By David Yoo
Everyone who knows my mom knows that she’s a magician in the kitchen, and I’ve been trying for years to learn how to cook Korean food like her. You’d think she’d want to pass on her legacy to her children, but that’s not the case. I swear she’s intentionally horrible at teaching me how to cook because she refuses to give me a straight recipe, no matter how hard I pester her in the kitchen when we visit. How much soy sauce do I add? A little. What’s a little? Less than a lot. Can you give me a more specific answer? No. How about a pinch, do I add a pinch? You can’t pinch soy sauce. Well then, how much garlic do you dice up? I just do it for a while, she says, visibly annoyed.
Sometimes I surprise them with a home-cooked Korean meal when they visit, but it’s always a disaster. I tried making them galbi last summer, but the gas tank on my grill was almost empty, so I merely browned the surface; the inside looked like a Fig Newton. My mom frowned when she cut into the gelatinous piece of meat. “It’s a fusion, modern recipe,” I lied. “Like pan-seared tuna. Or something.”
Don’t even ask about the time I attempted to make dubu jjigae.
Recently, I made my parents fried rice. My mom grimaced when I told her, remembering my previous attempts at exotic haute cuisine. I shood them into the living room, then opened up the refrigerator and gasped, realizing I’d forgotten to hit the grocery store. I had no soy sauce, so I made do by mixing balsamic vinegar with a couple tablespoons of ketchup. Instead of scallions, I had to cut up strips of iceberg lettuce. No carrots or celery, so I peeled strips of red peppers off leftover pizza. No Spam, so I chopped up some old turkey slices. No tofu, or eggs, for that matter, so I pulled off tufts of hamburger bun and smushed them into tofu-like balls. A half-hour later, my parents and wife sat down at the dining room table as I begrudgingly doled out bowls full of brown sludge.
“What the heck is this?” Dad asked, picking up a wilted piece of virtually clear lettuce with his chopsticks.
I sighed.
“Actually, son,” Mom chimed in, “fried rice is peasant food. You make it with whatever you have in the refrigerator. You’re a real Korean cook now!”
I beamed briefly, but then she added, “Let me spruce it up a bit before we eat.”
I was about to reject the emergency aid, but then my wife whispered to me, “She just wants to have her role,” and I realized she was right. For the first time that afternoon, my mom was smiling as she went through our fridge. I smiled, too, as I realized my role was simply to eat what she lovingly prepared.
