Hey, I am Bruce Weinstein and this is the Podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark. And I'm Mark Scarborough, and together with Bruce, my husband, we have written three dozen cookbooks plus a couple knitting books plus a memoir for me. We've written, I don't know, quite a few books plus some work for hire books for celebrities, which we can't really talk about Dr. Phil, but can't really talk about too much. But this is the podcast that explores our food and cooking passion, the main passions of our life. We've got a one minute cooking tip about Korean food. We wanna explore our journey to discover Korean food, to help you perhaps find a discovery route to Korean food, and we'll tell you what's making us happy in food this week. So let's get started. Our one minute cooking tip

here is some chopstick etiquette fuel. Oh wow. You have to know this.

I got one already. You gotta have to know this. No, I'm going first, Wayne. Alright. You go first. No, I'm saying it right up. Do not ever let your chopsticks touch the table. Okay. The tips of your chopsticks that you use to pick up food should never touch the table. You should. If it comes in a little paper wrapper, fold that up to make a little stand for your chopsticks or rest them on the bowl. Do not let the part of the chopsticks that touch food, touch the table. It's

a whole bunch of nevers. Here's the thing about chopstick etiquette. Mark says, never touch the table. Never. Pick up food off the main platter with your chopsticks. Eat it. No. Nope. No. Use a serving spoon to get it or

serving chopsticks to get it to your plate. If you go to a really fancy place, or perhaps someone's home, they may have serving chopstick, these giant, giant chopsticks. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. They're used to, they're used in a wok as you cook.

Never share your food by giving chopstick to chopstick. Right. So I'm not gonna pass you a piece of meat for my chopstick, your chops. I'm not sure. I give, I'm

deft enough with chopsticks to pull that off, but Okay. It's rude.

Don't stab your food with the chopsticks. Oh, no, no, no, no. Don't point with your chopsticks and the most important one. No, do not lick. Or suck your chopsticks.

Yes. All of those are really important to know about chopsticks, and let's just also say while we're sitting here about chopstick etiquette, especially if you live in North America or the uk, let's just say we're Australia or any place like that, it's okay to ask for a fork spoon. No, absolutely. It is not. Uh, what do I wanna say? It's not, uh, anything to be ashamed of. My mom, for example, could never mm-hmm. Get the hang of chopsticks. Mm-hmm. My dad actually got the hang of chopsticks, but my mom could never figure it out. And you know what? It's okay. And don't forget that there are some cultures like. Thai and Thai food, where in fact chopsticks are served in North America and the uk. That would not appear on a tie table in Thailand. And why

is that?

Well, it's this whole Asian racism thing. Mm-hmm. That somehow all Asians use chopsticks is not necessarily the case.

No. And in some parts of Asia it is the western. Cutlery that is used because unfortunately. Co. Western colonization has happened, so, right,

right. Yep. So we're gonna come outta this and talk about our exploration of Korean food in the hopes that we can inspire you to try some Korean food. But before we get to that, let me say that we have a TikTok channel. We have an Instagram reels channel, and we have a Facebook channel, and all of them are named. Cooking with Bruce and Mark. Mm-hmm. The TikTok channel is the big one of all of them. If you're on TikTok, check us out. We've got all kinds of videos, cooking, tasting, doing all kinds of crazy stuff. We're really silly in those videos and, um, it's okay. That's how it's supposed to be on TikTok. If you're gonna compete with a 20 year olds, then you have to be silly. I always say this, if you as a 65-year-old man is going to. Compete with the shirtless 20-year-old boys. You gotta, in fact be silly. So if, because I ain't going shirtless. No, certainly not. That would lose followers. So, um, check us out on any of those places for cooking videos and videos about us and writing cookbooks and our likes and dislikes and all that kind of stuff. Okay? So let's talk about Korean food and a way to in fact, discover it and in fact make it part of your culinary experience.

