Korean food has been having a ‘moment’ for a while. Ingredients that were nigh on impossible to get hold of a few years ago are now available in many supermarkets ( look in the world foods aisle) and they’re worth stocking up on to take your cooking to another dimension of sweet, salty, tangy and, above all, spicy. I’ve had gochujang – the bright red chilli paste – in my cupboard for a while, along with gochugaru (chilli flakes), doenjang (fermented soy bean paste) and ready-made kimchi. But once you’ve got your staples, what to do with them? Jina Jung’s Korean Home Kitchen has the answers.
Jina was born in Seoul, South Korea, and developed her cooking skills with her grandmother and mother. She says, “As a child in Korea, I still remember the mountains of cabbage that filled our living room once a year to prepare kimchi as a family, chillies drying in the sun and the peculiar smell of fermenting soy that would, in a few months, turn into delicious doenjang paste. The mantras of the women in my family still resonate in me when I cook: the order of ingredients, the completeness of colours and the ba lance of chilli in a dish.” But, she adds, “Contrar y to popular belief, Korean cuisine is simple. More than anything, it is an art of living.”