#immigrantfood

so, this weekend. this week-and-a-half. oh, dear lord.

i’ve been spending ridiculous amounts of time these last few days consuming news and struggling with not sinking into total despair and trying to find ways i can fight back — or, at least, contribute a voice to things.

i admit that it’s been easy to slide into despair and hopelessness, though, and i’ve been tempted simply to unplug from everything and curl up in a cave and block out the world, especially because none of this is helping with the ongoing downward trajectory of my mental state. every day is a constant struggle to stay afloat personally, unrelated to politics and the goings-on of the world, and it doesn’t help that i’m also pretty much completely isolated in california because i’m currently staying at my parents’, don’t have a car, am still financially unstable, and have no close friends in the area.

it’s no surprise, then, that i’ve been using technology as my support — text messages, kakao talk, twitter, instagram, this space — and, when david chang started using the hashtag “immigrantfood” over the weekend, it stuck with me.

as someone who loves food and spends most of her time thinking about it, i’ve come to embrace the hashtag fully. however, while i start aggressively using it, i wanted to lay out clearly what the hashtag means for me and what i want to convey through its use. i mentioned this briefly on instagram but thought i would also expand on it here, put it down on record.

the hashtag means two things specifically:

ONE. diversity does not only make this country great; it also makes it delicious. food is one of the great gifts immigrants and refugees bring to this country because food isn’t simply sustenance or something to eat — it’s a means through which to get to know people, to understand where they come from, to realize that they are not the Other.

i will never downplay or underestimate the significance of the 밥상 (bahp-sang, food table).

TWO. you do not get to take our food but reject us, our bodies/selves, our histories, our cultures. food comes hand-in-hand with culture because it is informed by culture and, in turn, informs culture, not only what we eat, but how we eat, with whom, in what ways. additionally, food is shaped by history, by wars, by scarcity and suffering and survival, just like it is shaped by wealth and privilege and abundance, and food is created by bodies, from the bodies that sow the fields and raise the animals to the bodies that take these products and cook them and offer the meals that we eat, whether at home, our own and others’, or in restaurants and eateries around the country.

food does not exist in a vacuum, and it does not come from nothing, and it cannot be detached from its origins. further, before you think that i’m making too much out of something so basic, think about this: food is also political. it is social.

it is used as a means of power when it is withheld and/or used as bribes or incentives, a means through which those in power control those below them. it is used to discriminate against people, to make Others of them, by saying that there is one way to eat, one way that is superior to others — “ethnic” (aka non-white) food is often looked down upon as smelly and uncultivated because it is different, served differently, consumed differently, and those who eat it are, consequently, seen as dirty, unrefined, less-than-human.

it is easily appropriated when people (usually white) go storming into spaces that are not theirs, marveling at the “exotic” things of other worlds and latching onto the food, all while exercising zero respect and awareness of the world and people around them. 

and this is what i mean when i use this hashtag — that food is not just food, that it can be as much a tool or weapon as it is identity, sustenance, and love. that food comes attached to people, to culture, to history, and, as such, it should be respected. that you cannot go barging into another culture without any sensitivity and simply take and take and take, that that time of colonialism and imperialism has (or should have) passed, that that mentality and attitude are unacceptable and despicable.

that food is one of the myriad amazing things that immigrants and refugees bring to this country, that this country and its food would not be what they are today without these contributions, and, as such, you cannot simply take our food and reject us.

i know; i eat a lot of asian food (and tacos); but “asian food,” in itself, is a giant umbrella that covers a whole lot of different food from different countries and cultures and peoples. one of my goals for the year is to get out of my comfort zone, to eat more from other countries and cuisines, to extend my palate and, in connection, my understanding of places and people i know little of now.

another goal is to learn more about korean food and to share more about it. there is a book i’m dying to write about korea and its culture and food and society — it’s been percolating in my brain for a few years now, but it’s really solidified as a concept in the past few months. i know how it would look visually and aesthetically; i know the stories i’d want to tell; and i know how i’d lay it out and organize it. 

at present, though, that is the extent of where i can take my korea food book, especially as one of my biggest questions these days is whether or not i will be able to write again in the ways i was once able, and, so, this is also a small way of seeing if there is any possibility for hope — hope that i will be whole again, that i will find my way home again, that i will survive this, all of this, and write again.

