Why hello there, and welcome to Kitchen Catastrophes, where today we’re going to be making something simple and quick, leaving me standing around with my d-ecidedly lower research needs for the week….in my hand. I’m Jon O’Guin, This is “Quick Quasi-Korean Udon”. If you gotta go even FASTER, take this link to the recipe. Everyone else, let’s…talk about stuff?

Quibbles, Foibles, Fibs, and Troubles

So, quick thing about this recipe: It’s based off of a recipe from Bon Appetit called “Kimchi Udon with Scallions”, which is a name I didn’t like for two reasons: one, it severely oversells the role of scallions in this dish: They are a TOPPING at the end. The second is that “Kimchi Udon”…I don’t know. There’s something to that framework that bugged me. It felt a little too tightly focused. The sauce for this dish is a mix of kimchi, butter, gochujang, and broth, so why only highlight the Kimchi? Hence my revised name for the dish: “Quasi-Korean” lets you know that it’s not a truly ‘authentic’ recipe, while still giving you the baseline expectation of what you’re getting into.

Kimchi and Gochujang being the typical understanding of what Korean food is to an American audience.

Originally, that was going to be a little harsher on my own naming convention, since I just called it “Quick Korean Udon”, and I was going to lambaste myself for falling into the same trap of “This has the same ingredients as culture X, I’m calling it X” thing I complained about with the Vietnamese Chicken Salad. Then, two sentences into the paragraph, I realized I could add “Quasi” to the title, and absolve myself of that flaw while doubling up on Alliteration, leading me to rename the post, this section, and rewrite the end of the paragraph before I even reached it.  So that’s a quick peak into how I revise on the fly, as it were.

And I mean…that’s really all I can get into for new and original discussion on the recipe. Like, I know we’ve discussed kimchi and gochujang before (which, don’t worry if you’re new, we WILL go over them in a bit so you’re not totally lost), and there’s not a LOT to say about Udon, though we will go into what there is. So I was honestly kind of worried that today’s recipe might not make a good post because it’s too SMOOTH: it’s fast, simple, uses basic ingredients…without like, deeply unpacking one of the ingredients, there’s not a lot to talk about. It’s like trying to give a recipe for my breakfast sandwich: it’s scrambled egg on a Cheddar bagel. That’s it.

An idea so boring that “Peanut Butter Toast” and “eggs on toast” with dates is legitimately a more complex idea.

“Luckily”, things got more complicated last week, giving me something to potentially talk about! Unluckily, it’s on a very fraught and messy topic that’s not super-connected to food, but instead to racism! Which makes it DOUBLY appropriate to the time, and DOUBLY difficult and frustrating to discuss! How…fortunate for us all.

So, if you don’t know, Bon Appetit’s editor-in-chief Adam Rappoport, aka “Rappo”, recently resigned because of racially-charged actions. Specifically, the events went like this: Illyanna Maisonet, a Puerto Rican food columnist (specifically, the FIRST Puerto Rican food columnist in America) posted a conversation she had with him about a rejected column, where Adam, to me, sounded fairly supportive and positive…but also VERY white, which is probably she says it ended up sounding condescending to her. She noted that the staffer who rejected her article did so on the grounds that it wasn’t about something “new”, which the magazine tries to focus on, but complained that that statement ran somewhat counter to an article appearing in May’s issue of the magazine about a specific region in Puerto Rico that’s been a food scene for quite some time, an article written by (she believed) a white member of the BA staff. Adam answers that he’ll talk to the people involved, and try and get the company to do more. He notes that it wasn’t a white staffer but another Puerto Rican freelancer who wrote the piece. He also notes that he thinks the magazine definitely needs to incorporate more Puerto Rican recipes, especially given how often the BA staff eat Puerto Rican food, since there’s such a large Puerto Rican population in New York, and that the staffer shouldn’t have simply shut down the pitch, but worked with the author to find a way to make it seem more timely.

