Summer Noodles

Grace Choi                                 South Korea

I would start the burning summer mornings running through my grandmother’s yard, trying to catch frogs coming out for their morning hunt. I would trip over rocks and scratch my knees, all the while greeting my grandmother’s lovely elderly neighbors who sat on their porches admiring my rambunctious youth.  

Then, I would run down to the field where my grandmother spent hours each day tending her vegetables. A small wooden pavilion welcomed me to sit down and take a breath. I would plop myself on its cool wooden floor just as I heard my grandmother screaming from afar, “Head back up to the house and boil some water on the stove!”. 

My grandmother, whom I called “Halmeoni”, was like an endless jar of random cookies when it came to cooking - bold, unpredictable, and confident, with her own set of rules which also reflected how she raised my mom. She overcame the fear of an unknown culture with boldness and confidence. Halmeoni did not use measurements or precise recipes. Instead, she would “nundaejoong”, a form of eyeballing a measurement with her guts and senses. She would say, “If you want to ‘nundaejoong’, be bold with it”. This is hard to understand even after all these years. 

Applying her teachings, I would nunndaejoong the water on the stove. Just around the time the water began to boil, Halmeoni walked in the door and added the somyeon in the water. We knew the somyeon was ready when the surface of the noodle slightly turns transparent. While the noodles were boiling, I would take out halmeoni’s yeolmu kimchi and kongguk from the fridge. When the noodles were fully cooked, we would take the noodles, yeolmu kimchi and kongguk down to wooden pavilion and call my parents to join us for lunch. That’s when we got to choose our lunch menu. 

Me and my mom’s favorite choice was adding kongguk, soybeans grinded in the blender with a few pinch of salt, pine nuts, and sesame seed, to the somyeon noodles. The soft, creamy, and nutty soy milk was served over noodles with a few floating ice cubes and shredded cucumbers to add a fresh taste.  

Yeolmu Kimchi, young radish springs covered in a fresh and spicy sauce base, was fermented over weeks, sometimes months. Once the kimchi was fermented and ripe, the radish produced a refreshing, tangy, umami, savory, and acidic cold soup. The soup was poured on the boiled somyeon with some chopped pieces of radish kimchi stems, a dash of sesame oil, and a few ice cubes. This was my dad’s favorite. 

Our tired, red, burning faces would recover after the icy cold meals. Halmeoni’s summer noodles would always look simple in appearance. However, once you saw the process of preparing, you could see and feel her affection in the food. Her motivation in cooking always came from the passion towards her loved ones which created her special flavors.