Okay, so what do two white guys know about Korean food? I mean, seriously, I have to, I, we have to start there, right? Neither of us are Korean. No. Neither of us speak Korean or pronounce it well, so there's gonna be lots of mispronunciations going on. It's just something we both love, but not something. Either of us grew up with

no. In fact, let me say that I can start this journey by saying, in college, I'm at Baylor. I am taking my final science course before I go off and take all my English courses and my German courses for my majors and I, I'm in my last, uh, science course, it's physics and my lab partner is Korean. And she doesn't speak English very well, so I help her a lot with our labs and we work together. I mean, I didn't do her labs for her, but I helped her a lot and in exchange for helping her understand what was going on in physics lab, she started taking me to Korean restaurants and there was. One, I forgot to

say this is Waco, Texas in the seventies. That was one Korean

restaurant in the late seventies in Waco. And we went there and of course she was very familiar with this restaurant and knew the people that owned it and all that kinda stuff. But then we actually drove twice to Austin and went to Korean restaurants in Austin, and I learned about. Korean food, and I was undone with it as a kid. I loved kid, college student. I You were a kid. You went to college as a 16-year-old. I was. I lied. You did. But I love bras. I love really big, deep flavors. I like bold combinations of flavors. And when I discovered this Korean food, I, I was scared of kimchi because I'd heard all these horror stories about it, burning people's faces off. That's so not true. I, I had heard all these horror stories about a hot. Korean food is, that's so not true.

Well, it's not a subtle cuisine. No, it's not. I'll say that. It's not a subtle cuisine. I'm

not a subtle eater, so I am not the, uh, incredibly subtle Japanese connoisseur. Mm-hmm. I am in favor of giant, bold flavors. Well, that's, Bruce knows I want a. Dirty, funky red wine than a light sophisticated, delicate white wine. Mm-hmm. That's just me. And so Korean flavor profiles and Korean taste it for my uneducated palette. As a senior or junior in college, I guess a junior I was. Absolutely undone with it and her taking me there. And I came back to Dallas after college and after traveling around a bit, I came back to Dallas and I tried to get other people interested in Korean food and I could get no one to go to Korean restaurants. It's

a hard sell. People are so familiar with Chinese food in the US Right. And especially in the seventies. Right. You can go to Chinatowns. So now we're in most big

cities. Yeah. Now we're talking like the late eighties and I'm outta college and I can't get. Anybody interested in any of the Korean food in Dallas?

It was really a hard sell. I, to be honest, I grew up with lots and lots and lots of Chinese food, and I did not know what Korean food was at all until my mid thirties and New York City has a big China town at this point, but it also had a big Korea town, but it also had a big Korea town. It was 32nd Street, like for two avenues long was Korean restaurant after Korean restaurant and. I had lived there my whole life and didn't know about this. So that's how sort of quiet this was being kept.

Well, at least quiet for you. I mean. Mm-hmm. And I think this has something to do and I'm gonna say something horrible, but I, I think this stuff has something to do with the Jews and Chinese food. I think that there's a way that there's this myopia that sets in with Chinese food. Mm-hmm. In the culture that you came from. Yeah. Because it's what you eat on Christmas, yada yada yada. You

eat on

what? Eat. Nobody eats, nobody eats Chinese food on Chavez. But okay. Um, I think there is this myopia that says, and so what happened is I moved in with Bruce and in the mid 1990s I was still vaguely attracted to Korean food, but can't find no one to go to Korean restaurants with me. And we together found a. Place in Midtown? Yes, Manhattan called Hung, and it was a vegan

Korean restaurant. And I will say the vegan part actually put me off. You did? Because I was like, oh, I'm a carnivore. I've always been a carnivore is birth and we're so okay. We go to this, hung this, this place. And it was so cliched. You take your shoes off, of course you do. They offer you kimono style jackets They do to put on, they do you sit on the floor? They You do. And not even with a well to put your feet in. Nope. You sit on the floor. Yep. And we ordered things like grilled burdock root and, which was one of my favorite things. Of course, it's the closest thing to a meat texture. And they had, but there were much more subtle flavors. And I, there was this pumpkin soup. Yeah, the pumpkin soup, which was so simple and beautiful. So I have this. Theory now about Korean food, and that is vegan. Korean food is much more subtle than non-vegan Korean food. Such

an esoteric subcategory of vegan Korean food. Well, there

is, there was a book that came out a few years ago called Temple Food and it was written by a woman who cooks in one of these, Korean monasteries and she makes vegan food for all the people who live there. You should make me more of that and. I had a copy of that book and quite honestly, I found every recipe to be so bland and so boring. No. That I never made anything out of it. Okay.

That goes against my big flavors, and I don't remember. We remember hung different. It's still in Manhattan. Yeah. And we remember it differently because I don't remember the flavors. It's all that subtle. I just remember it as all incredibly new. It

was new for us.

