Customer Reviews

Dok Suni

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Being korean-american, I guess my expectations were too high. I thought that since, the authors of this book were korean, that this book would help me hone my korean cooking skills. I was very disappointed because there are not that many recipes contained in the book and also many of the techniques used are not traditional. The recipes turned out okay, but they seemed to be lacking something. The ingredient list and techniques used seemed to be simplified so that they would be easier for nonkoreans. However, for someone who is unfamiliar with korean food in general, there are not enough pictures to help them. There are 8 pages of pictures and six of them contain pictures of finished products.

I am a Korean American who has been eating Korean food most my life-I feel that I can be a fairly accurate judge of Korean cooking and this book is Excellent. I feel that these recipes were very easy to follow and were very authentic. Because most Korean cooks-cook according to instinct versus documented recipes( a pinch of this and that)-this book was wonderful to have. It give some structure to the art. I've recommended this to several friends and have even bought it for others. Also this book has some wonderful little stories about cooking and the author's family. It is a beautiful and handy book.

I have been keeping this book for about six months and have tried around 10 recipes from it. I am not Korean but my boyfriend is a native so he can easily tell whether those dishes are authentic or not. After those experience, I feel this book is helpful for beginners, but it oversimplifies Korean cuisine. Those side dishes aren't so easy to make as they look, believe me. Besides, some recipes are confusing. For example, Kalbi, according to the book, for 1 pound beef short ribs, it only needs 2 tablespoons soy sauce, 2 tablespoons sugar, 2 teaspoon sesame oil and chopped garlic, no salt at all. If you follow this, the beef ribs will turn out to be tasteless. Korean barbecue dishes always have strong taste and need much more condiments. And Yuke-jaong, our favorite, needs much more red pepper flakes than the quantity from the book to get that hot and spicy taste. So I think this is just an OK cooking book, not a great one, though I do love those stories bringing out the culture of this country.

This book has wonderful glossary under the title "moms shopping list" which explains all the ingredients and how they are usually prepared. Also, this book has all the family style dishes that are not in many of the other Korean cook books. For someone who grew up eating Korean food and is now living in a place where it's not available at all, this is a life saver.

Just as my title implies, I found this book of "home cooked" recipes to fall just out of reach of my expectations. Being half Korean I have begun a collection of recipe books in order to enjoy the foods that I have grown up with. I will say that this book was the most satisfying I have come across so far, the others being so Americanized that they were a joke, or so vague and nondescript that I wasn't sure if I was preparing it properly. My problems with this book were the same as those that others have previously stated. The recipes were not as varied as I had hoped for and centered on familiar/common foods such as bulgogi and bibimbop, typically American favorites. The foods were also somewhat Americanized, as I found out when I cooked them for my Korean mother. She was quick to point out the differences. Still, overall it's better than most, and provided the basic steps for recipes that I could alter during cooking to suit my taste and memory.

Dok Suni is a nice Korean cookbook with it's many pictures of the author growing up, the little stories of her diligent mother, the colorful pictures of the food. I wouldn't call it authentic Korean cooking though. The recipes are still very tasty, but don't make these recipes thinking they are what most Korean mothers make for meals. The recipes are very Americanized and it's a great book to introduce someone to Korean food and cooking. Just don't serve these recipes to someone from the Fatherland and call it "homecooking".

I love this book! My mother is Korean so I was raised in a Korean and American household. Thus, I love Korean food! Having spent most of my life in the states, I don't get to eat good Korean food often enough though. My mom can cook all of my favorites wonderfully, but I have trouble learning from her because there are no "set" amounts for some of the spices and ingredients. This book makes it all easy. It has my four favorite Korean dishes--kimchee, duk gook, kimbop, and bibimbop (yum!)--in addition to many other traditional dishes. The book itself is beautiful and I love the personal stories and pictures from Jenny Kwak's life. Another nice touch is the Korean text and correct Korean pronounciation for each of the recipe titles. You will enjoy this book. The recipes are easy to follow and deliciously flavorful.

I love this book! It has all of my favorite dishes from growing up as a Korean American. Until this book, I mainly cooked American food and left the Korean food to my mom or eating out. For my first try, I cooked a dinner of Kalbi, boiled dumplings, japchae, cucumber salad, tofu, egg custard and seaweed soup when I first got the book and everything turned out wonderfully. I got rave reviews from my guests. By sprinkling the Kalbi with brown sugar before tenderizing with Kiwi juice(a key ingredient), they turned out perfect. Another reviewer said that the recipe calls for salt or more marinade, but I found it to be the right amount. I agree that some of the preparation details are sometimes similfied and missing information such as boiling time, etc. Also, in the seawood soup recipe, the seawood amount is a bit much and I had to add water and more of the seasonings. However, everything so far has been authentic, fun to make, and delicious. I already bought another book for a friend & for a newly married couple. It helps if you grew up with Korean Food, are familiar with Korean flavorings, but just couldn't get your mother to write down the exact recipes.

