Please tell me you made the kimchi, yes?

Oh, good, because this next recipe I’m sharing showcases kimchi. 

But first, two things:

1. If you haven’t yet jumped on the kimchi bandwagon, hitch up those skirts and jump.
2. If you’re toying with making it, but unsure how to use it, or if you’ll even use it, this recipe’s got you covered. Even if you don’t like eating straight kimchi [clutches pearls and swoons], you should probably make it anyway — just so’s you can make this.

Alright. Now for the deets. 

Kimchi jjigae is a stew (jjigae means “stew). Which, to the uninitiated, sounds plain wrong — take a bright vegetable ferment and then kill all that goodness? It makes no sense! 

Until you do it. Then it makes perfect sense.

See, you gotta understand: kimchi is not just a fresh ferment condiment — it’s also a ready-made soup mix. A ready-made soup mix! Add kimchi to soup and, BAM, you’ve just exploded your humdrum soup with vegetables, umami, salt, and briny acidity. 

The general idea: saute aromatics with Korean red pepper. Add the same ingredients again, but this time in the fermented form of kimchi. In other words, you’re layering flavors. It sounds stupid simple — and it is — but it’s also wondrously rich, satisfying, and comforting, aka, soul food with a twist, and I adore it. 

Kimchi jigae can be served over rice, or thinned with more kimchi broth or water for a lighter soup. Cook it low and slow for silky-tender vibes, or give it a brief simmer for fresh crunch. Pair it with pork, or go rogue and toss in some cubes of fried paneer. Since learning to make it, I’ve cranked this out at least three or four times, both with and without meat, and never the same way twice.

There are a couple special Korean ingredients — and they are worth purchasing. 

• Coarse gochugaru is Korean dried red pepper. It sparkles like sequins and fairy dust, and the heat is steady and punchy-deep (not hysterically sharp and piercing like cayenne). You can use a lot of it without making enemies.
• Gochugang is a paste, and it’s not authentic to kimchi jjigae, but I often add a hefty squirt anyway — because it’s delicious and I can.
• The green plum syrup (often called an “extract”) is optional, but I have been adding it to all sorts of things besides jjigae: seltzer water, sauteed kale, etc. It checks the boxes for both sweet and acid, so it comes in handy in all sorts of dishes, not just the Korean ones. 

P.S. It’s slowly dawning on me that I may have a “Thing” for Korean food. I’ve never been particularly drawn to the flavors of Asian cuisine, but there’s something about the flavors and textures of Korean food that’s making my skirt fly up. Stay tuned.

Kimchi Jjigae
Adapted from Eric Kim’s recipe in NYT Cooking. 

If you’ve got some kimchi that’s slightly bitter, jjigae is a fantastic way to use it up. In the jjigae, the flavors meld and deepen, and any trace of funkiness or bitterness completely disappears.

Eric makes his jjigae with pork ribs. I’ve made it with leftover pork chops. Also, ground beef (or was it leftover beef roast? can’t remember…). Also, no meat. It’s good any which-a way.

4 cloves fresh garlic, minced
2-3 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
1 tablespoon butter (or olive oil)
2-3 cups of well-fermented kimchi, rough-chopped and juices reserved
1 heaping tablespoon coarse-ground gochugaru
3 tablespoons gochugang paste, optional
2 cups water
pinch of salt
1 onion, sliced thinly into rings
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon green plum syrup (or extract)
3-5 green onions, sliced

Melt the butter and then add the ground gochugaru, garlic, and ginger. Saute for a minute, or until the butter is a pretty red. Add the gochugang paste, kimchi and its juices, 2 cups of water, and a pinch o’ salt. Bring to a simmer and cook for 5 minutes. 

Sprinkle the thinly sliced onion over top, cover with a lid, and then let it simmer another 10-15 minutes, or until the onions are cooked through and they’ve released all their oniony juices into the stew.

Stir in the fish sauce, plum syrup, and another couple pinches of ground gochugaru. Remove from the heat, shower with green onions, and serve over rice. 

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (7.22.24), milk sabbatical, mamma mia, peach pie with bourbon and fresh rosemary, Italian meringue buttercream, the quotidian (7.23.18), lemony cream cheese frosting, all practicality, vegetarian groundnut stew.

Monday mornings while I mix scones, sheet out pastry dough, and wash dishes, I listen to podcasts.

Specifically, I listen to Fresh Air. 

Wanna know what I love about interviews? 

They are just conversations with people who have lived their lives, suffering and failing and trying, and then during a quick 45 minutes, we get to look back at the whole messy story and watch as an astonishing arc rises from the mundane. 

Inevitably, the interviews give me new perspective on my own life. Like everyone else, I, too, don’t know where I’ll end up or what may emerge. This truth makes me feel both hopeful and grounded. 