And we took your

parents

there,

which was We did. They were, I mean, I don't think they would've ever gone there except that I was. Included in this. I think if you tried to take them, they would've been like, no, no, no. I don't So think they were afraid to tell me No,

no, no, no. I, I dragged my parents to all kinds of weird places. And, uh, not that Korean vegan food is weird, but for them it was weird. And that was

the place your dad was able to figure out chopsticks. It was. Your mom could not,

it was the place Dad figured out chopsticks and. My parents actually talked about that place for years afterwards about going to lunch. There it was, and of course it was a nice long lunch. It was really beautiful and a nice, so again, we're slowly making our way toward Korean food. We're experimenting. I've been there at college. We're going to a vegan place. And then our editor at the time, our book editor, at a one moment in our life told us about this, be b. Restaurant. Mm-hmm. That was in a really weird location and he's like, oh, you have to go here. So we did. It was the East

Village and it was behind another noodle shop. So you walked into a noodle shop. Yep. But then you had to go through a back door behind the dining room. Yeah, literally through, through the kitchen and out a back door to get into the second hidden restaurant. And I didn't know what Biba was. And if you don't know what it is, it's a rice dish and most often the rice is hot and it's served in a hot, hot, hot stone bowl. Yeah, I know. I see.

Uh, at this point I'm obsessed with Korean food, so I see these Korean videos on TikTok and Instagram reels, and they put those stone balls right on the burners on the stove. So when

the rice goes in, it gets. Crispy on the bottom, you get that beautiful browned crust. And then on the top, oh, I love it. You put all sorts of fresh vegetables, fermented vegetables, oh my gosh, of sometimes some seasoned meat, sometimes an egg raw or fried. So if

you know about that, like soer at the bit of paella where the rice burns on the bottom and people think this is very. Ta. I think it's very tasty and PE many people think this is a very tasty part of Haya. This is a kind of paella rice on steroids. Yep. 'cause it's really crunchy on the bottom and it's really delicious.

It was about, oh, I, maybe the 10th or 12th time I had it before, I realized after seeing enough videos online that the proper way to eat it is to mix it all up. Yeah. And that is actually a very traditional way of eating a lot of these. Korean dishes we're gonna talk about is to mix it all up. And I was eating it from the top down. And that's not really the traditional way. No, no, no, no, no. A lot of Korean food.

No, no, no. You, you mash it all up. You mash it all together. And that's another reason I like Korean cuisine so much. And then of course we moved from there from that experience too, I think what is a lot of people's entree point in North America and the UK and Australia to Korean food. And that is Korean barbecue. But it was actually for us, a very late. Intriguing into the process. We were completely into vegan Korean food. I was completely into glass noodles and the Oh, che. Yeah. And I was, that made up from sweet potato starch and they're really chewy. Right. And I was completely into all of that from my college years. Uh, and, you know, I was, I was into the, uh, the quote unquote Korean sushi with the, like the machi rolls, uh, that you run through the hot. Red sauce. I was into all of that, but I didn't actually until late know very much about Korean barbecue, which is really weird. 'cause again, I think that's where most people start these.

And Korean barbecue is a huge category of Korean food. Yeah. I mean there are Korean barbecue restaurants where that's all they serve.

And I should say that one of the moments when we really, uh, got into Korean barbecue was in Dallas. We were visiting my parents. We had had some Korean barbecue here in New England. I'll let Bruce tell that story, but we'd had some Korean barbecue here in New England, but then we were in Dallas and it just so happened that right where I grew up in North Dallas, a Korea town had in fact moved into a huge area. If you know Dallas, this is. At, uh, Royal Lane and Harry Hines, and it became all of this Korean restaurants, Korean grocery stores, Korean hair cutting salons, nail salons. The whole business moved into there and there was a Korean barbecue restaurant there. And we were with my dad and mom and, I don't know, maybe for a holiday. And I found this place online. I was like, oh, we're gonna go try this Korean barbecue. And my mom and dad would not go down there. They would not come with us. They no way refused. So they went to the vegan Korean restaurant in New York City. I think it had to do with New York City. Put their guard down and so they were able to go there. But thi this, they were like, no way. It

