Practice through food: Ven. Sunjae

Ven. Sunjae poses in this file photo that was in her new book “What are You Eating Now?” / Courtesy of Bulkwang Media

Buddhist monk shares secrets to healthy life with temple food

By Kim JI-soo

Unlike the rest of the city, Ilwon-dong, deep in southern Seoul, where the Korean Bhiksuni Association building is located, was covered in snow in the second week of January.

At a cooking class held inside the building, Ven. Sunjae stood in front of students, who were all ears and jotted down notes as she explained temple food that is enjoyed on traditional Korean holidays, and Buddhist ritual food.

“You can make pancakes with azalea, as the flower is good for coughs and nasal congestion, but royal azalea or rhododendron will kill you if you eat it,” said Ven. Sunjae, the first Master of Temple Food designated by the Jogye Order.

Azaleas are used on the third day of the third lunar month, which marks the beginning of spring. She noted how on Buddha’s birthday, the menu is mainly rice cakes made with zelkova, a water parsley dish called “minari ganghoe” and fried beans. Rice cake soup (tteokguk), dumplings and rice cakes with jujubes are among the temple food consumed on Lunar New Year; while marsh plant rice cakes are consumed on Dano, a holiday that falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, during which people wish for a bountiful harvest.

Temple food focuses on eating at the right time, eating seasonal food, eating proportionately and avoiding meat. In addition, it does not use the five common Korean ingredients: garlic, green onions, leeks, wild chives and Chinese squill.

Ven. Sunjae spoke animatedly and fast, with each word a drop of knowledge about greens, herbs, rice cakes and teas. She started to cook a stew with fried tofu-and-vegetable pockets working fast with her hands.

Ven. Sunjae poses in front of temple food in this file photo. / Courtesy of Bulkwang Media

“No matter how bad at work a monk is, we are always faster than you guys,” she said, joking to the audience of teaching assistants and students.

Loved and revered for her temple food, Ven. Sunjae recently released her third book, “What are You Eating Now?”

These days, she herself enjoys kimchi and soybean paste stew, she said.

For her, food is about delivering compassion, which makes people happy. But the foundation for practicing compassion is caring for and respecting all living things, she said. People should be happy, but so should the soil, wind and air.

The clean and healthy mind rests on a clean and healthy body formed by eating healthy ingredients borne of clean soil, wind and air. This approach applies to both Buddhist practitioners and lay people. “Many modern woes can be solved through this,” she said, such as the stress that comes from excessive competition due to greed. She also believes in being true to oneself, both in life and in cooking.

Neither her book nor her other achievements in temple food were completed in a day. Being diagnosed with hepatic cirrhosis put her strictly on the path to food, and she has maintained a healthy lifestyle since then. To this day, she has not suffered from cirrhosis complications such as diabetes; at worst, she feels tired and her lips blister.

She began her monastic life at Sinheung Temple in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province in 1980. She graduated from Joongang Sangha University in 1994; her thesis, “A Cultural Review of Temple Food,” gained the public’s attention.

“Monks learn about ingredients from their elders, and sometimes from animals on the mountains, through the energy they attain from practice,” Ven. Sunjae said. She said much of her knowledge comes from the Buddhist scriptures, but she also learns from talking to plants. She believes in the connectedness of living things and the earth; for example, she teaches children to look beyond the carrot — and to also look to the soil, wind, and air and the farmer who helped it grow — before consuming it.

Her book, “What are You Eating Now?” includes easy recipes for busy modern Koreans. “Use seasonal food, ingredients that survived the seasons,” she advised.

She is also popular abroad and is often asked to teach at institutions here and overseas. A former chief chef at the Park Hyatt in Seoul often consults her about Korean food.

Sunjae cooks with a genuine, humble mind — when it comes to cooking, she believes in being true to one’s intentions and to avoid ostentation.

“But the interest in healthy temple food is larger in a way abroad, and I hope we can cherish it just as much here as people do there,” the monk said.

Tofu-and-vegetable pocket stew

During class, she demonstrated how to prepare the simple tofu-and-vegetable pocket stew using the following ingredients: fried tofu bags (12), tofu (1/2), green chili peppers (2), shiitake mushrooms (6), Korean zucchini (1/2), water parsley stems (12), carrots, button mushrooms (7), pine seeds, gingko (12), bean sprouts (one pack), winter mushrooms (1/2), dried peppers, dried kelp, salt, soybean sauce and ground sesame seeds. First, she slightly boiled the tofu pockets and then washed them in cold water. Then, she crushed the tofu and marinated it in salt. She sliced the shiitake mushrooms, peppers, zucchini and carrots into small pieces and fried them in salt. She filled the tofu pockets with the tofu, vegetables, ginko and pine seeds and tied them with water parsley stems. Sunjae made a bean sprout stew, and then put dried pepper, kelp and the other mushrooms and the tofu bag in, before adding water and letting it boil. Then she added soybean sauce and let the stew simmer for two to three minutes. (The units in parenthesis were gleaned from the Ven. Sunjae’s apprentice notes.)

Tteokguk

In her book, she writes about how she made tteokguk, popular New Year dish for a guest. For ingredients, she uses a large Korean radish, kelp, and rice cakes. First Sunjae sliced a radish and soaked its pieces in water. She then fried the kelp and the sliced radish in perilla seed oil. When the radish turned transparent, she poured hot water into the pot and let the soup simmer, covered. When the soup turned white, she added the soybean sauce; then the rice cakes, sliced lengthwise, into the pot when the soup boiled, letting it cook until the ingredients were soft.

“You know, the title of the book asks us what we are eating, tells us that there is a problem with the food we eat,” she said. “It is also about not eating what is bad for us, rather than what to eat, and to eat moderately.”