[travelogue] eat eat eat eat eat.

i do regret leaving the south without eating fried chicken. and i also regret not eating more grits.

back in los angeles, at my parents’, and here’s a last travel post, a few other things i ate, a few things i’ve been thinking about since i left new york ten days ago.

01. we carry heartbreak in our bodies. i feel it literally in my heart, the way it feels like my heart is physically trying to squeeze itself out of my body. i feel it in my stomach, too, the way it churns with anxiety, wakes me in the morning with nausea, reminds me of loss by making me want to vomit all the time. heartbreak is not simply a matter of emotion; i think we forget that we feel with our bodies.

02. as i was driving, i thought a lot about borders, about spaces. i thought about how things started to feel different once i crossed the virginia border into north carolina, even though maybe that was more in my head than anything else. i thought about wanting to drive through north carolina without stopping because HB2 has yet to be repealed. (i similarly thought about wishing i could avoid texas because of SB242 and a similar bathroom bill and restrictive abortion laws.) i thought about being in charleston and feeling my asianness, my queerness, and i thought about being in the south and experiencing that southern geniality and hospitality but constantly having that fear underneath my skin, wondering, what do you really think of me? i know i pass as very straight, so what would you think if you knew who i was, what i was?

03. here’s a truth: that i know that we can’t make sweeping generalized statements about any region, any group of people, anything, really. that i know that there are open-minded, loving people to be found everywhere, that there are allies in hidden spaces, that we speak in code that’s there to be deciphered by those of us who speak the language.

04. and here’s another truth: that we must learn to speak these languages, that they are languages we carry, too, in our bodies.

05. and here’s yet another truth: that i know i can’t make sweeping generalized statements about the south but that my uneasiness was, is still a real thing. maybe it’s more easily explained in the context of religion because religion makes me very uneasy, and all the churches and the billboards blasting bible verses and the trucks done up in declarations of god’s existence made me queasy. it started once i crossed that virginia border into north carolina, and it’s something i wasn’t able to shake all the way into california. i don’t know why it surprises me how religious this country is.

06. like, when i was driving through mississippi, en route to new orleans, i exited the 10 west once because the sign promised a sonic. i ended up going 2.3 miles off the freeway and passed no less than six churches, no promised sonic in sight.

07. i am not, do not want to be the type of person who gets limited by my fears, who is afraid to head into spaces that make me uncomfortable, that make me look at the people around me and wonder, what do you think of me? do i make you as uneasy as you make me? if you could, would you throw the first stone?

08. i thought a lot about safe spaces, too. i thought about the criticism we sometimes face, that we live in these liberal spaces on the coasts (or on some body of water) and fail to see the rest of the world. i thought about the criticisms voiced after the election that went the wrong way, that we would have, should have, seen this result coming, had we only thought to look outside our liberal bubbles. i thought about the smugness that sometimes comes laced with these criticisms, the sort of, ha! all you liberals are getting what you deserved!, except that makes me sad, and then it makes me angry because, yes, maybe we congregate in our liberal bubbles, but do you understand this fear of walking around with a target on your back because of the color of your skin, the non-christian religion you practice, the orientation with which you identify?

