Meal Planning - The Korean American Edition
Wherein family and food lead us to Catsup, buckboards, and kimchi
Family and food are always on our minds. It’s the heart of what the Joy of Cooking is–a family cookbook. This runs counter to the prevailing notion of Joy’s role in American culinary culture. Many assume that Joy codifies American cuisine in some kind of objective way. That you can look at old editions and assume that the recipes on its pages are an accurate picture of what Americans were eating at the time. This assumption isn’t all wrong—starting with Marion Becker in the 1960s, the family has taken an expansive view of American cooking—but it elides more than it illuminates.
Irma did not have any designs on writing the Great American Cookbook. Her approach was much more desultory. Her first editions included a scrapbook-like assortment of family recipes, her own creations, even recipes mailed to her by Joy fans that she didn’t think sounded particularly tasty (she says as much in the headnotes). As far as we know, Irma never created an outline for Joy or developed any sort of criteria for what to include. This is what gives the older editions much of their charm. Opening a Joy from the 30s, 40s, or 50s is like opening your grandmother’s sewing box, stuffed to the brim with notions and spools of thread and shreds of fabric. It’s a bit messy but you’re delighted and surprised by what you find.
In a way, Irma stumbled into writing a book that many came to see as classically American not because she had the goal of writing an American cookbook, but because so many Americans bought and cooked from Joy. Irma was the child of German immigrants, and she grew up immersed in the culture of St. Louis’s Deutschtum, or, very roughly translated, German community (though the word has connotations of “German way of life”). She went to Germany as a young woman and spent five formative years in Bremen where her father served as consul. Irma was, from what we know of her, proud of her German heritage but also wanted very much to belong in America, as an American.
In this passage from Irma’s unfinished autobiography, My Little World, she looked back on her childhood in St. Louis and remembered being part of a different culture:
“Our ‘American’ neighbors were a constant source of interest and curiosity to me. They did not sew on Sundays, nor sing nor play. [The German idea of a good Sunday–listening to music at one of the city’s glorious beer gardens–horrified Sabbath-observing “Americans.”]* They made and consumed quantities of Catsup, lounged on beds, had hot cakes with sirup for breakfast, popped corn, made candy and sang sentimental songs. . . The older girls sat on the porch and had callers. These gay blades drove buckboards with frisky horses and were incredibly romantic as was the whole plan of ‘American’ living to me.”
There’s so much going on in this passage (Catsup with a capital C, popcorn, buckboards!), but Irma’s sense of separateness stands out. She was born in America. She was American. But she belonged to a society within a society with its own customs and language and food. She recognized that she did not “belong” in some fundamental way, and that sense of separateness was amplified when anti-German sentiment spread during World Wars I and II. How then did this very German woman go on to write America’s best-known classic cookbook?
Irma’s path to becoming a cookbook author was endearingly haphazard, matching her lively personality and lack of formal education. Irma’s daughter, Marion, was the quiet, studious one. When she inherited Joy she approached it as a scholar would, envisioning it as the American version of the Larousse Gastronomique, an encyclopedic tome that could answer all queries. But both of them ended up creating a book that presents American cuisine as seen through the eyes of two German-American women.
We have often scanned the pages of older editions wondering what they were thinking. What was Irma thinking when she included two dozen recipes for stuffed tomatoes in the 1953 edition? What was Marion thinking when she added a recipe for whale to the fish chapter in the 1963 edition? They had an imperfect understanding, as we all do, of what it means to belong. Their charming awkwardness as reflected in Joy mirrors the awkwardness all of us feel as we search for meaning and try to fit in, or don’t. We end up creating our own messy, beautiful, and flawed interpretations of our cultures, our place in the world.
This is a very long segue into this week’s meal planning subject, the book Korean American, by New York Times food writer Eric Kim (and gorgeous photography by Jenny Huang). Kim’s beautiful introduction tells his story of coming of age in a Korean American community in Atlanta and the push and pull of independence and family, necessity and heritage. He says “At the heart of this book is really a story about what happens when a family bands together to migrate and cross oceans in search of a new home. It’s about what happens when, after so much traveling and fighting and hard work, you finally arrive.”