(Which, as I’ve argued at least once before, isn’t all that hard. It is EASY to connect almost whatever food you want to any time of year/topic. Off the top of my head: July is the anniversary of the US seizing the island. It’s also the anniversary of their newest Constitution. September will be the 3rd Anniversary of Hurricane Maria. YESTERDAY was supposed to be THE 63rd Annual Puerto Rican Parade, which had to be postponed due to COVID, so they had a 90 minute TV special with Lin Manuel MIRANDA. For fuck’s sake, you’re asking how to make the food of a TROPICAL ISLAND relevant IN SUMMER.  (At which point I will briefly interject in their defense that that they’re not: Magazines take a long time to make, hence the common “Thanksgiving in July” issue creators face. But in that case, you could take the article, pop it on the website in July or whatever, and physically put it in the September issue or something. Hit TWO windows with one piece.))

So, like I said: seems pretty positive interaction to me, if a little on the “Jeez, man, can you NOT talk like you’re reading from a human resources best practices manual” side. That was then responded to by ANOTHER food writer suggesting maybe he could write the article himself,  posting a picture of Adam Rapoport at a party in 2004 dressed up as a stereotype of a Puerto Rican…including brown-face. This then led to a an explosion of people pissed about that…and, as it turns out, a lot of other things. Several prominent members of the Bon Appetit staff and test kitchen came forward to talk about various problems, such as pay gaps (apparently ethnic editors for the magazine don’t get paid extra for video appearances, while white editors do), microaggressions, and questionable things they’ve been asked to do, such darker skinned members being asked to appear in more group pictures of the test kitchen (which had been critiqued for its predominantly white membership) to, in one story, a group of black chefs asking that Bon Appetit SPECIFICALLY send a black crew to cover their story, due to some difficulties other black chefs had noted in the past…but Bon Appetit didn’t EMPLOY a black chef at the time, so they sent Sohla El-Waylly, a Bengali-American chef. (Bengal is a region now split between Bangladesh and India.) A choice they did not explain to the chefs OR Sohla before they met.

Is Sohla amazing? Yes.
Is she BLACK? No.

Because of all this, Bon Appetit hasn’t uploaded a video to their YouTube channel in 10 days, with several high-profile editors for the publication stating they WILL not appear in videos until the issues are resolved.

And I am NOT a source for how best to handle these sort of things, or corporate interactions with communities of color, or really any of that. There are much better voices than I to listen to on how best to address/prevent these kind of instances. Sohla herself has been very vocal about what she’d like to see, and the challenges she feels BIPOC individuals face. I just feel it’s important to be aware of these things, and listen to the voices of those who tell you how you can help make things better. None of us are perfect. We just have to try to be better. I’ll be very interested to see how the company continues, and what steps it will take to address the issues.

Alright. Now that that minor facet of the ongoing seizing mass that is the current zeitgeist has been explored, let’s get to something easier.

Butter, Spice, and Many Things Nice

Almost none of what we just talked about really matters to today’s recipe, which was posted YEARS ago, and is, as noted, a pretty simple and quick meal option. The original recipe serves 4, but I was making it as a simple lunch for myself, so I just halved it to make 2 servings, which I then ate on my own because Nate didn’t want any. (Nutritionally, that made it about 660 calories, which isn’t that bad for a lunch, though it had quite a bit of sodium and fat.)

As a quick run-down, in case you’re a newb (and if you are, thanks for not getting turned off by that extensive discussion of office/racial politics, I swear we’re normally much more fun.), let’s quickly break down some of our key players in the dish. And…looking at the time, we’ll go more in-depth on these Thursday. For now, just understand the following:

Kimchi is a ubiquitous topping/flavoring agent/banchan (Think “appetizer”, we’ll talk about it Thursday) in Korean cuisine, very roughly analogous to the American conception of a pickle/relish: a fermented vegetable found on all manner of dishes. It’s spicy, acidic, and funky.

Gochujang is a fermented chili paste made from chili powder and soybeans, making it “the spicy Korean miso” to many Asian minds. In America, the popularity of it is maybe only comparable to say, Mustard or Ketchup: it’s the kind of thing you just EXPECT certain places or dishes to have. Like mustard, it’s a mixture of sweet and spicy.

And yes, “if gochujang is basically mustard, and kimchi is basically relish, do they go together on a Hot-Dog” is a valid question, and the answer is yes.