09. that made me wonder, though, as to what makes a safe space. because, like everything else, spaces are complicated, too. a city can be liberal; it can be open and committed to protecting the diversity of its citizens; but that doesn’t mean it will necessarily be safe for you, for me, for everyone. we all have baggage, and spaces that should otherwise be safe become fraught with other things. it’s like me and california — this should be a safe space for me, but it’s not. i’m still afraid i’m going to die here.

a. before i came back out to california, i kept reminding my parents: don’t take it personally. this is not about you. my depression is a real thing, and it’s something that i have to live with — and it’s also unfortunately something you have to learn to live with.

b. and how do they learn to live with it? how does anyone learn to love and live with someone who struggles with suicidal depression? a few tips: remember that it’s not about you. it’s not in you or up to you to save us; you can’t. remember that we will have good days and we will have bad days. we will have days when we seem “normal” and “okay,” and we will have days when we’re catatonic, when every tiny little task seems like a giant, impossible thing. we will have days we do nothing but cry. we will have days we laugh without sadness tugging at our eyes. all you can do is take it in stride, treat us with patience and tenderness, and be present. just be present. always be present.

c. and how do we live with it? how do i? i eat; i cook; and, when i can, i read, and i write. i carry books with me like habit in the hopes that i will want to pick them up and lose myself in them. i think about what i’m craving. i think about what i want to cook. i keep my eyes open to the beauty all around me because the fact that i can see beauty at all is an indiction that there is a part of me that is holding on. therapy is good and all, but habits and routines are what get us through the day-to-day, and i cling to what i know has worked in the past and continues to work. i eat; i cook; and, when i can, i read, and i write.

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01. the only novel i took with me cross-country (at least in easy access) was rachel khong’s goodbye, vitamin (henry holt, forthcoming, 2017). i read it in pieces while on the road, a few pages here and there when i had the energy and needed words to refill my brain. i loved it, loved the prose, loved the way it seeped into my heart, loved the comfort it surprisingly delivered, loved the warmth and tenderness it fairly oozes.

02. in the novel, the narrator’s father has been diagnosed with alzheimer’s, and, so, she returns to her parents’ house in southern california for a year. she’s avoided visiting as much as she could, not wanting to encounter the realities of her parents’ problems, realities that her younger brother was privy to because he was still a teenager at home to witness them while she was away in college, in the bay area, in her own life.

03. the novel is told in short sections over a year, and the narrator is thoughtful and honest with a wry sense of humor (and offering many mentions of food). at first, i thought i might not like the short sections because, sometimes, that style drives me a little crazy, not being able to dwell in moments and being whisked into next scenes too quickly, but goodbye, vitamin thankfully works its rhythm deftly. the pace works; it takes a story that could be heavy and bleak and excessively dark; and it gives the novel a lightness, space to breathe.

04. there was a lot familiar in this novel, too. in 2012, my paternal grandmother passed away from alzheimer’s. we cared for her at home, and the novel brought all those memories to the surface — the ups and downs, the unpredictable sway of my grandmother’s emotions and actions, the struggles and pains and heart-wrenching sadnesses of watching someone you love deteriorate. also, like the narrator, i have just returned to my parents’ house in southern california under not-so-positive circumstances. in a way, all the familiarity was comforting, especially during that 3,400-mile drive across the country. i don’t know if maybe that’s a strange way of putting it, given the topic matter, but i miss my grandmother intensely at times, and i was glad to remember her while reading this novel.

05. in the novel, there are little bits taken from the father’s journal when the narrator was a child, and those may have been my favorite parts, even if they left me ugly-crying in public spaces. i’ve been thinking a lot these days about how much hope parents must have for their children, how sometimes all that hope is for nothing and how we disappoint the people who have loved us and cared for us and wished so much for us.

06. writing about books again feels really fucking good. and it also makes me laugh because all this reminds me how disappointing it is when questionable book decisions happen to good people. like the cover of jonathan franzen’s purity — i’ll never let FSG off the hook for that bizarre cover, especially given that the designer was the fabulous rodrigo corral (what the hell happened there?!). and, now, the title to kristen kish’s forthcoming cookbook because, come on, clarkson potter, the cover is beautiful, yes, though i was hoping she would not be on it, but, god damn, you can do so much better than that title.

07. next, we’ll be reading naomi pomeroy’s taste & technique (ten speed press, 2016) and ronni lundy’s victuals (clarkson potter, 2016). and hwang jung-eum’s one hundred shadows (tilted axis, 2016). look out for khong’s goodbye, vitamin this summer; holt is publishing it in july.

