[Jang Eunsu's World Through Books] Delicious Food Sometimes Becomes Poetry

Edward Lee, a Korean-American Chef,
Embraces the "Philosophy of Bibim" in Food
Tradition Blends with Unfamiliar Ingredients
to Create a New Identity
In an Era of Division, Bibim Symbolizes Harmony

Delicious food sometimes becomes poetry. While all food is consumed by mouth and fills the stomach, certain dishes also contain stories worth savoring. Food prepared with care can awaken dormant memories in human life and draw out stories hidden deep within the soul.

That is why our mouths take in food and, in return, pour out conversation. Philosophy, literature, and religion all originated as acts performed with abundant food laid out before us. Plato demonstrated that philosophy is the act of expressing thoughts through the mouth while eating and drinking to one's fill, and Homer turned the bloodthirsty beast Achilles into a meat-grilling chef who served Hector's father, Priam, thereby opening a night of reconciliation and peace. Food soothes tense hearts, and sweet saliva makes the tongue soften.

If food turns people into storytellers, then chefs can also become storytellers. Edward Lee, a Korean-American chef well known as the 'Black-and-White Chef,' demonstrates the existence of the chef-poet in his book "Smoke & Pickles" (Wisdom House). This chef, who majored in English literature at New York University, skillfully employs metaphor and symbolism, asserting that only when a chef resembles an artist can truly good food be created. "As a child, I encountered graffiti everywhere I went. Even now, when I think about food, I approach it in the same way that great underground artists tried to leave their mark. They defied the causality of time and place, creating elegance from twisted steel and concrete where it seemed impossible."

This book contains 130 dishes along with their recipes. Just as graffiti artists invent beauty regardless of time and place, Edward writes poetry at the table by combining the Korean flavors he learned from his grandmother with the traditions of the American South. These are distinctly Korean dishes, deeply imbued with the unique Southern sensibility, collective memory, and inherited soul.

The flavor of the accompanying essays is truly captivating. After reading, one naturally wants to cook and eat. In an interview, Edward said, "A chef must be able to tell a story through food. Good food must contain not only flavor but also a story." Indeed, after reading the essays, one can vividly understand how the taste of Korea migrated to America, took root, and how these mixed and blended dishes can transform Koreans into Americans and Americans into Koreans. He states, "Cooking is not just an act of preparing food, but a way to explore culture and identity, family, and human relationships."

This book chronicles Edward's long journey as he moved from Brooklyn, New York, in the northern United States to Louisville, Kentucky, in the South, opened a restaurant, faced setbacks and failures, and discovered and invented fusion dishes by blending the Korean food of his childhood with the newly encountered traditions of Southern American cuisine.

It is significant that 'cooking rice' is the starting point of all his dishes. "Deep in my mind, I am convinced that rice is a miracle. The comforting sensation of warm starch instantly transports me back more than forty years to the small, windowless kitchen in Brooklyn, New York, where my grandmother cooked." The best dishes, like this, contain stories of identity. Good food tells us who made it and where its roots lie.

According to Edward, rice in Korean cuisine is like a blank canvas. Just as a painter creates a work by applying paint to an empty canvas, a Korean chef cooks while imagining side dishes being placed atop white rice. Rice is both the starting point and the completion of Korean cuisine. This is likely why the book features so many rice bowl dishes. Whether it is tomato yogurt lamb, beef and corn, chicken marinated in doenjang with orange and peanuts, or spicy pork, whatever is placed on top and mixed with rice becomes Korean food! The title symbolizes the harmony of this dissonance.

The "smoke" in the title represents the intense flavors of Southern American smoked barbecue, while "pickles" refers to the aesthetics of Korean pickling and fermentation, symbolized by kimchi and jangajji. Edward presents creative dishes that combine Southern ingredients and techniques such as collard greens, bourbon whiskey, and barbecue with traditional Korean fermented sauces and methods like doenjang, gochujang, and kimchi.

He summarizes his culinary philosophy as "bibim" (mixing). Bibim represents the connection and harmony among ingredients, the blend of traditional and modern cooking methods, and the integration of cultural roots with local adaptation. Bibimbap is made by stir-frying, blanching, seasoning, and pan-frying each ingredient to its most delicious state, then mixing them with gochujang and sesame oil to create a new flavor. Bibim fuses the lives of the chef and the diner, the handed-down touch of generations and familiar local ingredients, and both unfamiliar and familiar tastes, all while preserving, respecting, and enhancing each identity.

To achieve this, one needs exceptional imagination to read the heart of food. Since the passion of chefs striving to create delicious dishes is the same everywhere in the world, it is necessary to discover and nurture the force that transcends time and space to connect Korean and Southern cuisine. At such times, Edward becomes a poet. Through analogy, he finds similarities between the foods of the two regions and unites them at a higher level. For example, he recalls the memory of cabbage kimchi from his childhood when tasting collard greens pickled in salt and vinegar. He finds the identity of kimchi in pickled collards, uniting the intense flavors of both foods. "The two flavors blend together as if they were originally one."

Thanks to this, kimchi becomes a "verb." It loses its rigid association with cabbage, and the method transforms into an innovative pickling technique that combines with cabbage, tomato, cucumber, radish, oysters, and fruit. Grits, once considered dead, and dried squid are "mixed" with jerky, while charcoal-grilled meat is "mixed" with Southern-style smoked barbecue to create something new. "Southern cuisine features meat as the main dish, accompanied by cornbread, pickles, and vegetables. This is similar to Korean cuisine, where galbi, rice, kimchi, and namul are served together at the table."

The 'philosophy of bibim' serves as a model for all of us living in this era of extreme conflict and division. This is also an ancient wisdom of the East. Hwaibudong, or harmony without uniformity, is the best way to respect others' thoughts and opinions while preserving and continuing one's own identity. Edward Lee's cuisine demonstrates this beautifully.

Jang Eunsu, publishing culture critic