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This is a woman who, in the suburban wastes of Colonial Heights, Virginia, makes her own persimmon vinegar from a tree in the backyard, grows hot and mild chili peppers and dries them in the driveway, and throws back a shot of bear gall bladder-steeped Bacardi after dinner with barely a grimace. She doesn’t do easy.
Over a three day stretch the indulgent Mrs. Kim also managed to make japchae, kimbap, seaweed soup, and the earthy Chinese-Korean black bean noodle dish jajangmyeon (of which I’ll have a lot to say about in a future Omnivorous). But the long version of her kimchee would take all day, incorporate four different kinds of “anchovy,” and the preparation of a flour-and-water mixture that sounded an awful lot like a roux. She told me if I wanted to learn how to do that I’d have to learn Korean. My questions were giving her a headache.
