Two different forces converged to inspire this week’s recipe.
First, I realized my daughter loves gochujang — the sweet and spicy chile paste popular in Korean cooking that gets its stretchy texture and depth of flavor from fermented sticky rice. More accurately, she loves Korean fried chicken, which is often tossed with a gochujang-rich sauce.
Second, I’ve been revisiting the cookbook Korean American by Eric Kim. My mom bought me this book when it first came out. Part memoir, part cookbook, I read most of the book in the spring, made a recipe or two, and then put it on the shelf.
Fellow cookbook author Andrea Nguyen and I recently interviewed Eric for the podcast I produce with three other cookbook authors called Everything Cookbooks. Because of that episode, I’ve been leafing through Korean American again, remembering how much I love Eric’s recipes.
Some are quite simple: Roasted-Seaweed Avocado Toast, for example, is as easy and delicious as it sounds. Others are a bit more time-consuming — the Ganjang Gejang involves killing and cleaning live blue crabs before marinating them for at least 24 hours.
Almost all of them sound so good and fun that they make me want to run into the kitchen and play, which is exactly what happened here.
Since Eric’s from Atlanta, he includes some dishes that nod to the South, including his take on shrimp and grits. I can’t wait to try his version, which includes gim (roasted seaweed) in the grits and a blend of seasonings on the shrimp, including gochugaru (Korean red chili powder), lemon, and fish sauce.
For the recipe below, I went in a different direction from him and use only five ingredients (or six if you use the scallions).
Coarsely ground grits made from heirloom varieties of corn are a real treat, but they can take hours to cook. Since I’m hoping you’ll make this dish on a weeknight, I opt for quick-cooking grits. You can purchase bags of cornmeal sold as polenta to have a similar effect.
(What’s the difference between grits and polenta? It’s mostly the name. Both are porridges made from stone-ground cornmeal. Polenta — a popular dish in northern Italy — is often made with yellow corn ground to medium fineness. Grits — part of the culinary lifeblood of the American South — are often made with white corn but can come in many colors, especially with all the heirloom varieties. The grind size of the cornmeal used for grits varies from medium for quick-cooking grits to quite coarse. Instant grits are usually par-cooked and then dehydrated.)
Frozen sweet corn enhances the flavor of the grits and adds a little texture (not to mention that vegetable I promise you every week).
For the shrimp, I cook them in a bit of oil and then toss them in butter mixed with gochujang — a genius combination Eric uses on steak. (Side note: I made my dad steak with gochujang butter back in the spring, and he still claims it’s the best steak he’s ever tasted).
The scallions here add some oniony punch, but the dish is also delicious without them.
While I was thrilled with how much flavor I could eke out of just a few ingredients (I mean…with gochujang butter, how could I not!), the real test was whether my daughter would like it.
She not only gobbled up the shrimp but went back for seconds on the polenta. “It’s not as good as Korean fried chicken,” she told me. “But it’s still good.”
I’ll take it.
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