By Chi-Young Kim
I know it’s a cliche to discuss memories linked to food, but I am a fourth generation food-obsessed member of my family. Food is all we think or talk about. As we eat breakfast, we discuss what we’re going to eat for the next five meals. Food is a framework through which we view the world. One of my very first memories is from soon after my sister was born, though much of it is likely reinforced by photographs.
It was someone’s birthday, probably not mine, and we were all gathered around our living room coffee table, around a cake covered in shaved chocolate. I called it “napul napul cake” ― roughly “fluttery cake.” I don’t remember ever eating the cake itself, but I could eat my weight’s worth in those chocolate shavings, and it remained my favorite cake for years. Whenever I see a shaved piece of chocolate on a fancy plated dessert in a restaurant, I remember the amazing “napul napul cake” and its embossed gold cardboard stand.
Starting when I was around six, I got to choose a menu for my birthday dinner. My dad’s birthday is five days after mine, and both of us always chose the same birthday menu. We started with shrimp cocktail on a bed of shredded iceberg and cocktail sauce in my mom’s special-occasion crystal bowls. Then we had steak and mashed potatoes with buttered peas. For dessert, we got a crystal bowl of green Jell-o with whipped cream, and a homemade cake. I still long for shrimp cocktail near my birthday, but I’m disappointed each time; it’s just boiled shrimp and a ketchup-y sauce, and it is never as delectable nor as special as I remember it.
When we went to dinner at my grandparents’, my grandmother would present braised spare ribs to the men and the boys first, and if we girls were lucky, we would get a few fatty pieces near the bone and the broth. I would take whatever shred of meat I could find in the broth, spoon it all over a bowl of rice, and throw myself in the silky flesh and sweet, salty, meaty broth. Its forbidden aura must have added a special something to the taste ― years later, I often requested my mom to make this dish, but it was never the same.
On a recent visit to see my parents, my mom took out some sesame leaf-wrapped meat patties and microwaved them as a quick side dish. I took one bite and was immediately transported to the late 1990s when I brought hot lunch to high school and scarfed it down with a group of friends around 10 a.m. The Asian economic crisis was in full swing, and many of my lunchmates’ fathers had been laid off. Several girls only brought rice, seaweed, and kimchi. My sesame leaf-wrapped meat patties were a hit, even though many of them complained that they were bland. After all, my family cooked with less salt and spice. I must have told my mother that I didn’t get to eat any, so she began to hide extra portions in my rice so that I didn’t miss out on any. I hadn’t eaten those patties for over 10 years, and for the rest of the morning my mom and I reminisced about those days. It’s funny what sticks to your memory; my mom had forgotten what she had packed for my lunch, because by the time my sister went to high school a mere two years later, they were served school lunches. (And they apparently had air conditioning, but that’s another story.)
My husband is not a cook. While I’m comfortable around the kitchen, I am nowhere near as good as my mom. That might be because I didn’t learn how to cook under a severe Korean mother-in-law. But that means that the dinners I whip up after rushing home from work are usually Western-tinged. Asian cuisine, other than stir-fry, which I do make often, is just so time-consuming. Throwing together a stew or a pasta is much easier than julienning vegetables, sauteing them separately, marinating strips of meat before grilling, or making dumplings, which my mom claims is the easiest food to make.
At least I’m making fresh, homemade meals, but none of my meals would stand in the pantheon of our family’s epic dishes. I’m hoping I can find more time to cook Korean food once my daughter is older. I don’t really like that she’ll have vastly different food memories from mine. Will she be able to say that she developed a taste for escargot at age eight? (My grandfather had boxes of frozen escargot with garlic butter in his freezer for some reason, and in elementary school I would go over after school and wolf down dozens.) Or will she be waxing nostalgic about nacho-flavored chips? If I sound nutty, you should know that my sister is even more obsessed than I am. She still remembers almost every meal we had on vacation ― 15 years ago.
Chi-Young Kim is a literary translator based in Los Angeles. She has translated works by Shin Kyung-sook, Kim Young-ha, and Jo Kyung-ran. Contact her at chiyoung@chiyoungkim.com or via her website, chiyoungkim.com.