KOREATOWN

I have a serious cookbook addiction that I must have inherited from my grandmother, who read cookbooks the way some women read romance novels. Mine started when I was just a year or two out of high school, with a subscription to the Time-Life Foods of the World series; I still have all of them, the hardbacks full of wonderful narrative, history, culture, and gorgeous pictures (rather faded now) and the spiral-bound paperbacks containing all the recipes, a couple of which (Scandinavian Cooking and The Cooking of India) have their covers secured now with clear packing tape.

 

Korean food is a fairly new and delicious discovery for me; Joe and I were introduced to it by a few of our students. Tucson has a few Korean restaurants of varying quality - Takamatsu, Seoul Kitchen, Korea House, Kimchi Time - and apparently some of the Japanese restaurants, like Takamatsu, also serve Korean food. I've heard good things about Kampai Sushi, but haven't tried it yet. Interesting trivia note: according to one of my Korean students, most of the sushi chefs in Tucson are actually Korean (that included her husband after he graduated from the university, until he was able to get a job in his own field).

So as you can imagine, I was delighted to receive a review copy of Koreatown: A Cookbook from Blogging for Books http://www.bloggingforbooks.com. Just the cover makes me hungry, and I love the clever design, with the name broken up so the word EAT occupies the center of the image! And the rest of the book is just as gorgeous, full of great, tantalizing photos, recipes, interviews with other Korean chefs and fans of Korean and Korean-American food. Grandma would have loved it.

After an entertaining and informative introduction, each of the co-authors introduces himself with a two-page essay. Deuki Hong grew up in Manhattan's Koreatown and has been cooking professionally since he was fifteen; most of the recipes are those he grew up on. Food writer Matt Rodbard titles his essay "How a White Jew Boy from Kalamazoo Fell Hard for Korean Food." The two make a great team; the writing throughout the book is breezy, entertaining, and deeply appreciative of Korean food and culture.

But the food is the core of the enterprise. I'm a fairly adventurous cook but somehow I've felt intimidated by Korean cuisine, probably because of a Korean friend's remark that cooking for a dinner party was going to be so much work and that Korean food was complicated. But it's really not any more so, I don't think, than any other national cuisine. My friend just doesn't like to cook.

The book arrived during Lent, and because Joe and I have been on-and-off vegetarians, we decided those 40 days would be a good time to go meatless. So I didn't cook any of the meat recipes during that time, although there are many in the book, since Korean food today can be quite meat-centric.

So of course one of the first things I tried was Bibimbap, although as it says opposite the picture, "This Is Not a Bibimbap Recipe." I've had bibimbap many times in restaurants; it seems to be many people's intro to Korean food, for good reason. In restaurants it's usually like a rice bowl on steroids, the sticky rice topped with a number of vegetables, some thin-sliced cooked beef, and an egg (in my experience, not a raw egg as in the above photo, though the raw egg yolk does look cool there). But really, as the authors assure us, you can make bibimbap with whatever's on hand, so I used leftovers from the first two dishes I'd made. Kongnamul Muchim, which translates to crunchy sesame bean sprouts, is one of my favorite banchan (the small dishes that precede and accompany the main course at Korean restaurants). If you look at the cover image above, the bean sprouts are at the top center, occupying the letter "O." I also had some leftover Doenjang and Kimchi-Braised Kale (the recipe served 4 generously and there are only 2 of us); amazingly delicious on its own, it lent a wonderful rich earthiness to the bibimbap. And chopped kimchi, of course, with some shredded carrots and, because it was Lent, just an egg, no meat. Ah, heaven! I love leftovers anyway, but this lifts the tasty to the sublime.

Another thing I love about Korean food is the unfussy way it's eaten. At the first Korean restaurant we went to, years ago, the waiter who brought my bibimbap said, "Just take your chopsticks and stir it all up. Mix it up!" No dainty little bites of one thing at a time - we loved it and felt instantly comfortable and well fed.

The first Korean recipe I tried at home (not from this book) was Pajeon or scallion pancake (above). We'd had some at Seoul Kitchen as a complimentary appetizer (with its spicy dipping sauce) and loved it. What I made at home was good, but not as good, and now I know why. According to Deuki and Matt, Korean cooks, including those in restaurants, all use prepackaged Korean pancake mix (no, Bisquick or Krusteaz won't do) with sparkling (unflavored, of course) water. That was hard for me, since generally speaking I don't do mixes. But they are right; the results were so much better.

In fact, this book and all the recipes I wanted and still want to try necessitated a trip to one of the local Korean markets where I bought enough ingredients that we put them all into a "Korean box," but you probably don't need to go quite that far immediately. Kimchi (if you've never tried it, don't resist; even just a little, chopped up and stirred into a bowl of rice, elevates the eating experience), along with some gochujang (spicy fermented pepper paste), and gochugaru (red chile powder) will get you started. A very informative section on ingredients at the beginning of the book will help you know what to look for.