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x. do i need to mention that rachel sent me the ARC to her book? that has no bearing on my thoughts, though, except for gratitude that she sent it to me to read. i’m always grateful when people send me books; it surprises me that they would want to do that at all.

x. the grits on the top are from callie’s hot little biscuit (atlanta); the shrimp and grits in the middle are from surrey’s (new orleans) (and easily one of my top three favorite things i ate; seriously, it was so fucking good); and, below, we’ve got hawaiian food (or hawaiian-inspired?) from solid grindz (tucson) followed by breakfast from king’s highway (palm springs).

x. eating my way across the country was great, and i’d do it again in a heartbeat. hopefully, i will get to do it again soon, just the other way, back home.

[travelogue] chasing meals.

i think about food pretty much all the time.

while i’m eating a meal, i think about what i want to eat for my next meal. as i’m trying to fall asleep, i think about what i want to eat tomorrow, what i want to cook, what i’m craving and why i’m so fucking hungry and how i can’t fall asleep because of it. i follow a fair number of food people on instagram, so i spend a fair amount of time every day looking at food and being cranky that i can’t eat any of it. i read about food constantly, whether on food blogs or in food magazines or as food memoirs or cookbooks — so, basically, i’ve got food on my mind pretty much all the time.

(maybe the one oddity is that i don’t watch tv about food, but that’s also one of the few things consistent about me: i don’t watch much tv in general.)

i know there are people for whom food is a nuisance, something that must be consumed merely for sustenance and nothing else, but i am (clearly) not one of those. food, for me, especially these days, has come to be a sort of hope, this one thing that i can anticipate and look forward to and enjoy on a regular, daily basis, even while everything seems to be going to shit around me. these days, i feel like i’m existing on a precipice, trying so hard not to lose myself entirely to darkness, to nothingness and hopelessness, and i swear this is a battle i’m constantly losing.

and, so, i eat. i cook. i think about food.

this past weekend, i moved out of my apartment in new york city, and, with the help of my family, i packed and loaded as much of my stuff as possible into a mini-van and discarded the rest. i’m currently in the process of driving across the country, back to california, and am currently typing this in a hotel room in charleston, even though i should be sleeping to continue on the next leg to atlanta tomorrow.

i can’t sleep, though, so here we are.

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the first leg of my trip took me from nyc to dc, where i went straight to momofuku ccdc because, as it goes, i set my navigation to guide me to restaurants.

last night, i laughed this off as a continuation of my ongoing inexplicable fascination with all things momofuku. today, though, when i think about it, i think it must have been the obvious thing that i would run immediately to something familiar. i mean, to an extent, i know momofuku. i know what the food will taste like. i know what the restaurant will look like. i know the logo, the ssam sauce, milk bar.

it reminds me of home, and, when i was in dc, when i was sitting at the bar in ccdc, slurping noodles and drinking a vodka cocktail, i could forget that i’d just lost my home and that i can’t go back, not yet, not for some time.

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when i first had momofuku a few years ago, i didn’t think that much of it. i remember loving the noodles but finding the broth too salty, too spare, and i kind of simply checked it off my list of places to eat and moved on.

recently, though …

momofuku makes my favorite ramen noodles (i believe they’re made in-house), and i can’t get over them. they’re the perfect texture and thickness, just slippery enough and easy to slurp (because noodles must be slurped), and i like that they’re not generic or given less care than the broth or pork. i think noodles are kind of like rice — they’re often seen and dismissed as a basic part of a dish, but, if you have bad rice, bad noodles, the entire thing is wasted.

