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:
So did you write down your measurements so you can do it again?
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!
Great, so now your kids can be just as frustrated as you were!
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