PART FROM THE OCCASIONAL bout of near-fatal food poisoning, I don’t think I got sick even once during my California sojourn. (It was two years, but we’ll call it a sojourn.) Perhaps it was the prophylactic weather, or the citrus-based cocktails, or some chemical property of the Dungeness crab, which I ate whenever an opportunity presented itself. All I know is that the East Coast is a very different story. We are passing from the rainy season into the season of low light, sleet, and suicidal ideation. There is only one thing for it, and that is soup.
For reasons which need not concern you, reader, I recently had good reason to believe I was coming down with strep throat. I prescribed myself two cans per day of Campbell’s Vegetable Soup (Beef Stock) with alphabet-shaped pasta, but each day the tickling in my gullet became less playful and more sadistic. I had lost my faith in western medicine. It was time to try a more exotic remedy—from the inscrutable Orient. Years ago, in Manhattan’s Chinatown, I had known a salty half-Irish, half-Korean bartender called S— Kim. It was she who ordered me my first ever plastic tub of 김치 찌개, or kimchi jjigae.
Kimchi, of course, is Korean pickled cabbage. Some believe it has special terrific health benefits, though it has in fact been linked more soundly to stomach cancer. Either way, it has a spicy, salty tang and is best consumed—this judgment being based on a near-total ignorance of Korean cuisine—in the form of jjigae, or stew. I decided to try my hand at this mysterious soup, and with luck I would establish a DMZ of sorts between myself and the approaching misery.
The preparation is so simple that I ended up with something edible despite using the vaguest (sorry, most “enigmatic”) recipe the Internet had to offer. “I’m sure everyone has their own version of kimchi jjigae,” it begins, “but I thought I would share my version anyhow.” (Baby, don’t be shy: Redundancy plus opacity is what the Internet is all about. This site is a case in point.) I submit the recipe for your use, with two caveats. The first is that if you cook this for anywhere near as long as 45 minutes, you will need to add way more than “a little” water. The second is that whatever sam gyup sal might be, it definitely isn’t “pork bacon.”
Now, some good news. This stuff is magic, and my throat is right as rain. Alas (kiss your appetite goodbye), it does absolutely nothing for piles.