a partial two-week history of cooking.
egg salad, apple kimchi, banana cake, potato banchan, and a cake for my dog.
this simple egg salad is currently one of my favorite ways to eat eggs.
put your eggs in a pot, cover with water, and put the lid on. place on high heat until the water comes to a boil. turn the heat off, and leave the eggs in the pot with the lid on for 10 minutes. transfer eggs to a bowl of ice water to stop the eggs cooking.
while you wait for the eggs to cool, chop your scallions. peel your eggs and hope they all shell evenly, though it’s okay if they don’t because you’re making an egg salad, after all. chop up your eggs, and put your eggs and scallions in a mixing bowl and generously squeeze kewpie mayo over it. mix it all together. taste. i find that the scallions and kewpie mayo impart enough flavor and saltiness, so i don’t need salt or pepper (but i don’t like pepper to begin with and rarely pepper anything), but, of course, modify to your taste.
i never learned how to cook “properly,” and it continues to be one of my most deep-seated insecurities. i kind of learned to cook in secret, picking things up here and there while never being fully open about how much i really wanted to learn how to cook. food has been my greatest source of shame since i was in high school, and it still is in many ways — my parents remain distressed by how much i enjoy food and wish, even now, that i would enjoy it less, would eat less, so i could, consequently, lose weight. just a few afternoons ago, i was told how round my face is, that it was a pity i can’t seem to dig my heels in and use this quarantine to commit to a diet, the subtext being that, if i were thin, i’d be able to find a husband and get married and have children.
presumably, then, i would be happy, my life full and fulfilled.
instead, i wish i could cook properly, and i wish i could write more about food with more heart and knowledge. i wish i had greater expertise. i wish i could eat more widely and more diversely, that i weren’t so limited by money, so i could travel and eat and tell those accompanying stories. i wish my knifework weren’t so shoddy, that i could be more adventurous in my cooking, that i’d had the guts ten years ago to say, fuck it, to all the body shaming and try the food thing, whatever that looked like. i wish i had the guts to do that now.
at atoboy, they make a riff on kkakdugi using granny smith apples instead of korean radish, and i love it. granny smith apples have a nice body to them, crispy but sturdy, and their tartness is tempered when tossed with gochugaru, garlic, scallions, a tiny bit of ginger, and honey. i toss everything in a jar and pour over a salt brine to finish, then let the kimchi sit on the counter for at least 2-3 nights before moving it to the fridge. this apple kimchi goes well with a lot of things.
the apples maintain much of their crispness and lightness, and i kind of prefer this over kkakdugi right now, especially in these heat waves rolling over southern california. i like these tiny not-even-bite-sized pieces, the way the sweet tartness of the granny smith breaks down but doesn’t disappear in the spicy brine. i like how easy this is, and i’ve no idea how my version compares to atoboy’s version (theirs is indubitably much better), but that’s not the point. i miss atoboy something fierce, like i miss all my korean american restaurants, like i miss momofuku, and i spend much of my days worrying about them, the chefs and staff and employees. i hope they are well. i hope they are safe and healthy. i hope they are able to get the aid and relief they need.
atoboy is delivering in manhattan and brooklyn, and i highly recommend ordering from them, and, if you do, please send me photos, so i may enjoy vicariously through you. they started delivering to brooklyn the week i left for los angeles.
i’m actually not a fan of banana bread. it tends to be dense, over-spiced, and moist in all the wrong ways, like it’s been left to sit in intense condensation, so, when my parents had speckled bananas sitting around, i knew i wanted to figure out a way to bake something lighter, more banana-y, and, well, not damp. i couldn’t find anything i liked on the internet, though, so i cobbled this together.
here’s an actual recipe, provided in a mix of measurements, which might be maddening, but i’m sorry, that’s too bad:
3 large eggs, separated
50 g sugar
120 g flour
1 ½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
50 g milk
150 g bananas, mashed
preheat oven to 350. lightly grease a loaf pan. i like this long, narrow one i got from ikea years ago, and i haven’t tested this recipe in another, more standard loaf pan, but i’m assuming it will be fine, just flatter. you’d think i’d ask someone to test this before sharing it, but i didn’t, so i hope it turns out okay if you try to make it.
separate your eggs into two bowls — the whites into a large mixing bowl, the yolks into a medium mixing bowl. make sure no yolk gets into your whites because your whites will not whip if there’s even a tiny bit of fat in them. set the whites aside with the sugar (in a separate bowl — don’t add your sugar to your egg whites just yet).
