But, I read David Chang's Momofuku book cover-to-cover, and thought obsessively about it when I wasn't reading it--like I would an engrossing novel.

Ssam means “wrapped,” and refers to a Korean dish in which mostly leafy vegetables are used to wrap a piece of meat. They prompt me to think about what I’m going to cook from them, to make little lists of obscure ingredients, to get on the train to Leeds with the sole aim of raiding the shelves at Wing Lee Hong.Chang gets the proper humble but arrogant narrative voice to drive his story forward, and, having eaten at all of his recipes, he deserves some of the arrogance. The epitome of no-holds barred fusion food, beloved by most foodies on the planet, lauded by the likes of Anthony Bourdain and Martha Stewart.

So I had Chang on the brain (a phrase that would be been infinitely more appropriate if I had reviewed his OTHER Netflix show, Mind of A Chef, but we can’t have everything in life. The first half of the book mostly featured basic Korean/Japanese fusion stuff that many of us have done before, like pickled vegetables, ginger dipping sauce, etc. The book is set up that way--it's the story of how the Momofuku empire came into existence, and, more fascinatingly, how the dishes evolved. The relatively low sugar content in cauliflower allows it to cook to a high degree of caramelisation without tasting bitter: this was the secret to the legendary cauliflower cheese of which we served hundreds each week at the pub (and which actually saved us from going under, but that’s another story for another day).The difficulties of the recipes are a wide range, but the hardest part is definitely the sourcing of ingredients or controlling the portion sizes. Except the recipe itself is kind of infuriating to read, because it RELIES on components it tells you how to make later in the book. The book has three chapters, modelled around each of Momofuku's New York City restaurants: Noodle Bar, Ssam Bar, and Ko, with recipes and stories based around each topic. Because Ko is a fixed menu restaurant, and the chicarrón was the first item on the first menu served there. And I think the cost to the user of you not including an index is higher than the cost saved including those pages.

This will not be a problem for the rest of us who will have a wry smile at the journey of culinary- and self-discovery by the talented David Chang. Or he has a recipe for watermelon geleé for topping oysters…because he was going to make consommé, and the tub got put in the fridge instead of the freezer, and the restaurant had to roll with it. This trying to kludge the two together thing, though, has resulted in a flood of books that are unusable, annoying half-ass cookbooks and insufferable, obnoxious half-ass memoirs. His journey from religion studies graduate to renowned chef was interesting to read, and his drive to produce food that is, at once both true to his Korean roots yet elevated without pretension, is translated beautifully in this cookbook/memoir of his start in the restaurant world. Most importantly, this is the first time reading a cookbook has made me actually excited about the idea of cooking, rather than just challenged and nervous.But any cook will tell you that the apparently simplest things can often turn out to be the hardest to accomplish well. Much like Justin Warner’s cookbook, it’s not necessarily that Momofuku makes me want to cook recipes from IT, but rather, that it simply makes me more confident about cooking in general.

Since I could never eat at Momofuku Noodle Bar (or Ssam Bar or Ko or Milk Bar--Chang flatly refuses to cater to vegetarians), reading his cookbook was the next best thing. We’ve talked before about how we review Cookbooks, so let’s not waste time repeating it(a thing I do later in this post, because I have little-to-no internal consistency) , and instead give a solid summary of the book before we tear it apart and analyze it. Now that my professional focus has shifted to vegetable cookery, I find little reason to prepare pork using this method. But again I need to state, each dish required multiple steps, hours of prep work and sometimes required 24 hours of prep work as well.No me gusta su acercamiento a la comida, no me gustan los ingredientes que utiliza, no me cae bien su personalidad. Our purpose is to share our passion and knowledge with everyone to teach how they can cook more and have a good time while doing it.