Kim repeatedly reminds the reader that this is not a book about Korean food, nor is it about American food. It is a book about one Korean American family’s evolving culinary story. You will find rib eye alongside rice cakes, ketchup next to kimchi. The book is moving and beautiful and everything sounds delicious (those post-it notes in the photo tell the story of me flipping through the book right before dinnertime). And so this week is dedicated to Korean American, to families and the food they eat together, to belonging, to home.
*Note in brackets by Anne Mendelson - this passage of My Little World was quoted in Anne’s book, Stand Facing the Stove.
Monday
A Lot of Cabbage with Curried Chicken Cutlets
This is Eric Kim’s take on donkkasseu, Korean fried pork cutlets (Kim uses chicken instead of pork). You’ll notice the similarity between donkkasseu and tonkatsu, and if you’re not familiar with either of those, you might recognize a like minded dish in German schnitzel or Italian pork milanese. The heart of the dish is a very thin piece of meat, either pounded or butterflied, breaded, and pan-fried. The breadings, seasonings, and accompaniments vary. In this case, Kim seasons the chicken with curry powder and serves it with a lightly pickled cabbage slaw and a Worcestershire and ketchup-based sauce. This will be the second time since starting this newsletter that I have included this dish in our meal planning, and that’s because katsu/kkasseu has it all! It’s quick! It’s tasty! It’s inexpensive! It’s easy! I’m not a good salesperson but please allow me to sell you on this recipe. You need it in your life.
Tuesday
Creamy Bucatini with Roasted Seaweed; simple salad
I am a giant sucker for recipes that offer satisfying flavors in small packages, and by small packages I mean a short ingredient list. This one clocks in at 6 ingredients not including salt and pepper, and one of those ingredients is optional. The sauce is made with cream, garlic, toasted sesame oil, and some of the pasta cooking water. Roasted seaweed (gim) is crumbled on top of the finished pasta. Kim calls it a “little black dress of a pantry dish” and that describes it beautifully.
Wednesday
Spam and Perilla Kimbap; Old Bay Shrimp Cocktail with Wasabi Chojang
We have book club Wednesday night (we read Joan Didion’s collection of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem) so we won’t eat dinner at home but will bring these two dishes as snacks for everyone to enjoy. I grew up eating Spam, so it doesn’t have the negative connotations for me that it does for so many people. In this recipe Kim caramelizes batons of Spam in a little maple syrup and sets them atop perilla leaves before rolling them in rice and seaweed sheets. The headnote calls them perfect food for a picnic so I’m filing that knowledge away for the summer.
Thursday
Dakdoritang; rice; Charred Cauliflower with Magic Gochugaru Dust
This is a braised chicken (drumsticks specifically) and potato dish. I’m hopeful that I will be able to find the yellow Korean potatoes Kim specifies in the headnote at our local H Mart, but if not he says Yukon Golds will work.
Friday
Meatloaf-Glazed Kalbi with Gamja Salad; Kimchi; Gem Lettuce Salad with Roasted Seaweed Vinaigrette; Whipped Cream Snacking Cake with Fresh Fruit
The idea of a meatloaf-glazed kalbi is brilliant. Kim writes in the headnote about how this recipe was inspired by his own childhood love of meatloaf TV dinners, which he would eat while watching Food Network, and his mother’s experiences eating at the very popular American-style restaurants in Seoul in the early 1980s. Throughout the book Kim emphasizes that sugar in various forms is critical to Korean cooking (he alternately uses brown sugar, maple syrup, and maesil cheong or green plum syrup), and when you think about it for a minute, this is not dissimilar from American cuisine. From the glaze on a meatloaf to sticky barbecue sauced ribs to hot dogs or hamburgers slicked with ketchup (Catsup, if you’re Irma), many of the most well-known “American” dishes have a signature sweetness.
Featured Dinner From Last Week:
Broccoli mac! I did not use a recipe here. I just made a bechamel and stirred in mozzarella and sharp Cheddar cheese, then added in pasta elbows and steamed broccoli. If I’d had my wits about me I would have briefly boiled the broccoli along with the pasta. I topped mine with a drizzle of my spicy curry leaf crisp, but chili crisp or salsa macha would scratch that same itch.