Miyeok Guk and Change.
Over at my family we are gigantic fans of The Chef Show with Jon Favreau and Roy Choi and huge fans of Chef - the movie - as well. If you haven't seen either, oh you should! If you like cooking, you definitely should!
About Miyeok Guk though. It’s Korean “birthday soup” and David Chang (the guest for the episode) was talking to Roy about the soup their grandmothers would make for them as kids.
The soup was not one we were racing to make (one of the few times I wasn’t salivating) but the conversation David and Roy had was a good one.
It went something like this:
“It’s a dish I’m trying to reconcile with because as a kid I would never eat it.” David Chang
“I hated it.” Roy Choi
“Hated it!” David Chang
“It was embarrassing sometimes.” David Chang
“It was too weird for me.” David Chang
“You’re going to hate the texture.” Roy Choi
“I’m going to try and make it different… I’m trying to create a version that if I was 10 years old I would eat it.” David Chang
“You’re redeeming this dish.” Jon Favreau.
Redeeming a dish… what is that?
What is it about these things from our past that we hated, we were embarrassed by, that were too weird and just all around left a bad taste in our mouth… that we really want to reconcile with, to redeem, to somehow make into something we would like if we could go back in time and taste them again?
“I’m in love with all the things we grew up hating. I’m asking myself could you tweak some things without ripping the guts out of it. It still looks Korean - it’s not anything else - but it’s not our mom’s or grandmother’s dish either.” David Chang
Some people probably aren’t very fascinated with redeeming a dish they hated as a kid.
But some people wonder… if… even though they hated it, were embarrassed by it, thought it was weird and had a terrible texture… they wonder if there was some part of it, some part in there somewhere, that with a little tweaking and innovation and creativity, might be worth doing some experimenting with… to see if there was always something tasty in there that was just smothered by poorly cooked seaweed.
That’s the shit of life and change and creativity and evolution right there. Right?
How do we find the stuff worth saving that was and is buried under all the stuff we hate and hated?