I’ve been looking for the official hard copy forever now, but you can access Korean Kimchi and Le Cordon Bleu: Taste Meets Culture in English online in either book format or straight-up html. (Beware: the html version seems to be missing key sentences.) The cookbook features a couple handfuls of recipes incorporating some form of kimchi or another.
[In which I hold discourse for a bit] [please ignore]
I made the cream-based kimchi sauce the other day using the high-qual, long-fermented type kimchi that had acquired that extra-savory air about it — a real mellow buzz aftertaste. But the cream felt heavy-handed; it masked both the earthy undertones and the initial sharpness of the side dish. Adding another serving of kimchi into the blender seemed to help, but in the end, you could have used some store-bought stuff and it wouldn’t have made a difference. Furthermore, the combo of fatty Hanwoo beef and rich kimchi cream sauce resulted in an unpleasant mouthcoat (is it just me, or does that sound kinda dirty? I think it’s because I’m thinking of a mouth that serves as a coat. To genitals). To be fair, I’m pretty sure the recipe’s celeriac purée, which I did not make, was intended to cut the overall fattiness of the dish. All in all, forced and disappointing. I had had such high hopes.
Earlier this decade, I had my first taste of Korean fusion at the defunct Temple on La Cienega. I remember how stoked my high school self was to see the food I’d been eating all my life styled so elaborately on large, thick white plates. The fare itself, however, had nothing on the best K-town bbq joints. It wasn’t exactly disappointment I felt, but a frustration — I wanted to skip forward and get to that place where the inventiveness of the cuisine could stake new claims in my imagination, where I wouldn’t be reminded of good home-cooking. Dressing up Korean food in French or Euro-style accoutrement doesn’t seem to work. Incorporating foreign elements into existing Korean dishes also has its flaws (apple kimchi at Ssäm Bar, anyone? Since removed from the menu, thank the Chang). But it’s happening. We’re getting there. Like some sort of all-American, neo-Korean-Vietnamese-Mexican-French/Californian hybrid that is going to fucking ALTER YOUR PERCEPTIONS OF EVERYTHING. (I’m very tired right now. The link points to a reference to LSD in “The 30% Iron Chef” episode of Futurama.)
So here we are. I’d say that, in general, the ascendancy of Momofuku and the whole Korean taco truck thing is this crazy food fantasy come to life. In this fantasy, we all dance the “bibim”-bop, snort lines of red pepper, and rub soybean paste into our gums, while brown rice vinegar mists us from underneath an outdoor rave canopy of fermented cabbage. Tall flames lick the edges of the tent as we bow down to the glory of thinly sliced leaves of bloody meat hanging upon metal chopsticks. It looks like hell and tastes climactic.
Despite the sploogey nationalistic Corean reverie, all I really want right now is a tri-state heirloom tomato. I’m very disappointing as a person.
I hope this will serve as a future memo-to-self that people only want to peep foodporn and maybe my 100-word descriptive paragraphs, but not long missives on nothing. This post is over. [BYAHHHHHHH!!!]
Addendum: After some time in the freezer, the sauce became a decadent thing to pour on top of stuff like eggs benedict. So much umami. No good with beef, which tastes better alone anyhow. The end.