may have scared them the idea of barbecue and meats. They might not have been, know what kind of meat that was gonna be. Might, well, I don't might even if they knew it was

frightening. Do it yourself. Barbecue. Well

that is the thing. Korean barbecue is do it yourself. They, you're, you're sitting at a table with a burner in the middle, in front of you. Um, some. Restaurants, it's gas flames. Some places they actually bring a charcoal bucket and we'll talk about that experience we had in la. So I think this place in Dallas, it was a gas flame and they put a metal, yes, it was gas. They put a metal pan over that with slits in it. And you grill your meat on this, almost griddled on this metal pan. They bring you a platter of meat that you order and you can order pork belly, you can order. Um. You can order pork belly, you can order short ribs, you

can order all sorts of meat. Okay. So,

yeah. And you

grill it yourself. Yeah. You grill it yourself. So now I, I'm sorry I'm pushing you on, but let's you talk about Jacque for a moment.

Oh, that's how we got this. That's how we first found out about Korean barbecue. So a very dear friend of ours who lives in New England, right near us, her son-in-law is Korean and his name is Yuck. And he would. Always make Korean barbecue for them. Mm-hmm. And we started to get invited to all these dinners. Mm-hmm. And yuck would bring all these fabulous short ribs and, and it's the cross cut flunking style short ribs. And he'd marinate them in beautiful Korean marinades and grill them. And then traditionally, as always, you cut them into pieces with scissors.

And, let me finish, let me get in and let me say that what, how. Did, and I think what blew both of our minds is Jacque upped the condiment game.

Mm-hmm.

That's what we didn't know. Yeah. We did know about grilling the meat. What we didn't know is all the billions of condiments that you can put on the Korean barbecue.

So like my favorite thing, Jiang, it's uh, a paste that is put on so much barbecued Korean meat, and it's a combination of. Dun Jang, which is a fermented soybean paste and gochujang, which is a sticky, sweet, spicy paste and garlic and sesame oil. It is, dare I say, it is the Korean ketchup. It is amazing. It is the Korean version of Indian chutney. It's like the go-to condiment to put on. Anything that comes off the grill.

So after Cka had gotten us into Korean barbecue and we'd had some, uh, elsewhere we went to on this trip to la Mm. And uh, we decided we were gonna go off on vacation. We had a week. We didn't know where to go. Neither has really spent a lot of time in la We ended up going to La, Los Angeles Yeah. For a week. And both of us fell dead in love with Los Angeles. And we did, but we ate like beasts for a week and it was fantastic. But one of the places Bruce chose for lunch was this Korean barbecue spot in Koreatown in la and so, I think, how do I know this place is good? And we drive up and we open the front door and what happens?

Smoke. So it's pouring out the front door, like

seriously, as if, as if the place inside is on fire. So

it is true, every single table has a vent. Like that comes right down over to suck the smoke up because this place actually brings you a box of burning charcoal. Mm-hmm. Puts that in the hole, in the table. Mm-hmm. Between you. Mm-hmm. Turns on the vent, but that vent is fine until you put the meat on the grill. Mm-hmm. And then the smoke, it was. Spectacular. And we did have to go back to our hotel and take a shower and wash our hair because it smelled like reminded

me of being in a gay bar when, back in the days when I did such things.

And you would come out, did it smell come like Korean barbecue?

No, but you would come out smelling like smoke disgust and you'd have to go home and take a shower because it was so disgust disgusting. Your clothes smelled like smoke. Your hair smelled like smoke. It was like that, except we smelled like Korean barbecue. But I

learned something else in that restaurant. And that was the. First place that we had ever experienced this idea of banchan and banchan are all those little side dishes of vegetables and fermented pickles and all sorts of things that come with your main course. And in a barbecue restaurant where the only main courses are grilled meat, they are first going to bring you. Bowl after bowl after bowl of bunch on, and they're gonna put out 10, 12, 15 of these

side dishes. And being the total westerner that I am, when I first started eating Korean food, I would let all those bowls sit on the table because I thought I was being polite and waiting for the main course that I was to eat them with. I didn't realize until I started looking around me what other people were doing that they were just digging into all those bowls and eating the kimchi and eating this and that, and the other that came and the bowls even before the main course arrived. Mm-hmm. I was being so decorated. We didn't

know what to do with this stuff. In fact, we didn't. We went, we went to a Korean restaurant in Bayside where I grew up in Queens, and that when I was growing up, of course in the sixties, that was an old Jewish neighborhood, and now it's an all Korean neighborhood. Mm-hmm. Everything is Korean. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. There are. Korean restaurants in every corner. There were even Korean Chinese restaurants on every other corner. Yeah.

