Kimchi is deeply ingrained in Korean cooking and usually appears in a few different guises. I love the deep red colour that this pancake takes on from the kimchi and its liquid.
The combination of textures from the crispy outside and soft, gooey inside adds dimension and interest to any meal. You can make a few smaller, individual pancakes or two or three larger ones as you wish, depending on how much batter you add to the pan at a time.
One of the countless ways Korean food excites me is that it employs extreme temperature—whether it’s serving food in the ripping- hot stone pots called dolsot or frozen bowls. I remember the chef world—myself included—nerding out when Noma served squid with broccoli in a vessel made entirely of ice, only to find myself, a few weeks later, eating naengmyeon out of one in Flushing, Queens.
There’s no ice bowl required for this dish, though I do take a page from a restaurant I went to in Seoul where they put the chilled broth into a slushy machine. My at- home version uses a savory- sweet granita to top the cold, super-chewy buckwheat noodles in a spicy dressing. The addition of dragon fruit powder is 100-percent not traditional and 95-percent optional, but it does add a little sweetness and an absolutely spectacular neon pink color. Got that trick from Starbucks.
I love okonomiyaki—large Japanese cabbage cakes made in a skillet and then cut into wedges to serve. But trust me, flipping one of those babies is not bare minimum. Instead, I make smaller cakes; they cook more quickly and are much (much!) easier to turn. Use a cast-iron skillet here if you have one.
Nyesha is an expert at fusing food and place and then building narratives around that fusion. Most of her stories are about Los Angeles, which meant that I tried to pick an LA story also. That sparked a memory of the first time I visited California, back in the mid-eighties, and specifically a memory of Toddy Tee’s “Batterram,” an early hip-hop song about the LAPD’s use of a modified Army tank to break down doors in search of crack dealers. That’s a completely different kind of cooking, but that’s not why I picked it. To me, it was one of the first true signs that there was distinct a West Coast culture that wasn’t making its way back east unless people brought it.
Use the powerfully spicy Korean chile paste, gochujang, to flavor tender beef brisket, along with the gochugaru chile flakes for added heat, sesame oil, garlic, and lots of fresh ginger. If you can’t find gochujang, Sriracha makes a good though slightly less spicy substitute.
[Ed. note: You can find the kimchi recipe Robin references below here.]
I'm in love with the combination of kimchi and eggs, and these came to me when I was looking for a flashy appetizer to take to an author event at the Smithsonian. But they became a standby in Maine when I had abundant access to fresh eggs but no one in the house to share them with, since my sister and brother-in-law had decided to go vegan. This recipe depends on the use of good kimchi, so either make the Cabbage Kimchi or buy the best you can find, probably at an Asian market. These can be refrigerated, covered, for up to 2 days, but are best eaten within a few hours of being made.