Author(s): David Clive Price, Masano Kawana
Publisher: Periplus Editions
Publication Date: 2002-11-15
Pages: 120
Review: This book includes easy to follow traditional recipes along with pictures to follow for the preparation process. There are also stories on some of the history of Korea and restaurants where the recipes were obtained. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Price: $18.95 Buy This Book
Author(s): Hisoo Shin Hepinstall
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Publication Date: 2004-03-01
Pages: 272
Review: I have at least half a dozen Korean cookbooks, and this is the only one that I don’t use. Every recipe is at least twice as complicated and time consuming as the other recipes–many requiring ingredients that have been made days, weeks or months in advance. There’s a lot of interesting info, but with very few pictures, color, and a bland design, you’re not going to end up using this cookbook for much.
However, if you aren’t just looking to make Korean food and want old-fashioned, traditional recipes, this is definitely the book for you. I found it too complicated to use, but it was certainly interesting.To be fair, I’ve only made two recipes so far: the cucumber salad and the spinach salad. I should have known that something was not quite right when the recipe called for lemon juice and parsley, two ingredients that are never found in the Korean kitchen! Still, I toiled away for nearly 40 minutes, only to be told by my (very Korean) mother that it is too sweet and that I had wasted my time squeezing the cucumbers! She quickly threw together her Korean cucumber salad in about 10 minutes! Tasting them side by side, it really hit home that the version I made was definitely Americanized.
So if you’re looking for unnecessarily labor-intensive, Korean-fusion cookbook, then this is the one for you. If you’re looking for a good, solid, everyday Korean food cooking, then this is NOT it.
And what’s up with the walnuts added to everything? My theory is that the author’s family must have had a large walnut tree. ; )
And yes, I am Korean for those of you wondering. Actually, I haven’t read the entire book yet, but her recipes are features on www.hmart.com, the marvellous Korean supermarket. I am so amazed by her knowledge and her clear explanation of Korean food. This is the missing piece of the puzzle to Korean cooking that I have been searching for. I feel very priviledged that she shares her knowledge with us. I bought this book and few other Korean cookbooks after traveliing to Seoul several times (my wife and I adopted three childen there). This is has been my favorite because of the range of recipes, the detailed instructions, and the intimate stories. It’s rare for a cookbook to excel on so many levels. I only wish the book had more photographs (and color ones), but this is the Korean food I have enjoyed in Seoul and it’s what I’m teaching my children to cook. They are as happy with it as I am.I have several Korean cookbooks (okay, I am a cookbook junkie and it is probably more like ten — and, yes, there are at least ten out there, although many are hard to find and/or out of print, and then there is that whole subgroup of watered down ones written by Western missionaries that are . . . quaint). Until I found this one I mostly used Dok Suni by Jenny Kwak and Practical Korean Cooking (aka The Bible) by Noh Shin-Hwa. Dok Suni is great for a novice and has great stories about growing up Korean American. Practical Korean Cooking is like the Betty Crocker for Korean Food, step by step, and lots and LOTS of glossy colour pictures, but kind of skimpy on personality or writing and is known as the book Korean mothers give their daughters when they get married. Hepinstall’s book bridges the gap between these two.
As with Dok Suni, Growing Up in a Korean Kitchen is written with much love and great memories about growing up in a Korean kitchen. Hers is that of a traditional Korean upper-class City household, and her book beautifully covers a comprehensive list of recipes including dishes traditionally reserved for the upper crust and royalty, replete with annecdotes and reminiscences from her childhood in a time and place that no longer exists. As I usually use cookbooks more as guidebooks than instruction manuals, I did not find the lack of pictures or “complete instructions” taxing; if you do, bundle this book with Noh’s and you would have the whole package as recipe-wise, the books overlap a great deal, although the formats could not be more different.
I am an adult Korean adoptee whose rediscovery of my native culture began with my love of good, unWesternized Korean food. Everything I know about Korean food I had to learn through a tutor (she taught to to make kimchi [no measurements, mix with your hands, taste as you go, start with the informal i.e. easier kimchis and work your way up to the stuffed ones] and how to harvest fernbracken and seaweed), restaurants (I like the bustling country-style ones the best,and if they have those fat iron pots sunken into the floor out back, so much the better), and through my cookbooks. I recently moved out West and had to leave most of my cookbooks behind and like a fool I left this one in storage back East. I can remember how to make kimchi and banchan and pancakes and other favourites like yookgaejang, bibimbap, bulgogi, and kimbap, but anything else —!!!! I miss it at least once a week, and that is more than I can say about the other nine!
Price: $29.95 Buy This Book