Class assignment overview and completion guide

¶ … Matrilineal Artifact

"…with your recipe books, they get stuck together on the pages of the things you really like making-- and you always call it Auntie Jill's Sponge Cake. it's never, "my sponge cake"-- so it always has that kind of resonance of belonging to someone else." -- Diane Bell

I have often heard it said that there are as many different recipes for kimchi as there are Koreans because it is such a ubiquitous part of Korean cuisine. Every family has a different recipe; every family has a recipe that has been passed down from generation to generation. If you are not Korean you might not 'get' kimchi: the fermented mix of vegetables is definitely an acquired taste. Cabbage, radish, cucumbers, and other vegetables are fermented in a kind of pungent, sour, yet salty mix. The closest analogy in Western cuisine would be a kind of relish, although the vegetables are not diced and are usually left intact. However, unlike Heinz hotdog or hamburger relish, many Korean students will bring bottles of kimchi to college. Kimchi has even been sent into space, as requested by a Korean astronaut who could not image life without it.

Kimchi can accompany almost every food, and the women in my family have been making it for generations. At one point, my grandmother wrote down her favorite kimchi recipe on a piece of paper. Like Auntie's proverbial sponge cake, however, our kimchi is always thought of as a family recipe. The problem with translating the recipe from page to plate is that my grandmother really cooks from memory, and her instructions are hard to follow. Her shaky handwriting records a list of vegetables, but I know that kimchi requires many more ingredients. Everyone who makes kimchi in my family changes their method of preparation, depending on the season and what types of foods they know we are likely to be eating. Sometimes the recipe is slightly hotter, other times more sour. Kimchi is altered suit the more delicate flavors of spring and the more robust flavors of fall.

However, no matter how much the recipe may be tweaked, it is always unique. I love this 'artifact,' this incomplete recipe, and the tradition of preparing kimchi itself because it is unique to my family, yet connects me to a wider Korean heritage. I also know that preparing traditional foods is very important to the women in my family: cooking a good meal is an essential part of their sense of 'self.' My mother is a strong and independent woman, but also takes pride in traditional feminine tasks like feeding the family.