I am a korean who has grown up eating korean food for at least one meal of the day, for my entire life. In addition, i've eaten at countless korean restaurants... So i can, at least, say that I know what korean food 'should' taste like.

PROS: I've tried about 10 of Kwak's recipes so far, and they have all come out very authentic and tasty. She includes a good mix of very common dishes and more advanced dishes, with a good number of pan-chan recipes. Her ingredient lists aren't excessively long like some other cookbooks, but some of the ingredients might require a trip to the korean store (beef dashida powder). Her memoir type style and her personal touches add alot to the enjoyment of the food. Sometimes it sounds like she's reminiscing about the recipes with tears in her eyes. Some could consider these digressions unnecessary, but I found it adds 'soul' to the recipes. And the family pictures are a real nice touch.

CONS: There are pictures of food, but only in the context of telling her family story. They mostly show up in the glossy insert sections in the middle of the book. There are no individual pictures that accompany each recipe. For koreans this might not be a problem, but if you're new to korean food, you might need to see what the finished dish 'should' look like. Secondly, I just wish there were more recipes. Don't get me wrong there are alot (about 77), but wanted more soup and meat recipes and less rice porridge dishes and sweet, snack-type foods. Well i guess my second point isn't really a 'con' because all the 'major' recipes are here. Now that i trust her cooking, I just want more of it, that's all. Lastly I wish she included a table of contents that includes the name of each recipe in a single list. The table of contents breaks down by category, then you have to flip through the entire category to find the recipe that you're looking for. (My copy has about 20 post-it notes on it now). Although I think this may have been deliberate, because the book reads like a memoir, so there are personal stories associated with many of the recipes.

Jenny and her mom own Dok Suni, which is a korean restaurant down on the lower east side of manhattan. Naturally, the food is excellent and it has a good reputation for 'cool' or 'hip' korean food. Although the decor is a bit...hmmm, eclectic? The recipe for the jalapeno fried chicken served at the restaurant (probably the most popular dish) is included in the book. For Dok Suni fans, this should justify the cost of the book itself.

Given the reasonable price of the book and the personal stories that add 'soul' to the recipes, i would highly recommend this book. I just wish there were more pictures. I can't wait for the follow up book.

Let me start out by admitting one fact: while I've grown up eating Korean food, I've never dared to try my hand at cooking it until only recently. My mother was an undefeated cooking whirlwind in our kitchen and when it came to the point where I thought I'd like to learn from her, I realized I would need more help than her 'a pinch of this' and 'a handful of that' pointers.

Jenny Kwak has written a book that seems to have been made just for amateus like myself, who are willing to test the waters but unsure of where to start. The common complaint I've heard with most Asian cookbooks such as this one is the difficulty of finding ingredients and the level of skills that the writer assumes. Let's be real here. Who knows what it means to ferment pickled cabbage in subzero temperature (and yes, I've actually read this in another book)? Dok Suni starts out with a couple of helpful pages entitled, 'Mom's Shopping List', where she lists ALL of the more-than-average ingredients she uses in the recipes to follow. She gives a nice description of what it is, what dish(es) they are used in, and its name in Korean (which is nice because now you can go into an Asian grocery and ask for it by name if you can't find them yourself).

The recipes themselves are, according to my very Korean mother, practically perfect in their authenticity. Instead of veering towards the more fancier (read: more difficult and not necessarily better tasting) dishes, Kwak has written up the simple staples of the Korean diet. Each recipe includes all of the ingredients WITH AMERICAN MEASUREMENTS. A lot of recipe books out there use grams and mg, which can get pretty confusing for us with our cups and ounces. The steps are easy enough for an eleven-year old to follow (and I would know because my younger sister proved it), and Kwak also includes a short but personal story about some of the dishes, which is a nice touch.

Interspersed throughout the recipes, she has longer stories of the story behind the cooking on a whole, which makes the cookbook more than a smattering of recipes; it is a memoir. Though I haven't counted how many there are in all, it is enough to fill roughly 130 pages. I can say that I've bookmarked at least 90 percent of them. The couple that I've dabbled with so far came out great, even if I botched up the recipe just a little.

In my overall opinion, Kwak has put together a fantastic book that couldn't be easier to follow and I haven't regretted my purchase in the least.