(Reading the John Lewis books about the Civil Rights Movement, I had the same sort of epiphany. Back then, people were doing what they needed to do — chaotically and incorrectly and without any guarantee of results — and then, over time, this Thing, the Civil Rights Movement, emerged. From where we sit now, the Movement seems like a given, but it wasn’t. Back then, the capital-M Movement was just lower case-m movement. In the midst of living, it’s all a jumble.) 

Anyways, if you have a big cooking project coming up and need some interviews to listen to, here are a few goodies I’ve enjoyed recently. 

Anna Deavere Smith asks incredible questions: How are human emotions captured in the rhythm of our language? How do the rhythms in which we speak reveal our internal disarray? She says that when people struggle to make sense of something, they often end up creating “gorgeous architectures of language” — isn’t that beautiful? (The audio clips of her theater monologues are stunning.) 

This interview with The Atlantic writer Helen Lewis about masculinism, which is all about the belief that feminism emasculates men (because men apparently don’t feel strong enough to withstand the power of the feminine, I guess?), is a doozy. Interestingly, both liberals and conservatives have a right and wrong way to be a women. For the conservatives, the wrong way is to be a “small-breasted biddy,” as Reverend Douglas Wilson said (this year!). And for the liberals, there are the Karens — meddlesome women who insert themselves. In either case, the behavior is “wrong” primarily because the person doing it is female. 

Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, a scholar of the N-word, speaks in a way that is deeply nuanced and challenging. If you’re anything like me, you may find the podcase requires some soul-searching and a conversation buddy. My advice? Tell a good friend to listen to it, and then go on a walk together to discuss. 

When legal scholar Kimberle Williams Crenshaw was a kid, her parents expected their children to come to supper prepared to share something that they were thinking about or that they’d learned. In other words, meals weren’t places to shut up and eat — they were times to show up and share. (Kimberle often had to leave off playing with friends early so she’d have time to prepare what she was going to talk about at supper!) Kinda makes me wish I could redo our family dinners.

***

Bonus! The Netflix documentary about Martin Short is a cacophony of activity, grief, and laughter.

Eighty percent of living is failing, Marty says, without even a twinge of resentfulness. Once you accept that failure is a central part of life, it doesn’t sting as much. 

This same time, years previous: best damn pork butt roast, something you might not know about me, banana pudding, the coronavirus diaries: week 70, mushroom burgers with cheese, the quotidian (7.9.18), nose spots, a photo book, the quotidian (6.9.14), let’s talk, the quotidian (7.9.12), basic and plain (and delicious), while I can.

At the top of our stairs is a teeny-tiny closet room. For years, we used it as a kid bedroom. It was ridiculously small and typically crammed with all sorts of kid junk — the sort of room that, whenever I’d walk by, I’d have to half close my eyes to retain any sort of emotional equilibrium. 

Here, let me show you.

Evolution of a Closet Bedroom

circa 2006

circa 2010

circa 2020

circa 2021, mid-dunging out (I hope)

Then when the kids outgrew it, we turned it into a little library.

circa 2026

As a “library,” the room was never much used. The space was too small for hanging out with other people, and everyone had their own rooms to go hide in, so it ended up being cluttlered dead space. 

But then when we were renovating my younger daughter’s bedroom last year, I had the brilliant idea to knock out the walls and create a hallway sitting area.

My husband wasn’t too sure.

But a space at the top of the stairs, I argued, would be the perfect little getaway spot when we had a house full of people. We could put in a floor-to-ceiling bookcase, a soft rug for lounging, and a loveseat for a nursing mama or napping toddler [insert star eyes and melty faces]. Plus, since we only have one main living area, when guests come over, we have no indoor space for kids to run off to so the adults can have after-dinner chitty-chat. This would solve that.

Persuaded (coerced?) by the brilliance of my logic, my husband heaved a sigh and played along. Over the last few months, the transformation inched forward.

My older daughter knocked out the walls and wired the room.

She and my husband built bookshelves.

My mom scoured Facebook marketplace for little loveseats, and then my husband and I drove over the mountain to pick one up.

We found a second-hand rickety coffee table and my husband shortened the legs, tightened it up, and painted it white. 

My big contribution was the carpet.

using blankets to determine correct rug size

I visited multiple rug stores, alternating between dragging my husband and mother along with me.

After much belabored discussion, I finally landed on a white remnant.

It was the most time I’ve spent being interior decorator-ish in years. 

My mother donated an old electric candle to use as a nightlight, and we bought a new lamp, curtains, a world map, and, voilà! A book nook was born.

P.S. My husband likes it.

This same time, years previous: cracked all-the-grain sourdough, live it well, the quotidian (7.6.20), fresh strawberry cake, one weekend only, the quotidian (7.7.14), let’s revolutionize youth group mission trips! please!, grilled flatbread, for hot summer days, playing make believe, sniffing for cake, cake for breakfast.