I was unfamiliar with Joanne Lee Molinaro’s work but the jjajjangmyun pictured on the front cover is one of my very favorite Korean-Chinese dishes and so I knew we’d be Seoul-mates (sorry, couldn’t resist). Very much like with Hetty McKinnon’s To Asia With Love, I felt connected to Joanne’s stories and her bifurcated love of foods both Korean and Western. Despite feeling like as a Korean woman, I should naturally be good at both golf and making kimchi, neither has proven to be true. Over the years I have tried, and failed, many a time to make my own kimchi. My mom is both puzzled and amused by this. She will carefully write out her directions, and I will just as carefully follow them. But every single time: complete failure. My favorite past attempt was trying to make these Korean pickles called oiji that she makes to perfection and that I adore. A few days into their fermentation process, I heard an explosion coming from the kitchen and found the pickle jar shattered. Those pickles jumped ship!

Reading Molinaro’s book, I was inspired anew to give it another shot. This time around I purposefully picked the easiest (so I thought) recipe for a water-based kimchi. Through no fault of the recipe, the entire production turned out slimy. As I read up on possible reasons why, I think my mistake was doing the initial fermentation on the counter. It was probably too warm and, ironically given how little sunshine we have had, too sunny (we had a succession of really cold but very sunny days right after I made this batch). I also think my sugar-to-salt ratio got out of whack somehow. Knowing what I know now, I’ll give it another try at some point. At least the jars didn’t shatter this time. And regardless, I am really loving both of these cookbooks!
Prairie Ave North was gifted this gorgeous cookbook (and another I’ll write about soon) that I have been loving. The hand-pulled noodles Ash Street South and I made during her visit northward were drawn from a recipe in this book, with delicious results. I was halfway through reading To Asia With Love before realizing the author was the very same lovely person behind one of my favorite blogs, Arthur Street Kitchen! Clearly I wasn’t reading the header of her blog, which has Hetty McKinnon’s name right at the top, LOL.

My lunch today is an homage to Hetty. In the cookbook, she ruminates about growing up Asian in Australia, and how food was a crucial component to figuring out her ethnic identity. Much like the recipes she has in the book, the dish above has a Vietnamese-inspired pho base with some Korean twists in the addition of tofu, turnips, and gochujang, all boiled together into a pan-Asian hot pot for lunch this afternoon.