Season to taste

My wife asks me to prepare some chwi-namul; she can't follow recipes. "Sure," I say, confident that I can. Cautiously confident. "What is it?"

"It's in the fridge."

There are a lot of namul in Korean cooking– leafy vegetables. The best way to find them is to look for an old person bent over in the bushes by the river. You go up to them and say, "Grandmother, what are you picking? Is it sukk?" The will look at you a little bit suspiciously, and then tell you, "No, it is this-and-that-namul." Then you use your considerable charm to ask them how to prepare it. This takes charm because of that suspicion. You have to ask them how to prepare the namul without worrying them that you are going to start picking all of their namul.

I know all this because this is how my wife does it, I've seen it several times. However, if like me, you don't have that charm, the best way is just to look on the internet.

Chwi-namul doesn't really have a common English translation, because it mostly only grows in and around Korea, but from its latin name, it is sometimes deliciously translated as Aster Scaber.

My wife gives me the recipe she has found online. I sit down in the kitchen to read it, as she goes off to bother the children. As is common on the commercial recipe sites these days, I have to scroll down, past ads and long-winded descriptions of the making process, to find the list of ingredients.

There is a wrinkle, or two, to working from a Korean recipe. The obvious one is that the recipe is in Korean. This is cooking, so they don't say 'cut' or 'slice', they say 'chop' or 'trim' or 'julienne'; and usually I have to look all these up. This takes time, but that is all. The trickier wrinkle is that when they list the ingredients, Korean recipes often don't say how much of the ingredient.

I've gotten used to the fact that meat comes in 600g portions, and most vegetables come in a standard 150g bowl. But it is the salt and the sesame oil, and the other seasonings that frustrate me. It is always 'season to taste'. I've never tasted cwhi-namul before. I don't know how it should taste. Not too salty, I guess, and not too bland.

My wife comes in to find me looking at my phone.

"Oh, you aren't going to do the chwi-namul."

"I'm doing it. I have to read the recipe."

"Can't you just follow it without reading it first?"

This is what she wants to say. But then she knows that I would say, "Can't you? It's in Korean." She knows both that I would be right, but that I would say it in a tone that would start a fight. Apparently she isn't in the mood for this, so she says, "Oh. Okay."

"How salty should it be?"

"I don't know. I've never had it. Just put half of the soy sauce that they say to. They always put in too much."

When in doubt, one tablespoon of soy sauce and one tablespoon of sesame oil. It comes out perfect.