against "the best" and dubu jorim

Whenever I get sets of security questions the ones about “what is your favorite color” or “who was your childhood best friend” make me so agitated, because my favorite color today is not necessarily my favorite color tomorrow. I don’t have a favorite ice cream flavor, and I don’t know I’ve ever considered someone to be my “best friend.” I can’t have a best friend, that’s insane, like, what, someone is just better than all my other friends? Seems rude. Also, like, what is childhood? When does that stop? Middle school? High school? You can see where I’m going with this.

It’s not very food blogger-y of me, but I hate the idea of any recipe being “the best.” For me, there is no “best” there is only “the one that I liked the most at this exact moment.” Alas, that doesn’t fit as well into a recipe headline, and it definitely sucks for SEO optimization. I will never write a recipe and say that it’s the best, because, first of all, I have a normal and totally healthy amount of self-loathing, but also because I am improving on things all the time. Or, even if I’m not improving on what I make, my tastes and preferences change, and sometimes I get bored with things and do try a new version. It doesn’t mean that what I did before was bad, it means that all of us can be fickle, I mean, look at the number of tahini desserts from five years ago. Was that “the best” or was it just a trend that we can look back on and say “weird time!”?

I think that this is mostly a me problem, as many things are, but I also think that the proliferation of “best” things is marketing rather than truthfulness. The thing that you say is the best is the thing that is your favorite, with a veneer of objectivity. Just be honest! Not that I’m calling all recipe writers liars or anything, that would be super rude. It’s just that the Serious Eats/America’s Test Kitchenification of recipe publishing means that recipes are presented as though the author has discovered The Way to make, like, mashed potatoes or whatever. I say to that, please calm down, they’re fucking potatoes. Make them with whatever you have at home, you don’t need to use heavy cream and blanch garlic in it or whatever the fuck. Like, literally who cares.

I’ve felt kind of weird about sharing my versions of a lot of what I cook for a while, because I used to share primarily versions of what I grew up with, versions of what my dad made, and what I learned to make by watching him. I used to have a lot of recipes that I wrote from scratch, or adapted really heavily. Sharing a recipe is something that I do because I feel, for some reason, a sense of authority over the subject. I think, rightly or wrongly, that I am making these dishes so well that you might also benefit from making them the way that I did.

I don’t really cook like my dad so much these days. For the last few years, I mostly just make stuff from the Woks of Life, or Maanghi, or Korean Bapsang, or one of any other vast number of blogs. I cook a lot of east asian food, because when I had to adapt to my IBS diet, that wound up making the most sense, and now I prefer it. I have felt that they are not my recipes to share, not so much because of the like “is cooking some other culture’s food cultural appropriation” thing, which, whatever, but more because like… I’m literally just following someone else’s recipe most of the time, so I don’t usually have a lot to add, and it’s boring.

The way that I change recipes now is that I follow recipes, for a while, and then I start making them from memory, and then I forget the original recipe and just sort of hit the main points (more or less) and carry on like that. That is to say, I do what everyone does. I think that what I come down to is this: I’m not claiming to make an authoritative version of any dish, really. I can only ever say that this is what I did to make something that I like. Nothing that I make is the most authentic, or the best (except for my biscuits, accept no substitutions) it is just, you know, what I liked, and what I had on hand that day.

So at what point does a recipe become one of “my” recipes? I’m not really sure. How much do I have to change something to say “well I did this, and I like it better” and not just like, “I did this because I ran out of scallions” or whatever. This isn’t really my recipe, because it really is barely adapted at all. The only real difference is that I use plum syrup instead of sugar, because I love using plum syrup in sauces, it’s so delicious. You don’t have to use it though, you can follow the original recipe if you want.

People love this recipe. The people in my Korean class are always really bemused when I say it’s my favorite Korean dish, but it’s the one I cook almost every week, so I guess that makes it my favorite, just like how I’ve seen Magic Mike XXL probably 15 times, which I think makes it my favorite movie, numerically speaking. When my friends eat this they often ask “how did you get this so juicy?” the answer, is of course, you fry it, and then you braise it. It’s a great tofu dish. I recommend it to everyone.

Whatever the bowl is a mess because I was eating it on my desk as lunch during a four hour bargaining session. But I took a picture!

dubu jorim (braised tofu)

(barely) Adapted from Korean Bapsang

• 1 block tofu (firm or medium firm, I never use extra firm for pan frying)

• 3 tbs soy sauce (I use Korean jin-ganjang, Kikkoman would do fine)

• 3 tbs water

• 1 tbs sesame oil

• as much gochugaru as you like (I don’t measure it, but it’s probably a few teaspoons)

• 1 scant tbs maesil cheong or plum syrup (I haven’t tried this one, but it’s not sold through Amazon, so I am linking to it here I just buy the regular assi foods stuff that they sell by my house) you can also use a smaller amount of sugar, or honey, or brown rice syrup or, who cares, something sweet. You could even use maple syrup I guess, although I wouldn’t

• garlic, a few cloves, or a spoonful if you have it pre-chopped (this is optional in my heart, don’t come for me, sometimes I do not want to chop garlic leave me alone, I know it makes it taste better)

• sesame seeds (if you’ve got em, add some)

• scallions (I say again that they are optional because sometimes I don’t have them, and you know? it’s fine! although it really is better with them)

Cut tofu into 12 squares (or whatever, that’s just the shape I usually go for). Heat a large frying pan over medium high, add some oil (I prefer peanut). For easiest frying it helps to heat the pan quite thoroughly before you cook it. Fry the tofu until slightly browned and crisp on the bottom, then flip and fry again. It’s best to use a fish spatula to pry it up without tearing it, but also it’s not the end of the world if you don’t get it up in one piece, I almost never do, it’s fine, this is a very forgiving recipe.

While tofu is frying, mix the sauce. Add everything but the scallions to a bowl, and lo, you have made sauce!

Once the tofu is done (I usually fry it in two batches) lower the heat in the pan, add all the tofu and the sauce ingredients and cook for a couple minutes, then add the scallions and cook a little bit more.

Eat with rice, kimchi, and whatever vegetable sides you have around. I will often make a quick kale thing with: 1 bunch kale, blanched, squeesed, and roughly chopped, 1 tbs doenjang, 1 tbs sesame oil, some garlic, some sesame seeds, and a lot of black pepper, and a few scallions if you have them (again, sometimes your scallions turned to mush in the bottom of the refrigerator, it’s fiiiiine). You can use that same basic sauce to dress broccoli, if that’s the only good vegetable your store has at the moment (see image above).

Dubu jorim will last in your refrigerator for a few days, it’s a great thing to make ahead if people are coming by for dinner, it reheats super well, and if you make it a few hours before people come by you can just leave it out and eat it at room temperature. OSHA isn’t coming over for dinner (I hope?)

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Here is a hot tip, if you make dubu jorim and spinach namul and have leftovers of both, try this:

Store them both in the same big tupperware, and then for lunch the next day boil some plain white noodles (I like Chinese style noodles not Korean style because Korean noodles have so much salt? like, so much) and make a sesame peanut sauce by putting a bit of sesame paste into a bowl, a bit more peanut butter, adding some boiling water, stiring to make a little sauce, adding the extra sauce from your braised tofu, then adding your leftover spianch, stirring well, and then mixing the noodles with it. Plop the tofu on top, and look, you’ve got lunch. You might want to add a little bit of soy sauce to it. I did this when I had some leftovers and was feeling a bit confused, and it was actually… really good? Like weirdly so. I wouldn’t go out of my way to make this, but if you happen to have these ingredients and it’s not quiiiiite enough for lunch, or you ran out of rice, it’s a good option!