combine your dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt) in a small bowl.
use a whisk to break your yolks and give them a nice stir. add the mashed bananas; mix together. add the vanilla, olive oil, milk; mix until incorporated. add the dry ingredients; mix until just incorporated — don’t overmix. i feel like i should be specifying that you should add each ingredient individually, but i measure out the milk, vanilla, and olive oil in the same bowl to minimize dishes, so screw that. anyway, set aside your yolk mixture.
using a clean whisk, start whisking your egg whites — or use an electric mixer if you have one, i guess. when they’re frothy and bubbly, add some of the sugar. keep whisking. add more of the sugar. keep whisking. add the rest of the sugar. keep whisking until the whites form soft peaks — like, your whisk should be leaving tracks in the whites, and, when you lift the whisk, the whites should form a slump.
the key word in this step is G E N T L Y. add about a third of your soft-peaked-whites to your yolk mixture. whisk it together gently, kinda like you’re folding the whites in instead of stirring. add another third-ish and incorporate gently. pour the yolk mixture into the whites, and fold everything together gently with a spatula until incorporated — don’t whisk or mix vigorously or excessively, but gently. wow, you know how a word starts to look all wrong when you look at it too much? “gently” looks weird now.
pour your batter into your greased pan. bake for 30-ish minutes, until the top is golden and a chopstick poked into the middle comes out clean. the cake will deflate slightly as it cools.
i often feel invisible, so, sometimes, i just want to disappear. i want to delete instagram, get rid of my website/blog (though i guess it’s been so long since i updated, that it’s basically gone), and erase twitter. i want to remove myself from the world. if i’m going to feel invisible, i want to be invisible.
last weekend, i finally did the thing and deleted twitter from my phone. i also decided to delete instagram, which wasn’t a permanent move — i’ve done this before, deleting IG for a weekend when the whole social media thing starts to feel too heavy, too one-sided. that’s my own damn fault; i’m a chronic over-sharer; and it’s something i’ve given up trying to cure myself of. i’ve never been a journal-keeper or a diarist, and i continue putting so much of myself out there in the hopes that something resonates with someone and sparks a genuine connection. i’ve made some good friendships with people through the internet, so it’s not an unrealistic hope. sometimes, though, it feels so desperate of me, this wanting to be seen and recognized, this craving for human connection.
anyway, so i deleted twitter and IG, and i was so bored that i was finally able to read again, plowing through yun ko-eun’s forthcoming the disaster tourist (translated by lizzie buehler) and cho nam-joo’s kim jiyoung, born 1982 (translated by jaime chung). i have lots of thoughts brewing about the korean literature that gets translated into english — or, well, these are thoughts that i’ve been percolating for years now. i’ve touched on it briefly before on this substack, how the west’s hyped praise over certain pieces of art from asia bother me because they intensely Other asianness with their fetishistic and exotifying exuberance. it’s vaguely racist, and i only qualify that because i can’t exactly pinpoint what i mean and why. it bothers the hell out of me, though.
it was no surprise that kim jiyoung, born 1982 made it through the western gatekeepers. the book was a phenomenon and sparked outrage in korea, with female stars being threatened and shamed, their photos burned, for reading it or supporting it in any way. i can see why the book elicited such a reaction from the korean patriarchy — kim jiyoung, born 1982 is less a novel than a recounting of what life is like for your average modern metropolitan korean woman.
kim jiyoung is so named because “jiyoung” is the most popular name for girls in 1982, and she’s barely a character, completely average as she moves through life as a girl who does well enough in school, goes to college, gets a job, gets married, gets pregnant, leaves job. she endures the gendered bullshit many women do, as well as the sexual harassment, the lack of professional promotions, the expectations from her in-laws and, even, her husband, who has all the “rational” reasons why jiyoung should quit her job to care for their child — his reasons make sense and sound reasonable because society has been set up to keep women at home.
cho includes citations to statistics throughout the novel, which she did intentionally so no one could dispute the facts and claim that kim jiyoung’s story was fiction. kim jiyoung’s experiences are not unique; they are average and common, kim a stand-in for your average korean woman; and cho doesn’t leave room for someone to argue that korean society is imbalanced and fucked up. it’s no wonder men became so furious, targeting young female stars who dared to read the novel. no one likes to see the truth so indisputable because, then, that could disrupt the order of things, and things are set up nicely for men.
