Taste of Piemonte
By Yun Suh-young
With the Milano Expo 2015 being held from May 1 through Oct. 31, interest about Italy has increased significantly.
For those who cannot visit Milan, there are ways to enjoy the taste of the Italian city here, notably in restaurants that specialize in food from the northern regions of Italy.
Chef Kim Hyeong-rae of the Italian restaurant Hanul Orum at the Kensington Jeju specializes in Italian cuisine from Piemonte, a province right next to Lombardia where Milan is located.
Former owner-chef of Ciro Olivo in Gahoe-dong, Seoul, Kim moved to Jeju last year as the head chef for the hotel's Italian restaurant.
What triggered this reporter to interview Kim was a comment by an Italian musician couple at the hotel who perform under the name the Aida Duo. Stefano Vagnini and Giorgia Ragni, a composer and singer who performs on a one-year contract, lauded the chef's cuisine claiming that it was the best Italian food that they've ever tasted outside of Italy.
Kim is noted for adhering to classical and traditional Italian recipes and presenting dishes reflecting the characteristics of northern Italian cuisine from Piemonte.
W met with Kim at one of his favorite restaurants in Seoul, Second Kitchen in Hannam-dong, to talk about his passion and philosophy about Italian food.
Grilled lamb chop with crostini
Q&A:
- How did you get yourself into learning Italian cuisine?
I had a yearning for foreign food. As I started cooking, I realized that I liked the food from the region. At the time when I started, Japanese food was the best career option because it was easy to get a job and the paycheck was higher. But now Italian and French dishes are more popular because there's a greater opportunity to grow quickly. I guess I knew that this was a better field to grow as a chef because if you're competent, they acknowledge you more than in other fields.
- How did you become a chef?
Cooking wasn't my interest until I entered college. I thought I'd get into the air force academy like my father did. I didn't make it, so I went to Seoul Health College instead and chose the culinary division out of curiosity. That got me started cooking.
Seafood marinara pasta
- What's the charm of Italian cuisine?
I think it's the fact that variations are possible in all kinds of ways depending on the regions. Italian cuisine reflects a lot of the country’s regional characteristics.
It's also difficult to end up with a bad result. If you have pizza dough and cheese you can make any type of pizza.
- What type of cuisine do you cook?
My food is from the northern region of Italy called Piemonte. It's to the left of Lombardia on the map of Italy. That was where my school, Italian Culinary Institute for Foreigners (ICIF), was located so naturally I took up the northern style.
Northern Italian cuisine involves a lot of meat, cheese and butter and is rich in flavor. As you move south, they use seafood and lighter meat and the cooking time shortens. Northern regions use more subsidiary parts of the meat because the ingredients are fresh.
Seared halibut with porcini risotto
- What do you particularly focus on when cooking?
I try to stick to the basics and qualified procedures. I want to cook closest to local cuisine but with my own style added.
Italian food that Koreans encounter is usually a transformed version of Italian cuisine. It's different from what Italians are used to. I'd say they're more American than Italian.
I want Koreans to feel the "Italianness" of Italian food. About 40 percent of my food is classic Italian and another 30 percent is an original version of the transformed dishes that are popular.
For instance, for Bolognese pasta, many restaurants use ground meat but I grind the meat chunks after cooking and flavoring them. The difference in procedure changes the flavor of the pasta.
What we know as carbonara is wrongfully perceived as "cream pasta" in Korea, when it actually doesn't have anything to do with cream. The carbonara sold in Korea is Alfredo pasta. Original carbonara is based on egg yolks and parmesan cheese.
- What's your favorite Italian food?
It's unavailable in Korea but I love an Italian dish called "ossobuco." "Osso" means bone in Italian and "buco" means hole. The name of the dish refers to the hole at the centre of a cross-cut veal shank. The bone is from the top part of the shin and this cross-cut veal shank is braised with vegetables, white wine and broth.
Out of the dishes available in Korea, I enjoy eating oil pastas. I eat Italian food often even when I'm dining out because I love Italian food.