My first job in my grandmother’s kitchen was to plate the banchan for the family’s evening dinner. Some nights, it would only be two or three little dishes to go with fluffy steamed rice and doenjang jjigae, a soothing bowl of silky potatoes, soft tofu, and sweet squash stewed with the nutty Korean soybean paste. If we were having guests over or celebrating a birthday, I helped bring out the large black lacquered dinner table and filled it with homemade goodies: marinated steamed eggplant from the garden; soy-pickled perilla leaves I helped to harvest the week prior; pan-fried eggs rolled with diced vegetables; sun-dried radishes from last year’s harvest spiked with vinegar and fiery pepper flakes; and dried squid doused with honey and the chile paste called gochujang.There might have also been japchae, glossy, slinky sweet potato starch noodles tossed with half a dozen vegetables; a whole fresh fish salted overnight and simply broiled; steamed egg custard with pollack roe; kimchi, usually both napa cabbage and cubed moo radish; crunchy squares of roasted seaweed; and ganjang gaejang, soymarinated raw female crab filled with roe, claws crushed to soak up the brine. Finally, the thinly sliced, sweet soy-marinated and pan-seared bulgogi would hit the table.My favorites were the egg custard, the marinated eggplant, and the seaweed, but especially the bulgogi. I would covet the sauce rather than the beef itself, tilting the bowl so I could scoop it out and pour it over my rice with a little kimchi.I look back now and know how amazing it was to have experienced this traditional Korean way of eating and cooking in my native country, if only as a small child. I moved to the United States when I was ten, and my family quickly embraced American culinary habits. We still ate Korean food, but we got pizza delivered, too. (Though my dad would put kimchi on it.)Flash forward thirty-five years later: I’m a classically trained chef with years of experience working at some of the best new American kitchens in New York City, including my own twelveyear-old Brooklyn restaurant called the Good Fork. But those flavors of home—piled up on that black lacquered table so long ago—are all I want to eat.Leia mais