(FIG [below] gets at this, too. i asked the waiter what he thought of their pork dish, which comes over rice, and he said that they consider the rice just as important as the pork. that kind of care and attention comes through on the plate.)

the more i eat momofuku ramen, the more i like how balanced it is; it’s a bowl that just comes together very well; and ithits all the right notes of comfort and satisfaction and quality. it definitely served as comfort last night, and it’s a bowl i will miss intensely when i’m away from nyc. they did just open a restaurant in vegas, though …

my navigation today brought me to FIG, where i spent way more on dinner than i should have. my budgeting philosophy is simple, though:  eat one great meal a day, and eat crap/starve for the rest, because i’d rather have one great meal than three mediocre/crappy ones.

because here’s the thing: there are a lot of really shitty things about suicidal depression, but, for me, one of the worst things that happens is that it takes away focus, and, when it takes away focus, it takes away books. depression often makes it really difficult for me to read, to sit down and focus on a book, to derive joy from that. i don’t know why that is, but it is.

food, then, fills in for everything.

part of it is likely to do with the fact that i have to eat, whether i want to or not, whether i have an appetite or not. i get hungry, and i feel worse because i’m hungry, so i have no choice but to rouse myself out of my mentally catatonic state and do something about my body’s basic needs. this isn’t to say that depression hasn’t taken food away from me at times, too — there were weeks last year when i got by on rice and hot dogs and fried eggs and ketchup because i didn’t have an appetite and that’s all i could get myself to cook and eat.

after a while, though, my mouth starts to revolt, and it starts craving things. it starts wanting noodles and kimchi and pork. it starts wanting to chew something with more heft, to taste something with more depth and flavor, to eat something that’s actually food and not questionably-processed foodstuffs. it wants green things, bright things, interesting things. it wants to feel alive.

and, so, i let food get me through the day. i think about food a lot. i think about what i want to eat, what i want to cook, and what i need to do to make this meal happen.

i let food give me purpose, and, in that way, i let food create a sort of hope for me.

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and, so, i picked my cities by food.

at the moment, i’m still kind of numb to everything, including my depression, including my grief. the road has that kind of effect, but i’m starting to feel that numbness fade away, too, and, as i get further and further away from home and everything that i love, it’s all going to come fully crashing down on me. i’m going to have to figure out how to process my grief, how to grieve, how to start piecing myself back together. i’m going to have to work on learning to manage my depression in more sustainable ways. i’m going to have to muster up the energy to fight for my life and get back home and not die in california.

until then, though, for this week at least, to hold myself together for this 3,300-mile drive, i’ll go on chasing meals.

even good things come to an end.

it was the via negativa way of figuring out i wanted to do with my life: i didn’t know what i wanted, but i knew what i didn’t want. (momofuku, 19)

benu is very much a restaurant that’s influenced by different cultures. like san francisco and its environs, which has the highest asian concentration of any area in the US, there’s distinct eastern influence. sense of place is expressed not so much in the locality of the products we use, but through the spirit and the cultural influences of our area that permeate our food. the cooking at benu often explores how asian flavors, ideas, and aesthetics can harmonize with western ones. in that way, i think it reflects a bit of my bicultural background as well. and in the process of establishing an identity for the restaurant, i came to a better understanding of my own. (benu, 23)

i imagined what it would be like if my ancestors had ended up in charleston, south carolina, a few generations before i was born. they would have eaten corn, they would have eaten grits, they would have cooked with bacon. or, if southerners were magically transplanted to korea, they’d eat jook instead of grits at breakfast. and you know a people who can handle the salty power of a country ham certainly could have gotten down with kimchi. i imagined a japanese cook making grits — you know he’d boil it in dash and season it with soy.

i guess these were all conversations i was having with myself. i didn’t want to be cooking shitting fusion food. i consoled myself by thinking about how vietnamese cuisine and cajun cooking adapted from french techniques into something that might have looked french but tasted totally different. but it was with this dish ["shrimp and grits"] that i decided — or accepted — that if we reached past “tradition” to create the truest and best version of a dish for our own palates, then what we were doing wasn’t bullshit. momofuku was going pretty strong at this point, but this is the dish that allowed us — or me, certainly — to really look outward and onward. (momofuku, 110)

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how to talk about some shit? here’s some stuff in lists.

01.  these days, reading is done pretty much as pure escapism, and there is no greater, more gratifying escape than to slip into the world of food. food has its own language, its own rules, and, unlike other art forms, it’s firmly grounded because the elements of food come from the earth. the best chefs, i think, are sensitive to this, to the seasons, to the shifting and changing of the environment, just as they’re sensitive to culture and technique and the globally varied approaches to food.