Which is a really interesting category and I don't think most people know about it. And that is Chinese food as CED through Korean techniques. It

was fabulous.

It's really a wild subcategory. Mm-hmm. Of Chinese food. It's interesting.

But we went to a tofu restaurant 'cause tofu is a. Huge ingredient and thing in Korean food, and we went to a tofu restaurant and we ordered this dish called kimchi gge, which is a big, famous dish. It is a stew made with this fermented bean paste and lots of kimchi in it.

One of my favorite things, and when Bruce asks me What do I want for dinner at this point, I often say kimchi, gigga, because,. Is so satisfying. Lots of onions, lots of kimchi, long braised pork belly. It's so delicious. But as Bruce says, it does have tofu in it. It has tofu in it. Lots of tofu. But

among all the baan they brought to us, there was one little bowl that had an egg. Now, mark and I both assumed this was a hard boiled egg. No, I don't like hard boiled eggs. Okay, so I'm not gonna touch it. And he didn't eat it. And it went back with all the dishes. Only then at the next table did we see a couple, two women ordered the same dish we did, and they picked up that egg and it was raw, and they cracked the egg into the bubbling hot dish of kimchi shige. And I'm like, oh, I want to do over.

I have to add to this story because our waiter came over and she saw that we hadn't cracked the egg in before we figured out what other people were doing with it. And she swept. Egg off the table because we had half eaten the stew. Yes. In disgust. She looked at us in disgust and swept it off the table. Well, no one ever told

me you're supposed to put the egg in it. No. I wish I'd

known. Now I know I didn't know this kind of stuff either. So this is, this is this whole bit of slowly introducing ourselves to Korean food and we're saying all this because we hope that perhaps we could inspire you to try it. Mm-hmm. And one of the great ways you could try it is you could go to a large Korean grocery store. We've. Talked about H Mart endlessly, but you could go to H Mart and you could see the prepared foods and there's a lot of big foods that you can just actually buy right there and eat. Mm-hmm. You could try it out. You can go to a local Korean restaurant, you can try the Be Bimba, you can try various things. One of the places that is really easy to try in North America at this point is the chain Banon, which makes Korean fried chicken. Mm-hmm. Bruce and I often go to the Bon Chun in New England about an hour away from us. But when we're over at Costco, we often stop at Bon Chun for lunch and uh, they make really crispy, unbelievably crispy, uh, fried chicken that I wanna have. The super, super hot sauce doused all over it. Now,

we've never ordered off the other part of the menu. No, but they do have a whole side of the menu that is more traditional. No, I know Korean dishes. So if you go there, you can try Beam Map. Mm-hmm. You can try bulgogi. No, you can try DeBakey. No. Which are those chewy rice cakey sticks in a sweet and hot

sauce, which

are amazing.

Yes, uh, you can, but again, Bonton is a great way to start. And if you go there, get, uh, what is sometimes called chicken moo or the, the, what do they call it? Pickled radish or something. They call it pickled

radish, right? It's often called chicken moo because moo is the word for radish. In Korean and you pickle it and it's what is served with fried chicken. So it's called chicken moo,

right? Chicken radish. And you can get that as a side dish and eat it with your fried chicken, which is what we do. Um, and it's really delicious and there are all kinds of ways to find and expand your palate with Korean food. Oh, and if you've done this and know how to do this, then eventually, maybe the hope is you might even start. Making some of this at home again, I think Kim Shiga is a really great winter stew to make. Mm-hmm. So why don't you just do a really simple walkthrough of how you make Kim Shige?

