Part memoir and part cookbook, GROWING UP IN A KOREAN KITCHEN is one woman's cultural and culinary story, weaving childhood reminiscences with lovingly gathered recipes. With descriptions of the traditional Korean kitchen, preparations for special feast days, and the rituals of everyday family meals, author Hi Soo Shin Hepinstall draws an engaging portrait of a seldom glimpsed way of life. Easy-to-follow recipes, largely handed down through oral tradition, cover the wide range of main and side dishes, from the sumptuous elegance of "royal cuisine" to simpler countryside cooking. Korean cuisine has emerged as one of the most exciting and robust tastes of Asia, with great variety and some of the world's most sophisticated techniques for pickling and cooking with garlic and hot pepper. Cooks of all levels, as well as armchair travelers, will welcome this book to their collection.• Includes over 250 authentic recipes, a glossary, and a list of resources for finding uniquely Korean ingredients and utensils.• Illustrated with the author's travel and family photos, depicting the cultural and culinary traditions of Korea.For a list of markets that carry Korean ingredients visit www.koreanfeast.com
Hi! I was born and raised in Chung-ju, South Korea. I have a bachelor's degree in English literature from Ewha Woman's University in Seoul and a "certificate" from Le Cordon Bleu de Paris, France. In my senior year, my first novel, "The Beautiful Prisoner's Suit" won the grand prize in a prestigious national novel contest. It was published, serialized in a newspaper and made into a movie by Korea's eminent director, Shin Sang-Ok. I married my American husband, Larry, and moved to Seattle in 1962. We and our daughter, Sonya, returned to Korea on Larry's Fulbright in 1969 and for the next 25 years we travelled around the globe according to his assignments as a professor and administrator for the University of Maryland University College. During our life in College Park, Maryland, Heidelberg, Germany, Seoul, Korea and Bangkok, Thailand, we met many different and interesting people and studied their languages and cultures, especially their food culture. I soon realized that people knew little about Korean food and, in fact, I felt Korean food culture was close to losing its identity. I put my novel writing aside to focus on Korean food. Looking for a stage, I hit upon the idea of using my family kitchen of the 1930's and 40's to portray Korea's authentic traditional food culture and way of life. Our three generation family--grandmother, mother and father and we twelve children under several roofs, but in one compound--was a most conservative and sternly traditional upper class family. Our kitchen was like a small exclusive restaurant where our mother, with her servants, plus us girls (including me as a reluctant errand girl who hid in the attic reading and had to be dragged out by the back of the neck into the kitchen). Every meal was elaborately layed out for more than thirty people. We worked in a frenzy to serve our fastidious elders, boys and guests who demanded nothing but the best, served in the proper Confucian manner. I did not realize this nightmare of my childhood kitchen was my first Korean cooking lesson. Today we live in beautiful Rappahannock county Virginia, next to the Shanandoah National Park. We enjoy offering Korean cooking workshops and "kimchi making" and "cooking with kimchi" workshops. Please watch for our kimchi cookbook that will be published shortly.