02.  i recently read benu (phaidon, 2015) and chased that with momofuku (clarkson potter, 2009), and they’re both written by korean-american chefs (corey lee and david chang/peter meehan, respectively). they both take inspiration from korean food, but they also draw from chinese, taiwanese, japanese, vietnamese, french cooking and flavors and technique, paying respect to these sources but unafraid to toss out tradition and try new things. there’s a sort of mad scientist glee to their innovation, and i bloody love it.

03.  i love seeing what korean-americans (and, in general, asian-americans) are doing. we all negotiate our relationships with our ethnic identities in different ways — some of us reject it outright; some of us acknowledge it though it doesn’t play a large, obvious part in our lives; and some of us draw significant parts of our identity from it. it’s not just ethnic identity, either, because we also negotiate our relationships with our sexual identities, gender identities, etcetera in our own ways, and there’s no “right” way to do so. there is no “right” way to be asian-american, just like there is no “right” way to be LGBTQ or to be a woman. there is only the way that is right for you, and one of the great, exciting things for me in recent years has been to see and witness how we contribute and present our individual selves to the world.

04.  benu and momofuku are fun books to read back to back. lee and chang have their similarities — they’re both korean-americans of the same age who grew up (or spent significant amounts of their youth) on the east coast and have reputations for being intense in the kitchen and obsessing over details — but to dwell on or make much of these similarities would be to do both a disservice. the juxtaposition is interesting, though, because of the ways they diverge in so many ways; chang is more foul-mouthed and has a dry sense of humor while lee is more formal and restrained with his words (at least in writing). lee’s cooking is more elevated and refined, very little of which someone could attempt at home, while chang goes for the masses without muddling accessibility with low quality. none of this is meant as an inherent compliment, and none of it is meant as an insult because what benu & momofuku show us is that here is how two creative minds work. here is how they venture off on their own individual creative pathways and bring us something wonderful. here are two ways of being amongst the billions there are on this planet.

05.  it must be said: the recipe writing in momofuku is top notch; it has a character of its own. and the photography/design in benu is so fucking stunning. trust phaidon to turn out an aesthetic wonder of a book.

06.  the flip side of reading as pure escapism, though — at one point, the book ends. at one point, we run out of pages, and we’re ejected back into our realities, at which point, sometimes, the only option is to find the next book to chase the next high and avoid the crashing low. sometimes, though, we’re left in better shape because the reading has fortified us and given us better insulation. i suppose it’s a gamble of sorts, one we play while hoping for the latter.

07.  god damn, though, i love food.

a.  here’s a story photographs don’t tell:  these days, it’s about simple things, simple tasks — making a grocery list, walking to my favorite pie bakery and eating a slice of pie, cooking dinner. it sounds stupid, maybe, but, these days, i feel like i’m skating on thin ice, and i’ve got to keep moving or else i’ll fall through, except i’m just moving for the sake of moving and it’s exhausting and it feels like a matter of time before the ice gives way under me. this is what suicidal depression feels like.

b.  i get so scared attaching “suicidal” to “depression.” depression on its own — to the healthy mind — and, hell, maybe even to the depressed mind, though in a self-loathing, self-hating sort of way — seems relatively harmless. it sounds like something that can be overcome, although that’s really a product of how we’ve made depression fill in for basic human sadness when depression actually runs much deeper, more insidiously than that. you attach “suicidal” to it, though, and it immediately takes on a different tone. ooh, now we’re talking about dying, ooh, how dark, ooh, how melodramatic.

c.  one of the worst things about suicidal depression is silence. it’s not being able to speak, whether because it’s just not physically possible (seriously, sometimes, words just don’t come out) or because there’s so much fear attached to it — a fear of being dismissed, of not being taken seriously, of being taken too seriously. there’s also a sense of exhaustion attached to it, too, because there are only so many platitudes you can take. it’s guilt, too, guilt because you’re likely making everyone else feel like shit, because people might be trying to be there for you but you’re not being receptive, because you’re not taking to any of their solutions even if they seem practical and rational.