This beautiful book is a marvelous introduction to a cuisine that is only now getting the attention it deserves, as enjoyable to read and look through as it is to cook from.

WHEN IN ROME

Recently I've read two very good novels about ancient Rome. Well, one of them is about the place destined to become Rome, but that's close enough. Anyway, I've realized that I'm rather partial (at the moment) to good fiction, especially mysteries, set in ancient Rome; fortunately several very good authors are out there working hard to feed my habit. Several years ago I was introduced to the work of Steven Saylor, whose Roma Sub Rosa series kept me entertained for quite a while, till I'd read them all. In the first, Roman Blood, the reader meets Gordianus the Finder, whose fortunes improve dramatically when the great orator and senator Cicero comes to him for help.

Gordianus is smart, personable, and very, very human, with a personal life that is just as interesting as the cases he works to solve. (But isn't that the case with all appealing fictional detectives?) Through his association with Cicero, Gordianus (and the reader) becomes acquainted with all the great names of that period of Roman history, including but not limited to Julius Caesar, Crassus, Sulla, and a lot more I didn't know much about before reading these books. I also learned a good deal about Roman law, culture, family life, food - Saylor really does his homework, as all good historical novelists must.

I was very disappointed to come to the end of the series, but I've recently learned that in addition to two very BIG (as in massive) non-Gordianus novels of the period, Roma and Empire, Saylor has begun a new mystery series called the Seven Wonders. These stories - The Seven Wonders, Raiders of the Nile, and Wrath of the Furies - are prequels to the first series, recounting the adventures of the younger Gordianus.

If I had to pick a favorite Roman series, though, it would probably be the Medicus novels of Ruth Downie. These mysteries are set in Roman Britain, where the general dampness and gloomy weather parallel the mood of Gaius Petreius Ruso, a doctor with the Roman Legions. He's a reluctant sleuth who finds himself taking responsibility not only for his patients but also for an independent-minded British slave girl, Tilla, and of course solving murders. Downie's first six Ruso novels - Medicus, Terra Incognita, Persona Non Grata, Caveat Emptor, Semper Fidelis, and Tabula Ras - will be joined by a seventh, Vita Brevis, later this year.

 

Tilla and Ruso are very well-matched (it does take Ruso a while to recognize this) and they make a great team in the setting of cultural contact and conflict in which they find themselves. This series also offers fascinating insights into the history and culture of early Britain and how the Roman Empire operated as it expanded into very different territories far from Rome.

  The first of Lindsay Davis's many novels about Marcus Didius Falco, The Silver Pigs, sends him to Britain to uncover the truth about a conspiracy to steal silver ingots, the "pigs" of the title. Falco is a bit rougher around the edges than Ruso or Gordianus, and his neighborhood's definitely lower class, at least in this first book, but that's part of his charm, and it certainly broadens one's knowledge about life in ancient Rome.  I confess this is the only one of Davis's novels I've read so far, but I enjoyed it very much. My husband has read at least a dozen, and when I've whittled down my To Be Read pile some more, I plan to pay Falco another visit, or two, or . . . . 

Robert Harris's novels about Cicero are a more recent discovery. I picked up the first, Imperium, some months ago thinking Joe would like it (he did), and only lately got around to reading it myself. I wasn't sure I'd be interested, but decided to try a few pages . . . and I couldn't put it down. The narrator, Cicero's slave Tiro, was a real person who apparently did write a biography of his master which has been lost. Tiro also invented a form of shorthand, something that figures importantly in the story.

Imperium is sort of a hybrid of courtroom drama(s) and biographical fiction. Harris's Cicero does not contradict Saylor's portrayal of the great orator, but rather expands our picture of this brilliant and complex man as seen through the eyes of the individual who probably knew him best. Harris focuses sharply on politics and personalities, of which Tiro is an astute and gossipy observer, making Imperium both fascinating and highly entertaining. I found a used copy of the second book in the trilogy, Conspirata, last week and the final book, Dictator, was released a couple of months ago to rave reviews. One critic called it "Triumphant, compelling and deeply moving . . . the finest fictional treatment of Ancient Rome in the English language. . . . " I haven't read all those other "fictional treatments," of course, and maybe the critic hasn't either, but still, that's pretty high praise.

And now, at least in my opinion, I've saved the best for last. The final novel I want to talk about is neither a mystery nor is it technically set in Rome or outposts of Rome's empire. It is, rather, about the mythic events that preceded the founding of Rome. Lavinia by Ursula K. LeGuin tells the story of the Latin princess Aeneas marries when, years after the fall of Troy and his tragic affair with Queen Dido of Carthage, his ships arrive in ancient Italy.

Lavinia appears only briefly in Virgil's Aeneid and she does not speak at all there, but LeGuin gives her both a voice and a fully drawn, fleshed out character, bringing this mythical princess and her long-ago world vividly to life.  I have admired LeGuin and her writing for decades. She regularly transcends the categories of science fiction and fantasy to which some uninformed readers have tried to limit her, even while she continues to work within those genres.

