Fashion designer Rejina Pyo has joined with her husband, chef and food writer Jordan Bourke, to produce Our Korean Kitchen, available from 3 September (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £25). Judging by the extract published today in The Guardian, the recipe book is user-friendly, full of welcoming photographs, and adapts traditional recipes to accommodate ingredients available in the UK.
Links:
- www.jordanbourke.com | www.rejinapyo.com
- Sample recipes available in The Guardian
- Buy the book on Amazon.co.uk
- More details on the book on Jordanbourke.com
Are you buying this?
I wish there was more of a preview available (a recipe index and a few pages from the actual book) because I can’t get a real sense from the sample recipes published in the Guardian whether this is a book for me or not. My hunch is that it’s probably more aimed at beginner cooks or individuals new-to-Korean cooking.
Yes I’ll probably be adding this to the collection. They’ve beaten Judy Joo to it – hers isn’t due till May next year. Until then it seems to be the only UK-focused recipe book as far as I can see. The nearest equivalent seems to be Quick and Easy Korean Cooking by Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee – an American book.
I hope you can bring it along then at some point, so I can leaf through it.
I would guess that Judy Joo’s book would be quite different, and possibly aimed at a quite different reader. I don’t care so much whether it’s UK oriented or not, I generally prefer highly specialised cookbooks to introduction-to-a-cuisine ones because these days the internet covers the basics pretty well. I’ve got an Asian dumplings cookbook, one on Japanese farmhouse cooking (50% or more of the recipes being foods you would never find in restaurants), a similar one for Tuscany. I would love one on Korean temple cuisine (would love to research that myself tbh), or foods specific to certain regions in Korea.
Still, this one might make a very good gift for others.