Love, Loss, and Kimchi
August 8, 2016 7:03 AM   Subscribe

" I’d create true fusion one mouthful at a time, using chopsticks to eat strips of T-bone and codfish eggs drenched in sesame oil, all in one bite. I liked my baked potatoes with fermented chili paste, my dried cuttlefish with mayonnaise."

Michelle Zauner writes on how Korean food helped her connect with her mother after her death, winning Glamour's 11th essay contest.
posted by FirstMateKate (8 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
"When I came home from college, my mom used to make galbi ssam, Korean short rib with lettuce wraps. She’d have marinated the meat two days before I’d even gotten on the plane, and she’d buy my favorite radish kimchi a week ahead to make sure it was perfectly fermented." Somehow, this is what started the waterworks. Thanks, FirstMateKate.
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:11 AM on August 8, 2016


That was really lovely.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:23 AM on August 8, 2016


"I’m so tired of white guys on TV telling me what to eat. I’m tired of Anthony Bourdain testing the waters of Korean cuisine to report back that, not only will our food not kill you, it actually tastes good. I don’t care how many times you’ve traveled to Thailand, I won’t listen to you—just like the white kids wouldn’t listen to me, the half-Korean girl, defending the red squid tentacles in my lunch box. The same kids who teased me relentlessly back then are the ones who now celebrate our cuisine as the Next Big Thing."

Relating to this and other moments in the essay so hard.
posted by driedmango at 7:34 AM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Michelle is also an astonishingly great musician, having put out records with Japanese Breakfast and Little Big League. Absolute "repeat until I can't stand it" music
posted by GilloD at 8:34 AM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


The specifics are entirely different but this essay made me feel really similar things about Italian-American food and my connection to my grandparents.

My Gram and Pop-pop's passing walked an unlikely tightrope - long and clear enough that my family had no illusions about what was happening, but steady enough that my grandparents didn't have long, protracted illness; close enough to each other (7 months apart) that Gram wasn't lonely for very long.

It happened while my family was in a tough adolescence - 3 kids in their twenties, sometimes wayward, making Life Decisions that were not always parentally-approved. Cracks were forming. Relationships were strained. It was hard.

But we came together in the years leading up to Gram and Pop's death - regular visits, collaborating on care, and honoring their steadfast love ("family comes first") with commitment to each other - even if that commitment, like faith, had to run on fumes and suspend some disbelief for a while. Honestly, when things were hardest for my immediate family, "What would Gram say" was something to fall back on.

I had been vegetarian and vegan for a long time but in the few years following their passing - which coincided with a move to the midwest for my partner's grad school - I realized how much I missed Italian-American food in my life. So I started eating more cheese, more meat - out of a desire to stitch diet to culture and memory.

I replicated some of Gram's recipes when I could - the sausage bread, the pasta aglio e olio. Options in Minnesota were slim, but there was one import store that had some of the sopressata that Gram and Pop always snacked on.

Done writing for now, I'm gonna go take a moment to have a quick cry.
posted by entropone at 8:54 AM on August 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


This was great, and thanks for posting it.
posted by Dashy at 10:16 AM on August 8, 2016


What a beautiful essay. Truly the best of the Web. Thanks for posting.
posted by invokeuse at 10:42 AM on August 8, 2016


When I’d beg for her galbi recipe, she gave me a haphazard ingredient list and approximate measurements

That's how my mom always gave me Korean food recipes. When I was younger I found it a bit annoying and not very helpful - but I realized I was giving out the recipe in a similar manner when somebody recently asked me for a mandu recipe. Note that kimchi mandu is something that I have made with my mother since my early teens, often with my father kibitzing in the background, teasing us that we were doing it all wrong, he was going to show us how to properly make mandu, and what do you know, he would make picture perfect ones. My mom and I would grumble, then steam a batch "just to taste," and then get teased by my father again that we were eating more than we were making.

After I moved away a yearly ritual I acquired was to call my mom to consult her about making the traditional tteuk mandu guk for New Year's Day. And always a haphazard list of ingredients, slightly different from year to year, maybe some measurements in the form of ratios ('equal parts ground beef, ground pork, and tofu'), but more usually not. I don't really measure out ingredients when I make the kimchi mandu filling - just throw in what looks right to me, sometimes however much I happen to have on hand. It's part of muscle memory after all those years.

It has been several years since my father passed away, and lately my mother has trouble remembering words, let alone ingredients for mandu filling.

If somebody asks me for a mandu recipe with measurements, I'll refer them to this one from Korean Bapsang ('Table'). You want a kickass recipe for kalbi marinade? Try the one from Cook's Illustrated - my mom declared it the best one she had tried, after I had dictated it to her over the phone during one of our food discussions some years ago.
posted by needled at 5:04 PM on August 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


« Older Bringing back the fedora bins   |   The Moral Machine Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments