Monday, August 10, 2009

#27 - Day 247 - Korean Food



When I was growing up, I would always watch my mom cook different kinds of Korean food. For some reason, I always had it in my mind that it was too hard to learn and if anything were to happen to my mom, I would have to buy all of my Korean food pre-made from a Korean grocery store or restaurant. I think it had to do with the fact that my mom (and 99.99% of all Korean cooks) never measures out ingredients.

A couple weeks ago, I brought some napa cabbage to her house to make baechu kimchi. I knew that I could find a recipe online, but every Korean cook has their own special way of preparing it, and I wanted to get as close to my mom's as possible. I had my pencil & paper ready and gave her some measuring cups and teaspoons to write her measurements down. And surprise surprise, she still didn't use them. So I had to guess how much garlic, crushed red pepper flakes, etc. that she was putting into the bowl. This is the same thing I did when she showed me how to make galbi (Korean grilled Beef ribs)... I ended up leaving her house with a list of "approximate" measurements of all the ingredients and her advice of just "adding ingredients til it tastes right".

Nice.

So in the past few months, I have pushed aside all my inhibitions and tried cooking more Korean food. This past Sunday, I made Oi kimchi (cucumber kimchi - pictured above), baechu kimchi, and kimchi chigae (kimchi soup). All passed mom's taste test! Now I don't have to limit myself to eating Korean food only when I am at my mom's!

3 comments:

Beth said...

So did you write down your measurements so you can do it again?

Abby said...

haha nope... She was right... you can't really do it using measurements. I wrote down the ingredients and I just dump everything in the bowl and add stuff til it tastes right, just like she does!

Beth said...

Great, so now your kids can be just as frustrated as you were!