d.  here’s the thing to remember, though, the crucial detail that changes everything: the depressed mind, the suicidal mind, operates outside pragmatic rationale. it has a logic of its own, and it is a logic that sees and acknowledges dying as a viable solution.

e.  the thing about books that act as records is that they often come after the struggle. they come after the creators have survived, have achieved success, and struggle is something that can be viewed in retrospect. i wonder a lot about whether or not i should write so openly about suicidal depression now, if maybe this writing is best saved for later (if there is a later), for after this has passed (if it ever does), but i wonder, too, if this is a form of self-censorship. isn’t there value in putting these words down now and making them public? i want to say yes because i think it’s important not to attach the clause of survival to every story because, sometimes, the truth is that we don’t survive, and that’s why i think it’s important to see things for what they are, as they are, when they are, even if they’re in really dark places that scare us and put us off and make us uncomfortable. and so we find ourselves here.

f.  which is not to dismiss books that act as records, like benu and momofuku. we need records; we need stories that remind us that, sometimes, the only option is to fling ourselves off the precipice and take the crazy risks and work hard and trust ourselves even amidst the insecurities and the fears and the probabilities stacked against us. we need reminders of this, and, sometimes, we need them more than we do at other times, and i’m glad that they’re there. these books were a tremendous source of comfort to me over the last few days, and, in times like these, that means the world.

g.  oddly (maybe), my lasting impression from benu and momofuku was the thought, huh, i guess maybe there is a space in the world for me. this is why i want to create and write and share.

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i knew it from the beginning, from when quino and i did everything ourselves, but by this point i knew the difference between momofuku and mcdonald’s: caring. caring about every detail. when you start to cook on autopilot, when you buy into bullshit people write about you, when you stop paying attention to details — not to mention big things, like seasoning — no amount of press in the world will make up for it. i preached this to my crew. what is the point of cooking at all if you’re not gonna do it right? (momofuku, 223)

x.  i often wonder who the market is for cookbooks, and i wonder this because i feel like i do not fit into that market. i so rarely cook from cookbooks, and i look at cookbooks as reading material — but it’s not like i’m losing sleep over this.

x.  that’s one thing i loved about benu so much because lee even directly says this in his introduction (which i’ve quoted before). it’s not so much about me attempting these recipes as it is gaining a different perspective, picking up some really cool knowledge about food and food production that i wouldn’t have come across in my average daily life, and learning to see culture (even my ethnic culture that i grew up with) in new ways. it’s learning to think of language in different ways because, like i said, food has its own language, and language, often, is something we take for granted.

x.  this was a thing i loved about both books, that lee and chang pay tribute to different aspects of korean culture, and this was one of my favorites from benu, and i will leave you with this:

the term haenyeo, or “sea women”, refers to the legendary female divers of jeju island, an island province off the coast of south korea. they free-dive into the deep waters for various edibles and play a major role in the seafood trade on the island.

[…]

it is generally accepted that the first known documentation of female divers in jeju dates back to the seventeenth century, during the joseon period, when the primary role of the haenyeo was to supply the royal court. their financial independence eventually helped to establish a matriarchal sub-culture that is unique to the island and in stark contrast to the rest of korea which has deep roots in male-dominated confucian thought. although it has become a dwindling tradition in modern times, with most haenyeo well into their seventies, the sight of these daring women and their floating buoys is still very much a part of the life on jeju island today.

[…]

as a chef, any encounter with the farmer, the fisherman or with anyone who has pulled up their own sleeves to get you the raw materials you cook with can be an educational experience. with these women, however, what i learned is not so much related to food or the products they supply. they are living emblems of korean cultural heritage and embody the resilience of its people and, in particular, the strength and self-sacrifice of its women. and for me, their unwavering spirit is much more beautiful and palpable than can be imagined through any folklore. (benu, 220)