Udon is the new one for us, and it’s a style of noodle from Japan that’s much thicker than others, but still made from wheat flour, unlike, say, Soba noodles. This results in a springy, slightly chewy kind of noodle that doesn’t really have a great parallel in Western cuisine, other than particularly thick egg noodles. Like, the kind you get under stroganoff, or in thicker chicken soups.  Udon noodles traditionally have a relatively subtle flavor, and they’re served with subtler broths and sauces, and are typically seen as being either vehicles for the sauce, or to add textural variation to a soup.

They’re not an ingredient I get to use a lot, because, to my understanding, they really suffer from being dried/made for long storage, so you want fresh or frozen. I couldn’t do that in my local markets, but I did find some prepared udon that was stored in the fridge, so I figured that was close enough. You wanna quickly boil it as you work on the rest of the dish. But by “quickly” and “as”, I should be clear I mean “you wanna bring the water to a boil as you do the rest of this, and then cook the noodles for 3 minutes”.  

Now, once your water’s heating, the recipe, as noted, is pretty straight-forward. The most complicated and time-consuming step is “chop up some kimchi, and sauté it in butter with gochujang”.

I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing that I used a red spatula for what is going to be an almost entirely red dish.

You wanna get a little browning on the kimchi, so cook it for a couple minutes, then add extra kimchi juices and chicken broth, which is going to make something that LOOKS a lot like a kind of basic red-pasta sauce, but tastes a lot different.

This is how your red sauces look, right? Murky and filled with small chunks of cabbage?

Specifically, since we’ve cooked out a lot of the kimchi’s acidity, we’re really left with funky, umami notes. This whole mix just tastes sort of…holistically warm. It’s a LITTLE spicy, a LITTLE funky, but mostly it just tastes warm and comforting.

Cook that down a little to thicken the sauce, and then add the (hopefully just finished cooking) udon noodles, and some more butter, and tossing it all to combine.

Now THIS looks more normal, if only because the Kimchi now looks like diced onion and tomato.

Scoop into bowls, and top with sliced scallion, toasted sesame seeds, and, if desired, a single egg yolk per bowl. The egg yolk is going to move this out of vegan territory again (assuming you had a substitute for the butter) , but it’ll help add a little body and richness to the sauce.

I will say that the scallion and egg add some MUCH needed visual variety. WHY DID I CHOOSE A RED BOWL?

And, like I suggested earlier, the dish it pretty damn good, in my opinion. It’s warm and a little spicy, with satisfying chewy noodles. It doesn’t taste unusual or offputting, it just tastes nice in an almost generic way. And if you already have these ingredients (and I think you should: both kimchi and gochujang are fairly cheap, and keep for MONTHS), it’s easy to whip up in under 20 minutes. For that time investment, it’s an amazing result. 

THURSDAY: IT’S TIME TO ROOT AROUND KOREA’S PANTRIES, AND SEE WHAT WE FIND.

MONDAY: WE HIT UP VIETNAM FOR A DISH CALLED BUN CHA, WHICH USES A COOL TECHNIQUE.

Recipe

Quick Quasi-Korean Udon

Serves 4 (can be halved)

Ingredients

5 tbsps unsalted butter, divided into 2 tbsp and 3 tbsp

1 cup finely chopped kimchi, plus ⅓ cup kimchi juice

2 tbsps gochujang (Korean hot pepper paste)

½ cup low-sodium chicken or vegetable broth

1 pound fresh or frozen udon noodles

Kosher salt

4 large egg yolks, room temperature

3 scallions, white and pale-green parts only, thinly sliced on a diagonal

1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds

Preparation

1. Start to bring a pot of water to a boil.

2. Heat 2 Tbsp. butter in a large skillet over medium-high. Add chopped kimchi and gochujang and cook, stirring occasionally, until kimchi is softened and lightly caramelized, about 4 minutes. Add broth and kimchi juice and bring to a simmer. Cook until liquid is slightly reduced, about 3 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, boil noodles according to package directions.

4. Using tongs, transfer noodles to skillet and add remaining 3 Tbsp. butter; cook, tossing often, until sauce coats noodles, about 2 minutes. Season with salt if needed. Divide among bowls and top with egg yolks, scallions, and sesame seeds.