Kim - The Good Fork Cookbook

For more than ten years, The Good Fork has been one of Brooklyns favorite restaurants. Its a neighborhood spot that offers a rare treat in the crowded, slick New York food scene: a restaurant that feels like home. Chef Sohui Kim and her husband live just down the block, blurring the lines between their kitchen at home and the restaurant kitchen. The Good Fork Cookbook is packed with Kims recipes for flavorful, globally inspired cuisine that a home cook can make any night of the week.

Just as she has done at her magical Brooklyn restaurant, Sohui Kim has created the most soulful, welcoming book, allowing hungry friends and strangers alike to learn, gather, eat, and celebrate together. The Good Fork Cookbook is at once a story of true love and perseverance, a collection of authentic, imaginative, and tasty recipes, and a spirited example of the modern American dream. The moment I picked it up, I knew it would become an indispensable tool in my kitchen.

GAIL SIMMONS,

FOOD CRITIC, TV PERSONALITY, AND AUTHOR OF TALKING WITH MY MOUTH FULL

For years, The Good Fork has been an extension of our kitchen, our family room, and our dinner table. Its a place that feels like home to us. And now with this book, you canat last!re-create Sohuis incredibly flavorful, soulful, and comforting food in an actual home.

MICHELLE WILLIAMS, ACTOR

Sohui Kims personal geography has inspired an especially tantalizing fusion of Asian and European food ways. Her colorful and intriguing dishes are intricately explained for the home cook with ample information on finding ingredients.

MIMI SHERATON,

FOOD CRITIC, JOURNALIST, AND AUTHOR OF 1,000 FOODS TO EAT BEFORE YOU DIE

The Good Fork Cookbook is a wonderful collection of warming recipes and stories perfect for the multicultural way we eat, entertain, and live today. So many of my extended restaurant-family members are highlighted in these pages; opening the book feels like coming home. And you all are invited to share.

ANITA LO,

OWNER AND EXECUTIVE CHEF OF ANNISA; AUTHOR OF COOKING WITHOUT BORDERS

I believe that deep down inside, every American cook wants to cultivate the delicate touch, thoughtful spirit, and audacious flavors found in Sohuis cooking. Her distinctive style of combining Korean traditions with contemporary American flavors in such a personal way makes her cooking, her restaurants, and now her cookbook a reference point for all that is good in our food world today.

MICHAEL ANTHONY,

EXECUTIVE CHEF AND MANAGING DIRECTOR OF GRAMERCY TAVERN AND UNTITLED

DEDICATED TO

the greatest Buena Forchettas:

Jane and Peter Schneider;

my father,

Dae Sik Kim;

and my two amazing children,

Jasper and Oliver,

who will hopefully one day

cook these recipes

while I sit in the backyard

and drink a glass of wine.

Contents

BY ANDREW KNOWLTON

SPECIAL INGREDIENTS:
A NOTE ABOUT USING THIS BOOK

Foreword

You know the kind of people who make you mad because you wish you could be like them? Thats who Sohui Kim and Ben Schneider are to me.

It all began in 2003 over a plate of grilled chicken thighs. My friend St. John Frizell, who was a copy editor at Bon Apptit at the time, had just moved into a ground-floor rental in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a quiet waterfront hamlet that felt thousands of miles away from the hustle of New York City. The apartment was a shoebox, but it had a big backyard, and St. John was smart enough to see its party potential. His new landlords needed help cleaning it up, and I volunteered. Beer and food were promised and, at the age we were, thats all it took to get a dozen or so people to pitch in. As the sun began to set, the landlords, Sohui and Ben, rolled out a keg of Brooklyn Lager and set out a platter of chicken thighs.

The chicken had been marinated in soy sauce, ginger, garlic, honey, and gochujang and then charred on a Weber. It was spicyperfectly tender on the inside, and impossibly crunchy on the outside. I realized at that moment that I wasnt as good a cook as I had thought. Sohui probably doesnt even remember cooking that mealit was something she had simply thrown together at the last minute. As I would later learn, thats what she does. She makes people happy with food.

Over the next two years, that backyard became my life. There was party after party. There were ptanque tournaments, weddings, and bonfires set in old oil drums around which we would recap our workweeks and drink and smoke too much. There were playsreal plays with actors and scripts and costumes and propsand people paid to watch them. I became the unofficial backyard bartender, behind the bar Ben had built one weekend. That backyard wasnt just a gathering place; it was the grange hall of the Red Hook community. Its where, you could say, I became an adult. Everyone who spent time there was lucky, and we all had Sohui and Ben to thank.

But they also made me envious. Ben could drink more beer than I couldand not fall down. He could build anything: a house, a float for Coney Islands annual Mermaid Parade, a Broadway-worthy stage. Give him a box of toothpicks and a tube of Krazy Glue, and the next day youd have a boat to take you to nearby Liberty Island. His beard was always better than mine, and he even owned a pickup truckin New York City!

Sohui introduced me to the world of Korean cooking with its fire and funk. She taught me how to cook rice with my instinctsthe ultimate gift, in my book. Plus, she did it all with a big smile and an even bigger heart. I think she could drink more than I could, too.

Soon, they told me they were thinking of opening a restaurant around the corner from their house. As someone who has seen great restaurants come and go, I attempted to talk them out of it. It was too hard, I said. Too time-consuming, too thankless. But I was simply being selfish. What would happen to our backyard parties? What would I do with all my weekends? Where would I drink kegs of cold Schaefer beer, listen to Willies Roadhouse on Sirius XM, and just shoot the shit?

) or drink a cold beer with Ben while you ask him, again, how he built the place all by himself. Its not just a place where I go to see old friends and meet new ones. Its not just a restaurant in Red Hook; it is Red Hook.

I still hold a grudge against Sohui and Ben for being better than me at pretty much everything. But now, thanks to the book you are holding, I can at least try to cook like them.