the Korean edition of her memoir, Trail of Crumbs. Lee was her interpreter, but the two quickly bonded over a shared love of food.
Having grown up in a different food culture, Sunée writes that while fascinated by Korean cuisine, she found the idea of cooking it intimidating.
She now regularly cooks with ingredients from the Korean pantry and makes dishes from the book several times a week.
“Seung Hee and I wanted to honour this cuisine and culture that is becoming more and more popular … We wanted to encourage the home cook to get in the kitchen … and make it their own.”
Recipes excerpted from Everyday Korean: Fresh, Modern Recipes for Home Cooks by Kim Sunée and Seung Hee Lee, Countryman Press.