Cravings
I married well, generally speaking. Tall, strong, and handsome; wicked funny; requisite love of dogs and bad movies. Above all, Sam is thoughtful. Judicious. Reasonable.
Right up until bad weather hits; then that man goes completely bugnuts.
Blizzards, flash floods, hurricanes – any dangerous meteorological condition attended by wailing sirens and staticy emergency alerts – give Sam an unstoppable urge to run pointless errands. Return a library book, stock up on light bulbs, no reason’s too small to experience a natural disaster. Once, in the stone age of our courtship, he dragged me to a Blockbuster in a tornado. And he wasn’t looking to rent any movie in particular; he just wanted to browse.
Reader, I married him. And as a good wife I’ve pulled the curtains and hid the car keys every time a storm system swings our way. But no longer. I get it now.
Perhaps you’ve heard about this little pandemic we’ve been having. South Korea has done an incredible job managing the Covid-19 outbreak, mostly through mass testing and quarantines. Although we haven’t had the same kind of shutdowns the US and Europe are experiencing right now, the schools are closed, public events cancelled, and traffic thin. Stay home, the government urges.
Normally I’d be happy to oblige. But now, inexplicably, with the apartment full of supplies and restaurants a no-go, I am craving Korean food.
Sure, I could make it at home. I am, though I say it myself, a darn good cook. But I am not a Korean cook. Korean cooks are magical. They scorn measurements and cooking times; every dish has either 800 ingredients or a pure, perfectly balanced two. There’s nothing I can make that wouldn’t be better and cheaper in a local restaurant. I even suck at cooking rice, which in Asia is like admitting I don’t know how pants work. It’s a fundamental skill.
Fortunately for my stomach, Korea also excels at pointless bureaucracy. Even though schools are closed several of us are required to be at our desks every day – specifically the administrative staff, the janitor, and me. Each morning I crawl under the yellow caution tape barring our school gate and settle in for eight hours of boredom, known here as “desk warming.”
Thought I was kidding, didn’t you?
The cafeteria is closed of course. Under normal circumstances we’d go out for lunch, but no one wants to risk it. (For unclear reasons, it is assumed that while the outside world is overrun with coronavirus, everyone inside the school is hunky-dory.) So my coworkers have dug up two butane camping stoves and a couple of frying pans and turned our storage room into an impromptu kitchen.
And there are some big personalities in that kitchen around lunchtime. You can keep your Italian mamas and Jewish grannies; when it comes to culinary drama (and the subsequent force-feeding) I'll back a Korean eomma against all comers. Their opinions are even sharper than their knives. Yet weirdly enough, it seems in this case you can never have too many cooks.
Last week I wangled an invitation to learn how to make kimchi bokkeumbap (spicy kimchi fried rice). Hierarchy is important in the kitchen; Koreans intrinsically understand this as members of a Confucian society. Only the top ranked staff got to cook. Young, unmarried women scurried around with bowls and chopsticks. Me? I stood in the back and didn’t touch anything.
Byeol-hae, my gracious instructor, browned the pork in a frying pan then upended a massive tub of kimchi on top of it. It was immediately clear that the pan was too small. I said nothing. I didn't have to.
"That pan is too small,” said the vice principal as she dumped a double handful of mushrooms on top of the kimchi. Byeol-hae nodded agreement, carefully stirring the pile with a spatula.
"That pan is too small,” Ji-hye observed as she returned with a ladle. She took the lid off a boiling pot of seaweed and anchovies – the base flavors for soup stock. I missed the next step in the bokkeumbap recipe watching the vaudeville that followed: Ji-hye stoically attempting to fish anchovies out of the pot while the VP tossed in mushrooms.
The janitor appeared with a wide, deep-bottomed pan of chopped onions. A masterful cook, everyone deferred to her in the kitchen. She butted the soup pot off the burner and put her onions on instead.
“Your pan’s too small,” she observed to Byeol-hae, stirring the cauldron of onions.
This was followed by a discussion about the relative size and suitability of certain pans, most of it addressed to the air. Ji-hye tactfully turned to the microwave to zap some precooked rice. The VP stirred fermented bean paste into the cooling soup.
The discussion concluded. The browned onions went into Byeol-hae’s pan.
“All of them?” asked Byeol-hae.
“Oh yes. Onions are delicious in bokkeumbap,” the janitor said. There was group consensus that this was indeed true while the cauldron was abandoned in the sink. Ji-hye added the rice on top of the onions, and Byeol-hae delicately shifted and turned it all together, ensuring every grain was coated in red kimchi sauce.
The admin girls set out plates and chopsticks while Byeol-hae advocated for fried eggs on top the bokkeumbap, as served in restaurants.
“It would be so delicious.”
A chorus of agreement filled the air in a non-directional kind of way.
“Fried eggs on bokkeumbap? Yes, delicious.”
“That’s true, it’s delicious.”
“It’s delicious to eat bokkeumbap with fried eggs.”
“We’d have to fry them one at a time,” the vice principal decided against it. “It would take forever.”
Byeol-hae finished cooking and passed the spatula to Ji-hye who packed fried rice into a bowl and turned it out onto a plate. The room filled with collective ooohs of appreciation for the red dome of bokkeumbap.
“Just like at a restaurant.”
“It would be if there was a fried egg on top.”
The plates were distributed round the table with bowls of mushroom soup. Salad was placed at intervals to share. There was a moment of calculus – were there enough plates? Enough chairs? Which plate for which chair for which person? Finally we all sat down to eat.
“Delicious,” came the communal consensus. It was – the bitey kimchi was fantastic against the pork. They’d been right about the mushrooms and onions too. It was exactly the kind of meal I’d been craving, and I was pretty sure I could eat it all day.
But fried rice is filling. I was still only halfway my bowl through when discussion turned to the leftovers.
Byeol-hae eyed the half-full pan. “Erin, give me your bowl.”
“Erin gets three scoops,” the vice principal decreed.
“Oh, that’s ok.” I was suddenly terrified I’d actually get my wish and spend the next four hours shoveling down bokkeumbap. “One scoop is fine.”
“Three,” the VP repeated. She nodded approval at the mountain of fried rice Byeol-hae pushed my way, then handed over her own bowl. “One scoop for me.”
I waddled home to find Sam pondering the contents of our fridge. “I know you’ve been in the mood for Korean food – how about we make dak galbi tonight?”
“Oof, no thanks,” I sank onto the couch under the weight of my belly. “How’s the news on coronavirus?”
“Bad.” He plopped down beside me, put his feet on the ottoman. “I think we’re going to be indoors for a while.”
I sat up, suddenly aware of failing in my wifely duties. “You’re not going to do something stupid like go try to rent a movie or something?”
“Why would I?” he looked at me in sedentary surprise. “We’ve got Netflix now.”
-Erin