kim jiyoung, born 1982 is a slim book that goes quickly — or, well, it went quickly for me. it didn’t tell me anything i didn’t already know about korea’s patriarchal society. i’d recommend it if you aren’t familiar with how bad it is in korea for women, but, if you have some familiarity with it, i’d say there are other korean novels that may be more worth your time — like yun ko-eun’s the disaster tourist. i loved the disaster tourist, and it’s forthcoming from counterpoint press in august. i wrote a micro-review of it on instagram if you’re curious.
last weekend, i got so mired in the sads that i ordered rainbow silicone whisks.
this potato banchan is one of my favorite banchan, and i don’t know where it fits within typical korean banchan — it’s just something my mum started making a few years ago. i modify it by adding rice wine vinegar, which is something i picked up from my brother’s father-in-law. he makes a version that’s similar but much more vinegary.
all you need are russet potatoes, kewpie mayo, rice wine vinegar, and toasted sesame seeds, as well as some salt and pepper, if you like pepper.
cut your potatoes into matchsticks, using a mandolin or a sharp knife. whichever method you choose, watch your fingers and fingernails. soak your potatoes in room temperature water, so all the starch is released — i typically leave my potatoes to soak for at least 30 minutes.
bring a pot of salted water to a boil. blanche potato matchsticks in salted boiling water. drain and rinse in cold water, then remove as much excess water as possible.
in a large bowl, mix your blanched potatoes with kewpie mayo, rice wine vinegar, and toasted sesame seeds to taste. if you want, add some pepper. store leftovers, if you have any, in the fridge.
the most sentimental thing i’ll have made all quarantine is this cake for my dog. i make it out of a mix and in the microwave, nuking it in this bone pan that comes in the package. i don’t read the instructions beforehand, though, so i have no greek yogurt to mix the frosting into and use peanut butter instead.
the cake smells like spices and peanut butter, and goms sniffs the air, curious. we stick the candle in, light it, and my parents try to get gom and som to sit in front of the cake, but they’re scared of the fire, even that one solo flicker emitting a foreign, smoky smell. we sing goms happy birthday because this is his belated birthday celebration (he turned two on march 10) that we’re having on the second-year anniversary of the day (may 5) we brought him home.
he was under five pounds then, a shivering ball of floof i held on the two-ish-hour drive back to my parents’. he was slightly damp from a hasty bath his former owners had given him, and he napped for part of the ride, decided to crawl over me to explore his new human and new surroundings for the rest. i would spend the next few weeks with him, zooming home after work to take him to the backyard and play with him, hanging out in the kitchen (which doubled as his bedroom) with him after dinner, getting up in the middle of the night to take him outside to potty then going back to sleep on the sofa, goms curled up around my face. i took him to get his vaccinations, enrolled him in puppy school, taught him sit, 손, down, roll, and i took him on drives because he liked car rides (and still does), fed him bits of peanut butter and cheese and hard-boiled eggs, let him sleep in my bed as soon as he was potty-trained. he had bad separation anxiety, but i had it worse — when i moved back to brooklyn in december 2018, goms was nine months old, and i had to leave him in los angeles with his brother and my parents, and i couldn’t eat peanut butter or hard-boiled eggs or kraft singles for a full month. i’d find myself crying whenever i’d even see any of those items because i missed my dog so much.
it’s a weird thing, learning to live without your support animal after you’ve learned how much he helps you. we brought goms home as i was sliding into a bad depressive, suicidal episode, and he kept me alive that summer. my depression would typically have crippled me, but i couldn’t be so paralyzed by my brain because i had a puppy that needed attention and love and care. i’ve gotten by the last year-and-a-half by making regular trips out to los angeles to see my dog (and my parents) (but, really, my dog), and there’s a lot i could get into about why he stays out here, instead of with me, but i won’t, not now.
may is asian american pacific islander heritage month, and it’s also mental health awareness month. i have been sliding deeper into a depressive, suicidal episode since march, which was made all the worse by quarantine and isolation, so i finally gave in and flew out to LA two weeks ago to be with my parents and my dogs. it’s been a challenging two weeks in ways i did not expect — i’d forgotten how much i depend on being able to go out and see friends when i’m in LA — but i’m glad (for the most part) to be here, where the kitchen is huge and modern, the light beautiful, and my dogs floofy and adorable. i hope you are all well, as well as can be in these times.