You wanna take a heavy small pan, like something you would make a soup or a stew in. And it's not too big 'cause you don't really make giant batches of this, like a two quart or one quart pot. And I put a little sesame oil in the bottom and I know people say, don't saute with sesame oil, but I'd like it for this dish. And I put in a ton of fresh ginger and onion, raw, raw onion. Raw, raw, sliced onion. And I just, just let it start sizzling. You don't really want to cook it very much. And then you. Dump in a ton of fresh kimchi. Chop it up so that it's a little easier to deal with. Mm-hmm. Put in some sliced pork belly, and then you're going to cover that with some broth. Now you can use chicken broth. You can use vegetable broth. Traditionally, I would like to flavor that broth with some dried anchovies. If you don't have those, you can get something called Handi in an Asian market, which is a Japanese dashi powder, and that'll give you that slight fish flavor to it. You be really careful with it. Just put a teaspoon, tiny little bits in with your chicken broth, and then you have to put a little sweetener, so sometimes a little brown sugar, a little corn syrup works, and then the chili flakes. You need chili flakes, gochugaru, gochugaru, and then the pork belly, as I said,

go is a think about red. Uh, pepper Flakes, you know, the, that, that you put on pizza. Mm-hmm. But they're not, this is a Korean version that's kind of like that. It's a coarsely, ground dried red pepper. It is hot. I will use two tablespoons for a quart sized pot for us and. I have watched many at this point of a cooking video of people making kimchi shiga online, and I see them put what could only be a half cob, three quarters of a cob of the, it's really hot. It's really hot. We don't. Quite go that hot, but, and

once it comes to a simmer, you're gonna let that simmer away for about 40 minutes until the pork belly is tender about halfway through. I'm gonna open it and I'm gonna put tofu on the top. You can use a firm tofu. A soft tofu. I like to use silk and tofu because that's really good. And if I'm using. Silicon. I put it in closer to the end just to warm it up. 'cause I don't want it to break apart. We tend not to put the egg in it when we have it at home. Right. But you can put the egg in it and that's it. So it's the kimchi, the onions, the sesame oil, and that's it. The fishy broth. It's the, I notice that the writer has to fun of.

That's it, because like that's it. I'm sorry. That's not just, that's it. Okay.

Well if you wanna really go, that's it. The sweetener traditionally in Korean food would be rice syrup. Okay. So anyway.

Yeah, that's it. And I have to say that we, uh, Bruce often makes, uh, Kim Suge in a totally non-traditional way, and he makes it instead a pork belly with beef oxtails. And in fact, the Korean man who kind of got us on the jag of Korean barbecue, fantastic. Actually ate Bruce's oxtail, Kim Shige, and he was rather speechless about the whole thing. It's not that he didn't like it, he just, it was like he couldn't process it. He didn't

know he, that's one of the things I've discovered about a lot of Korean food. The dishes are very. Set. Like this dish has these ingredients, right? And this dish has these ingredients, and once you switch out one ingredient, it's like traditionalists will go. I don't even know what that dish is now. I don't recognize it.

Well, I, yeah, I, I don't know that that's a, that that's, uh, necessarily a Korean thing. I think that, oh no, I think that comes with a lot of things. That's a French thing. Mm-hmm. That's. It's the Jewish grandmother thing. That's, that's, oh my gosh. So I, I'm totally off Korean for a minute, but I just wanna say that when, uh, years ago we wrote the Ultimate Cookbook, which was 900 recipes, his first giant book we ever wrote. And, um, it kind of represented totally still represents the way Bruce cooks on an everyday basis. 900 recipes is a huge, huge encyclopedia book. And, um, we said we write this book. And it got of course reviews. And this one reviewer, his comment was out of 900 recipes, he made a big deal that Bruce put garlic powder in matza balls. And it was this whole thing about matza balls do not have garlic powder in them. And it, it, it, it's back to that, you know, there is a way to make matza balls and it's the way I grew up making it. And that's the end of the matter

in my defense. If you look at the ingredient list on the box of Manus Chitz, matza bowl mix, I, yeah,

I know. Garlic powder. I know, but I'm just saying that this is the way, I don't think it has anything to do with Korean food. This is the way that storied dishes get mm-hmm. Set. Mm-hmm. In a kind of, and don't

change them.

Right. In a kind of cultural matrix. It's really weird. Like, for example, I think that a lot of us from the South have very set ideas about what Hop and John is, what. Cornbread is, I have what fried chicken is. I have very set ideas about cornbread and my ideas about cornbread. And I grew up, as you may know, in Texas, and I grew up with mom, who thought that putting sugar in things made you low class. So I grew up with cornbread that did, had no. Added sugar to it. And still to this day, I can hear my mother say, my now long gone mother say about cornbread when she bites into it, Ooh, this is cake. Meaning, well so much. It has no sugar. Meaning it has sugar in it, and she doesn't want any sugar.

