Day Fourteen - Page 63 - Kimchi Stew - Home Style

Home style is an adjective that restaurants use to tantalize customers who crave simple home cooking but don't have the time, skill, or desire to cook. When I see it on Chinese restaurant menus I think of dishes that my father or mother made from ingredients at hand and became staples of their kitchen repertoires. Chopped pork steamed with salt fish and egg custard studded with pieces of black gelatinous thousand year old eggs are so home style.

Kimchi stew is definitely in the home style category and since I've only had it twice, once in a Korean restaurant in L.A. and my own today, it will be a while before I can honestly say I have my own version of the dish developed through years of trial and error.

A Web search brings up dozens of stew recipes and mine is a combination of what I found that sounded tasty and the Momofuku version. From the book I used kimchi, ramen broth, rice cakes, and roasted onions. From My Korean Kitchen
and others, like Korean Home Cooking I added canned tuna fish - not so surprising since Chang mentions anchovy stock in his mother's stew - and a paste of kochujang, kochukaru, and mirin. From the refrigerator I added some chanterelle mushrooms. Some corrections would be to use a tuna that maintains it's shape after cooking and to put the kimchi in at the last minute so as not to lose the crunchiness of the vegetables. Nevertheless, this dish is as umami-rich as you'll ever get.