Made in Korea and the USA By Kimchi and Fried Chicken
When was the last time you thought about your favorite food? Or maybe a special meal?
Food does so much more than just nourish our bodies. Like passport stamps, meals mark our journeys. They keep a record of people, places, and events that all contribute to making us who we are. Food feeds our souls and helps the memories of those who are no longer with us to live on through snapshots of dishes we recall when the right breeze catches a particular fragrance and blows it across our memory.
This is my true confession: by no fault of my own, I was born and raised to be a foodie. My own story begins overseas, as a Korean orphan in foster care. I imagine that soup made up my early days or perhaps juk, boiled rice porridge.
“... the kimchi that somehow marks every Korean’s DNA.”
I was adopted at the age of one in 1984 by an American couple who were stationed in Korea with the army. Before they adopted me, my parents lived the typical overseas military life, living in Germany before Korea. My dad served in Vietnam. Between the two of them, their passports also bore stamps from Russia (the USSR in those days), Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, France, Switzerland, Mexico, Israel, and the United Kingdom. The early days of their marriage were spent weaving in and out of many cultures, and so it’s from them that I learned to love many places and their people.
The author around age four.
Like Mom and Dad, I’ve traveled to taste the beauty of the differences in the world. I sampled Peking duck in Beijing and fish and chips at the Sherlock Holmes Pub in London. I’ve shared a table in a mountain village with Romanians in Romania (who knew they made sweet pastries coated in sugar like donuts?), eaten goulash in Hungary at two a.m. with other weary travelers, and celebrated Christmas by eating tacos with orphans in Mexico. I’ve enjoyed traditional iced coffee cahpe sua da and fresh coconut milk in Vietnam and sampled camel (and rich, smoky camel’s milk) in Djibouti.
And as an adult, I returned to Korea and the kimchi that somehow marks every Korean’s DNA.
My first passport picture was taken when I was a baby. I have a wide-eyed look, kind of like a deer in headlights. I am a naturalized US citizen. I never learned how to speak Korean, and I don’t have an accent, so most people assume I was either born over here or that I am only partially Korean, but I am 100% pure Korean — and like some of the food I love so much, I’m an import. Food has helped me bridge the varied, beautiful parts of my own identity, and even navigate the gaps, too.
The author (upper) with her dad’s parents, Tina and Chester Smith (lower).
My family has a rich culinary heritage: My father hails from a Polish-Italian family with immigrant roots. His parents raised him in Massachusetts. My grandfather was Polish, and my grandmother was Italian. Home-cooked meals were family affairs with a level of formality that required that my dad wear a tie to Sunday dinner, which was typically roast chicken. Thanksgiving meant a turkey and his mom’s famous stuffing, and of course, pumpkin pie. He also loved it when she would make pizza because everything was from scratch, including the dough. No wonder my standards for pizza are high.
Nana Smith’s spaghetti pot is one of my prized possessions. She and Papa Smith retired to Florida, and that’s where my memories were made.
I remember being fascinated by the kumquat tree in Nana’s painting studio. I’d never seen one before, so she had me try one of the small, tangy football-shaped fruits. She used them to make marmalade, which made sense, given my dad’s fondness for orange marmalade with his toast.
“Like passport stamps, meals mark our journeys.”
If Nana Smith said she was going to put something out for a snack, you could expect the “snack” to be enough for a whole meal. I remember lavish spreads of cold cuts and cheeses and bread laid out because the main meal was being prepared. The unspoken rule was: If you love someone, you feed them. I also remember the classic Italian cooking rule like a mantra: “Don’t break the spaghetti!” Even during spaghetti night back at our own house, Dad would sometimes play the music of Dean Martin or Pavarotti, as if we needed ambiance for a more authentic Italian dining experience.
Nana Christine, the author’s maternal grandmother.
Mom, on the other hand, has roots that are Scot-English-Irish but tethered to Alabama, so you can imagine the deep-fried everything of the South.
When a lot of Mom’s extended family settled in Mandeville, Louisiana, my parents and I lived in Texas, so visits meant flying from Dallas to New Orleans (“N’awlins”). The only things as predictable as the jazz in Louis Armstrong International Airport were powdery beignets and the wafting richness of Café DuMonde coffee. There would be the ride across the 26-mile bridge over Lake Pontchartrain to get to Nana Christine’s. Visits meant fully dressed shrimp po-boys on French bread. Mardi Gras season meant King Cake.
Nana Christine was the kind of cook who moves effortlessly through a kitchen and doesn’t need to measure spices because the recipes are in her soul. Her kitchen always smelled like God was coming to dinner.
I remember sitting on her sofa watching The Lawrence Welk Show with a bowl in my lap because one of my tasks was to snap peas, the long green beans fresh from the store. The sound of oil sizzling was music to my young ears because it meant cornbread patties or fried chicken. Bacon or ham would be added to sauteed cabbage or greens of some kind. I come by my love of seasoning honestly because her food was always spiced with creativity.
The author as a teenager with her parents.