How often have I bitten into a piece of cornbread in a barbecue restaurant? Oh, and it's so sweet and it's like dessert. Wait a

second. This is like a polenta cake, but you didn't grow up with it. And again, it's part of what gets set in your head. Like, like the Jewish matza balls and soup and like mini Korean dishes. These are storied dishes from people's past. Mm-hmm. And so when you take this St story dish and you add oxtails to it instead of pork belly, it changes the whole thing around. It did.

And boy did. I love it.

I do. I actually love Kim with, uh, oxtails in it. I think it's really tasty. so as we come to the end of this bit about, uh, Korean food, is there any Korean cookbook that you would recommend if somebody wanted to buy a cookbook and figure out how to make it at home?

That's really a good question. There's a brand new cookbook that just came out this year and it's actually up for some awards. And it's called Uma, UMMA, which is mom in Korean. It's called Uma, and it is all about home cooking and stories that this author knows about from her mother and her grandmother who taught her how to cook. And the recipes are. Just beautiful to look at and the ingredients sound fabulous and I have not cooked from me yet, but I have so many flag that I'm going to be making.

So. I hope that in saying all this, we have inspired you to go out and find a Korean restaurant to just experiment. Maybe you wanna start with Korean barbecue. Maybe you wanna start with a Korean vegan restaurant. Maybe you already know all there is to know about Korean food and you want to, uh, tell us about that. You can find us on the Facebook group cooking. Bruce and Mark will post this episode of the podcast and you can tell us your favorite Korean dishes or your own experience the first time you ever had. Korean food, or maybe you are Korean and the best place where you live to get Korean food beside your mom's house, the best place to go buy Korean food. Before we get to the final segment, what's making us happy and food this week? Let me just say that it would be great if you could subscribe to this podcast and if you could rate it, if you could give it a star rating. Can I ask for five? That would be nice. And a review that helps in the, uh, algorithms and the analytics. Thanks for doing that. As you know, we are. Unsupported. We choose to be unsupported. So it is the way that you can actually help support this podcast. Thanks for doing that. I know it's an extra step and I hate making, uh, any requests for extra steps, but there you go. Thanks for doing that. Okay. As is traditional, we're gonna finish off with what's making us happy in food this week.

Crab apple hard cider. Oh gosh. You've heard me talk about hard cider being one of my favorite things over and over, but as Mark has said in a previous episode, we have been recently to the Finger Lakes and there are so many cries around these lakes there. It is not only a wine producing region, it is a huge cider reproducing region and increasingly cider reproducing. We found some fabulous ones and we bought a couple of big bottles of a. Crab. Apple cider. Now

I should say, when we say cider, we're talking about hard cider. Hard cider

beer levels four to 5%. Mm. So good. So we had that crab, apple cider with burgers for dinner, and it was spectacular.

It was, it was really nice. Yeah, it was really sour and it was really great. Okay, so what's making me happy in food this week? It is a lemon tart that Bruce made, and I have to say that this is a really hard thing for me to admit because I think I am the master of the lemon meringue pie. But Bruce made a lemon tart recently, and you made it with a thicker crust. So it was much more cookie like, and then he put a lemon card on top of it and he put an Italian meringue, which is a cooked meringue on top of that. So it's a marshmallowy sticky meringue. I do the french meringue, the traditional American lemon meringue pie, where it's the French meringue. It's really light and high. His was much more marshmallowy and his lemon tar was spectacular. I ate way too much of it. Mm-hmm. It was really good and it's really hard for me to give any creds to any Lemon Tart except my own Lemon R pie, which you do quite well, and which I got the recipe from my grandmother. So I am, uh, I'm really given a huge kudos here, uh, because I think that it was just this spectacular Lemon Tart, and it's not only nice occasionally to have a dessert that kind of blows your mind, so. Hmm. Thank you. That was really nice and it made me very happy. Alright, that's the podcast for this week. Thanks for listening to it. Thanks for being part of our podcast community. Thanks for being on this Food and Cooking journey with us. We appreciate you more than you can know, and we appreciate your being here with us

more than you can know. And as Mark said, please subscribe so you don't miss a single episode when we talk about Korean food, Chinese food, Japanese food, and all the foods that we are passionate about here on cooking with Bruce and Mark.