Category: Korean

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that there is often a great void between the chef and the home cook. Though both are creating dishes for consumption, the context, methods, and sheer scale of their work differs tremendously. The same considerations should be made when a professional chef – particularly those operating in fine dining environments – write a cookbook.

It’s something I regrettably neglected to aptly reflect on when I reviewed Niklas Ekstedt’s ridiculously lavish entry into the canon a few years ago. How can I, a home cook in urban Britain, be expected to source reindeer hearts, I asked. I don’t even have an Ikea food hall near me.

But, of course, I wasn’t the intended audience. Ekstedt didn’t expect me, of all people, to knock up one of his many dishes that called for the cook to first gather their hay. Hell, he didn’t even expect most of the chefs who bought the book to build a fire from dried grass on his behalf. Most cookbooks by acclaimed chefs are about the theory of cooking as much as they are about the cooking itself. About sharing gastronomical philosophies, flavour combinations, and mutually revelling in what it means to get excited about presenting these bold, delicious ideas for others to taste.

Which is what makes two recent Korean cookbooks so interesting. Both Sohn-mat and The Korean Cookbook have been written by professional chefs with acclaimed restaurants to their name, and both books are aimed specifically at audiences looking to bring Korean flavours into their homes. The challenge here, then, is for the authors to translate their professional interest in cooking into a language that is relevant for domestic kitchens.

Monica Lee, the writer behind Sohn-mat, has a definite head start in this process. Lee was, before she opened her much-loved restaurant Beverly Soon Tofu in LA, a home cook with a small but very loyal fanbase of friends and family. Amongst the many Korean dishes she would recreate in her kitchen was the soon tofu chigae that she eventually became famous for.

Lee’s restaurant, opened in 1986, was entirely focused on this relatively low-key dish – a nutritious bowl normally associated with affordable diners in Korea. Beverly Soon Tofu closed in the midst of the pandemic, and Lee’s book is its legacy; her way of connecting with people one more time, and empowering them to create the food she served for over three decades.

In a move that feels spiritually aligned with the cookbooks of Michelin-starred chefs, most of the first eighty pages of Sohn-mat are dedicated wholly to recreating this dish. This means in-depth looks at the sourcing and handling of ttukbaegi – the clay pot Lee served her custardy tofu in. There are tips on ingredients and methodology, and no less than twenty-two recipes for components and variations so that the reader can recreate soon tofu chigae at home exactly the way they like it best.

Though Lee goes to lengths to make these recipes accessible, and considers almost every obstacle a home cook might come up against, the approach can feel a little overwhelming. To serve up a by-the-book version of the restaurant’s popular Combination Soon Tofu, home cooks will need to commit to making a beef broth from scratch, as well as preparing marinated short rib trimmings, and a seasoned red pepper paste that requires a day’s rest in the fridge before use. It’s not impossible by any means, but it does put the dish firmly into the ‘best saved for the weekend category’.

Beyond soon tofu chigae, Lee offers a wide ranging look at other Korean dishes. Starting with banchan – side dishes served alongside rice – we are presented with plenty of bright vegetable dishes and a select few for carnivores (who are given a much broader selection to choose from in a later section of sharing platters).

Lee’s recipes tend to be relatively wordy and this, combined with ingredients lists that feature those extra recipes to prepare in advance, can make the dishes look like a lot of work. And look, it’s a busy book – filled to the brim with tips and adjustments for different dietary needs – but the dishes are usually easier than they look. Those preparatory recipes only exist because Lee has offered DIY options for ingredients you can just buy off the shelf if you need. Save yourself the time and use standard soy sauce instead of Lee’s seasoned version, or any garlic you like, instead of her pre-blended take. If Sohn-mat has any real flaw, it is not that it is too difficult for home cooks – but rather that the writing and design makes everything look like a lot more effort than it really is.

Offering an even broader look at Korean cuisine is Phaidon’s The Korean Cookbook, written by Junghyun Park and Jungyoon Choi. Park is best known for Atomix, which was this year named the 8th best restaurant in the world by World’s 50 Best Restaurants. It’s one of four Korean-oriented restaurants he runs in New York, which puts him very much at the high-end of chefs-turned-writers. His co-author Choi is a research and development chef for Sempio Foods and – not that I’m claiming any foul play – Academy Vice Chair of Korea & China at World’s 50 Best Restaurants.

The Korean Cookbook is the latest entry in Phaidon’s ongoing mission to publish the definitive tome for any cuisine you care to imagine. The series always has its strengths and weaknesses, which we’ve covered over the years here. Historically, one of the series’ biggest issues has been a lack of context for the dishes presented. Here, thankfully, we see perhaps the most in-depth look at a cuisine that Phaidon have yet offered readers. Park and Choi offer an extensive forty-page introductory section exploring the concept of hansik, or Korean cuisine. There are also useful introduction to chapters on fermentation, and the different components that make up a meal in Korea. Perhaps most importantly – and frequently missing in older entries to the series, each recipe is given vital context.

The grand scope of the book means that there are over 350 recipes to choose from. Readers can be certain that any Korean dish they already know and want to recreate will be here – there are two options for the nation’s distinctive take on fried chicken, and three for bulgogi. But the joy is in discovering the unexpected, and there are plenty of exciting new ideas here for readers to explore, from Pan-Roasted Acorn Jelly to Ray with Bean Sprout Jjim and Yuja (Yuzu) Punch.

There are, as is often the case with Phaidon’s books, a large number of cases where audiences not actually based in Korea will struggle to source ingredients. Even the best stocked Asian supermarket is unlikely to provide stonecrop. Of course, this authenticity is what readers come to the series for. But sometimes it feels as though it goes too far – so much of this book is celebrating home cooking, but the authors make no effort to offer advice on substituting hard-to-find ingredients.

This is a particular shame for those looking to recreate those iconic dishes – both The Korean Cookbook and Sohn-Mat are all too keen to include pre-mixed cooking powders in their recipes. Park and Choi use a store-bought seasoned flour mix for both fried chicken recipes, but offer no DIY substitute. The jeon (pancake) recipes across the books almost all call for ‘Korean pancake mix’ but, again, offer no substitute. In offering an authentic view of Korean home cooking, The Korean Cookbook is a success. In making the dishes universally accessible, less so.

But then, do people come to cookbooks that explore other cuisines expecting the author to present every dish as a simple half-hour recipe? It takes millennia to form the way a nation eats – The Korean Cookbook offers a potted history that starts in the neolithic period. It shouldn’t be a matter of rocking up at the tail end of this evolution and demanding simple translations. And, frankly, if that is what you’re looking for, we’re probably only six months out from a six-part BBC2 series and accompanying book: Rick Stein’s Korea.

For now we should relish that we are being offered so many nuanced, informative takes on one of the most unique and flavour-filled cuisines in the world. Time to move beyond bulgogi, and get into the real heart of Korean cooking.

Cuisine: Korean
Suitable for: Confident home cooks
Cookbook Review Rating: Four stars/Four stars

Buy these books:
Sohn-mat by Monica Lee, £25, Hardie Grant US
The Korean Cookbook by Junghyun Park and Jungyoon Choi , £39.95, Phaidon Press

Cook from The Korean Cookbook