In the summers, family reunions for Mom’s side of the family were at Lake Jackson in Alabama. The men often grilled or cooked, and the picnic tables featured large spreads of casseroles and side dishes where everyone had pitched in. All of us kids would run around, splash in the water, chase minnows, and come out of the water to sneak a bite of food and eagerly wait for a decadent chocolate seven-layer cake my mom’s Aunt Joanne had perfected. But we would wait until everything was ready and grace was said before the feast officially began. There was lots of chatter and laughter under those moss-draped cypress trees. I learned early on: good food is often synonymous with good company.
My mom’s older sister, Anzia, married a man with French roots who loved to cook. He came from a family with a long line of women whose culinary influences included Cajun, Italian, and German styles of cooking. Uncle Randy would make a giant pot of steaming gumbo for Christmas dinner, and everyone brought side dishes. It was guaranteed that no one would leave hungry.
Crawfish and shrimp boils take me back to those happy times with family, no matter where I encounter those dishes. If it’s Mardi Gras season, I’m going to find a King Cake somewhere. Zydeco music still makes me smile. Even though Nana and Aunt Anzia are both gone now, part of my heart will always belong to Louisiana.
Suffice it to say, this Korean has found herself integrated into a family tree nourished by a long line of gustatory variety. And variety, as we know, is the spice of life.
But when someone meets me for the first time, the two questions invariably asked are: “Do you speak Korean” and “Do you like Korean food?” And then like clockwork, kimchi rises to the top of the conversation.
As a teenager, I would eat Korean food on the rare opportunities I could, mainly because Mom’s Korean friends might bring some Korean food for us. My tastebuds didn’t venture far past yaki mandu, the fried dumplings my mother’s neighbor came over and taught her how to make, and the occasional bulgogi, a sweet, marinated beef dish that is a pretty safe bet for anyone who doesn’t want to venture too far out into exotic culinary waters.
But I would eat kimchi when I could. Kimchi made me feel Korean, even with its pungency. I acquired the taste not for the taste’s sake but because I was Korean. Koreans ate kimchi. And that was that. Chopsticks at Asian buffets were a must for everything, of course. Because that’s how real Asians do it! (As I traveled, I would learn later that Koreans and Chinese eat rice not just with chopsticks but also with spoons. Go figure!)
Kimichi (centre left, top right) surrounded by other dishes
My first trip back to Korea was in 2012. I was 29 years old. My husband and I took students to teach English in summer camps for Korean students, and I had five beautifully overwhelming weeks. The Korean meal options on our flight were as foreign as the chatter I heard all around me. When the flight attendant asked which choice of in-flight meal I wanted, I guessed. I was just lucky “noodles” was an option.
The problem with looking Korean and not being able to speak Korean is …complicated. People would greet me in Korean only to be met by my blank stare. “Sorry, I don’t speak Korean.” At one store, a woman saw me struggling and kindly stepped in to translate. I couldn’t read a Korean menu if my life depended on it, but you had better believe I recognized the KFC logo. Yep, even Colonel Sanders made it to Asia!
While we were there, one of our hosts, a Korean professor, decided to be my ambassador to Korean culture. He proudly said:
“Before you do not know Korea! Now you eat, sleep, drink Korea!”
And I did.
In Bukchon Hanok village, a landmark in Seoul, I visited a tea house on a rainy day. I sat within the rice paper-windowed walls, imagining the traditional tea ceremonies of thousands of years. In downtown Seoul with its trendy nightlife, I had Starbucks coffee, and if it wasn’t for the K-Pop and the seas of faces that looked like mine, I might have thought I was home in Dallas. Our students slurped boba tea and gobbled down waffles covered in cream and gelato, a popular local treat—and a pairing I wouldn’t have ever guessed existed.
Beyond Seoul, the city we stayed in, Jeonju, is famous for its bibimbap: a traditional dish that’s been served in Korea for centuries. We went out to eat with some of the student assistants at the university, and of course, we had to try bibimbap. The term “bibim” means “to mix.” “Bap” means “rice.” It’s a visually stunning dish, a rainbow of colors and textures that all somehow work together.
A hot stone bowl filled with rice is topped with a variety of vegetables such as chopped onion, julienned carrots and radishes, sauteed spinach, and kim
chi. Cooked beef or other sliced meat is common. Ingredients vary according to the cook’s taste. Some ingredients are hot and some are cold. Each one is placed neatly next to its neighbor, arranged in a circle. To top everything off, a sunny-side fried egg crowns the dish. The hot stone cooks the egg once all the ingredients are mixed.
The first time I had it, I don’t remember being overwhelmed by it, but rather by the experience of eating it with Korean students and being able to ask all the questions about my birthplace I never had. It was an oddly comforting experience: eating it and hearing a language that will always be foreign to me but feeling less like a foreigner.
Years later, I can say I’ve acquired a taste for the dish. If I stop to think about it, it’s a bit representative of my own experience in life. Like the mixing of a lot of different tastes and textures that all coalesce, I’ve been blessed to have made memories around many tables in many places. My passport — and my own heart — are full.