Lavinia is an example of that transcendence of genre boundaries. More than fantasy, it is nevertheless not history, nor is it an epic like the Iliad, which is mentioned mostly in passing. It is a coming of age story and more; its heroine tells her own story of how she figures in an important cultural and historical change. There are moments of high drama, but mostly in terms of interpersonal, often family relationships; there are battles, but they are largely in the background. Among the most beautifully rendered scenes are Lavinia's conversations with the shade of the dying Virgil, who regrets the way he overlooked and shortchanged her in the Aeneid. Although Lavinia is so far in the past as Virgil would perceive it, or Virgil so impossibly far in her future, these scenes, in which time becomes slippery, blend smoothly with the more traditional chronological narrative of the rest of the story - the story that Virgil is only now coming to know - so that the reader may not even notice how extraordinary LeGuin's accomplishment is. Flanked by figures known for heroism (Aeneas) or artistic brilliance (Virgil), Lavinia, who before LeGuin was nothing but a name, creates herself for her poet, stakes her own quiet claim to our attention, and becomes the most real character of all.

Welcome!

I'm very excited about this blog, which is an expansion of my original venture into the blogosphere, Morning Glory Garden (morning-glory-garden.blogspot.com). That blog, as the title suggests, focuses on gardens, gardening, the lovely things that come from the garden - vegetables, herbs, flowers, fruits - and other associated creative ventures, from cooking to various arts and crafts.

For a while, after I discovered Blogging for Books (bloggingforbooks.com), it also included the occasional book review. For an ardent book lover like me, Blogging for Books seemed like a sort of miracle. You sign up, choose a book, and they send you a free review copy. All they ask is that you read it, write an honest review for their site, and also post the review on your own blog. If you go to Morning Glory Garden you'll see that recently reviews have pretty much been all I've posted, and except, perhaps, for the cookbooks, they don't really fit with the theme(s) of that blog, so here we are. This will be the place for all things literary from now on. Including cookbooks. And maybe posts of my own poetry during April (National Poetry Month). Things like that.

I actually have a new cookbook awaiting review, but since I haven't read it yet, I want to talk about something else: book groups, specifically the book group that I attend every month. Reading may seem like a solitary pursuit, but talking about books with other readers, even when we disagree (and that sometimes - well, okay, often - happens in this group) is also a great pleasure. Just last month, for example, I came away from the group with a greater appreciation for Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow, which I didn't actively dislike, but didn't find quite as compelling as some other readers did.

Our group reads a wide variety of things, both fiction and non-fiction, and the book for this month is Edward Abbey's 1968 masterpiece (that is not a word I use lightly), Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness.

His fourth book (following three novels), Desert Solitaire is, as the subtitle suggests, a chronicle of the time Abbey spent as a park ranger at Arches National Monument in Utah. Based mostly on his journals from those seasons, April to September for two years (he later returned for a third), he conveys in lyrical, sometimes angry, often humorous prose what he found to love in the desert southwest and how he believed we should live in relation to it so as not to destroy it. Readers who admire Thoreau and Aldo Leopold will certainly respond to Abbey's passionate environmentalism, while others, perhaps new to the genre, will also enjoy the experience. "Enjoy the experience" - such a flat, namby-pamby phrase to apply to this book that many of my students have said changed their lives, though to be fair, some others (a very small number) got quite angry with Abbey (though even they could not say he wasn't an excellent writer).

Here's what Edwin Way Teale wrote in the New York Times Book Review:

This book may well seem like a ride on a bucking bronco. It is rough, 

tough, combative. The author is a rebel and an eloquent loner. 

His is a passionately felt, deeply poetic book. 

It has philosophy. It has humor. It has its share of nerve-tingling 

adventures . . . set down in a lean, racing prose, 

in a close-knit style of power and beauty.

I knew next to nothing about Edward Abbey when I arrived at the University of Arizona in Tucson in 1992. He had taught there, in the creative writing department, until his death a few years before I arrived, and I heard later from some of his students how kind and good a teacher he could be, despite his cantankerous reputation.

As a grad student in the English department I taught composition, and one of my students asked me if she could bring her mother, who was visiting her, to class. I said "sure." I don't remember what the topic was that day, but after class the student and her mother came up to talk to me. "Have you read Desert Solitaire?" the mother asked. I had to admit I hadn't even heard of it. "You would love it," she said. "It is absolutely my favorite book."

So I read it, and then I taught it in several courses. And now I have the pleasure of re-reading it yet again, and looking forward to a lively discussion. Recently I was talking with the rector of our church, another Abbey aficionado, and I said that if I could only have one book on a desert island and had to choose between the Bible and Desert Solitaire, it would be very, very difficult. He just nodded in understanding.