Food – Bora Lee Reed

Go to Tbilisi, Georgia to get deeper into kimchi making?

I’ve been making kimchi on and off for several years, empowered by YouTubers like Maangchi and a growing number of Korean cookbooks written in English (*Korean Home Cooking* is a favorite). But knowing how to do it with “son maht” has been elusive.

“Son maht” literally means hand + taste, i.e., cooking by feel.

How a person likes her kimchi is varied and personal. There’s no “right” answer about how spicy you like it, how fermented, how fishy. But I didn’t understand the nuances that would turn a follow-the-recipe batch of kimchi into a this-is-how-I-like-it kimchi…in other words, into my kimchi.

When Mrs. Greyhound asked me to help her make a batch of kimchi in Tbilisi, I said sure. I had Kate send me a photo of the recipe out of the book but soon realized that we were going to have to improvise. Mrs. G had some glutenous rice flour, gochugaru (Korean chili powder), and fish sauce in her pantry. We found napa cabbage in the local markets but no daikon radish or chives. And we only had table salt on hand, not the kosher or sea salt that the recipe called for.

I had to think—really think— about each step as we went. How should I adjust for the fact that table salt is much finer and saltier than kosher salt? What could be substituted instead of daikon?

In the end, I was quite happy with the results. Even more encouraging, I started developing a sense of a kimchi groove…my own version of sohn mat.

(One tip I’ll offer is that you want the wilted cabbage to taste good, with the right amount of saltiness, before you mix in the other ingredients.)

I like making mak kimchi (meaning easy, because it’s pre-cut, unlike poggi kimchi, which is stored and fermented in half-cabbage chunks.)

I came home and made another batch…this time, I didn’t even have to look at a recipe.

My mother likes to sit and watch us eat. Okay, that sounds a little creepy, but it isn’t. It is one of the reliable pleasures for a Korean mother to see the people she loves—especially her children—eat. My mom will prepare the meal but rarely eat with us. Instead, she’ll sit and make conversation, ready a moment’s notice to refill a bowl or go out to the refrigerator in the garage and bring in more kimchi.

One of the early fights that Wes and I had went something like this: we’d be at a restaurant and when it came time to order dessert, I’d decide to pass. Wes would order something. When the piece of cake or pie came to the table, I would reach across with my fork and take a bite. This struck him as quite rude.

“But you said you didn’t want any,” he’d say.

“Are you seriously unwilling to share a single bite of your dessert? How selfish can you be?”

And so it went.

In Korean culture, as in many cultures, eating is communal. Eating is sharing is eating. If I’m going across campus to meet a colleague and plan to grab a coffee on the way, it feels natural to ask my colleague if he or she would like one as well. To clarify: it’s not that other people would never do this, but for me, it’s instinctual. I never think, oh, I’m Korean. Let me bring my friend a latte. I just do it. Or, lest you think I’m some amazingly generous person or something, if I don’t feel like bringing a friend a coffee, I make sure I finish my drink before I get there.

In Korean culture, it’s rude to eat something in front of someone else and not offer to share, even if that person chose not to order dessert, fries, or whatever. (I found this excellent video explanation, but it’s for advanced language learners so it’s in Korean with Korean subtitles). 😳

Our current housemate hails from Mexico City and when I told her this story about sharing food, she told me about the time she and her friends ate with two visiting Canadians.

“Why are your Canadian friends so rude?” One of her friends asked her after dinner. “We were all passing our plates around and they just sat there eating their own food.”

I can just imagine them, can’t you? Two white Canadians—for some reason, I imagine them wearing matching red scarves—doing their best to fit in by being polite but missing a big social cue.

The other day, Anna’s boyfriend sent me this little GIF.

[gfycat data_id="gaseousterrifickawala"]

“I do that!” I said. “Does Anna do it, too?”

“Every time,” he replied.

A couple of days later, Kate sent a photo of eating dduk guk (rice cake soup, the traditional food of lunar new year) with her boyfriend. He’s a grad student and had a mountain of homework to do, so she got take out and brought it over.

In the matter of food, I’m delighted my girls skew toward their Korean side. Because really, it is an excellent way to be.

Category: Food

Sohn mat

My favorite thing about being Korean